Work Text:
It seemed exciting.
Everything was shinier. The colors, more saturated. The food, more fragrant.
There were lots of people in the house, making it easier to slip away in the masses.
Effie tucked herself under the table, the pretty silver tablecloth shrouding her from view. With the bulk of all the adults filling the space no one even noticed. The dark wood floors pressed their grain into her pink knees as Effie carefully arranged a selection of sparkling things she’d collected off the floor. Glitzy pink sequins, glitter-dusted orange feathers, and an assortment of clear crystals.
Carefully she took each item in her hands, gently running her fingers over shimmering edges and dyed plumes. The grownups had shedding costumes, littering the ground with more treasures as they grew woozy.
People had been flocking around the TV since the morning. They came and went, a few surrendering to work or styling appointments or long afternoon naps, but of the rotating cast several dozen remained at her house. Now it was well into the evening.
Effie pressed the dull point of a crystal into the fleshy pad of her thumb. Her father did the same thing with a pen nib, so he always had a tiny dent of black ink on his fingerprint. He always let her kiss it when he got done with work.
The din of chattering voices had alarmed her at first, but after hours of it, she felt almost sleepy.
She had just about nodded off when she felt her mother's cool fingers wrap around her arm. “Effie Claudia Trinket, what in the world are you doing under that table? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Sorry Mama,” she mumbled, letting her mother guide her quickly to the living room. The TV was still on, spraying the encircling couches with harsh blue light. Adults watched its flickering in rapture, while their well-dressed children played on the rug.
She wanted to sit on the rug with them and curl up on the fluffy pink fur. It looked so cozy and her head was so heavy. Instead, her mother folded Effie on her lap and pointed at the glowing screen.
“Look how exciting it is, darling!”
There was a strange-looking girl on the TV. She looked too sharp and very grimy. Everything about her was brown. Her hair, her skin, her eyes. The crusty gashes on her deflated belly.
She’d never seen a person look like that. She was quite an ugly girl wasn’t she, barely a girl at all.
Effie thought of the animals painted on her bedroom walls. There were fluffy pink sheep, lime green parrots, and butter yellow mice. This girl looked a bit like one of those, an all-brown animal that could be painted on a bedroom wall. No young lady could possibly be all one color.
Her mother was the loveliest lady she’d ever seen, and Sweetie Trinket was every color of the rainbow. Her skin was sunny yellow, her eyes glimmering cobalt, and her hair a silky sheet of magenta. She’d promised Effie once she turned eight she’d get to pick out her own upgrades. Until then, she picked out the most colorful outfits she could to match her mother.
Once she’d seen an ad on the TV for bubblegum-colored eyelashes tipped with shiny spring-green crystal droplets. Since then she’d tucked away her allowance in her pearly jewelry box, swearing she’d save up for those eyelashes. Unfortunately, the replacement operation could only be done on twelve-year-olds and above because little kid eyelids were just too small for the doctors to replace the follicles.
Oh well, she’d have to save up until then anyway.
She wished that ad was on the TV again, instead of the all-brown girl. She was shivering on a bed of yellow grass, her lips white with dead cracked skin.
Something must have been wrong with her. There were shows like that, where doctors took the more repulsive-looking people and filmed sped up versions of the operations to make them beautiful. Effie hoped it would be soon. Something about the girl unsettled her stomach.
A dark figure appeared behind the shivering girl. Finally, the doctor! Maybe he’d use some of that glittery sugar scrub on her horrible lips. Then he could whiten her skin so she’d be more easily dyed.
The doctor wore the same thin clothes as the girl. Gently, he rolled her over, touching her stiff bluish fingers and lumpy stained belly. A word came to Effie’s head, an almost obsolete one. Blood. She’d only heard it once, when the chef had accidentally cut her turquoise finger. A slippery redness had formed a little bead on her skin. But then they’d cleaned it away and dabbed on a cream that smoothed any trace away. Since then, she’d never seen the same shade of red.
Now it was everywhere. Dying the brown girl red, gushing into the dark ground. The yellow grass was smeared with the stuff. The adults began to whisper excitedly. Her mother was smiling a pearly smile, looking supple and radiant, her cheeks like ripened peaches.
