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You had it figured out since you were in school, everybody loves pretty
Satine Belcourt had purposefully created exquisitely beautiful children. Every moment of her life was intentionally orchestrated to lead to exactly this, to the three little blonde babies who ran about her home. She hadn’t been alone in organizing it, her mother had certainly helped to coordinate the dinner parties in elite corners of District One, to get her alone at a bar with the single son of a gold manufacturing tycoon. There was nothing more perfect for the daughter of a victor father to marry the heir to a gold manufacturing fortune. He was ideal, really, with the same blond hair and sea glass colored eyes as the majority of the District One, he was perfect. They were perfect. He was able to give her the castle-like house on the end of the street, the wedding of the decade with hundreds of District One’s best in attendance, and ultimately the two perfect children of her dreams.
Gloss and Cashmere had in fact been perfect. Big blue eyes, shiny blonde hair, she had done it in one try. A boy and a girl, flawless flawless flawless children from the very day they were born. The absolute pride of both families, the twins had been, and no one could come close to the adoration of those two children.
Of course, as the twins grew past babyhood, from the perfect matching outfits, from the safety of their mother’s arms, there was just that indescribable need in Satine once again. Everyone had warned her against it, had told her she had struck gold with stunning little Cashmere and darling little Gloss. She didn’t need a third, not when she had such a perfect little family already.
But oh she did. And if she had struck gold with her perfect little twins, she had burst into a diamond mine with Glimmer.
Eyes like springtime, hair like honey, little pouty lips the color of raspberries, Glimmer Grace Belcourt was the single most beautiful baby in the district. Maybe even in all of Panem.
It’s a shame, really, that she presented such a conundrum for her parents.
“She’s just such a little doll,” is said by the mother’s sister, as they watch her play at four years old. Doll-like is truly the best way to describe her, with the wide eyes and the long soft curls that just looked absolutely darling with the pink ribbon in her hair. “Have you decided what you’re going to do about her?”
Satine Belcourt sighs, and takes a long, intentional sip of her tea as she watches her youngest daughter dutifully wrap her newest toys– two little blonde baby dolls, designed to resemble Glimmer herself– in an overly practiced swaddle with little pink blankets. The decision had recently been made that both of the twins would be entering training for the Hunger Games within the year. The idea of being the first family to ever produce sibling victors, and twins nonetheless, was something that had been all but decided before the twins had even been born ten years ago.
A decision, by the way, that was not made by Satine and her husband as much as it was made by everyone adjacent to them. “I don’t like the answer.”
It had already been mentioned, already spoken into the universe, that Glimmer could go too once she was old enough. What a dream that would be for the families’ reputations– three victor children.
Gloss and Cashmere, while delightful children, already had such an edge from being raised together. Cashmere, with the beautiful smile, was not afraid of pulling her brother’s hair until he cried in defeat. Likewise, Gloss was not at all afraid to push his twin sister to the ground with no regard for the gender roles otherwise assumed of them.
Glimmer, though, she was just..different. So sweet, so smiley, too content to play with her babies and her dolls and dress up as princesses every single afternoon. Glimmer was far more attuned to a life like her mother’s; destined to be a beautiful socialite with her beautiful home and her beautiful parties and her beautiful life.
Yet, the ambition brewed regardless. Two Victors is better than one, but three is absolutely unheard of.
“Mama, look.” The child in question calls out, nearly running (but never running, because her auntie taught her that ladies never run) over to her mother with arms full of pink wrapped baby dolls. “They’re sleeeeeeping.” She presents the neatly wrapped dolls to her mother, with a well practiced gentleness as she transfers one of her dolls as if it were a human child over to her mother.
“Why yes, I can see that, darling.” Satine switches her fine china for the little doll, and appropriately cradles it to keep her daughter from crying in distrust that she was going to hurt the baby (an experience that Glimmer had given them all once when her father was not gentle enough with the doll and left her in unconsolable tears until bedtime, which none of them cared to repeat). Besides, it was rather cute how protective she was of these little toys. “Which is this one again?”
“That's girl Glossy, mommy. And this one is Cashy.” Glimmer reprimands softly, handing her other little doll over to her aunt. Satine shoots her sister a little smile, in memory of the way her daughter had insisted on naming her babies after her siblings, insisting that they were twins so of course they have twin names, mommy.
“Yes, how silly of mommy.” She smiles at her daughter, who is kissing each of the dolls on the head like she is about to leave. “Where are you going, Angel?”
