Hi, everyone. This story will be a oneshot, but I will be expanding this chapter a couple times before it is completed. This is the first bit, inspired by the song "Secret" by The Pierces. When I listened to this song, I totally fell in love with it, and immediately started drawing parallels to this particular part of the Hunger Games series. I decided it would be fun to tell this area of the story from a different perspective, and created my OC Livia to play the part of a Capitol criminal tasting the sting of justice for the first time. Try listening to the song while you read (nightcore is the creepiest version, if you're into that.)
Enjoy+Review :)
Livia sat, solitary in the dark room, unable to fully relax against the plush, meticulously sewn-up couch cushions at her back. Only a strip of her elaborately dressed-up body was visible as a result of the garishly bright screen before her, beaming its pixelated wonders into her eyes with unrelenting vividness. The Panem National Anthem blared into her jewel-bedecked ears, but the so-familiar melody, typically soothing, was acutely discomforting to her this particular night. Rather than taking the trouble to lower the volume, she stayed cemented to her seat, each muscle rigid. Such stillness calmed her, though she was still tempted to turn her head to the darkness. A terrifying scenario of a dark figure lunging from the unlit shadows snuck into her imagination and her head whipped to her right in a burst of braided hair, royal azure. Sickly gray eyes, pink around the edges and dilated from the intense light of the screen, scoped out the hazy darkness of her living room. Searching for…fair skin? Fiery hair?
"Nothing?" Livia asked within her mind, turning to the left to be doubly assured, glimpsing a glittering skyline out her window in the process.
"Yes…nothing."
When she returned her eyes to the screen, however, a far less expected sight, almost equally horrifying, was broadcasted straight to her face.
The wicked Katniss Everdeen. What sort of horrors would the Capitol be learning about her this time?
Yet this didn't look like the usual evening news. There were no headlines cycling beneath the main image, no patriotic border encircling the screen. And no familiar reporter's voice. Instead, Livia heard the Mockinjay's voice for the first time in her life.
"When I met Peeta, I was eleven years old, and I was almost dead."
Livia clapped her manicured hands over her ears in a cacophonic jingling of bracelets, rings and earrings. The voice, so soft, with a softness she had only heard from outsiders, had disturbed her. Why would they let that rebel speak like this, before every citizen of the Capitol? With wide, greasy eyes, she looked to her window for a second time, fighting to see past the reflection of her television on the twin glass panes. When, at last, she focused on the beautiful nighttime horizon, she noticed the lights within the glowing towers becoming gradually brighter. No, not brighter. They were being joined by new lights at a rapid pace. Window after window, floor after floor, was blooming with the intense white-yellow of electricity, as if bursting into flames. The skyline was being illuminated so quickly that she could visibly see the sky's edge glowing stronger every second.
"As if the city is catching fire," she mentally noted with a deep shudder. Once again her imagination forced her to look into the darkness of her room. Looking for angry eyes as bright as the screen before her.
"Nothing? Nothing."
Still covering her ears, Livia timidly faced the screen. Someone out of the picture was in the midst talking to Katniss, who was just finished with her intense monologue. Yet another voice so soft…
The screen flickered, a gray snowstorm of static clawing at the warm image of Katniss's face. Defiant, she parted her lips to speak as the image began to clear again.
"…I know at any moment Snow could kill him," she gravely confided, "Especially since he warned Thirteen about the bombing. It's a terrible thing to live with…"
Livia finally worked up the will to turn off the screen. She shut her eyes and her vision was engulfed in a glaring square of swirling greens and reds and blues as a result of the concentrated exposure to light. The slowly fading image was the haunting ghost of what she'd seen, refusing to let go of her senses. Soon visions of a dark head of hair and the young, dainty features of Katniss Everdeen were dancing across the spinning darkness behind her lids.
Suddenly, Livia became terrified to reopen her eyes. Afraid to find herself looking into the truly present features of one she was far more familiar with. A glint of silver-white teeth in a smile filled with admiration yet sizzling with an underlying hatred. Or the bat of a lash-laden eyelid in a wink so sweetly playful that one would never know of the tears it blinked away.
Slowly, with gritted teeth, the woman unveiled her eyes. All she saw before her was the blackness of the screen she had been looking into moments ago. No tall figure. No teeth.
"Nothing."