Effie smiled up at her mother. So beautiful. She looked back at the TV as the doctor drove something into the now red girl’s flesh. More blood sprayed out, shimmering like the gems she’d collected from people’s costumes.
Something strange and unconscious twisted in Effie’s chest. Something was wrong. Her mother was still smiling her lovely smile. Nothing was wrong.
The doctor closed the girl’s eyes. Huffed a sigh that turned silver in the cold night air.
He left her in the matted tangle of sticky red grass.
“Who’s one step closer to payday?” her mother asked the crowd cheerfully. There were a few happy responses and self-deprecating grumbles. People were laughing. Effie carefully slipped from her mother’s lap and dropped herself onto the soft rug. She pinched a tuft of hot pink fur and imagined she was the girl in the grass, drifting softly to sleep.
This was an important dinner. It had to go perfectly.
Her mother sounded slightly strange, repeating it so much.
But Effie didn’t complain, there was a crackle of activity in the air. It almost fizzed on her tongue.
Instead, she lay still as her mother painted something on every inch of her skin. After a few minutes it began to burn. She lay still. It burned more. Finally, the tears threatened to spill over. “Mama this hurts,” she whimpered, feeling the pain dig into her naked flesh.
“Don’t worry,” her mother replied, removing curlers from her own strawberry pink locks. “It’s supposed to, all the fashionable young ladies do this. You’re lucky I’m letting you do it so early. I would have been thrilled to get treatments like this at twelve.”
“Oh,” she squeaked, slightly relieved. Hearing her mother's silken voice had relieved the pain some. “What’s it for?”
Her mother pursed her full rose lips. “It will make it easier to dye your skin when you’re old enough. Trust me, my love, you’ll be grateful when you're older. Until then you’ll be the fairest young lady in your class.”
That sounded good. Her mother peeled violet flowers off a clear plastic sheet and arranged them on her raspberry cheeks. Then she brushed gold dust over her eyelids. A small timer went off.
“Alright my darling, pop in the shower, let’s rinse you off.”
Thank goodness.
When she stepped out of the cool water every inch of her was stinging, but it was more superficial than the pain had been with the paste on her. She looked fresh as lace. Every inch of her was silky smooth and the color of baby’s breath.
“How pretty,” her mother murmured into her ear, her soft hair tickling Effie’s cheek.
“Thank you,” the girl whispered back, giggling. “I love it!”
“I just knew you would, baby! Every girl could use a few treatments like this.”
Effie wrinkled her nose. Her mother smoothed it with her fingertip.
“I’ll have to do this again?” she asked, trying not to sound ungrateful.
Her mother laughed a clear tinkling laugh. Like a bell. Effie wondered if she’d gotten an operation for that. “Of course you have to do it again, you have to have your skin bleached twice a month or your regular tone will come back in horrible splotches!”
That sounded unappealing. Still, with her hands still spasming from the lingering pain, she wondered if that might be preferable.
Her mother kissed her cheek. It hurt a bit. “And we just can’t have that, or it will absolutely ruin your father’s reputation for you to be seen.”
Ah, of course. Effie smiled. “It’s like Grandma says! Beauty is pain.”
Her mother laughed her bell laugh again. “Exactly!”
Effie was dressed in a dress the color of grapes. Its skirt fell in great velvety petals to her ankles. Strings of pearls hung from her neck and wrist. She liked to twirl in it, listening to the soft rasp of fabric and clink of pearls.
There weren’t wigs small enough for her yet so her wheat blonde hair was dusted with gold and twisted against her head with jeweled clips.
All the guests kneeled down to compliment her sparkling appearance. Her mother graciously received the compliments, saying, “Oh her stylist is quite capable. Very expensive too, for such a young girl, but he’s so well rated we can’t complain.”
Effie wondered what she meant. Her mother had done all the styling. No one in her house had a stylist, even the adults. She didn’t ask.