“I have to go to tea with their Aunt Cashy, mama. Don’t be silly. They can’t come to tea. It’s not pro-pree-it” Glimmer rolls her eyes, and gives a little wave goodbye as if she is not just going to the next room over to insert herself in between the playtime of her sister and brother. “If they wake up just come get me, they like me best, I am their mama.”
“Have fun at tea time, Glimmer.” Satine muses, continuing to subconsciously rock the baby doll in her arms. “She’s going to come in here crying because Gloss taunted her over something.”
“Good luck with that one,” Her sister responds, setting the baby doll on the table now that Glimmer is out of the room and not there to judge. “I can’t see her killing anyone.”
Satine eyes the doll that now lies on the table, discarded half-heartedly next to sugar cubes and floral china. “She might, if she comes in here and sees you aren’t supporting her baby’s neck right.”
And while it comes out with a giggle, there’s an unsettling truth to it. This beautiful, sweet little girl wasn’t born to be a Victor.
The camera flashes make it look like a dream
Glimmer is ten years old when Gloss wins the games, when her golden boy brother comes home with a parade and confetti and a new, straighter nose that Glimmer doesn’t recognize. It’s exciting and exhilarating and her parents immediately shift all their attention to Cashmere, leaving little Glimmer in the dust.
It’s no secret that Glimmer is not as naturally gifted as her siblings. Both brother and sister excelled with knife throwing, and it was oh so fitting that they even shared a weapon as they had once shared the body of their mother. They had taken to it so naturally, just like they had taken to everything. Gloss was charismatic and charming and could command the attention of an entire audience with a single smile. Cashmere, gorgeous cashmere with legs for days, a bombshell of a girl with a laugh that stole the attention her brother had just gathered. Maybe it was sibling rivalry, maybe it was a need to be the favorite child, but the two of them always pushed each other to simply be better tributes.
Glimmer, like most parts of being the third sibling to twins, lost out on that direct push. Really, she lacked the push for the games at all. There was nothing that the games could give her that she didn’t already have and there was no fun in shooting a bow at a target.
When Gloss comes back from the games, sixteen and a smile plastered across his face, parades in his name and a new house of his own on the hill, Glimmer starts to see the point. He buys her a necklace, with two white oval diamonds flanking a larger, oval, pink center diamond and she throws her little arms around his neck in a hug as he picks her up. A year later, her sister buys her the matching ring before she even leaves the Capitol to come home a victor.
If her brother’s winnings made her interest in the games pique, her sister’s victory tilts the axis of her life. At eleven, she is allowed to watch her sister throw knife after knife into the chests and necks of other teenagers, and while it makes her stomach turn she cannot help but feel pride for her older sister.
Cashmere, who taught her how to braid her hair, who taught her how to put on mascara when her mother wasn’t looking, walks on stage in a dress Glimmer could only imagine in her dreams. She sees her in this pink ball gown, with puffy sleeves and beautiful silver glitter in the tulle, that makes her look like a true princess when that victor’s crown is placed on her head.
Glimmer has never wanted anything more than she wants to look like a princess like her big sister.
Cashmere returns from the games, a smile on her face and with a nose that now looks just like her brother’s again. She’s wearing a lilac tulle dress that Glimmer later runs around the house in, giggling and practicing her walk in heels.
Her sister moves into the house directly beside their brother, and Glimmer has her first ever sleepover in her sister’s new home. She takes a bubble bath in a bathtub with golden claw feet, and gets her hair curled with expensive capitol brand curlers, and is sure there is nothing better in the world than being a victor girl.
She returns to training the week after her sister wins, fight in her eyes and wanting in her heart. When a boy her age tries to pin her to the floor in a wrestling match, she bites down hard on his shoulder, and when he jumps back yelping and she is declared the winner of the fight, Glimmer knows she has this in her hands.
She goes home that night and tells her parents she’s going to win the games, too.
She does not see the sad look in Cashmere’s eyes, and when Gloss pushes away from the table and storms off, their mother assures her he is just tired and that they’re all very proud of her.
(Tired in the way he is when he returns from a weekend in the Capitol)
Glimmer is eleven years old when she looks in the mirror and thinks maybe her nose isn’t straight enough.
In the angel’s city chasing fortune and fame
“Fifteen is so young, Glimmer, you have a few more years.” Cashmere gently drags the brush through Glimmer’s perfectly toned hair, smoothing any strays to frame her face in just the right way.
