Oddity
summary: "One summer night, she catches her oddity brother in the middle of the night, staring out the window with a sketchpad in his hand." Raleigh's thoughts on her younger brother Cinna, before and after the Rebellion. For Paige.
\
Soon the doors of the Capitol Academy of Fine Arts, the best school for aspiring designers and stylists, will open, and Raleigh Sherry is excited. Raleigh has big hopes, wishing to become a stylist for the Games, preferably for One or Two. Everyone knows that's where all the best go, after all.
The Academy is a rather large place in the heart of the Capitol city, at a setting very different from what she's used to. She remembers looking at it from afar, staring at the pretty strings of light.
"Aren't you excited, Raleigh?" asks Cinna, her younger brother, clutching his sketchpad and holding her hand as they board the train. "In just ten minutes, we'll be at the Academy!"
"Kind of nervous, actually," she mumbles. She looks down at her younger brother, and eyeing his ensemble, suddenly exclaims, "What are you wearing?!"
"Uh, what I always do," replies Cinna calmly.
Raleigh is horrified. Her brother didn't even bother to dye his ugly, ordinary brown hair or put on some makeup or something! "Couldn't you bother to dress up a little bit for our first day? You look like you popped out of the Districts! Now everyone will think we're uncivilized!"
Cinna looks down at his plain blue tunic. "I think I look fine. You're the one that looks uncivilized."
"Me?!" Raleigh splutters. She's wearing what's at the height of fashion: her favorite purple tutu and green clogs. Her skin is tinted orange, and her eyes are lined with peacock-colored eye shadow. She looks uncivilized?
Cinna nods. "You look inhuman."
Raleigh rolls her eyes. Her younger brother was just so clueless! "Just don't tell anyone that you're my brother, okay? No. One!"
\
Raleigh quickly adapts into the scene of the school in the city, making friends and being adored by teachers for always working hard and following all the rules.
She also grasps onto the unspoken but equally important rules almost automatically. Never go outside unless your skin is dyed. Being seen with the nerd group is social suicide. District Twelve's outfits will always be ugly.
Because of the rules, Raleigh loses almost all contact with Cinna through their days at the Academy. She goes to her classes, her friends, her dorm at the end of the day. He goes to his.
But then summer comes, when they leave the city and the Academy to go to their humble home in the outskirts of the Capitol. She never has friends visit or anything, because she's ashamed of living in such a poor part of the Capitol. Sure, it's a wonderful place to live compared to, say District Twelve, but even the Capitol has its less civilized parts.
Even during summer, she tries to avoid her younger brother as much as possible. Yes, they're living in the same house with the same mother who expects them to get along and eating at the same table and everything. But that's it. By the time she's seventeen, she's speaking to Cinna for maybe five minutes per year.
One summer night, she catches her oddity brother in the middle of the night, staring out the window with a sketchpad in his hand.
"What are you doing?" she asks, folding her arms over her chest. "You should be sleeping." She's strict and firm with him, as if Cinna is some naughty little boy she has to babysit.
Cinna shrugs and stares at the twinkles outside. "I'm looking out the window. Looking at the lights."
"Can't you do that later?" Raleigh suggests, frustrated already. "I mean, the city will be just as bright in the daytime as it is now."
Cinna sighs. "I can concentrate better at nighttime. No one to disturb me." The unspoken words hang there, like you, and she hears them, loud and clear.
"Oh, like me?" she asks angrily. "Go to bed, Cinna. Now!"
She wishes Cinna would get mad or at least defensive or something. But he just sits there, calmly sketching.
And that's when she yanks the little leather-bound notebook out of the boy's hands. What's so fascinating about what Cinna is doodling anyway? She flips through the pages, and her eyes widen as she sees amazing designs. On the page Cinna is currently sketching on, there is a picture of the city lights, and then under it, an unfinished dress that was obviously inspired by the above drawing.
"These are… really good," she whispers, against her will. She flips to the next page, which, to her disappointment, has no designs but only words, written in loopy handwriting, similar to a journal entry.
"Don't read that," she hears Cinna say. Her brother stands up and tries to take the book away, but that only inspires Raleigh to read faster. The words whir before her, and it takes her a while to process what she is reading. The phrase these tributes are human and the Games are wrong flash out and she gasps.
"Are you mad?" she hisses. "How can you write things like this?" And here she had thought that maybe Cinna had potential to be someone she would be proud to call her brother.
"Give it back," says Cinna. Gone is the calmness. His arms are crossed, and his face is flushed. "You had no right to take it."
She latches onto the book, shooing away Cinna's hands, and starts ripping out the pages.
"Stop!" Cinna sounds desperate, on the verge of tears. "Don't do that! Get your hands off my notebook! Stop! Please!"
