Perhaps He Would Have Loved Her, a hunger games fanfic

For Blake! This is the first time I've done a fic exchange, so if the way I incorporated the prompts seems strange, just let me know.

The first time Marvel Sanford meets Glimmer Belcourt, it's his first day at school in District 1 and he is only four years old. Most of the girls in his class that day do not stand out to him as anything special, but Glimmer does, mostly because everything about her is so stunningly yellow—her long, flowy skirt; her curly golden hair; her soft, mellow voice; and the sunflower tucked carefully behind her left ear.

And because yellow is his favorite color, Marvel immediately promises himself that he is going to become best friends with this girl, and this is a goal he is easily able to obtain when their teacher places their desks right next to each other. They quickly become companions; their personalities mesh especially well, with Marvel's loud, arrogant demeanor complimenting Glimmer's quiet, kind one. And they bond over a shared loved for salt and vinegar potato chips.

And for the color yellow.

Time begins to pass and Marvel and Glimmer stay close friends, always spending their afternoons playing together at Marvel's house or Glimmer's house or wherever there is room to run around. And at the end of each day, they collapse exhausted on the grass, whispering and giggling and chatting, and Marvel always goes and finds a yellow flower to tuck into Glimmer's hair.

They don't usually talk about anything of depth, mostly about school and classmates and fun games to play. But Glimmer likes to tell Marvel all about her father: how strong he is, how handsome he is, how hard he works to the Capitol.

"Dad's really really smart," Glimmer always tells Marvel, twirling a piece of blonde hair on her finger. "He always says to me, 'It's a sin to kill a mockingjay, Glimmer.' And I don't know what it means, but it sounds really smart."

And by the time he's eight years old, Marvel is pretty much absolutely sure that he loves Glimmer, and he's decided that he wants to be with her and her yellowness forever.

But things don't work out the way Marvel's eight-year old self planned.

That year, he and Glimmer, along with most of the rest of District 1's children, are sent off to a Hunger Games training academy, where Marvel is taught how to fight and how to throw a spear, how to kill with his bare hands and how to survive in the wilderness for days on end. He is taught to trust nobody, he is taught to betray his friends, he is taught to feel no guilt when somebody dies of his doing. He is taught to never, never love.

And he and Glimmer drift apart, each changing more and more as the years go by. Sure, Marvel is still loud and arrogant, but he also becomes cruel and heartless and devoid of emotions, and at some point he stops loving Glimmer at all. And Glimmer transforms even more; her quietness and kindness vanish and are replaced by the same cruelty and heartlessness Marvel obtains. She also learns to use her beauty—her curly golden hair, her piercing green eyes, her thin waist and her long legs—to get what she wants.

And she is no longer yellow. She is not warm or soft or kind or lovely. Rather, she is blue, like the cold and devilish personality she has adopted; she is blue like her new favorite dress, one that barely goes halfway down her thighs.

And by the time he's seventeen years old, Marvel is pretty much absolutely sure that he doesn't love Glimmer anymore. He did love her once, back when they were children, back when they were once softer, more tender, much more lordly.

However, things have changed.

But when Marvel is in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, and he is about to die, and an arrow is piercing his neck and he is drowning in his own blood, the only thing that he is thinking of is Glimmer Belcourt.

And he can't figure out why. At this point, Glimmer is nothing more than his deceased district partner; she is not his girlfriend or his crush or even his friend, really. She is not significant. And aren't people who are about to die supposed to think of significant things?

So maybe Glimmer is more significant than he believes, Marvel realizes.

To him, Glimmer is sea salt and vinegar potato chips, Marvel thinks, and she is the color yellow; she is warmth and beauty and a single flower tucked behind the left ear of a young girl. She is a person that he was once very much in love with; she is a girl who was forced to become something that she was not, was forced to kill and feel no regret.

She is a mockingjay, Marvel realizes, who was shot for no good reason, and really, Marvel is a mockingjay too. They are both innocent beings whose control over their own lives was brutally ripped away.

Maybe Glimmer's father's old phrase "it's a sin to kill a mockingjay" was pretty smart after all.

Glimmer is absolutely nothing less than significant, Marvel realizes during the last few seconds before his death. In fact, she is much more than significant.

Perhaps, if the academy had not changed him, he would still love her now, still love her like he did when they were so much younger. Perhaps he would still want to be with her, her and her yellowness, forever.

Perhaps he would have loved her, more than anything in the world, but things didn't work out that way, and it's much too late to change them now.