“I..do feel a little young, you and Gloss were sixteen and seventeen. I wanted to wait until next year, but...” Glimmer leans back in the luxurious velvet vanity chair, closing her eyes as the perfectly manicured nails of her sister run along her scalp. It reminds her, briefly, of being a little girl sleeping in her sister’s bed for protection from the monsters under her bed (later, it is to hide from the monsters in her bed, but Glimmer doesn’t know that yet). “I don’t think I have much choice anymore.”
Fifteen is too young to volunteer for the games, they tell her. Fifteen was not too young for the lip fillers her parents encouraged her brother to pay for, or the bleach and extensions in her hair they got her sister to get done for her that took her from golden to platinum. Fifteen is certainly too young to ever have sex but somehow not too young to be encouraged to find out what boys like. Fifteen is not too young to be on a strict diet, where she toes a fine line between just enough to get through training and not enough to gain an ounce. Fifteen isn’t too young for daily weight checks, for examinations of her body composition, for measurements of her waist and her hips to keep her in that fine balance of childlike and womanly. Fourteen was not too young for that, either, and neither was thirteen apparently.
“You don’t ever have to go to the games, Glim.” Cashmere stands between her and the mirror now, with delicate hands on delicate shoulders. “We’ll take care of you, you can be like Mommy, you don’t have to do this at all. I know they want you to..but me and Gloss, we will take care of you. You do not have to go.” We don’t want you to go dances on her lips, but even in the safety of her home in the Victor’s Village, saying too much can be just as bad as not enough.
“What, are you worried everyone is going to like me more? That I'm going to be known as the hotter sister?” Glimmer switches to a teasing tone, scrunching her nose before immediately remembering the lecture she received about that literally this very morning about the risk of premature wrinkling.
What Glimmer does not know is that yes, that’s exactly what Cashmere is afraid of.
“You could die, Glimmer. You know that, right? I know you were little when we won but-” Her hands slid down Glimmer’s arms to take her hands in her own. She laces their fingers together, but can’t seem to ignore the way Glimmer’s hands still feel so..little. Juvenile. Childish.
“I was eleven when you won, Cash, I wasn’t a baby.” Glimmer squeezes her sister’s hands, flashing her a brilliant, identical smile to the older girl's own. “I know the risk, but I’m going to be okay! And you’re on the other side, you’re my sister and my mentor. You’re going to help me.”
Cashmere forces a smile on her pretty face, before she drops Glimmer’s hands gently into her lap. She reaches behind her back for the shimmery golden highlighter, bringing it around to the space between her and her sister. “Glimmy…” She warns, but brings a fluffy brush of the powder up to Glimmer’s heavily makeup covered face. It was funny– there were expensive foundations and powders, heavy pink blush along her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, shimmery shadow on her eyes– but she looked so naturally pretty despite it all. She brushes the gold highlighter over her cheekbones and over the tip of her nose, and her smile drops as does her stomach. She had this same nose, once. “There is nothing winning will give you that we can’t.”
“Oh yeah? Well I’m sure when I win I won’t just be Gloss and Cashmere’s baby sister anymore.” Glimmer smirks, and looks around her sister to look at herself in the mirror. She flashes herself a smile, checking her appearance against the expectations of her. They had set her angle for the cameras years ago, the minute she turned thirteen and the trainers got even the slightest idea of what puberty was going to do to her body, any pretense of sweet or even cute was out the window. She learned how to show more of her legs, how to lean forward when she spoke to give just the right eyeful of cleavage to her interviewer, the way to slash through an artery in a way that the blood splattered just right along her neck, her collarbones, her chest. Baby sister she was no more, no, Glimmer was trained in the art of sex appeal.
Cashmere gently brushes some of Glimmer’s soft hair behind her shoulder, pinning it back so it could stay just so. “You’re always going to be just our little baby sister to us, Glimmer.” Her thumb brushes over the highlighted, blushed cheekbone of Glimmer, and feels a certain tightness in her chest and in her throat. They’ve spent four years trying to stop the train that was barreling into this child’s life, four years trying to protect her from the things she’d face on the other side of this. Ironically, of course, they were the very things that Gloss and herself were about to do to guarantee her survival. She blinks rapidly to halt her tears, and sniffles back the feeling of despair that eats at her heart. “I’m telling you, Glimmer, you do not have to volunteer. You do not have to do this. Please…don’t do this. Please-”
“Are you crying, Cash? Don’t cry! I’m going to win. I’m going to come out of the arena.” Glimmer promises, and her smile is not the practiced, rehearsed one she had for the impending cameras. It’s one that reaches her eyes, that fills her cheekbones with a youthful, angelic glow. “I promise.”