In a sudden streak of cruelty, she chucks the entire notebook into the fireplace. Cinna wails and whimpers as his precious notebook burns into ashes.
"It was for your own good," declares Raleigh.
Cinna says nothing. He looks entranced by the dancing flames. "My own good?" he asks coolly. Just like that, he's calm again, staring at the flames.
Why must her brother be such an oddity?
\
She graduates from the Academy and enters the Capitol University of Design on a scholarship. It's a wonderful school, and she knows that she's incredibly lucky to have gotten in. So even though her mother begs her to enroll into a school that's closer to home, she packs her bags and heads to the heart of the Capitol city, where the University is. She kisses her mother goodbye but doesn't bother saying anything to Cinna. He's only her oddity brother.
After four years of studying in the University, she finally gets into the world of the Games stylists. The old District One female stylist, Errinjes, is getting well along in years, and Raleigh applies to become a member of the prep team. Six more years later, she finally gets her dream job, becoming the District One stylist. She's twenty-eight years old and extremely proud of herself for getting such an amazing, coveted job.
This is the life, she thinks to herself. She indulges and buys for herself a glorious mansion in the city. Now she won't have to live in her shabby temporary apartment anymore, and they'll also be no need for her to live in that shack of her mother's in the outskirts.
The first Games that she styles for herself are the 73rd. She has some trouble with Audie, her female tribute, who's obviously trained for the Games and is looking forward to the killing, not the sparkles. Audie protests violently when Raleigh tries to highlight the girl's boring black hair with trendy pink sparkles, and Raleigh has to beg and coax and threaten the girl into her short and frilly interview dress. It's a lot more trouble than she expected.
But Audie wins. She basks in the honor and glory and success and immerses herself in the fun and also stress that will be designing for the Victory Tour.
"Goodness, Audie," she says as she takes the girl's measurements. She's excited for her first Victory Tour and also eager to talk to Audie again, even if they never got along. Audie's a Victor now, she thinks proudly. "I'm going to have to pad a lot of your dresses! You've gotten so thin!"
Instead of a smirk and a snarky comment, like Raleigh expects, Audie just looks down at her feet. "Yeah."
Raleigh frowns, confused at the marked difference in the girl. She tries again to make conversation with Audie, but Audie doesn't say anything. Audie doesn't even protest when she streaks the girl's hair with blue highlights to match with the extremely tight, short blue dress. She hesitates as she takes out the tattoo pen. Something just feels off.
Audie is different after the Games. Why? The Games had been rather ordinary, as far as Games went, and Audie had won gloriously, with five kills under her belt.
She suddenly remembers a line she read in Cinna's notebook. These tributes are human and the Games are wrong. But that's silly, crazy talk that'll get her killed. The Games are rightest thing in the world; they're just natural.
\
Her second Games, the 74th, comes with a much easier tribute, Glimmer. Glimmer adores sparkles and trends and heels and dresses. Plus, Glimmer is gorgeous. With her wonderful designs and Glimmer's natural beauty, they'll be stealing the show!
Except they don't. To everyone's surprise, District Twelve does, with fire. Some of the other stylists, like Perdot from District Four, are responding with anger and jealousy. But Raleigh is awed and impressed. She must befriend this genius stylist, perhaps pick up a few tricks. But then the genius stylist turns out to be none other than Cinna.
At first she's skeptical. Surely it's not her ex-brother Cinna? Cinna is a sort of a popular name, after all. But she sees him at an interview on television, and she knowsit's him, even if she hasn't seen him in almost fifteen years. Cinna doesn't seem to have changed at all, with his hair still a boring brown shade and no makeup on his face other than some gold eyeliner. Except now he's Panem-famous.
Forget him, she tells herself. Just because Cinna is famous now doesn't mean that Cinna is special all of a sudden. He's just a crazy, stupid genius. Nothing between her and Cinna is going to change. She has her dream job as the District One stylist. This whole hype about Twelve will die down as soon as the tributes are killed in the actual Games. Her tribute, Glimmer, is so much better than that Katniss girl is.
She actually gets rather attached to the bubbly blonde. They gossip together, about trends and fashion and dress design. Perhaps, when Glimmer wins the Games, Glimmer's talent will be fashion design, and Raleigh will be able to teach her everything she knows.
Except, of course, Katniss ends up killing Glimmer.
\
These tributes are human and the Games are wrong.
She can't get the words out of her head. They ring and ring, and she wonders, what if Cinna's right? That's scary.
She wishes she could hate Katniss, dubbed the Girl on Fire, but she can't somehow, because if anything Katniss reinforces her belief that the Games are wrong. Because as she watches Katniss's interview after she wins, Raleigh can tell that no matter how much the makeup tries to cover it up, Katniss—like Audie—was changed by the Games. And maybe not for the better.
