A/N: I mentioned this on Instagram, but for anyone not following me there (check out tricia_pevensie for fic trailers and edits btw), Swanwhite updates will be coming every Wednesday and Saturday.
This fic is also cross-posted on Wattpad and AO3, just for future reference incase the rumors of FFN shutting down become true at any point.
Happy reading!
xXx
CHAPTER THREE
Lucy woke with a dull ache behind her eyes and blinked in glaring white brightness, bewildered for a moment before the previous day's events crashed over her, and she buried herself deeper into the blankets.
This would have been easier if, by turning over, she had not almost stabbed her eye out on the corner of the book, and had to sit up to unstick her face from the pages.
Sunlight slanted through the small window, falling harshly across the bed as the silent rush of speed engulfed her, pristine train car gleaming in needlepoint clarity.
In the foggiest corners of her mind she wondered if that light meant they were going North.
For all the days she'd spent staring at the map pinned up above the schoolroom blackboard, she should have memorized it better. She'd always been focused on mountains and rivers, never the red dotted lines criss-crossing the terrain, never expecting to really travel them.
All she knew for sure was that they'd left Eight through the mountains, a range once bordering what legends called Archenland, the only sight visible from the grey concrete of town, huge and imposing and far off, just as bleak as they were majestic.
Perhaps they'd passed District One yesterday, perhaps those had been the fields through the window, stretching across the center of the country, valleys and rivers and small forests. But it had always been Seven she'd envied the most. The lumber district, situated right in amongst what had once been called Lantern Waste, thick with pine and oak and beech, and all the sights and sounds and smells she'd longed to know even before she'd read of the days when trees could talk.
They must have passed it in the night.
At any rate, they had to be getting close to the Capitol now, and a strange cold feeling swirled in her stomach as she dragged her unwilling carcass out of bed and into the too-bright world beyond the blankets.
One glance in the bathroom mirror told her crying had been a bad idea. Again. She splashed cold water on her face, but that wouldn't reverse the damage, pink cheeks and puffy eyes staring back as if she were six years old again, locked in the orphanage washroom, too young to hold in the tears but old enough to hide them. Now she couldn't even do that.
She ran a brush through her hair, didn't bother changing clothes, and at last ventured outside the safety of her room to find Caspian and both mentors already eating in the dining car, deep in conversation over a spread of eggs and toast, countless fruits, ham, bacon, tall pitchers of orange juice, and a lava cake.
Her stomach growled.
"Good morning, Lucy," said Polly with a kind smile, wispy blonde hair framing the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. She motioned her inside without commenting on her appearance.
"Good morning," Lucy echoed politely, sleep still rasping in her voice as she took her seat and silently filled her plate while the others fell back to talking, though Caspian said very little after she came in.
She bit into a slice of perfectly square toast, raspberry jam melting onto her tongue with every crunch, sweet and rich, but not quite enough to distract from the ache in her skin, small and vulnerable and utterly out of place in the glittering chamber.
"As you know," Polly was saying, "The Opening Ceremony will take place tonight, so you'll be spending the day with your stylists in preparation."
Oh, great. Lucy rubbed her eyes as if she could magically rub the swelling away, delicate skin hot against the backs of her hands.
"Your stylists are your greatest allies here," said Digory, "So don't complain or argue with them if you can help it. Your appearance can make or break your chance at sponsors, regardless of how well you do in training."
The friendly lilt to his tone only grated in her hollow chest. He couldn't really believe she had a chance.
Her toast turned dry in her mouth and she swallowed, nursing ice-cold orange juice from a crystal goblet as she stole a glance at Caspian, his dark eyes boring holes into the table as if lost in another world.
Was he even listening? A delicate silver fork twirled absently in his fingers, the muscles in his jaw tightened, and she looked away, stomach knotting just like it did when she walked quickly past factory boys on her way home from school, the same broad, calloused figures he resembled so closely, the ones whose eyes tracked her even when she turned her back, the ones with the barking laughs that made her think if she were ever alone with them she would be in trouble.
But something about Caspian seemed different from those boys. It wasn't animalistic fear that twisted in her gut now, but something deeper, a threat shrouded in red silk, masked behind mirror-black glass.
The light outside the windows vanished.
Lucy's head snapped up in sudden dim lamplight and Polly supplied "The tunnel. We should be pulling into the Capitol in a few minutes."