The sad smile offered to her baby sister does not betray that that is exactly what she fears for her.
She had tried to protect her, she had.
“..they like us young, Glimmer.”
Overnight you look like a sixties queen
“That's…it?” It’s half a whisper and half a gasp, and her doe like eyes make her seem all the more like a little lamb being led to slaughter, a baby mouse being released into the tank of a hungry python not knowing that the glass walls are a death sentence and not a window to the outside world.
Lucrezia, the stylist for District One with her Purple eyes and Purple hair and skin with an iridescent sheen all too similar to a fantasy dragon, tuts in disapproval. “What do you mean that’s ‘it’ of course that's it. You are the draw, my dear, why would we go hiding that body in tulle and lace!”
Glimmer hand shakes as she reaches towards the ‘outfit’ that was prepared for her, and a sickening wave of nausea rushes over her, as her body threatens to expel her minimal meal for the day.
(It didn’t matter that she was in the Capitol and about to go into the games– strength isn’t what she would be known for, and they couldn't risk her looking anything but ideally thin for her big reveal.)
Clothes would be a massive overstatement for what she ran her fingers over. Her big reveal outfit was exactly that- a reveal. In front of Glimmer laid hundreds of loose rhinestones, in shades of gold, champagne, and light pink. Each would be intentionally and purposefully glued to her skin, a painstaking task that ensured she was fully on display for the entirety of the capitol, the entire country, and most notably her competitors.
“Noone is going to take me seriously,” Glimmer argues, running her newly manicured fingernails over the pile of rhinestones. She realizes the tips of her nails shimmer in the same shades as the stones, a nice touch if they weren’t going to be caked with blood in a week. “Noone’s going to see me as a serious contender in these games.”
“Oh Glimmer darling, you don’t need to be taken seriously to get sponsors. This is going to turn all the right heads, I’m sure of it.” Lucretzia uses a fingernail that is easily two inches long to scoop up some of the rhinestones, and uses her other to gesture for Glimmer to turn around so she can start rhinestoning along her back to replicate an intricate ombre sunburst pattern laid out on the paper lying on the vanity.
“I’m trained, you know. I’ve trained to go into the games for years.” She defends, holding both her hands across her chest for any shred of dignity she could grasp at preserving.
“You’re a favorite to win already! Trust, no one is going to care about training when they see you and everything you have to offer .”
Glimmer is naked beside a properly dressed male counterpart, a boy she only ever passed once or twice at the academy. They were kept separated intentionally— nothing good would come from allowing such beautiful, trained teenagers to mix with the opposite sex. She knew nothing about him except that he got to wear clothes today and she did not.
The other tributes stare, of course, including even her own district partner.
When the boy from District Two stares at her and licks his lips, she feels a distinct chill go down her spine. She sees the mentor, a scary girl about Cashmere’s age who had won just before Gloss, slap the upper portion of his bicep and reprimand him with a harsh expression on her face.
For the first time it hits her that in the arena she could be running from more than just attempted killers.
Another name goes up in lights, you wonder if you’ll make it out alive
Glimmer kills six in the blood bath, and an additional two within the first days of the games. Her district partner takes a spear to the abdomen on day five. She kills the boy from two in his sleep that same night, terrified of what he would do to her without the small protection provided by having a living her male district partner, and severs the remnants of career pack.
By day twelve she is desperate.
The arena, a tropical island of hell, was getting progressively hotter. The humidity was choking, the heat blistering. Three more tributes had died from different combinations of overheating and dehydration. Even the careers, or what was left, had started to succumb to the elements once their alliance divided and the cornucopia supplies started to run dry.
Glimmer, for one, is fucking hot. She’s found a semi secluded cliff, with rocks lining the coasts of a waterfall. The water wasn’t drinkable– the salt content was so high that she could feel it crystalizing on her skin just from the gentle mist of it hitting her skin. Still, the cooling mist was better than nothing, and she’d go so far as to say it may be keeping her temperature low enough to keep her alive.
