If she prays hard enough, maybe the odds will be in her favor. / Glimmer always hoped.
a/n: this is recently revised! but i've always had way to many feels for my precious baby, glimmer.
If she prays hard enough, maybe the odds will be in her favor.
She thinks that as the hive of bees falls down, down, down to kiss the dirt. She whispers that as she desperately flees from the painful bees. She hopes that as her foot sangs on a branch, and she stumbles to meet the cool, dark earth of the arena.
The wasps buzz in her ear, a never-ending hum that fills the silence of the trees. Time slows down, and the world sharpens from the blur. She can feel each and every sting, hear every buzz of the god-awful creatures, and see each individual stripes on their bodies.
(She can taste all the emotions in her heart; the regret and anger and sorrow and guilt and hope and—)
But the pain stops, and everything changes.
She is not in the forest anymore, in the battlefield of children, but in the heart of the nation, hundreds of people surrounding the stage. And thousands more are watching her every move.
She's no long dressed in the faded, stained tunic but a long sheer red dress that hugs her curves. And she's sitting on a throne. No, the throne.
A glittering band of gold decorates her golden hair, the sign of victory.
The crowd cheers and screams her name. Screams I love you and stay with us. Roses are tossed at her, perfect, beautiful red ones that would've cost a fortune in One, and she stoops down to carefully pluck one off the floor.
She basks in the glow. She won. She clawed her way to the top, over deceased children and hellish mutts.
(But then a sharp pain stings her cheek.)
And it fades. The stage and throne and crowd and the crown, that beautiful, glittering crown, disappears. All that's left is her, in her stained, torn, ragged clothing, and the giant trees and the goddamn wasps that buzz all too loudly.
All she can feel is pain. Pain like a thousand flames dance on her skin. Fire flares in her joints and eats her alive.
Because there is no stage or crowd or dress or crown or victory. It is just her, another child condemned to war, that died. (Just another corpse in another casket to be shipped home to another crying family.) It is always just her, the wasps, and the illusion of what she really wants.
(Even if she prays hard enough, wishes enough, the odds will never be in her favor.)