Queen of Hearts

i. serendipity

The train flees from the sun's rays as they sink gracefully behind the hills in a blaze of glorious fire, piercing through the windows like arrows into flesh. The girl shields her eyes as she watches the re-cap of the reapings. Her district partner is draped across the other side of the couch, and their mentors are whispering to each other as each tribute is called up. She's secretly rather pleased with the way she looked as she volunteered, her curtain of hair loose and her slow, confident walk.

Then they've moved on to District Two, and Glimmer leans her head against her hand as the boy's name is called, as another from the back of the crowd volunteers. He's as beautiful as the rugged mountains that pierce the blue silk of the sky, and she smiles at the television screen. It's fortunate, isn't it, that it looks like she'll have some fun before the real Games start.

ii. transcend

The stables are full of noise as the tribute chariots roll back in. Marvel gets off first, holds out a hand to her, but she refuses to take it, stepping down as gracefully as she can manage considering how tight her costume of lurid faux fur and glitter is. Hurt flashes across his face as quick as lightening, and then his expression hardens and he turns away. She tugs at the silk base of her feathered headdress, briefly considering pulling it off.

Gloss and Cashmere suddenly there, crowding around them. "Well done," Cashmere says briefly. "You looked good. Nothing we could do about District Twelve."

Glimmer clenches her fists, but Marvel gets in there first. "It's okay – we'll see how they like real fire in the arena."

iii. mellifluous

She sees the boy from Two again in training. The second they're released from the boredom of the head trainer's welcome speech – blah, blah, who needs to know how many of them will die from dehydration – Marvel goes over to him and his district partner. Glimmer grits her teeth, and heads over to the sword station. The weapons beckon to her, silver glinting under blue-white fluorescence. She knows she could have gone over with Marvel, but Cashmere gave her a knowing look this morning over the crunchy tang of bacon and the soft sweetness of the hot chocolate.

Make them come to you, she'd said.

Glimmer chooses a sword, weighing it in her hand for a second, before facing up to the trainer. Five minutes later, he's on his back with the dull practise blade poised at the tender skin of his throat.

"How about you try and fight a real opponent?" The voice behind her is faintly amused, low. There's a certain music to it, and Glimmer tries to clear her head.

She lets the trainer up, and turns, one hand on her hip. "And what makes you think you'd be good enough to beat me?" she asks.

He raises an eyebrow, eyes as blue as the sky after the sun has gone to bed but before darkness has fully risen from her slumber, lifting his own sword. "Just a little feeling."

She laughs. "Nice try."

It doesn't even matter when he ends up winning. She's disarmed, with her back to the wall, breath escaping her as he bends his head towards her. "What's your name?"

"Glimmer. Yours?"

"Cato."

iv. sinners

It's never truly night in the Capitol. Glimmer learns this when she's up at midnight, padding up the fire escape stairs to District Two's floor, her silk nightgown swooshing around her thighs. The bright lights and loud music never really end, there's never the almost-holy silence that always hung about the air whenever she was out past curfew in her district, sneaking home from whichever boy's house it was that night.

Cato is waiting for her as she slips into his room, turning and shutting the door behind her. A lamp on his bedside table sends a soft orange glow across the room, turns his hair to flame and his skin to gold. They come together slowly, but not hesitant, never hesitant, and then their clothes are pools of black and white on the floor, and as his mouth moves lower, all she can think about is how many rules they're breaking and how she doesn't care in the slightest.

v. family

She's the second to go into the training room for her private session, and she goes straight to the bow and arrow. She remembers how her brother, himself a victor, taught her how to use one, his hands firm against the hollow between her shoulder blades and on the flat of her stomach. She imagines him now, standing there, his face a mask of tension as his pretty little sister works her way through the weapons, slashing and stabbing and spearing until the Head Gamemaker stops her with a raise of his hand.

"You may go," he says.