Dinner was spectacular. They only got to taste that many options when her father was hosting parties. The guests piled their plates high but Effie had been warned to only take small portions. And she wasn’t to try every dish like she wanted to. It had to look like such fine foods were a completely regular occurrence. So she took a small plate of truffle mashed potatoes and succulent pink pork and devised a way to sneak to the kitchen after dinner and try the rest of the food.
Her father spoke cordially to all the bright-suited men at the table, laughing at satisfying increments. Her mother charmed them, speaking of the latest fashions and telling jokes Effie didn’t really understand.
Most of the men Effie recognized from the annual Hunger Games watch parties her parents hosted. They’d end up at her house, huddled around her TV on various days throughout the week. They sometimes shook her hands and told her what a nice house she had. Their wives had sat with her mother and chatted about tributes and bets and other things Effie didn’t really pay attention to. The kids had played on mini-screens and chatted about intermediate studies- the last grade before they were enrolled in the Academy.
There was one man who Effie didn’t recognize, who looked older than the rest of the group. Among the firm cheeks and square jaws of the other men, he looked rather grotesque. Effie watched as the loose flesh of his neck wobbled as he spoke.
It took all of her mother’s lessons on manners not to grimace.
“The documentary had to be canceled, actually. The president thought the actual footage didn’t achieve what we set out to do.”
Effie’s father raised his eyebrows. “The president had to be involved? Surely a documentary on the districts couldn’t have accidentally gone so astray.”
The man gave a rusty laugh. “Well, you know how it is, Governor Alastor. Their hate runs deep. Even just education on resource production gave them enough reason to ‘corrupt’ our footage. To send messages to Capitol people.”
Her mother let out a slightly shrill giggle, easing the terse silence that had befallen the table. “The districts father such bitter people. No one can blame you, Mars. They act like Capitol people are wicked for wanting decent food and homes. As if we don’t work for our livings as well!”
“Considering they work as much as we do and their children still starve, they have every right to be angry at us,” Mars rasped, soup dribbling from his spoon onto his clean white shirt.
All the air seemed to be sucked from the dining room, leaving only the scent of alcohol on Mars’ breath.
Her mother laughed again, more forcefully this time. Like an angry bell. It had to be an operation, then.
“Honestly, you’re too drunk for this, Dear. I’m sure you’d agree with me sober. The reason we have more privileges in the Capitol is because we work more influential jobs. You can hardly think a coal miner and a politician or actor should experience the same way of living.”
“That’s not-”
The front door slammed open. Two white-clad Peacekeepers marched purposefully into the room, “Mars Poole, you have been cordially invited to a conference with Investigator Salice Kian.”
Effie avoided breathing too conspicuously. She carefully crossed her ankles the way her mother always instructed.
“‘Cordially,’” Mars huffed, sending the hot damp scent of wine across her cheeks. He stood without protest and surrendered himself to the pair of Peacekeepers. He caught her eye as he was escorted from the room.
“Don’t let them fool you, girl,” he sneered. Her mother erupted from her seat and stood protectively in front of Effie.
The front door shut mightily behind them and her Father locked and deadbolted the door. There were sounds of walking onto the wet street, something falling heavily, and blows administered to some groaning thing. Her father closed the dining-room door and shut the window shutters. The sounds dulled. They sounded almost like the muffled din of voices at a party.
Her mother pressed her lips together unsympathetically. “Well, that’s what happens to traitorous minds. Who wants dessert?”
They can hear us. How can they hear us?
Effie ate her citrus cake silently. The adults made up for it, babbling loudly about nothing for the rest of the evening.
There are always guards on the streets. That’s how they got here so fast.
Why can they hear us?
Effie woke up to her mother chirping happily about another, “big, big, day!”
This time it really was a big day.
The Academy had been funneling its best and most influential students into various programs since the earliest Games. Supposedly from the tenth through the thirtieth games students were even mentors. But by then there were enough Victors who were better qualified to mentor the Tributes. So students instead trained to be stylists, escorts, and Gamemakers.
If you asked Effie, a good portion of the Victors seemed like lunatics, so their mentorship was probably less than ideal for both parties. Part of her wondered if that was the point. That part of her was not to be listened to.
