a/n: the prompt I used was you can't have love without feeling pain, and that pain changes us forever, but very loosely because it didn't end up being love-y, sorry :/ also ty to johanna for betaing (even though i actually used very little you said oops) (:
warnings: non graphic sex-ish, i think i swore once?, mentions of sex also quite a bit of death lmao.
– 39.746 A.U. –
Glimmer likes space too much. That's what her best friend says, anyway. They're ten and they're both meant to be in bed, but they've snuck out of a sleepover so that they can watch stars.
"Is that Sterling?"
Well. Glimmer's watching stars. Cierra's more interested in the boys showing off their strength – they've been Training, she says admiringly – at the other end of the street.
"We didn't come out here for stars, Glimmer." An elbow finds its way to her side. "Look, Skyler's here …"
Skyler has washed out blue eyes and an alarming tendency to flirt. Glimmer disapproves. "But look at them," she says, lifting an arm to point. "They look like pins."
"What, and the sky's the board?"
"Why not?"
Cierra scoffs. "You're boring." She wanders off, and Glimmer watches her make it to the flirtatious Skyler before tilting her head back as far as it will go. Her neck cracks painfully, making her eyes water. Even through the blur of tears, the stars are shining.
– 30.087 A.U. –
They call her name on an afternoon of summer sunshine. There are no clouds: the moon is pinned like a brooch to the blue satin of the sky, and Glimmer takes it as an omen. She's only seventeen, had been planning to wait the extra year – but she's proficient, one of the best, and there's no set volunteers for the Ones this year. Sixteen year old Vermillion looks as if she's considering it; Glimmer eyes her until she subsides. She'll have other years.
Marvel isn't drawn, but he volunteers for Sterling, a soft eyed thirteen year old who she doesn't think has ever touched a weapon in his life. It's neither a good nor bad partnership for her. Glimmer had thought Marvel was attractive when she was younger, right up until she realised he was made up of brute strength and not much else. Still, he's not whom Glimmer would have preferred to compete with. She hopes there are stronger tributes in the arena.
They feed them early on in the train journey. Glimmer picks, listening idly to Marvel discussing strategy, until she looks up and meets Cashmere's eyes. This isn't District One, they suggest. Dieting won't help her now.
Carefully, she refills her plate.
– 19.208 A.U. –
It's a rule that tributes are not meant to have contact with the Gamemakers, Cashmere tells them as they're making their final preparations and costume fixes. Her dress is garish, but it shines, it's eye catching, and Glimmer figures the crowd will be too far away to see the stupidly tall heels her stylist had forced her into anyway.
"Why would I want to?" Marvel asks. It's not the sort of question that wants an answer, nor does it warrant one. Cashmere ignores it, continuing her brief.
"Just look attractive from afar. None of them are female." She hesitates, looks him up and down, the glance briskly calculating. "Not that that's an issue, really … but I wouldn't, not right before the arena."
Marvel looks like he wants to throw up, which, well, Glimmer has to travel in a carriage with him in an hour or so, so he'd better get that under control. She takes pity on him, forestalls whatever painfully awkward answer he'd been about to vocalise. "Why are you telling us?"
"Because people do." She shrugs. "Usually ours. Or girls from Four, they're not thin enough to be unappealing." There's something in her tone that suggests she knows this to be true. Glimmer knows what being a Victor entails, but she shivers anyway.
"What if I want to?"
Cashmere quirks an eyebrow. "It depends. How badly do you want to win?"
– 9.523 A.U. –
As it turns out, she only has a few moments in the spotlight before the Twelves apparently set themselves on fire for attention. Her stylist was right, she'd been thinking. The people shouted for her, they had thought she was beautiful – and then a bright spot glows in the corner of her eye, a golden pinwheel of light. A star. It turns into the Twelve girl a moment or two later, arms upraised, head thrown back, fire crackling over her body.
Honestly, Glimmer would have preferred the star.
When the chariots form a line in front of the foremost stand, the Twelves are – thankfully – out of sight. Glimmer rakes her eyes over what she assumes is Capitol nobility – Gamemakers, scattered politicians, President Snow. Her eyes fall on a man in the seat next to the President. He has dark hair and dark eyes and rich clothing, and he lounges in his chair as if he was born for it. Glimmer thinks – hopes he's watching her. Testing it, she raises her arms, letting the light glance off them, and a real smile replaces her pasted on one when he lifts his glass, as if to make a toast. She has to put her arms down a few seconds later because the President starts to speak, and Marvel laughs at her later for it, but the man in the stands lowers his glass, and it is worth it.
She has only a few moments in the spotlight, but they are enough.
– 5.203 A.U. –
"Seneca Crane," she says aloud, testing the name on her tongue. It sounds forbidden, but so are a lot of things tonight. There should not be an Avox leading her down a corridor tributes are forbidden from visiting, but there is, and she shouldn't have disappeared without telling her mentors, but she has. Cashmere will understand.