It doesn't matter that her shooting was off-centre, or that she accidentally choose a spear that weighed a good deal more than she thought it did. When the eight flashes up on the screen under her name, she knows her brother will be proudly beaming somewhere back home as people come up to congratulate him, even though her father is surely sitting in their living room with a glass of port and shaking his head, saying "Four points too low."

vi. divine

When she sees the dress her stylist has designed for her interview, she shakes her head in awe. Cashmere had told her bluntly on the train that her angle would be sexy, but she didn't quite realise that it would mean dressing up in something that's golden gossamer and air and nothing else. But when she puts it on, with glitter around her eyes and her hair tumbling in a rock fall of ringlets to her waist, red lipstick like a slash and she feels like something out of a story, a being not quite human.

When Cato sees her, his gaze rakes up and down in a way that makes heat pool in the base of her stomach. And then she's out on stage with Caesar Flickerman and whole world barely able to tear their eyes from her figure when she realises that she doesn't really like this exposure. She wants to save her beauty for the people that matter to her.

But because she knows she has to, she smiles and flirts and walks off in a swaying of her hips until she can go back up to her room and wipe away the make-up that makes her look immortal and feel more vulnerable than ever.

vii. stained glass

That night Cato kisses her in a way that's like shattered glass, all sharp corners and desperation, his hands clawing through her silken hair. They stay together all night, because neither of them can stand being alone, the night before her death sentence is passed.

(She thinks that if anyone's going to go home, it's him).

In the morning, his prep-team finds them in a tangle of legs and arms and bed-sheets, wide awake and pressed close. They squeak and giggle and duck out, and Glimmer extricates herself, pulls her night-dress over her head.

"See you later," she says, trying to sound blasé.

"Okay," he murmurs, getting up and stretching.

When she gets back to her own apartment, everyone else is up and dressed. Cashmere gives her a grim smile, and Marvel glares, shooting daggers with his eyes. She grimaces and gives them a little, elegant shrug before disappearing to get dressed. One way or another, both she and Marvel are going to end up dead.

viii. verdant

The meadow surrounding the Cornucopia is too green. But Glimmer forgets all about that as the gong sounds and she leaps off her plate, runs towards the thought of weapons and safety that lie within that golden mouth. Within two minutes she's armed, a sword swinging and cutting down anyone in her path in a symphony of screams and bursts of blood. She can see Clove, Cato's district partner, throwing knives, and Cato, as graceful and cold as a constellation of stars, his spear pinning a terrified tribute to the ground.

When it's all over, and they start to gather supplies, Glimmer tries not to look at the way crimson has taken over the grass like an invading army. It doesn't bode well to think too hard about these things.

ix. starlight

That night, they hunt by the light of Hercules and Andromeda and Orion. She and Clove leave the killing to the boys as Clove's made it perfectly clear who she's after and in reality, Glimmer's not as fond as she makes out of the light leaving a child's eyes. They've got the boy from District Twelve with them, supposedly to help them find his partner, but Glimmer doesn't trust him. He dropped a bomb, no make that a nuclear bomb, with his declaration of love at the interviews, and whilst he seems to have convinced Cato, Clove and Marvel that he was lying, that it was only a strategy, Glimmer can see the truth flickering behind his eyes.

(She'll tell them eventually. Some secrets are useful to keep).

x. sea-glass

Delta, the girl from District Four has a piece of sea-glass as her lucky token, and once, when they're all lying around the fire by the Cornucopia after a day's hunting, she lets them pass it round, look at the way the rasping waves have sandpapered it down to a smooth pebble. That night, when Clove's on watch and the others are bedding down under their canopies, she slips down to the lakeside with Cato, away from prying eyes (though never from the cameras) and she lets him touch her, this time gentle, glass rounded by the sea instead of shattered by a storm.

Then they have to return, because, even though the whole Career alliance knows what they do when they go off together, it's warmer to sleep around the fire. And in any case, it keeps the mosquitoes away.

xi. music notes

She dies alone. There's not much more to it, except that it has a sort of poetic finality, her allies deserting her, her lover running from the angry swarm of black and yellow, leaving her to writhe on the ground as the stings dig deep into her pale skin, crawl into her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Delta's already dead, and it's only seconds before Glimmer is succumbing to black tinged hallucinations. Music drops inside her head like rain, and then there is nothing but the heat of life seeping away from her and a damp sadness that there was no-one there to hold her hand as she slips quietly away from the world.

A/N Another thing using eleven prompts from Caesar's Palace Caesar's Challenge Level One. I'd love to hear what you think. Red xx.