A/N: This chapter is a little shorter than I would have liked, but the next one will probably be longer to compensate. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 4

After the opening ceremony, they were escorted to the District 12 apartment by their escort. Each district had a floor to themselves in the tower, and twelve got the penthouse, which the escort wouldn't stop prattling about.

"You might want to clean up before dinner," the escort informed them, looking them up and down with a smile. "My, Tigris really has outdone herself! Gold will be all the rage this season."

Each of them was designated their own room, and Haymitch's was larger than his house back in District 12. Everything was automated, including the windows, which he changed from a view of the city to a view of a meadow. It reminded him of home.

Of Lily. Racing her across the meadow and arguing about who cheated. Picking the prettiest daisy and threading it into her hair. Stealing kisses behind the oak tree by the fence.

He couldn't relax with the paint there, and it was beginning to itch, so he did climb into the shower, despite the instinctive urge to disobey the escort.

The shower had too many panels and buttons for him to understand how it worked. He pressed blindly, accidentally turning on a blow drier at first and then a spray of some sort of flowery perfume.

Finally, he got water to come down. It was lemon-scented and warmer than he was used to, but he was too weary to attempt altering the settings even more.

Washing off the paint was harder than he'd expected. It was everywhere, which meant he couldn't even attempt to wash off most of the paint on his back. They'd been wearing clothes; where was the point his stylist had seen in painting everything?

But they had looked great. If it hadn't been in celebration of twenty-three children's deaths, he would have preened just as much as Trinket.

Water and soap weren't enough to get rid of the paint, so he enlisted a towel's help. But no matter how hard he scrubbed at his skin, he couldn't wash off anything beyond the initial layer of glitter.

He gave up after an hour of determined scrubbing. His skin prickled from the force with which he'd used the towel, but when he looked in the mirror, he was still faded yellow. His hair sparkled.

He groaned loudly and pulled off the golden eye-lashes he'd had stuck on. Despite being soaked in water for so long, they clung to him, and he ended up pulling off many of his own eye-lashes alongside them.

The contacts were the most imposing part of the ordeal. No matter how much he stuck his fingers in his eyes, which burned, he couldn't pull them out. He ended up leaving them alone, too.

He'd try again later, after he'd eaten.

Shale, the escort, the three other tributes, and four people who must have been stylists because he recognised one as his, were sat down at the dinner table when he arrived.

Sash and Maysilee were both also yellow, and Sash had completely forgotten to wash his ears, so they were gold. It looked funny, and Shale must not have been happy about it, because she kept looking at them.

But of course, Trinket had somehow washed off all the paint. Or, almost, at any rate; her hair was still completely gold. She'd styled it into a ponytail and tied it with a new ribbon, so she must have left it alone on purpose.

The ribbon was blue, and it matched her eyes.

It was the first time he'd seen Trinket without her beloved Capitol-esque get-up, and she looked completely different. Younger and softer, somehow. Almost pretty.

"Good, you're here!" she beamed when she saw him. "There you go, Sash, now you'll be able to eat."

The table was laid with lots of meat and vegetables, and Sash obviously had his eye on the turkey. He looked to Shale first, and when she nodded, he fell upon it hungrily.

"I'm not late," Haymitch announced to the room, in case Trinket's words had been a slight. "I was just trying to wash off this bloody paint."

The stylists all shared smiles, as though this was funny. The silly district people can't even wash off some paint!

"I'll have the prep teams hose you all down tomorrow before training," one of the stylists, a terrifyingly-altered tiger-faced woman promised.

"The trick," Trinket told him, "is using cold water and rubbing at it with a towel, like it's a stain."

He doubted she could have that much experience with washing off stains, but he didn't say anything. She was only trying to be nice.

He shrugged and flopped down in a chair next to Maysilee, who was tentatively prodding some peas on her plate. He scooped a huge spoonful of mashed potatoes onto his.

"So," Haymitch's stylist, Neo, said. "Whose idea was the hand-holding?"

"Effie's," Maysilee provided. "The rest of us just copied her."

"It was pure genius!" Neo praised.

Trinket blushed, obviously pleased with the attention. "It wasn't that good. It was very much an in-the-moment decision." She was making it clear she did think it was that good, and they should carry on speaking about it.

The stylists fell for it.

"Of course it was, darling! Why, I never would have thought of it myself!"

"The audience loved it. It was a beautiful display of unity."

"It very much in the spirit of the Games!"