She blocks the first part of the night out. It's not awful, she considers later. It could be worse. He's younger than her father, which is more than can be said for most of the other Gamemakers. And he lets her spend the night, which is good, because she's not sure about walking.
Cashmere had said Gamemakers were worth it. He's the Head one. She hopes she's right.
Seneca doesn't become more than a Gamemaker to her until he sees the way she's looking out of his window and doesn't laugh at her for it.
"We have climate experts in the Capitol," he tells her. "They magnify the planets for us a bit. It's a nice view."
"Those are what?" Back in One, they have textbooks, but the pictures are grainy and balck and white. Outside the window, the stars – planets? – are shining. She sits up to get closer to the window and he grins, but bears it.
"Not all of them. Just – that one, and that, the one in the middle." He points, and Glimmer stops trying to look as old as possible to attract him and stares with wide eyes.
"I didn't know technology could do that."
Seneca shrugs. "We have the best."
– 1.524 A.U. –
The next night, when she comes to his room, the ceiling is awash in stars. It's the sky, but brighter, nothing like she could ever have imagined.
"I told you," Seneca says when she looks to him for an explanation. "We have the best."
– 1.000 A.U. –
"Did you like your score?"
"It was worse than the Twelve girl's."
"She's a target now." A pause. "You should get rid of her early. There'll only be one bow in the arena, make sure you get it."
"Want to go in there for me?"
"Not on your life."
It is, she thinks.
– 0.723 A.U. –
The final night she spends in the Capitol is cloudy. Glimmer's mood echoes it. She knows the stars aren't gone – hadn't until Seneca had told her, but that's beside the point – but it had been a long day of interviews and she'd been looking forward to them. She wonders if she'll see stars in the arena, if she'll live long enough to see the ones in the Capitol again. It takes Seneca three prompts to shake her out of her reverie; when she murmurs what she's been thinking of, he stops telling her about his mutts and laughs outright.
"I'm talking about genetically engineered, fully responsive lifeforms," he says, "and you're tuning me out for the stars?"
"Look at them," she says, rolling onto her back. He's had them splattered across his ceiling every night since they'd first talked of them. Probably he clears them off once she leaves, has them added again each time she returns.
It's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for her, she thinks wryly, and then realises how true that is and forces her mind back to a reality where she'll be fighting for her life come morning.
"They're revolutionary," Seneca's saying. He looks at her, pained. "They'd do whatever I told them to."
"That doesn't fill me with confidence."
"I've been working on them for years," he says, proud of it despite the – what, anger? She's known him three days. But the Capitol is known for doing things quickly, she supposes. Quick Games, lives, loves … "I could make them know you, have them leave you alone–"
"Snow would find out," she says flatly.
Furious, Seneca shakes his head. "I don't care."
He should, she thinks. It's a Capitol mindset to be so frivolous with a life, playing, as if it's not he only one he has, as if there'll be another and another after that. Glimmer knows better: she's never killed before, but she'd cut his throat if it would secure her victory. "He'll hear," she says instead; and when he takes a breath, preparing to vocalise some weak, inherently Capitol reply, she leans over and presses her mouth to his, swallowing the sound until his dissent is no more than a muted rumble someplace close to her heart.
– 0.387 A.U. –
She is burning.
That's what happens when something gets too close to the sun, Seneca had said, only the slightest smirk at a wide eyed district girl who couldn't believe there were worlds outside her own. A barbaric one, she thinks suddenly, winces at the dissent in the thought. But she is burning and the lake is far, too far, and her allies have deserted her as she would have deserted them. She shouldn't blame them, but she does.
But you don't have to touch the sun to burn, he'd told her. You only have to be in its proximity to be swallowed up. It doesn't feel as if the stingers are touching her anymore, but they must be, because she's still hurting. There's just the pain.
Does it swallow? she'd asked. It had been a joke, but he'd answered seriously.
Of course not. It just – burns.
She is burning.
Glimmer stretches her arm out as far it will go. It's dark, it must be, she was sleeping – but her vision is blurry and somehow that doesn't seem to matter anymore. Slowly, painstakingly, she lifts a finger and touches the sun.
– 0.000 A.U. –
He doesn't know if they're an answer to his dissent or to a job not well done. Still, there's no mistaking the bowl of berries that some Avox had transferred to his room directly after the end of the Games. He'd known something was coming the second he'd allowed both of the Twelve tributes to live – but what other course of action was there? They must have a Victor. But Snow's not known for second chances, and he likes his little gestures. This is one of them. There's an alternative, probably, but this is his decent way out. This is, you failed, succumb gracefully. He thinks of a cocked gun, hanging, other various means of execution, and shudders. The ceiling of his room is still spangled with stars.
Seneca Crane fills his palm and, eyes watering, pours the berries down his throat.
–
fin.
–
a/n: section headings are the distances of the planets from the sun. pluto included because idk i'll fight you.