Darkness was all around her now, save the glow of the Capitol beyond her window. The city was fully alight now, and she could hear cars roaring down the streets below; shocking, considering her little apartment perched ten stories above the ground. She was tempted to walk to the window, to look down and see just how many cars could make such a noise, but felt more secure on her couch. She just wanted to stay still and be…left alone. Just as she was going to look away from her window, something flickered across the glass, looking to be a reflection from the back of the room. But the room was pitch-black!
Livia whirled around, staring into darkness with wild eyes before finally managing to distinguish the far wall and a lone door to the hallway, void of anything that moved. Her paranoid eyes had tricked her, as they did oftener and oftener these days.
Suddenly, she longed for the screen again. Its sickly sweet, deathly pale glow was comforting to her. Hopefully they had stopped that strange broadcast. They could stop it, right?"
Livia allowed her rectangular companion to flicker to life and found herself staring into the blue-flame eyes of Finnick Odair. His vibrant black pupils bored into her maggot-white face with a righteous vehemence that shook her to her core.
"Why?!"
The woman shrieked this word alone as she lunged from her seat with sudden, terror-driven vigor, gasping, half out of shock, half in an attempt to keep away the silence that now felt so unnatural in the way it loomed around her. Just as she found the nerve to look away from the screen, a toneless voice, softer than all the others, seeped like a gentle mist from the speakers bedecking her screen in a near-whisper with a lilting District Four accent. She had never heard him speak this way before.
"I wasn't the only one, but I was the most popular. And perhaps the most defenseless, because the people I loved were so defenseless. To make themselves feel better, my patrons made presents of money or jewelry, but I found a much more valuable form of payment."
For a moment Finnick glances away from the camera, either distracted or building up an internal drumroll. As if awoken from a trance with the loss of eye contact, Livia filled the silence with a wordless scream, dropping to her hands and knees. She knew where this show was going and was now utterly terrified of it. For that moment, her mind was plunged into the past. The guilt that had stewed in her for years. The garnish of fear she'd added to it when she had her first and final meeting with that legendary Victor. Her entrails writhed with violent sickness beneath her elegant blue dress as she revisited her rollercoaster of memories.
"Secrets."
Finnick's voice hit Livia like an iron hammer; driving a nail into her coffin.
"…And this is where you're going to want to stay tuned, President Snow, because so very many of them were about you. But let's begin with some of the others. Starting with…"
From the wall behind her, Livia could hear muffled voices talking in raised tones in the hallway beyond and stamping footsteps echoing at multiple distances; all with the same hurried pace. Livia threw a glance behind her, then fixed her gaze on the face in her screen. Finnick was about to begin telling his first dooming tale and Livia focused herself on the simple task of listening for her name. Don't say my name, don't say my name…
The first on his execution list did not bear Livia's name. She forced herself to block out his silken voice, unwilling to face any more shock than she already had to. A woman's long, shrill scream, a man's bellowing response and a slamming door boomed from the depths of the hall.
"…committed arson eight years ago, killing her unnamed child in the process…slit the throat of a snooping Peacekeeper right before the assassination…hung his sister's body from his balcony…blackmailed her into stealing it, then…"
Livia walled herself off from the ever growing noises from the window and walls. They had begun to terrify her more than Finnick's stories and, hesitantly, she refocused only on the sweetly unfamiliar voice that calmly continued pouring its dark serenade of sin into the bewildered ears of the national population. Livia did not hear her name, but began to recognize many others as those of well-known Capitol aristocrats, like herself. These were people she'd learned to trust; some of which she'd even had the fortune to meet. They were never quite as magnificent in person as they appeared to be on the screen, of course, but she had always had faith in them. They were only human.
"…his mother shot him, then turned the gun on her miserable self…but the serial murderer was a good friend of our dear President Snow…bribed the Peacekeepers…sprayed the toxic chemical stores on the mansion grounds…killed the family dog and cannibalized the wife…"
Livia was deeply startled upon hearing a loud thump as something in the hallway slammed heavily against the back wall. There was more screaming, more arguing, then a steady rhythm of gunshots from down the hall. The enraged insults hurled back and forth were now replaced with high-speed lead, and the stamping footsteps scattered as a result and were promptly lost in the chaos beyond. Glass shattered, a baby was howling, a door was pounded open. From below, sirens wailed, tires were shredded against asphalt and car horns blared, not quite drowning out an oncoming rainstorm of fast-firing Peacekeeper weapons. Livia could only sit and silently beg the golden-skinned figure before her to keep her away from the chaos that so many others had fallen prey to. She cursed the night she met him and tore scratch marks in her couch cushions with talon-like fingernails, beginning to wish the fabric in her claws was the skin of the Victor's throat.