There, Haymitch drew the line. "Actually," he said, "I liked it because it was rebellious."

The table froze, staring at him. Even Sash, who usually wouldn't have stopped eating even in the case of a natural disaster.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Shale said, voice sharp.

The lime-haired stylist laughed high-pitched. "It was a display of unity in your service to the Capitol."

"Exactly," Haymitch replied. "We were showing the Capitol that we're not adversaries, we're friends. And we're not going to change like that for them."

"We'll see how long that sentiment lasts in the arena." Shale was glaring at him. If looks could kill, he would be dead. "Have some beef, Haymitch."

The quiet he'd caused didn't last long. Trinket asked the stylists some question about fashion, and soon the whole table was abuzz with conversation again.

After everybody had their fill of what was laid out, the Avoxes brought in an intricately iced cake studded in tiny silver balls. When Haymitch bit into it, the silver exploded in his mouth and fizzed on his tongue.

"Your training sessions will begin tomorrow," Shale announced once everybody was finished. "We'll discuss them at breakfast, which will be eight am sharp. Don't be late and get plenty of sleep."

Haymitch had only been in his room for a moment when there was a knock on his door.

It was probably Shale, come to tell him off for what he'd said about the costumes. "Go away!" He didn't want another lecture.

It wasn't like the Capitol could punish him, anyway. They were already trying to kill him.

Not that he'd let them.

His door opened, and he groaned, flinging himself onto the bed and burying his face into his pillow. "I know, my behaviour was abysmal," he put on an affected Capitol accent, "but I'm really tired, so screw off please."

"It was quite bad, but it's nice to know you do know how to say please."

The voice was high, with a bad Capitol accent of its own. Not Shale, her voice was lower and her accent better. There was only one person it could be…

He sat up. Indeed, there was Trinket, smiling. Didn't her face ever hurt from doing that all the time?

"What do you want?"

Her smile faltered slightly. "I noticed you still had your contacts in, at lunch, and I thought because you aren't used to them, you might need help taking them out."

That was rich of her. Thinking he was all helpless, when she was really the helpless one, when there was no way she would ever survive an arena.

He scowled. "They said the prep team would take care of it tomorrow."

"That's fine for the paint, but contacts can become painful if you leave them in all night."

"I'm sure I can deal, princess. There are worse things I've had to deal with."

She pursed her lips. "Your eyes will be all red tomorrow. It won't be a good look. The other tributes might even think you stayed up all night worrying, which would make you look weak."

He doubted the other tributes would bother looking at his eyes, but he wasn't about to risk it. "Fine."

"You'll be thankful for it, I promise!" She sat down onto the bed beside him and took his face in her hands.

They were soft – the hands of somebody who didn't have to work – and her touch was gentle.

He yanked his head away. "What the hell?"

"The contacts are in your eyes, Haymitch, I'll have to get close to your face." She spoke to him slowly and clearly, as though he was a child.

The last time he'd been so close to someone, it had been Lily. She'd been kissing him, and it had tasted salty, because they were both crying. He'd had his hands in her hair. He loved her hair; long and dark, frizzy in the summer.

It had already been frizzy when she came to say goodbye, despite all the hard work no doubt put into flattening it. On any other day, she would have huffed and tugged on it in irritation, cursing her curls, and he would have defended the lion's mane he loved so much.

"Haymitch?" Effie sighed, and took his face back into her hands. She began to reach for his left eye, and he was going to let her get on with it and get it over and done with when having something so close to his eye made him flinch away reflexively.

"D'you want me to do it or not?" Her tone had lost all its softness, and she sounded frustrated. Some of her District 12 accent slipped in. He hadn't known she had a District 12 accent.

"I do," he replied, just as annoyed. "It's just hard 'cause you're poking around my eyes and your nails are sharp."

"They're not that sharp. And I managed my own contacts without poking out my eyes, didn't I? Now, stop being a baby and come over here."

She was the baby.

"Fine. Seeing as you're such an expert."

He let her come close, so close that he could feel her breath on his face, and he could smell her hair – flowery, like the meadow he missed. He felt a pang of longing for Lily deep within him.

This time, he forced himself to stay still, even though every instinct his body had was urging him to push her away. He clenched his fists around the bedsheets.

There was a moment of discomfort, when her finger was brushing against his eye and all he wanted to do was blink, and then she was pulling away with a beam on her face and something clear with gold bits on her finger.

"There! That wasn't so hard, was it?"

