Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. Not even a little bit.

TW for sexual content, forced prostitution, sexual violence and regular violence. Y'know, regular stuff.

[Glimmer]

When she wins, there's not a single man in the Capitol who doesn't want to taste her.

And who wouldn't? That golden face with the long, coppery lashes (Capitol-grade, imported) the full, crimson lips (her father had taken her to her first injection when she was twelve). Who could forget that ravishing young woman, all tan legs and curves in that sheer interview dress, the sequins clustering at her breasts and hips? It's a lovely dress, Caesar had noted, but I think there's a few of us who think you'd look even better without it, hmm? Oh, how they'd laughed.

But she wouldn't win, they had thought. Just some airheaded blonde girl from District 1. They'd nodded and tutted when she had clambered into Cato's tent, one shoulder spilling out from her jacket, and she'd ranked lowest in the polls out of all the Careers. But they hadn't seen how she'd wound Cato's hair around her finger and how the rest of him followed. All they'd seen was the brutal boy and the beautiful girl couple with strange intensity, seen her take him in her mouth, seen how his fingers left soft bruises on her thighs, waist, breasts. To the victor goes the spoils, she had whispered, and they'd thought she was talking about him.

The Games started. and they were textbook. They chased the scrawny girl from 12 up to the trees and slept, while she took watch. She hadn't fallen asleep. She'd seen the girl from 12 saw through the branch where the tracker jackers were, felt the tendrils of the idea as it crept into her mind. She woken Cato up with a kiss, pointed upwards and led them both away. Who could forget, that wonderful chaos that followed, as sharp Clove and bright Marvel, as Marina and Peeta and that boy from 3 they'd picked up all thrashed against the stings, their skin blooming with a hundred red welts, their faces mutated and disfigured. As Clove attacked Peeta and 3, thinking they'd done it, even as she drifted past insanity and into death. And the girl from District 1 suddenly shot up to third highest in the polls.

The boy from 3 was dead, though. So when the smoke from the false signal fires rose, Glimmer stayed behind to watch the supplies.

And she'd spotted the dark girl from 11 as she crouched in the bushes, trying to dislodge the supplies with her tiny slingshot. Laughed as she tried to run on her tiny, sparrow-thin legs and as she fell with the crimson blood spurting from her lips, screaming Katniss with her last breath. How sweet.

Cato came out soon, bounding up to her with the news that Firegirl was dead, he'd dragged her death out in a mess of broken limbs and slit her throat once he'd had his fun, and it was just them and two more tributes, and then Victory. She'd kissed him again, her tongue slipping into his mouth and her fingers messing his hair, and Caesar had said it looks like our star-crossed lovers have given way to new ones. The golden lovers, he called them, and Glimmer loved it when she heard.

The fox-faced girl from District 5 managed to elude them for a while. But when Claudius Templesmith had announced the feast, they knew it was their call for blood. They had nothing they needed, not truly, their backpack was an empty sack. So as the girl emerged, red mane flying, from the Cornucopia, Cato took off behind her, a smile on his face and a knife in his hand and tackled her as she reached the treeline. The cannon rang out, and it sounded like music.

But when Cato came back, face flushed and grinning with exhilaration- that was Glimmer's crowning moment. Because when he came back, she cupped his jaw in her hands and peppered kissed down his neck and got down on her knees for him. She'd let him ravage his way across her beautiful limbs, tug at her golden hair, leave purple bruises and red marks and a soreness between her legs. And then she'd slit his throat just before he came.

And the Capitol went wild.

Thresh was easy, after that. She received a thin sword with gold inlaid in the hilt and a set of beautiful body armor made just for her. And she waited him out, until the hunger overpowered him and he came out to meet her. The fight was too easy, almost. The body armor was tough and the gloves had curved, spiked claws curving out, knives at every angle, and when the huge boy tried to grab her he meets only metal. She carved his face into bloody ribbons and just as the light left his eyes, looked up and gave the cameras that sleek, seductive District 1 smile.

If only she had known.