She’s also desperate, terribly desperate. She slit throats, felt the sticky warm spray of blood hit her chest just right for the cameras. She’s stabbed repeatedly in a boy’s stomach until blood bubbled out of his mouth, and a hair never slipped out of place. She killed, ruthless and without abandon, to prove that she was so much more than a pretty face. When she becomes a victor– and she will, she has come too far now– it will be by her own skill, by her own abilities.
But right now, she isn’t a victor. She’s thirsty and overheating and would do just about anything for a single bite of a granola bar.
The most pressing issue is the heat, the blazing sun pulling all the moisture from her skin and her body. The uniforms– so conveniently being a high cut spandex bathing suit, one that showed off her long legs and unzipped to demonstrate natural cleavage– were not helping. The long sleeves of the spandex trapped the heat in, and she was sure that if she didn’t get it off of her body soon, she was going to die here. Not even with glory– but from overheating on some rocks.
She is laying face down on the shore, one leg bent and curled up at her side, arms over her eyes to shield them from the unforgiving sun. When she pushes upwards on her hand, arching her back like the yoga poses all the kids trained in, she absently realizes this was a test at flexibility. She squeezes her eyes shut, and takes a few deep breaths to slow her rapid, fluttering heart. The heat was killing her, quite literally, and her heart was trying desperately to keep her body going.
Glimmer knows what the audience wants, she knows what her angle is, but right now all she can think of is survival.
There’s not many tributes left, and only one that has the athleticism to scale the rocks she had taken to calling her sanctuary the last day or so. It is foolish and it is risky to do what she is considering, but the cooling effects on her body may just buy her enough time to get the hell out of this arena.
They’ve never broadcast blatant nudity before, right? Maybe it’s the heat ticking at her brain, but she can’t imagine they’d show such a thing, considering children watched the games.
(It doesn’t slip her mind that she is a child herself.)
Glimmer barely pushes herself to a standing position, her body fighting the movement and positional change, her blood pressure absolutely tanking. She’s dizzy, and hot, and doesn’t have the energy to even make it to the edge of the water before her hands are on the zipper of the wetsuit and are shaking as they unzip the fabric. She’s shimmying out of the wet fabric, and when she steps out she gently folds the fabric into a perfect square, before placing it at the side of the waterfall.
Glimmer gasps as the water engulfs and cools her burning skin, but she has not even submerged her naked body entirely in the water when the familiar beep of a sponsored item draws her eyes to the sky. The metal container meets her in the water, and conveniently contains both a bottle of freshwater and the granola bar she had just mentally craved.
It is not a coincidence that the minute she’s stripped she gets her first item in days. The note makes her heart drop, but she fights, oh she fights from allowing her lip to quiver and her eyes to fill with tears on what she is certain is a live broadcast.
We’re sorry. We love you. See you soon. - G + C
She unscrews the bottle cap and chugs the water, not caring how unladylike or unbecoming it will look. They’ve already gotten enough of a show in the Capitol today. Glimmer tosses the empty bottle to the shore with rage, listening to the glass shatter all the way her heart has at the realization that her naked body is worth more to sponsors than the kills she’s committed, worth more than the children she slaughtered.
When she becomes a victor, when she plants the final blow on a girl from District Two, half naked and exhausted to her core, she is not credited with being a victor from skill. It is not because she has ten kills herself, it is not because she’s ruthless and well trained. Glimmer will be remembered as the girl who took off her clothes, who stripped for sponsors.
She is fifteen years old, and wins the sixty-eight annual Hunger Games.
They will say her body won the games, not her.
They tell you that you’re lucky but you’re so confused
“This is all they think of me now, isn’t it?” Glimmer’s voice is numb, cold, as she turns away from the mirror to look at her siblings. “Sex on legs, is what Lucrezia called me. I’ve never even had sex.”
She can remember her Cashmere in that beautiful pink gown. The one that made her look like a fairy tale princess, the one that made her want to be a victor too. Glimmer had dreamed of her moment in a similar dress, she dreamed of being called a princess, of a jewel, of being called pretty .
She looks in the mirror, at the completely see through golden gauze fabric draped around her body, and realizes she will never be called pretty. She will only ever be described as sexy and alluring . Lush. Desirable. Enticing.
She wasn’t going to be seen as a victor.
Glimmer was going to be called a whore.
A slut.
Nothing more, nothing less.