It was hard, although it was admittedly far less painful than he'd expected.

"Now for the other eye."

He groaned loudly, stretching out the sound.

Trinket rolled her eyes. "You survived it once, I'm sure you'll survive it again."

She was different than when she was in a room of people. Less giggly. It was more tolerable, although her presence still irked him.

She took his face into her hands again, tightly so he couldn't escape again, and plucked the contact lens out with far more ease than the first time.

"All done!" Trinket chirped, discarding the lenses on his bedside table. "May I be of any other service to you?"

"Er, no, thanks." Haymitch ran his hand through his hair and winced when he felt how stiff and sticky the gold had left it. "Are you not washing off your hair?" She had to be in discomfort. Then again, with all those fancy wigs and dresses, she must have lived in discomfort.

"No, I think I might keep it," she told him. "Like a trademark, you know. So people will be able to tell me apart. It does look rather good, doesn't it? The gold brings out my eyes."

"Figures you would want everybody's attention."

Trinket sniffed delicately. "Attention is what saves your life, you know. If we're trapped in a desert arena, like the 29th Games, sponsors could be the only way we don't die of thirst. Or our sponsors could provide us with a specialised weapon, like Woof's needle."

Oh, he knew. The Capitol owned them. Of course their lives would ultimately depend on them, even if they were already perfect Victor material.

But she had a point.

If it meant getting out of that arena alive, wasn't it worth sucking up to them?

To lose his dignity that way, to have to betray everything he believed in… It would almost be worse than facing the arena itself.

And yet… Harland, huge smile plastered over his face, chasing after the crushed tin they were using as a ball. His mother, her hair not yet greying, her belly still bulging with Harland, tucking him in and telling him stories. Lily, taking him by the hand and pulling him behind the slag heap.

Weren't they worth it?

"Mother will go over it with us later, anyway," Trinket continued. "Definitely before the interviews. That's when the sponsors really come into play. We'll have our private training sessions before that, so they're the priority. Are you excited for training tomorrow?"

"Thrilled."

He wasn't about to make small talk, not with Effie Trinket, not about the Games.

"Night, sweetheart. Don't think too hard about tomorrow, you wouldn't want to hurt that pretty head of yours," he told her, watching her face fall slightly, and then he basically pushed her back outside.

Again, he found it hard to sleep. Even the carpet was too soft to replicate the feeling of sleeping in his bed, and there was no fancy machine which could mimic the sound of soft snuffles and snores as his brother slept beside him.

Mostly, he strategized for training.

He couldn't trust Shale. It was already suspicious, in his opinion, that she'd left their meeting about it until the morning of, when they'd have less time to prepare.

He'd head for hand-to-hand combat stations first. Establish just how much he could rely on his strength. Then he'd head for all the important, basic stuff tributes died because of in the Games. Fire, food, water. Maybe he'd try his hand at knives, because you could generally trust the Cornucopia to be full of them.

He got barely any sleep, and when he woke up it was already half past eight. Haymitch swore, not bothering with showering or changing clothes, and hurried to breakfast. He wouldn't have put it past Shale to start discussing training without him there.

Everybody was sat in the previous night's places, except the stylists weren't there. They were all eating, so Shale must have lost all her patience on him. She would have made them wait for him otherwise, because it was polite.

Trinket was the first to notice him entering. "Haymitch! Did you sleep in?"

She drew everyone's attention to him, and they stared. They were dressed in light clothing obviously meant for sports.

"Good morning, Haymitch," Shale greeted him coldly. Was she still upset about his talk of rebellion, or was she annoyed by his lack of manners?

Both, knowing his luck.

"I'm here," he announced. No point in excuses. "Have you talked about training yet?"

"Lucky for you, boy, the topic hasn't come up yet."

"You missed all the muffins, Haymitch!" Sash told him as he sat down. "Muffins are like cake, but not. They have blueberries inside, or chocolate, or…"

"Cool," Haymitch dismissed him, grabbing a roll and some butter. "So, training."

"In the training centre," Shale began, "there will be stations teaching you about weapons and survival. There's no time for you to hone a weapon now, so you may as well stick to the survival stations. Don't display any talents you may have – save those for the private training session. 12 has theirs last, so you'll need to be impressive. This is your chance to form alliances. If you're determined to be a loner," her gaze flickered to Haymitch pointedly, "don't aggravate anyone, because the last thing you need is other tributes seeking revenge."