But she was being trained as an escort, which was excellent publicity for her father’s political career. The Games were the most popular event in the nation. A daughter who was an escort would mean instant connections to some of the biggest names in the nation. At least, the biggest names in media, which was honestly better.
Effie dressed carefully in her uniform, hiking her skirt to a fashionable length, folding her sleeves, and artfully draping her blazer over her shoulders. She pinned a swirling jet-black wig over her hair and painted two thin blue lines over her eyebrows.
The Academy was down one of the most well-maintained streets of the Capitol, and besides that, only a few blocks from her house, but her mother insisted on driving her anyway.
“Don’t forget to record everything your instructor says,” her mother reminded, “And take the most notes out of everyone, be very obvious about it. You’ll get the role if they think you won’t complain about all the work of talking to district folk.”
Effie nodded and agreed mildly, staring out the car window. It looked lovely outside, the sunbathing the manicured flower bushes lining the street. The flowers never wilted or browned, even in winter. They had when she was a child, littering the sidewalk with limp wrinkled petals. They’d fixed that, even enhanced the scent.
At school she knew almost everyone. The classes hadn’t changed since first year, when she was thirteen. Now she was seventeen, looking at the people she’d spent her childhood watching the games with become the people who made it happen. No wonder her mother seemed so proud.
Artemisia linked her arm with Effie’s the moment she entered the classroom. “Professor released the results early! Apparently, only three people made it.”
“What?” she gasped, her heart dropping. “Did you make it?”
“Hummingbirds if I know, I was waiting for you!”
They gave matching nervous giggles and bustled to the line in front of the podium, where a screen was embedded in the painted metal, along with an eye scanner. Each student let the beam identify their left iris, and their result popped up on the screen. From the sound of the grumbles, no one had made it so far.
Then one boy a year ahead grinned quite conspicuously, his mint-colored lips nearly splitting his face.
Only two left, and still half the line to get to.
Artemisia went before her. Effie saw the screen light up a happy green, reflecting against her friend's shiny emerald curls.
One left.
Effie stepped up, pressing the button for the scanner. She tried to focus on not blinking as the light blazed in her eye, rather than feeling the twisting in her stomach. The screen sputtered for a moment, before flashing green.
Thank goodness.
Artemisia, who had been quite conspicuously watching for her result, grabbed her and squeezed. “We did it!”
“Well no one doubted you would, Art,” Effie offered graciously, “You’ll be the nicest stylist those district kids could get!”
“Aw they’ll love you too, you’ll teach them manners like no one else could. They’ll be practically Capitol by the time you’re done!”
Effie giggled. “That’s all we can hope for, isn’t it?”
“Do I get a congratulatory hug too?” asked a voice. The boy who’d made it too had come over to join the other lucky students.
“No hugs before introductions,” said Effie primly.
At the same time Art said, “Of course!” and encircled the boy.
He laughed. “Thanks, I’m Rumex Brooks.”
Effie extended a hand, “Effie Trinket.”
He shook cordially.
Past handshakes, Art gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder and said “Artemisia Bell.”
“Nice to meet you both, looks like we’re bound to be hanging out in the future.”
“Seems like it,” Effie agreed, “Are you an escort?”
Rumex shook his head slightly, “Nah, I’m part of a prep team.”
She imagined having to wax and bleach and dye a tribute after years of nothing. It sounded nearly impossible. No one could put up with such tedious pain without years of training.
Art said what she was thinking, “I do not envy that job. You are a brave person.”
He laughed, “Well at least we only have to fix their bodies then we’re done. You have to make them look pretty and spend days trying to override years of district education.”
Effie tapped a finger on her chin performatively, “Now that you mention it, why did we all sign up for this again?” Art giggled, fingers wrapping around Effie’s arm. Rumex laughed too, though he was looking between them inquisitively. She stood a little straighter, meeting his eye carefully.
Inexplicably he winked at her. “You know, if we’re going to be working in the games together we should definitely exchange notes. You guys free to meet me in the courtyard after school?”
“Certainly,” Art said, still holding Effie’s arm. “Effie?”