“I’m so sorry.” Cashmere whispers, but her eyes look over Glimmer’s new body in horror. She had come out of triage with the usual adjustments– unblemished skin, healed wounds– but she had come with more than the average victor. The same nose job as the twins, freshly installed hair extensions… Those were minor compared to the artificial roundness in her hips, in the new volume in her breasts. They took the natural curvature of her body and amplified it, emphasized it. “I am so so sorry, sissy.”
“You tried to stop me.” Glimmer reminds her, running her hands over the tender spaces of her hips from the recent surgeries. “It’s not your fault. Besides..Mommy will be so proud. She has three victors, now. That's a record.”
After her crowning, Glimmer is pulled out of the backstage embrace of her brother and sister by a dark-suited Capitol official.
“What are you doing to her?” Cashmere snaps, and firmly grabs for the arm of the unidentified man. There is anger in her eyes that Glimmer has never, not once, seen in her sister, not even when she would rewatch her games. A rage, a hatred that would scare Glimmer out of her skin if it had been directed at her.
“This doesn’t happen this soon.” Gloss growls, and pulls Glimmer back into the safety of his and Cashmere’s embrace. Similarly, this man is furious, and if looks could maim the man would be writhing on the ground in agony. “Not already.”
“President’s orders.” The man says firmly, and non-coincidentally flashes the silver in the waist line of his pants at them when he reaches back in and drags Glimmer towards him, less fight now that the group of siblings have been effectively threatened with a gun. “There’s a lot of interest in how she is. President Snow wants to ensure they get the intact girl they paid for.”
Glimmer’s blood runs cold , and the only thing she can feel is fear. No, not just fear. Pure, unfiltered terror. “What do you- what does that- what are you going to do–” She is pulled back by an aggressive arm at her waist, and desperately, desperately, reaches out helpless arms towards her siblings. The word intact registers at exactly the same moment the phrase paid for does, and the reality of what is about to happen to her feels worse than nearly dying in the arena did. She kicks, uselessly, but she kicks her legs and wriggles desperately for an escape. “No…no no no no.”
When Gloss reaches back for her, the gun is pulled and aimed directly at her siblings. Her body freezes, but immediately goes limp in defeat. She won’t let them die for her. “It’s an order.”
“I’m so sorry.” Gloss calls out, “I’m so so so sorry.” He’s now failed not one but both sisters, damning them both to the same hell as his own.
Cashmere actually cries, and Gloss wraps his arms around her midsection to hold her in a standing position, to keep her from crumpling to the ground and going catatonic. “If you fight they’ll hurt you more, Glimmer!” It’s her last attempt to protect her, her last attempt to shield her sister from the realities of her new life.
She feels anything but lucky, she feels anything like a victor, when she is stripped down and given to a sixty something man with too big a belly and too soft a bed. She begs him to stop, when her legs are forced apart. She screams, a bloodcurdling, agonized plea for help when he shoves himself inside of her. Glimmer refuses to beg for her life when this man grabs her throat so hard that she leaves with a handprint shaped bruise around her neck.
The blood that stains her thighs and her dress feels like karmic payback for the blood she spilled to get to this point. This is the price she will pay for the children she killed, the price she will pay for the ambition of her family. The price she will pay for becoming a victor.
She begs him to stop. He does not.
Glimmer lays there, like the corpse she wishes she were, with blood running down her legs and tears running down her face, for the worst hour of her entire life.
After, when she is thrown back in her room, bleeding, bruised, and in the worst pain of her life, she is sure she would never choose to do that.
She will not consider herself a monster for killing other tributes to win.
She will never be a monster when men like that exist in the world. Maybe all men (save for her brother and father) were like that.
At least now she has the same nose as her brother and sister again.
Because you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used.
The year that follows her victory is the worst of her life, she decides, and it’s only been six months.
The bathwater is so red it feels like she is bathing in blood– oh. Wait. She is.
It’s nothing new. Someone carving her up a little, going a little too far drawing blood in bed. Some twisted fantasy or another about being in the games with her and coming out on top, it was all the same.
This was different, though.
There were monthly injections, thick white liquid that was injected into the muscles of her hip, that was supposed to stop it. It was supposed to be entirely effective at the contraceptive effects it was intended to have, something that her abusers should not have to worry themselves with. Sometimes, however, the President would graciously grant her abusers (not clients, never clients, they did not pay her, they did not work with her. They were Snow’s clients, they were her rapists) an extra insurance policy.
