Rattle This Scene
for rach (bloodbuzz)
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What is beautiful is good, Glimmer thinks.
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The bathroom walls on the third floor used to be mirrors. Gramma would dress Glimmer in soft navy skirts and pin back her pale hair with steady hands and a promise: "Glimmer, you look beautiful." Then, perched on the ledge of the bathroom sink with her head thrown back, the whole room was ablaze in perennial blooms of yellow and blue.
A few years later, Glimmer's swelling hips burst the skirt seams, and Gramma's hands shook like Jello molds in an earthquake. The bathroom mirrors were torn from the plaster and replaced by wallpaper—sinful wallpaper, with gnarly trees in repellant orange, and a row near the ceiling where the pattern flopped like a broken neck.
Now, the bathroom nurtures a limp feeling and a sad smell. Gramma descends into madness, and Glimmer is pretty sure it's no coincidence. Agitated fluorescent lightning illuminates her reflection when Glimmer gazes into the only mirror left in the bathroom.
At least she's pretty.
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Her brother won the games when he was sixteen.
They were in a desert, him and the only remaining survivor. His arm was wedged around the girl's neck, her chin only an ornament in the crook of his elbow. She grappled at his unyielding fist, shrieking, and scraped his forearm hysterically with dirty fingernails. Her legs flailed and then buckled, slipping limply into the hot sand.
Her brother returned with more gold than the family needed, and Ma used it to buy couches and very ugly wallpaper. They don't need more money now (and they certainly don't need more wallpaper), so when Ma suggests that Glimmer starts her training, she nearly swallows her spoon.
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Glimmer knows there are girls her age already training for the Games, girls in her class who can cleave skulls in their sleep. She never thought much of it—she's pretty. Girls who look like Glimmer don't volunteer; they make jewelry, or maybe they bake. Some even teach at the primary school in midtown.
"What?" Callously, Glimmer extracts the spoon from her mouth, ignoring the thread of saliva still strung from her lip.
Ma shoots her a funny look. "That heart you have won't hold out much longer, Glim." Her tone is joking, but the tightness by her eyes suggests otherwise.
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Gramma has stitched wrists and a flat smile.
The stitched wrists because she stabbed herself with knitting needles (which Glimmer found hugely uncharacteristic of Gramma because she could knit a portrait collar coat in her sleep).
The flat smile because something is wrong, and it has been for a while, but no one can put their finger on it. Sometimes Gramma moans Glimmer's name through the cracks of her teeth, beaming. "You're going to win," she practically sings. "How could you not—I mean, look at you!"
After dinner, Glimmer grabs her toothbrush and scrapes furiously to scour the fear from her mouth. It doesn't work.
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Glimmer feels pretty helpless. She can't take care of plants, or whistle, or braid her own hair. She wants to learn and do things, other things, but so much of her time is devoted to chopping rubber heads now. She's not even very good at it, not like her brother was.
"You're actually decent with a knife," he keeps reminding her, smiling encouragingly every time she spears a rubber dummy in the chest. Brittle flakes bleed from the wound, and it makes her sick.
The only thing Glimmer is sure that she's "actually decent with" is looking pretty, but that doesn't seem to matter so much anymore.
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There are always people lingering outside of the gym.
Glimmer used to think it was purely on a socializing basis, but she knows better now. Their stances are formal and stiff, their expressions aloof and detached: they are sizing up the competition with beady eyes like their lives depend upon it.
One evening after a particularly grueling session, a boy with crisp steps and well-oiled hair flashes over the moment she steps outside. His height is daunting and his eyes are patronizing; Glimmer's heart sinks. Her hand freezes on the strap of her bag when he opens his mouth.
"I heard you're going to volunteer." It's not a question, but Glimmer almost wishes it had been. He stares at her inquisitively, dark eyes darting across her spindly legs and slight fingers. She jerks her hand from her strap and finds crescent-moon depressions in the leather.
"What?" Glimmer snaps. "Got a problem, Greasy?" She tries to sound annoyed, but her voice shivers like a pair of broken wings.
His brow clears and he grins wolfishly, clapping Glimmer on her shoulder. "Good luck, then." Turning on his heel, he struts away to join his friends. Quickly, over his shoulder, the boy cups a hand around his mouth and shouts, "I'm Marvel, by the way."
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At some point between a fiercely turbulent evening and the flushed crack of dawn, Gramma nearly dies.
The doctor mumbles something about heart muscles, oxygen-rich blood, and coronary arteries. Glimmer wants to scream and spit in his face. Instead, she stands with her hands clasped and her head bowed, glowering in her cold pajamas.
Later, Ma trickles out, then Pa, and then her brother. As Glimmer lifts her eyes to meet Gramma's, something triggers inside of her—something hot, fierce, and so angry. She flings herself at the bed.
"I don't want to volunteer," Glimmer screams into Gramma's chest, her face damp, her lips pulled back in a disconcerting grimace. She clenches the sheets in obdurate but quaking hands until her muscles burn and she snaps away. Sobbing, she he slams the mattress with white-knuckles. Unfair, she screams into herself. So unfair.
Gramma pulls back calmly, cupping Glimmer's cheeks in her wintry palms. "You are so beautiful," Gramma murmurs sweetly. Glimmer blinks in surprise, her eyelashes still wet. "Those eyes…green, green eyes. If I could inhale them I would."
And it breaks Glimmer's heart; Gramma is so blind. Her vista meets skin and then freezes, soaking in slick lips and a narrow jawline and nothing else. Gramma used to tell Glimmer, from her rocking chair with a needle rolling between two fingers, "You are what you love, not what loves you." Glimmer wonders if Gramma is taking her own advice a little too seriously.
With a forced smile, she humors Gramma. Then, casting her eyes down, Glimmer retreats to the bathroom with a lump in her throat. The ugly orange wallpaper is hot on her skin, eliciting unwelcome tears that bead in the corners of her eyes.
Glimmer smears them with the back of her hand, annihilating Gramma's predilection of beauty. Glimmer will do anything to make her happy, and it's the worst feeling in the world.
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On Reaping Day, the first name fished from the bowl belongs to a tiny face, pierced ears, and downturned lips. A mother whimpers somewhere in the desolate sea of heads, and the girl draws her hands into her sleeves.
Glimmer knows there are other girls with their mouths already open, and two words on their lifted tongue. She has to act fast.
Dread settles into her skin, rotting, pressed against her bones (and Glimmer wonders if they've melted together because she feels stiff and petrified). She turns her head just a fraction of an inch. Somehow, somewhere, Gramma smiles, Ma purses her lips, and her brother raises his eyebrows expectantly. Frantically, Glimmer drills her teeth into her tongue until it bleeds, but she hardly feels it. She hardly feels anything.
When Glimmer raises her hand, being beautiful is the furthest thing from her mind.
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author's note (directed mostly towards rach but w/e): i tried incorporating the song 'anna sun' into this, i swear i tried, but i am a firm believer in not putting song lyrics in my fics (i can't, i just can't). so…the title is from the song. im trash lol i know. not to mention i kinda altered your other prompts a lil please don't kill me. happy holidays!
prompts: "i think i might've inhaled you," "this heart you have won't hold out much longer," "you are what you love, not what loves you," and the song "Anna Sun" by WALKTHEMOON