“I’m in if you’re in,” she said, looking down at her friend indulgently.
“It’s settled then,” Rumex said, pleased.
“The first Games I remember watching was the Fifty-Second, I think,” Rumex said, reclining in the warm grass. “The one with the one-eyed boy from Eight.
“I don’t remember that one,” Art admitted, “Our first Games was the year after. With the wheat fields.”
“That makes sense, you guys watched it together?”
“We didn’t know each other at the time,” Effie explains, “But my parents always host a viewing because we have the biggest TV on the street. Art’s parents came to watch and at some point we discovered we were the same age. So we made blanket forts in my bedroom and fell asleep in piles of stuffed animals while our parents watched.”
Rumex smiled, “Well watching with a friend is probably the best way to watch the Games.”
“Agreed,” Art said earnestly, “It… ah, just feels better.”
Rumex’s mint-green eyes flitted around briefly. The courtyard was large and empty, a slight breeze whistling through the flower bushes. “When you watch it alone the first couple times, it makes you want to panic.”
Effie swallowed. No one had ever admitted something like that to her. But it was true, the first few times, she remembered feeling ill and fearful. Only her mother’s presence had taught her everything was fine. She hadn’t realized everyone had that.
“It’s different when you’re little,” Effie replied smoothly. “You don’t understand the Games are confined to the Arena. So your survival instincts make you nervous.”
“And…” Art added meekly, “You feel a little bad for them.”
Effie scanned the area. Still empty.
“It goes away when you’re older of course,” Effie warbled loudly, “When you realize they’re District.”
“Of course,” Rumex said, “It’s necessary for them to remember what a mistake the war was. A waste of life on both sides. All for nothing. Once you understand that, you almost wonder why the Games aren’t harsher.”
He was laying it on a bit thick, and his head was twisting around conspicuously. But the edge of hysteria in his voice sounded fresh. It wasn’t an old man who was taken from him years ago. Something happened recently to this boy.
Effie held up a hand. Rumex stopped his nervous writhing. She gave a cheerful smile, just like her mother’s.
“Well we’re a part of them now. We better get planning. Did you two get your district assignments in 7th period?”
They both nodded. Art actually started grinning, which seemed like a good sign. “I’m a stylist for District Eleven!”
“Oh my stars, are you serious?” Effie squealed, not needing to exaggerate her enthusiasm.
“Yes!” Art sighed happily, “They said my portfolio was so good I got to skip Twelve, even though it’s my first year.
“That’s a-maz-ing!” Effie cried, shaking Art by the shoulders.
“Yeah that’s incredible,” Rumex added, “Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” Art said, a blush staining her plump cheeks and lips. “What about you guys?”
Both Effie and Rumex replied, “Twelve.”
“This is so exciting-”
Familiar cool fingers wrapped around Effie’s arm, yanking her upright. “Mother?”
“Hello sweetheart and friends. I need to borrow my daughter for a moment!” she said cheerfully, practically dragging Effie away from them. Effie hadn’t even noticed her arrival.
“What in Neptune are you doing?” Her mother growled.
“I was talking- we- we’re the students who get to work in the games.”
Her mother blinked, some of the anger melting away from her face. But her eyes remained hard. “Well, I don’t like you talking with that Brooks boy.”
“Why-”
Her mother’s grip on her arm tightened. Her voice was light. “Well, he’s got you out in the sun, of course. Just imagine what it’s doing to your lovely complexion! Save your mother some grief and stay away from him.”
Her grip was starting to hurt.
“Of course, Mother, I’ll avoid him as much as possible.” She didn’t add that that would probably be impossible because they’d be working for the same district.
“Good, good, you know, boys who lead you out to the sun can only be trouble. Do you remember Mars?”
Effie felt her heart still. “Yes?”
“You remember his awful complexion? That’s what you’ll turn into if you spend time with the Brooks boy. Your skin will turn almost district.”
Peacekeepers weren’t the only ones who could hear her, apparently. “Of course, I’ll avoid him.”
Turns out she really would. When she met the prep team for twelve, Rumex Brooks was nowhere to be found.