"Oh, please…"she gasped into the eerily screen-lit air before her, soon to begin biting her polka-dotted lips, lined with wrinkles that even years of cosmetic surgeries couldn't hide.
"…left her dying husband with the delusion of marrying me…"
There was a smash and the sound of snapping wood from past the living room door. Livia staggered to her feet, almost tripping on the pom-pom adorned hem of her gown. Hustling to the door, then flinging it open, she met face to face with the host of one of her favorite all-night talk shows, though her face was barely recognizable, deathly pale with fear and almost void of the usual flamboyant makeup.
"…drank himself to death in the basement out of guilt…"
"What are you doing…"
"You have to help me!" The television star shrieked, throwing her heavily perfumed arms around Livia's shoulders. The two stumbled to the couch and collapsed into their seats, breathless from shock. A muffled but terrifyingly elongated boom sounded from the streets below.
"…stalked her for almost a decade afterwards…"
"What is going on…" Livia began again, starved for an explanation.
"He's told everyone! I have to hide!" The woman's voice was now a hushed whisper as tears of guilt dripped from her face, masked by a mane of acidic, highlighter yellow hair that fell straight over her face. "He's looking for me right now! He knows!"
"Who?"
The woman broke into a full blown sob. She was unable to speak for a few agonized moments. "…I thought he'd never tell!" She finally forced from her throat with a final wild wail. "I thought…that he didn't care…I was such a monster…"
"…preferred his victims twelve years old and sometimes younger…"
"Antonia!" A man's voice roared from the shadows. Livia launched herself from her seat and backed away as a large figure in a deep purple suit lunged into the room with a gleaming pistol in his gloved hand. "You! It was you! How could you kill her like that! You sick murderer! You dared to…to hang her like a bloody piece of meat!"
"He's lying! That scum from the Districts…!"
Antonia was cut off as an explosion erupted from the point of the gun, bleaching the room in a momentary lightning flash before vanishing with a puff of smoke to serve as its ghost. Antonia's body, contorted by pain, spilled down Livia's couch and onto the wood floor with a trail of crimson slime originating at a gaping puncture in the left of her chest.
"…fell madly in love with her twin brother and caused the mysterious death of…"
In two big steps, the man was at the desired distance from his foe. Then he aimed his gun a second time, firing directly into her skull. Thick blood mingled with her heavily dyed hair, creating a foul ooze that soon began pooling about her head and seeping into the grooves between the floor panels.
"…ran him off the road up in the mountains…"
"You just…" Livia decided to forget about finishing her sentence.
"You live here? Why was she with you?" Though tears trickled down the grooves beside his nose, the man's steely gaze was intimidating enough without being held at gunpoint.
"She just…barged in here on her own! And so did you! I don't know anything about what's going on between you…two."
The man gave Livia a solemn look and a slight nod. Another scream sounded from the hallway. "I see," he said, his voice soft but hoarse from its former volume. "Then you must not have been listening very closely to Mr. Popular up there."
"…told me he'd hired a team of assassins to…"
To Livia's horror, the man raised his pistol yet again, firing at Finnick's image and landing a bullet hole square in his forehead, causing her prized, outlandishly expensive screen to give out a miniature spark spray and a puff of gray smoke. Finnick kept talking, in fact, he had just happened to give a short, ironic chuckle immediately following the virtual murder. Livia stared at his gentle features and fearless, focused eyes in a mixture of hatred and terror.
"…kept them chained in his attic to torture them when he pleased…"
"The one truly peaceful, prosperous place in Panem…and he ruins it. Why would he have such a burning desire to cause us all this chaos?"
Hawking up a gob of spit and landing it with dramatic disdain upon Antionia's lifeless face, the Capitol man left the scene as if he was the star of an exciting new action film. He'd failed to notice the irony of his words. The Capitol had never been truly peaceful.
Livia stood motionless, scanning the wreckage before her. A woman who had been begging for her help one moment had been outright murdered in the next. Were they all Tributes in the Hunger Games now? Slowly, she averted her stained eyes from the corpse bleeding onto her floor, finding herself drawn to the man on her screen, still talking. Still ruining lives…
"You're ruining our lives!" Livia shrieked, unable to trap the words within her thoughts. Forgetting her obsessive attachment to her electronics, the maddened Capitol woman balled up her fleshy fist and pounded it against the screen, recoiling upon receiving a slight static shock in the process. The Victor continued his steady stream of condemning words.