She sighs. She just needs to stop thinking about all of this. She reaches for a magazine tablet and has the tablet read out loud to her. That'll relax her. A chirrupy voice starts speaking. It's some sort of introduction to an interview with Panem's hottest new male Victor, Peeetaaaa Mellark!
Fed up with District Twelve, she reaches for the tablet to turn it off, but then she hears Peeta's voice: I just didn't want to be a piece in these Games, you know? She freezes in the process of shutting the tablet down, and her eyes widen. Then she hears the interviewer's chirpy interpretation of that quote. Of course you're more than just a piece! I guess you got your wish! Because now you're a faaabulous Victor! Now, can you tell me something about Katniss Ev—
She shuts the tablet off.
\
Another year passes, like normal. She decides that she just has to move on. Thinking such treacherous thoughts won't accomplish anything. She designs ensembles and lounges in her gigantic Capitol home and parties. Then the 75th Games come—the Quarter Quell, with the awful twist.
She tries to forget about what the actual Games themselves mean and just focuses on designing. She's lucky, because her tribute is Cashmere. Cashmere is already beautiful and accustomed to the whole design process, and not old and disgusting like some of those other tributes she saw were Reaped. In addition, Cashmere is smarter than Glimmer. She knows better than to get attached.
So it's simple. It's just designing. It's just another Games.
Except Cinna doesn't think that way.
And he turns Katniss into a Mockingjay.
\
It shouldn't hurt when she hears the rumor that Cinna is dead.
Dead, because of his stupid noble treasonous thoughts that might have been true but she can't think are true because then she'll die too. Dead, because he's a crazy, stupid genius. But it shouldn't hurt because she never cared for Cinna, didn't she? But he was her brother—no matter how much she denied it—and she had to love him.
The day that the 75th Hunger Games starts, she gets a visit from a crisp executive in a black suit and two Peacekeepers.
"Good evening, Miss Raleigh Sherry," says the executive, shaking her hand.
"Wh-who are you?" she asks. The whole experience is surreal. This sort of thing only happens to criminals and lawbreakers and those who think treacherous thoughts—ohmygosh what if they know?
"That's nothing for you to worry about, Miss Sherry." The man plops down on her sofa. "Perhaps we should discuss the topic of your brother over some tea?"
"C-Cinna?" she stammers. The thing is about Cinna's oddities, not hers. "Oh. Of course. I'll, um, get the tea."
Getting the tea is as simple as sitting down on the opposite sofa of the man and pressing a button. They sip the tea together. Or rather, she drinks, and he talks.
"Now, Miss Sherry, it may have come to your attention that your brother Cinna has been imprisoned—"
"Is he dead?" she interrupts. The moment the question flies out of her mouth, she regrets it. Oops.
The man doesn't seem thrown off, however. He answers her question calmly. "No, he is not dead, at least not yet. Simply under much pain and torture." Raleigh gulps. The man continues with his speech. "I'll make this meeting rather brief and get to the point. Miss Sherry, do you and your brother still communicate? I am aware of the fact that the two of you have been avoiding each other for a great number of years. Is there any possibility that you know any facts about him? That you still hold affection for him?"
"N-no, sir," she answers. She bites her lip and thinks fast. She can't let the man think that she too is an oddity like Cinna. She values her life, thank you very much. "Cinna and I haven't talked since I first went to University, when I was eighteen. I had no idea that he still existed until last year's Games when he became stylist. I do not know any facts about him." She pauses. "A-and I hold no affection for him."
The man raises his eyebrows. "You seem rather hesitant about that, Miss Sherry. Are you sure that you know nothing about your brother? No ties at all?"
She has to seem confident. Her life is on stake, after all. "No sir, I know nothing about Cinna. He isn't really my brother anyway. Just because we're related doesn't mean I think of him as a brother. He was always an oddity, even when he was young, and I was never close to him. I didn't care for him much back then, and now, we have absolutely no ties at all." She looks up, into the man's empty, soulless eyes.
"Thank you, Miss Sherry. That's all we needed." He seems satisfied. "Wonderful tea, by the way." He hadn't even touched any of it.
The man and his two Peacekeepers leave. She sees a camera behind a Peacekeeper's back as he walks away.
They were filming her. Why would they? Then the full force of everything she's done and what a huge coward she is hits her, and she collapses onto the floor, reminding herself that she can't cry because that'll stain her eye makeup and face dye. She hears the words of Peeta Mellark run through her head—I just didn't want to be a piece in these Games. Except she is just a piece, and she gave the man exactly what he wanted.
And now Cinna is going to die thinking that she never cared for him.