Two pills. One slipped inside her cheek, the other under her tongue. They had told her it would be like a period, maybe a little more. The first time resulted in such heavy bleeding and substantial pain that Cashmere insisted she be seen by a doctor. She wasn’t, couldn’t have anyone asking what had happened to their prized Capitol girl. It had felt like she was being ripped inside out, and maybe she was. The second time was no better. And now, the third time in six months, wasn’t necessarily any better. She was just used to it.
The surging of blood, the waves of nauseating pain. It was familiar at least, and much preferable to the other more invasive methods they had offered.
There wasn’t even anything there to get rid of. It was just in case : In case a nervous politician wanted to ensure there were no loose ends, no evidence of his crimes against a young girl and his indiscretions against his wife.
There was nothing there, and she wouldn’t have wanted it if there were.
And yet, it feels like an immense loss regardless.
It’s for the best, it’s for the best, it’s for the best.
Glimmer repeats in her head like a mantra, and squeezes her eyes shut as yet another wave of nauseating pain washes over her. She desperately grasps at the edges of the marble tub, and squeezes so tightly her knuckles go as white as the bath itself.
The tears that brim along her eyes are either from pain or grief, but she doesn’t want to consider which.
As soon as the nausea subsides momentarily, her eyes lock on a dual bladed razor on the other edge of the bath.
It would be so simple. So easy.
Two more slices, two more arteries severed, one more body on her kill count. She could bleed out, fast and effective in the water, and none would be the wiser. The blood would mix and easily be drained away, and her exsanguinated corpse could be unaware of the abuses it would continue to face in the last hours before she is laid blissfully to eternal rest.
Glimmer laughs bitterly as she considers how six short months ago she considered being a Victor her happy ending.
Being a victor, frankly, fucking sucks.
It is increasingly lonely, with only Finnick and her siblings to confide in, but truly only Cashmere able to understand the levels of violated her body has become. They still starve her, keeping her the ‘youthful’ size all her clients so enjoyed. When she overindulges in that extra bite of dinner, they give her a drink to force her to vomit it all back up, effectively conditioning her with the taste of bile to never eat more than she is permitted. They give her false nails which she uses to scratch her arms open in her most anxious moments, the blood that falls and stains white linens and carpets the only thing that ever grounds her in her reality.
Then, of course, the endless strings of rape and beatings at the hands of the Capitol’s finest and most elite.
There was a little girl, deep inside her, who wanted to be just like her mother. Host parties, have pretty little babies, be adored by a man who loved her more than anything.
That little girl was one of many that Glimmer killed in the arena.
Her happy ending now would simply be her life ending.
She has considered it more times than she can count– a handful of pills, the razor blade at the edge of her bath. If this is her life it is not worth living. The only thing that has ever stopped her when she reaches for the blades or the pills is the thought of her family.
Her mother and father surely would be punished, it was abundantly clear that they would be held over her and her siblings for the rest of their lives, a threat to do exactly as the Capitol bids or else.
More so, she thinks of her brother and sister. Her brother and sister who had sold themselves, even together once or twice, Finnick so kindly informed her one night, to get her the sponsors to get her out of the game. It had been Snow who had not allowed their gifts be sent until she herself earned them by stripping that day, but they had done it. Their bodies, their abuse, the rape of Cashmere and Gloss funded her survival. Even before the games, her life had been dangled before them like a carrot on a stick, a threat to take away if they did not comply with the client of the day.
Her sister and her brother, who gave so much to keep her alive. Who gave everything, who endured horrific abuse in exchange for her life.
It was their bodies that won her game, too.
While she can’t die, she can at least feel numb , she decides.
Glimmer reaches next to the bath, finding a bottle of pills just within arms reach. There were only one or two– can’t risk giving them enough to accidentally overdose– but the little white pills were enough of a sedative to take the edge off. Glimmer places both of them on the edge of the tub, and with the bottom of a full shampoo bottle, crushes them into a fine white powder. She uses the nail of her littlest finger to create a jagged little line, which she leans down to inhale with one side of her nose. They were meant to be swallowed but it would knock her out faster this way.
Perfect. Maybe if she’s lucky she’ll slip under the water and drown. Her family couldn’t be punished for an accidental death, right?
If she closes her eyes long enough, she can imagine she’s a grilled cheese sandwich in a cup of tomato soup (her favorite childhood meal, thank you for asking), and not sitting in a stew of her own blood and tissue. Maybe thats the line of some fancy Capitol drug talking, the sedative taking her from reality into a world where men didn’t hurt her, where her family wouldn’t be slaughtered for her suicide.