"…listened in on their plans and the guard gave me a black eye that put me out of commission for a week… sponsors bribed the Gamemakers into setting a trap for my former girlfriend from Four…I bit his finger straight through the bone and Peacekeepers murdered my mother the following night…"
Livia frowned, disturbed by the darkness in his words. Her fisted hand prickled as if the shock was still taking effect and she was swallowed up in a strange, sour feeling; the unmistakable sourness of regret.
"He has nothing to lose," she realized, silent as she tossed and turned in her thoughts. "He's ruining their lives because they tore his own to filthy shreds. And I…was a part of that…? No. I can't be a part of this. Don't pull me into this misery! Can't you spare just one?"
Livia looked deeply into the array of vivid hues in the depths of Finnick's eyes. Behind those eyes was a brain that knew far too much. His mind was the only other that knew the full truth about Livia's darkest hour. He paused, taking in a patient breath. Someone hurriedly walked across the camera's path, shrouded in a gray District 13 uniform. A dainty, gloved hand brushed comfortingly across Finnick's shoulder as the figure passed by him. But the Victor did not move his gaze from the lens before him.
"Onto an old friend of President Snow: Livia Bellany."
"NO! Not m-"
"…CEO of the Bellany Electronics Company, of which I'm sure many of you already know and love. She seems so kind hearted; an expert at first impressions. But search just beneath the surface and you'll find a hideousness that rivals the most savage of beasts."
"NOT ME!" Now Livia's screams only added to the apocalyptic chaos around her.
"Dear, sweet Livia hasn't stayed single for so long without a reason. Five years ago, she got to meet Snow's charming young nephew, Cassian. She told me she'd fallen so madly in love with him that she was sending him gifts from her factories in District 3 every day and stalked him from party to party every night. Yet, as you all know, it was her twin sister, Tacita, who won his heart and married him. Then they agreed to adopt a child from the pitifully impoverished, horribly polluted District Eight. And I'm sure you all remember that sweet little baby girl they brought home by the name of Shenna. Those deep brown curls and sparkling black eyes were photographed so many times; imprinted into the minds of every single citizen in the Capitol. How could we ever forget that heartwarming photo of the little child laughing in the arms of President Snow himself? Shenna was a symbol to your city, representing everything that was good about your world. As little Shenna began to grow up in the arms of her loving parents, however, Livia's envy of their happy lives grew out of control. And then the angelic little girl just…disappeared. You know why?" Only now did Finnick's calm face begin to show emotional weakness at the corners of his scowl and the edges of his sea green eyes. Bristling with pent up anger, he hissed, "Tacita's jealous evil twin kidnapped Shenna right from under the Peacekeepers' noses and, in an envious rage, butchered the child in the very bedroom I was forced to share with her."
"NO!" Livia's fingernails raked down the image of Finnick's face as tears raked down her own.
"Anyone who began to suspect her of the crime found themselves swimming in more bribe money than they knew what to do with."
"NO-O!"
"So get to it, Mr. President."
"Please, no…"
"Give her the punishment she deserves while you're still a free man."
"No! No, no NOOO!"
"Now onto one of our favorite musicians…"
She thought he'd never tell. She thought someday, when he would finally grow old and unpopular, he would simply return to his homeland district and fade from the minds of the world. Victors always went quietly. Even if he did turn out to be a rat, Livia had felt secure in the fact that she'd made him swear on his life. If he was to tell anyone of what she'd done, she fooled herself into believing that it might only be a few worthless District 4 fishermen. Not this. Anything but this.
Livia ran to the window, watching as tiny, white-jacketed Peacekeepers sifted through the traffic wreckage below, pursuing a few scattering, brightly colored citizens like hounds scrambling to fetch their favorite toys. Would she become one of those people? There was no doubt.
The window was obviously not an option for escape. She turned back to the screen; the face with bullet holes and scratch marks that just wouldn't stop talking.
"You broke your promise," she sobbed to the unresponsive figure, "you swore!"
Why did she expect him to keep his promise? Why, when the Capitol broke their promise of a happy Victor's life to him? Now she finally put these thoughts together and realized the sheer stupidity of trusting the Victor's promise. Burying her face in her hands, she remembered how easily he'd persuaded her into revealing the secret that had been clawing at her insides for years.
"Who would I tell?" He had purred in a voice void of its soft accent. "I might be the only person in the world that would really keep their word. You can confide in me and never have to think about it again."
