PROLOGUE
* . °•★| Face to Your Nightmares |☆•° . *
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HIS HEART WAS IN HIS THROAT, an uncomfortable pulse that accentuated the fragance of blood lingering ironed tastes upon his tongue. The Tribute Center building was hardly the place for the President to be seen in and by all means, he knew that, but he had to see her for himself.
There was no better time to discreetly check whether or not his eyes had deceived him but when the whole Remake Center wing was buzzing with the sounds of showers, trimmers, driers and hushed chatter around mumbling tributes. Everyone was busy and every single stylist was informed by Peacekeepers guarding each compartment that they should not exit for the following ten minutes. Mentors and head stylists would be held at the entrance, should they try to cut the line of schedule. Coriolanus planned on being out of that place before the ten minutes had been spent anyway.
Not even half a thought had been formed in his mind as to how he would react should the girl prove to be his Edith. Somehow, he couldn't phantom a shame higher than the one presented by that possibility. But then, he walked into her compartment and locked eyes with the orange colored palms of the stylist in charge of washing the tribute's hair.
"Ah...," the stylist gasped out. Wide eyes stared from beneath thick neon green bangs at the president after having looked down for far too long at the dye on her palms. The president simply nodded to the side that the Peacekeepers with him, four in number, would remove the two stylists quietly — an Avox fate awaited both, regardless of what he decided to do regarding Edith. Two Peacekeepers would remain outside the compartment in which he now stood alone, petrified to watch the girl laid on the table open her eyes and sigh.
"I have requested they dye it back before the Chariots," she informed him nonchalantly, staring only ahead, at the bright lights of the ceiling.
"Get up," Coriolanus ordered in response. Without the distortion of recordings and broadcast, her voice was unmistakable. There was no room for doubt. "Get up, Edith."
Her jaw clenched, but she sat up and moved her attention to her father, "It's Lucy now." After a deep breath, she settled into her new posture and tilted her head to the side, "Figured I'd need a new name to avoid the press, but not one you wouldn't recognize."
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm being washed," Lucy gestured at their surroundings. "Prepared for the Chariots. District 4 has made me reek of fish."
He held his rage condensed, best he could, to a whisper, though she had had no such curtesy for a lower tone. As for expression, it so seemed that they shared the trait for coldness — all creases on Coriolanus' face were ridges of old age rather than deviations from numbness and unlike him, Edit benefitted from a features unspoiled by old age.
She ultimately shrugged.
How could that be the best answer she could muster? The president's fury accentuated behind the banner of that thought until he could no longer control himself in approaching. Then, because she was within reach, it was almost magnetism that drew out his hand to grasp the chin of his daughter and force her to look up st him.
"You stupid child," he seethed the words out, looking down into her pale blue eyes, unable to distinguish her own fire from a mirror of himself.
"I didn't get caught until I wanted you to see me, did I?" She tampered with the faint beginning of a smile. "I wouldn't say I am stupid if you couldn't find me until now."
"Do you even realize what sort of danger you have gotten yourself into? What horrid death awaits you in that arena? What shame you've brought onto me? Our name—"
"I requested they redye my hair," she reminded him with an interruption. "If I wanted to bring your name in the mud, I would have let the cameras see my blonde hair."
"What do you want then?" Coriolanus asked breathlessly, albeit he had to pick up his tone from that pit of despair she pushed him into. "You've always burdened me greatly, Edith, and I have always worked through the headaches and the stress, because being a burden is what a child is before it becomes a gift. I want to believe that. I want to have faith in you and that the education I have provided for you have made you more like me and less like your mother. Your true mother." He pasued, "I know she's been sending you letters and I want you to know as soon as I found out about what had happened, the culprit was captured and punished accordingly. There was a public execution."
"You got the wrong guy."
"Not possible."
Lucy sighed, drawing her gaze away, and down to the floor, as if she was bored with him. Such nonchalance helped the debate within Coriolanus' mind end. He straightened himself up and nodded, "You needn't have gone to such lengths to die, Edith. All you had to do was ask."
"I like knowing you'd be on the edge of your seat watching the Games this time around," her ghost of a smile had returned. "Asking yourself, Is this the moment when she'll finally tell them who she really is? Whose blood is really being spilled in that arena? Becoming a face to your nightmares."
"I could kill you here, right now," Coriolanus offered. "Or drag you back to the Ministry, lock you in a box, have them turn you into a Mutt."
"Without a doubt, you are capable," she nodded. "But are you willing? Are you willing to break another pristine record? How long has it been since a Tribute died before the Games even begun?"
"Careful, Miss Bellwood."
"Or what?" Lucy was calm in her response to his threat. "There's no one alive that I care about who you can hurt. The people who helped me get here are pawns and if I learnt anything from you, that sure is how I should never get attached to toys and tools."
"They'll rip you to shreds out there," he shook his head, astonished by her audacity.
"Most likely," Lucy agreed. "But I'll make them struggle." After a short pause in which she watched his numbed expression, she puffed, "You seem surprised."
He wouldn't say it. He would rather die than admit that he was, for the first time since she was born, impressed with her performance. Amongst his children, Edith had always been the one closest to the glorified image of himself in the dreadfully long years spent at the Academy; that distorted image of himself that he tucked away and hid, polished and altered all on his own, in the quiet reflection of the night fragrant of rose powder.
"Alright."
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FINNICK HAS BARELY COMPLETED his victory tour and he's already found himself in the shoes of a Mentor, even if just to give back to Mags what he hoped would make up for the great help she's been to him: a break from the dealings of the Capitol. But it was undeniable the reaping had been disappointing that year in District 4. Lucy Bellwood and Carmine Laurent. Between a frail girl and a young drunk, their odds were anything but in their favor, because neither of those two even talked during the train ride. People expensive on words had to be strong beyond doubt to win the games and they were not, so he's managed his expectations, so to say, until he was confident enough to walk besides the head stylist of the team nodding in approval at the designs for the chariot costumes.
The hallways to the Remake wing were quiet enough such that their conversation was instinctively diminished to a whisper and the second another set of steps thunder along,vyhe presence of company was undoubtedly pertinent to assume. Finnick simply did not exepct to get a glimpse at the all too familiar President Snow walking with his escort towards him. Before he knew it, he had frozen. Tingles in the tips of his fingers drove him cold and still. Had the stylist not been there to pull him aside, those Peacekeepers would have stomped all over him, reminding the President that he existed. Oh, Finnick stopped breathing for a moment at the though of locking eyes with that man.
But it was a lucky day: their feeble presence went unnoticed.
"What is the President doing visiting the Tributes?" The stylist sighed out, seeding the question deep into Finnick's mind, as an aftermath fo his fresh panic. Yes, his thoughts affirmed the importance of the inquiry. Why is he here?