When she wakes up in bed, having been found and tended to by Cash, Gloss, or Finnick, she realizes she didn’t get to drown after all.
What a pity.
All the young things line up to take your place
It dawns on her, on her first reaping day as a Victor, that this could be her way out. Or, at least, it could be a reprieve. The girl looks remarkably like her, as most girls do in District One.
If she wins, Glimmer’s best clientele may have a new target, something younger and fresher. Her name is Emerald, and she is so like Glimmer it nearly hurts. They were friends once, being the same age, and it makes Glimmer sick with herself when she realizes she is imagining shifting her abuse on to this innocent target.
(She had been innocent, too).
The boy isn’t as remarkable as someone would typically expect from a male tribute from One. He’s sixteen and tall, but skinny. He isn’t blonde like the usuals, but instead has curly hair the color of milk chocolate. He’s cute, but not in the drop dead gorgeous way they usually push for. He won’t have the strength Gloss did, or the body Glimmer did, so how exactly he got chosen isn’t quite clear.
He is so funny, though.
He is funny and charismatic, and he is so unbelievably kind to Glimmer in a way that she doesn’t trust but sort of wants to.
On the train when he twirls a champagne glass a little too carelessly between his fingers, and cracks a terrible joke as it shatters to the floor, Glimmer laughs for the first time in a year.
He stares at Glimmer through most of his week of training. Glimmer’s used to boys looking at her, but he doesn’t look at her like a meal to be consumed–and trust her, that boy will throw down any meal like it could be his last (and it could).
“I know, I’m hot, but that’s not going to help you in the games.” Glimmer snaps one evening, when they’re alone in the living room recounting training scores from his competitors. Her girl was uninterested in strategy, content with her nine, and headed off to bed. Her strategy wasn’t about skill ‘ just like you, Glimmer.’ She had made it clear, she would attempt the same tactics to win that Glimmer had to resort to.
The boy thought, Marvel, he listened to her as if she were God, like her recommendation to take out the weaker links asap was revolutionary. She notices the way he stares, from the edge of his seat, and reminds him more gently, with the tiniest hint of a little smile, “everyone has a little crush on me, you’re not special, but crushing on your mentor isn’t going to make you a victor.”
Marvel is flustered, then confused, then shaking his head with a crooked smile. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re-” He blushes and rubs at the back of his neck. “I just mean…I think the way you look is the least interesting thing about you, Glimmer.”
Boys. Glimmer thinks to herself, rolling her eyes and ignoring the way such a different type of compliment made her stomach flutter.
He doesn’t know her well enough to tell her that she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen, and that yeah maybe he does have a little bit of a crush on her. He most certainly doesn’t know her well enough to tell her that it’s sweet the way her laugh reaches her eyelashes, or how her strategies are borderline brilliant.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever know her well enough to ask where she got the bruises on her jaw that she tried to cover with makeup, or why she stares a second too long at the breakfast they’re served when she’s lived in the lap of Capitol luxury for an entire year.
She can read a man (a boy, he is just a boy and she is just a girl) well enough to know there's concern in the way he looks at her. Not in the way a predator sees prey, not in the way men usually look at her, but in a way that makes her almost feel like he sees her like a human.
But he is still a man, and men are all the same.
The games begin and so does the usual horror.
Her girl kills three in the blood bath, fumbling clumsily with an axe, and Glimmer stains white sheets with her mascara as a middle aged man clumsily fucks her from behind. She pleads for him to stop and he smacks her across the face.
Her boy spears a twelve year old in the chest, losing him favor amongst more empathetic sponsors, as a man presses his hand so hard around her neck that she passes out without even having time to beg him to stop and let her breath.
A man offers her an extra two hundred dollars to get her tribute something to eat, and doesn’t give her time to reject before he pushes her to her knees. She is held still by a tight hand in her hair as he aggressively thrusts a tiny dick into her mouth, her eyes watering from both the suffocation, the taste, and the dehumanizing violation.
Her tributes both make it to the final four.
Glimmer stops fighting. She stops begging them to stop, stops thrashing around. She lays there, underneath these men, silent and still like the corpse she wishes she were.
The girl she’s responsible for mentoring dies in the final three. Their boy wins, with a goofy smile and more sponsors than he should have ever had.
It is her body, her abuse, that funds the win of Marvel Sanford.
Hopefully it is fucking worth it.