"I don't know…"
"There are many others that dared to tell me a secret of theirs…though, of course, I can't tell you any of their names. I've never given away a single one. To be honest," he smiled, "I think I've forgotten some."
"…Are you sure there isn't something else you'd want?" Strain tinged Livia's features as she gazed upon the flawless, smiling features of the teenage Victor. Suddenly, that smile had vanished.
"Tell me that which lies buried deep within your mind and both of us can be happy."
The overwhelming feeling of guilt had won Livia over. She knew that Finnick hadn't spent that night with her by choice. He was giving her an opportunity to redeem herself.
"Alright…"
"You tricked me! You seduced and guilt tripped and tricked me! They know…it's all over!" Livia's voice grew deep and shrill like a demon's as she let loose her unbearable rage. "Damn you, Finnick Odair! Damn that blind fool, Caius, too, and selfish, wretched Tacita! And damn that snobby little bitch, that devil child, Shenna, who could only pose and smile and taunt me with 'Aunty, aunty AUNTY'! ...When all I wanted her to say was Mommy!"
With a defeated, rasping roar, Livia seized her precious screen, bordered with pink curlicues and an engraving of her signature, and tore it from the wall, hurling it with adrenaline powered force straight over the bloodstained couch and into the air. She watched with a hanging jaw and wild, animal eyes as it crashed against the wall and clattered in a series of heavy, money wasting thumps to the ground, where it lay motionless and, at last, silent. Released from the screen's captivating spell, Livia was suddenly filled with the desperate craving to escape. She ran from the room, not looking back, not taking a single precious belonging with her as she kicked off her stilettoes mid stride and dashed, barefoot, out the apartment door and into the chaos of the hallway.
Across from her door she found a dead man with a curled mustache, black hair sculpted into a pair of horns, and a neon blue suit with pointed boots. Across his torso spanned a trail of bullet holes, still trickling a thick blood that already had re-dyed most of his shirt and vest. Turning away from the sight and the stench, Livia found herself looking into the eyes of the killer, a blonde woman with a hot pink petticoat and a smoking handgun clasped in her shaking fingers. Her face was pale, causing her heavy blush to stand out unnaturally against her ghostly cheeks, and her jaw quivered with a mix of total shock, absolute exhaustion, and slowly fading rage. Livia backed away, defensively raising her hands.
"What…do you want?" The woman growled. Her whole body shook with each breath. "He...deserved this! You don't even...wanna know...what he did."
"Oh, I, uh, understand. I'll…be going?"
Unable to face the murderous madwoman any longer, Livia slipped away, running down the opposite length of the hall with her hands still raised and shoulders hunched. She dashed by more bullet holes in the wall. Another man's corpse. A woman screaming uncontrollably at the corner that Livia quickly turned. A Peacekeeper dashing across her path and into an open door, gun drawn. A gaping hole in the wall that gushed smoke. A trail of thick red blood and bits of teeth, leading to a third corpse beside the stairwell.
There was so much murder all around her. So much blood. Every time she caught sight of that unmistakable crimson compound, she was reminded of the horrible deed she had committed. Her body would launch itself into panic mode, and visions of the murder flashed before her sickly, tortured eyes. She could only think of the beautiful little girl; her brown hair mingling with scarlet blood; her black eyes closed for a final time. Lying there in that bedroom in pieces. Livia had always known she would never have that girl. The sweet little Shenna was a blessing meant for souls far purer than her own. She couldn't have her, so she destroyed her. She sliced apart flesh and severed joints, butchering none but her own soul, her own innocence, in the process. The blood was drained from the girl's body and the joy was sucked from Livia's spirit. A loveless shell, she dashed past the corpses without looking back. Ducking through the doorway to the stairwell, she raced down the first flight of steps, only to gape at a virtual army of Peacekeepers scrambling upwards, silent save the sound of their metal boots clashing against pink marble with every step.
Suddenly, one of their masks tilted upward and she felt the eyes behind it lock onto hers.
"You there!"
Livia skidded back up the stairs as if the words had been a bullwhip driving her away. Pumping her slim but muscle-lacking limbs against the unforgiving air, she leapt through the doorway and dashed down the hall, nearly tripping multiple times on her pom-pom dress hem. She was certain they would be at the top of the stairs in moments and was baffled to behold that she hadn't yet been shot at. She failed to realize that President Snow had almost certainly ordered the men to capture her alive. Many days of unimaginable torture would pass before the end of Livia's life, if Snow was to have his way.