President Snow met her on the train and laid it all out to her. What happens to the pretty Victors, and how she was the prettiest one of all. How there were certain men and women in the Capitol who were baying for a taste of her like starving dogs. And then he shown her video of her doting, proud parents and her grandparents and each and every one of her cousins, who adored her- 12 year old Amber, 7 year old Sheen and 10 year old Krystal, Aurum and Luster, the baby twin boys. Tapes he had no right to, of her parents in the kitchen and the twins playing tag. Her breath had caught in her throat at that. But they're only children, she had whispered, and he had looked at her as if to ask what was she, exactly?

There are a hundred ways a family could have an accident, he explained. And children- well, Amber was of Reaping age, wasn't she? And she swallowed hard and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips and he had slapped her like she was a dog. Others, idiot girl.

"How many stops do we have to make?" Glimmer asked, chewing on a lock of blonde hair. Snow held up four fingers.

She wasn't a virgin, of course. Not since fifteen, not since a few awkward kisses and fumblings with a boy she discarded the next month. But she felt so much like one as Semel Mammonas, a Gamemaker with sharp eyes and a violet beard, grabbed her by the shoulders and spread her across his ottoman and made her bleed. She threw up in his fancy white sink as he slept, the tears burning her cheeks, holding back her own hair because there was no one else to do it.

One down, she had thought. She had thought it was just those four, and then she could go home. Idiot girl.

Then there was a brother and sister, and she had cringed at the thought. Callisto and Amalthea Lune, heads of the Agricultural and Peaceforce Councils respectively, with their skin painted magenta and their faces ridged and embedded with gemstones. She'd taken off her false nails before shoving her fingers up between her legs and Glimmer had to choke back her tears and pretend to like it, even as the brother wrapped his arms around her waist and buried a half-human face in the nape of her neck.

Halfway done, she thought, lying awake with his arms and her legs draped across her, pinning her down to the sheets. She popped a silvery pill for the nightmares.

The next one was quick, a skinny, gangly man named Lucius, Head of some Senate, who licked at her jawline with a forked tongue and who whispered things about his wife that made her want to scream. She couldn't scream. Sheen had written her a letter in his wobbly handwriting, asking her when she was coming home. She couldn't write one back.

The fourth was the worst. Everyone could see her.

It was a party, thrown by the wives of the Managers of Districts 1, 4 and 7. Drinks, pouring forward, splashing on the carpet. Laughing men and women in ballgowns and spiked suits, she saw some outfits modelled off her own. Other victors, too- Cashmere and Enobaria and Gloss. Even Finnick Odair, sprawled across a sofa, licking wine off his fingertips while they pawed at him. But she knew, now, she what she had to do and what she did. They pressed diamond earrings and ruby rings and little vials of white powder and crystals into her hands, whispered secrets into her ears, called her pet and goldie and darling. The other Victors gave her looks of pity, and she didn't know which one she hated more.

And then, at 5 a.m. the white-suited attendants led them out into a car and back to the train. Glimmer sat on the leather in the darkness, with Enobaria on one side and the sickly-sweet Capitol on the other. Her breath made white clouds on the glass.

'You killed my tributes,' Enobaria said, her teeth glinting in the moonlight.

Glimmer just looked up at her. 'I wish I hadn't.'

'I'm glad you did,' she said. 'I don't know if they could handle it.'

'When does it end?' Glimmer whispered, her voice so high and soft and so unlike the girl who had killed Cato and Thresh and Clove.

'It doesn't,' Enobaria said, and put a hand on her shoulder. Glimmer left it there as she stared out of the car window, her eyes too dry and drained for any more tears.

And when she got home, and Krystal and Sheen clustered around her and her parents wept for joy and the baby twins clung to her skirts and Reaping-age Amber looked up at her in wonder and asked 'how was it?' all she did was smile and say

'Well, I got to meet Finnick Odair,'

Love it? Hate it? Want to slam it in a car door and throw the car in a ditch and throw the ditch into a flaming volcano? There's only one way to let me know. (hint: it starts with r and ends with eview)