\
The Rebellion is over. The Rebels won. Now life can go back to normal.
Except there are no Games, which means that she's out of a job. In addition, her lavish home was wrecked during one of the battles. She uses what remains of her money to get back to her old home in the Capitol outskirts, which is far enough away that she's pretty sure there's no way it was wrecked. She's right about that—the home is fine. But her mother is not.
She later learns from neighbor that her mother just disappeared. A man in a dark suit and two Peacekeepers were seen entering her home one night, and then the next day, her mother was gone. Raleigh fills in the blanks herself: her mother must have experienced a similar visit to hers, but instead of denouncing Cinna, her mother must have done the opposite, and suffered the consequences. A younger version of her would have thought her mother foolish. But now Raleigh knows that was the right thing to do, the human thing to do.
She catches her reflection in the mirror: purple-dyed skin with feather and jewel implants, puffy green hair, ostentatious rainbow eye makeup. Cinna's words, from so many years ago, come back to her: you look inhuman. That's because she is inhuman. She's a Capitolite, an oddity. She doesn't know the first thing about being human.
\
She opens up a small clothing design store. Life is a lot more humble compared to how it was before, and for the first time, she has to worry about things like money—her! Worrying about money! But money worries are something she can deal with, at least.
What she can't deal with is knowing that Cinna died thinking she hated him. That her mother made the right choice, and she didn't have the courage to. That she'd known that everything she was doing was wrong and she'd done it anyway, like the inhuman piece she was.
Months pass. She adapts to small town life quicker than she would have thought possible and designs dresses in her little shop and wonders if she could have turned out to be more than this.
One day, a year after the Rebellion ends, exactly on the date of the anniversary, she is going out to buy some groceries—yes, manually now—when she notices that something is going on. There's a crowd in the community center, and she wonders if she missed a very important bulletin. It turns out that it's just an unveiling of a statue, and she vaguely remembers passing by some sculptors for the past week. She hadn't paid much attention to it, however.
Curious all of a sudden, she strains her neck so that she can see the statue.
It's a statue of Cinna. Her jaw drops.
She sees a man near the statue, the man who was apparently in charge of sculpting, telling the crowd, "Not only was Cinna was a gifted stylist, he touched the world forever, made an impact, and he was born in this very town! Also…"
\
She swears that she's not going to go anywhere around that statue, but she has to pass by it every time she goes to buy groceries or something. And every time she passes by, the cold gray hunk of rock is eyeing her, judging her, condemning her—
She needs to stop this. She walks faster.
She gets home and eats dinner. It's nighttime now, and she looks outside at the falsely pretty, always bright strings of lights. Some things never change. She sighs and supposes she should be preparing for bed. But she can't sleep.
Instead she sneaks out in the middle of the night and looks at the statue, really looks at it. Statue Cinna is standing tall, regally, a faraway look in his cold stone eyes. A gray mockingjay is perched on his muscular rock shoulder.
It doesn't look a thing like Cinna did in real life, yet it's all she has left of him.
She has to stop herself from crying, because crying would just make a mess out of her makeup. She looks back up into the sculpture's eyes—where is the warm look? He doesn't even have his signature gold eyeliner.
In a fit of insanity, she reaches for her makeup bag in her fashionably large suitcase purse, takes out her own gold eyeliner, and climbs onto the statue.
And carefully lines the statue's eyes.
She's surprised that the makeup goes on so easily. But it is her best Capitol makeup, makeup that's good enough to line eyes made more of plastic than skin. So it rather easily goes onto the smooth stone. She steps back and stares at the little gold that stands out in the gray.
And then that's not enough. If she's going to do the eyeliner, she has to do the actual eyes too—the face—the hair. She reaches for her piles of foundation and powder, lipsticks, liners, mascara and eye shadow, bottles of nail polish in every color imaginable, her twenty-color set of body dye, tattoo pens and stencils and paints.
She colors in the statue, cold gray stone eyes turning green, hair becoming a rich brown, the tunic colored blue—even the mockingjay is colored black and powdered snowy white. She doesn't stop until no gray remains, and every single tube or can or palette of makeup she owns is emptied.
When she's done, she looks at her handiwork, and now she really does cry—forget how ugly her face is going to look. This is the best thing she can do for her brother: color him with her fake Capitol makeup products. But maybe Cinna understands; he always did understand so much better than she could. Maybe he hears what she's trying to say.
I'm sorry.
I miss you.
I love you.
\
She falls asleep against the newly colored statue, one hand on the mockingjay.
Dearest Paigey, I'm sorry that I totally disregarded your preference for AU. I fail. I disregard preferences a lot. I'm also sorry for the sucky ending and sucky overallness of this fic and this a/n. Hopefully you liked it anyway?