"Stop right there!" The leading Peacekeeper's voice was filled with an unusual vigor that only served to terrify Livia more and spur her on. She ran to the nearest branch of the hallway and turned, hoping to avoid the bullets that would never come. Pausing for an instant to strip off the encumbering gown, Livia ripped out of its multiple layers as quickly as she could and tossed it to the shiny pink floor in a heap, then deftly unfastened the hoop skirt underneath, continuing her mad sprint in nothing but a bright white corset and skin-tight leggings.
There was a window at the end of the hallway, facing in the opposite direction of the one in her living room. Instead of giving a view of the Capitol skyline, it showed but a few patches of wealthy suburbs and the empty mountains beyond. What Livia wouldn't give to be spirited away right this moment, off to those barren lands that she had hated for her entire life save now, now that it was her only possible refuge from the horrors she had brought upon herself.
She reached the window, stretching out her arms to slide her palms down the smooth, single pane surface. Momentarily she turned her head to find the Peacekeepers hot on her trail, charging down the hallway. Their guns stayed strapped to their armor; only their batons were at the ready. Livia was not about to be hit by one of those.
Wild with panic, she balled up her hand into a tight fist and pounded at the window, cracking it deeply but badly bruising her knuckles in the process. She gasped in pain, recoiled and then, relentlessly, struck at the window again, using the opposite hand. It shattered and large glass slices plummeted from the frame to the street below. Kicking, then brushing away the final shards at the bottom of the frame, she scrambled onto the windowsill like a monkey and perched there, not brave enough to jump forward, nor brave enough to step away. Below, a giant screen, no doubt purchased from her company, flashed brightly from the top of the furniture store across the street. On it was none other than the golden face of District Four's very own Finnick Odair. He was laughing, laughing heartily at a comment that had just been made by some woman off-screen. His bright eyes gleamed like blue-green stars, only duller than the sun itself, due solely to the visual limits of the camera that displayed his image. Only a free man could have eyes so bright. He had escaped. Now Livia wanted escape, too. She thought she wanted it just as badly as he had.
Filled with fresh motivation, the woman lunged from the window, equally prepared to either fall to her death or, somehow, get to safety. The top of the screen, she realized, was at the perfect height and distance from the window, where, if she had the strength, she might barely manage to grasp onto it and save herself. Her hands stretched out before her as if she was diving, her fingers silhouetted against the image of the only man she'd dared to trust. If she fell, would the Victor's smiling face be the last thing she would ever set eyes upon?
Sadly, no. It was destined to be the scowling face of President Snow.
Gloved hands raked through her long, thick hair and suddenly tightened, suspending Livia helplessly in the air. Shocked, she looked to the street below, packed with cars and chaos, and then the screen above. He was still smiling.
"NO-O!"
He smiled as, zombie-like, she thrashed against the ever growing number of Peacekeeper hands hauling her back up to a terrifying reality. He smiled as her hands flailed in front of her, clutching at the air that separated her from the beautiful, joyous face, from the happiness she never had and never would. He smiled as her screams became wordless and violently shrill, tearing at her vocal chords with each harsh vowel punctuated by sheer volume. Still he smiled as they soon turned to hoarse but equally loud sobs as first Livia's jaw, then her shoulders and finally her arms were seized and she was dragged, both kicking and screaming, from not only a near certain death, but the last happy face she would ever see, the last reminder of the pure, guilt-free life she wanted so badly to rip away and make her own.
Now, at last, Livia truly knew that was stealing such things was impossible. She had tried so hard to steal away the happiness of her sister and her daughter, and miserably, she had failed. She had tried, also, to buy the Victor's love in an attempt to make herself happy, but now that she looked upon that sweet smile and those sharp eyes, she knew she had failed, also, to take anything from him. And now she was paying for both failed attempts at once.
"Finnick! Finnick! You swore you'd never tell! You swore!" She screamed into the empty air.
Just before she was completely hauled through the window, she managed to make out a final glimpse of Finnick's face. He sighed, his smile finally fading away, not to a frown, but a serene, contented expression that not she, nor anyone around her, would ever be able to genuinely reproduce. With a slight toss of his head, he turned his eyes straight to the camera's lens, focusing there with a rare intensity. There was a moment of silence. Then, he finally said,
"Cut."
The screen went black and so did Livia's vision as she was thrown to the floor and beaten over the head with a baton. Never to see that happy face again.