Caspian stood so quickly his chair toppled backwards, and crossed in one stride to the nearest window as Lucy flew to join him before her brain could catch up.
Black nothingness yawned through the window so dark it could have been a wall or a bottomless pit. The Tunnel, the most secret path through the vast mountain range to the Capitol, not marked on any map in order to deter another uprising, and now here it was before her eyes, as if she had truly stepped right out of the world.
Faint fluorescent lights flashed by at intervals, distant at first, then so close they blurred into a solid blue streak a few inches from the glass, and all at once they burst out into broad daylight, blinking in a white sea.
Tall silver spires came into focus first, as if hovering a hundred stories in the air, twisted buildings of multicolored glass shining like white hot metal in the sunlight.
Tiny purple spots danced in her vision and the floor lurched as they slowed, buildings rushing up to engulf the train, glass walls reflecting a bolt of silver before they soared over arches and wide streets hundreds of feet below where the earth ought to have been.
Lucy gasped and the bridge curved. For a moment she caught sight of slender trees curling into strange shapes in patches of green that must have been parks, and then a mass of buildings shrouded her view and they came out into an open area on ground level, flooded with what at first looked like a sea of jewels.
The floor lurched again and she gripped the windowsill, racing through the shining, brightly colored things, which up close turned out to be people. People dressed in colors she could hardly have imagined yesterday, reds as brilliant as the reddest ruby, yellows like the freshest lemons, hats of purple and bonnets of lime green, all gathered at what must have been the station, white smiles flashing in painted faces, hands shooting into the air, pointing and waving.
Lucy's heart jumped when she realized they could see her.
Somehow she hadn't expected that, but a moment later she found a foolish grin spreading over her own face, lifting her fingers to make a small wave back. The crowd went wild, surging forward to wave, to blow kisses, shouting words she couldn't hear beyond the muted hum of the train.
Then the station enveloped them and the crowd vanished into brief darkness as they pulled to a crawling stop, dining room lamps swinging as they reflected again in the window pane.
"Well," said Polly, "It seems our Lucy doesn't need any help with her angle."
Lucy spun to find the woman's smiling eyes fixed on her, and something fluttered in her stomach at the unexpected approval. "I didn't mean to— I mean, I wasn't really thinking—"
"Then you're a natural, they already love you."
"I— thank you," she breathed, not even sure what she'd done that was so special.
The edges of her senses tingled with the sharp weight of dark eyes, but when she glanced up Caspian was looking at the mentors.
Had she imagined it?
Polly and Digory stood to lead them out of the room, and they stepped back into the main compartment where the doors opened into the Capitol station.
Lucy hung back while the mentors descended the platform, but it turned out to be nothing like the station in Eight; fully enclosed, brightly lit, and not a single reporter in sight.
Capitol guards flanked the doors, and Zardeenah emerged last, taking the lead across the station to a set of elevator doors.
Lucy had never ridden an elevator before in her life, and this one moved so smoothly she hardly thought they'd moved at all before the doors opened to a world of white marble and glass.
"This is the Remake Center," said Polly.
"It is also where we must leave you," said Digory. "For now, at least. We'll see you again when you're ready for the ceremony."
Lucy wanted to protest, but a row of Capitol attendants appeared before she could get the words out, gloved hands guiding her by the shoulders as they took Caspian another direction and she turned back just in time to bid the mentors farewell before they disappeared behind a marble wall.
Stiff white uniforms reeked of antiseptic and pale-painted faces set off every alarm bell in her head, white as death down to their frosty lips and lashes. It was all she could do not to shrug their hands off and bolt, fingers itching for the cool reassurance of the knife she'd left in her attic crate, but of course the alien halls of the Remake Center didn't work like the streets of District Eight; you couldn't just run until they forgot about you. Her world of carefully constructed survival skills fell apart here.
The attendants took her down a narrow side passage to a private suite the size of a house, and a mob of much more colorful figures swarmed in to introduce themselves as her Prep Team, all surgically altered faces and glittering tattoos and squeaky giggles.
"So pleased to meet you, dearie!"
"No fear, no fear, we don't bite!"
"That's right, we're just damage control."
"You know, before you meet your real stylist, clean you up a bit."
In spite of their rather alarming appearance, the Prep Team turned out to be alright in their own way, though Lucy didn't think they were very bright.
Over the course of the morning they waxed and plucked every hair from her body (which left her feeling raw and exposed without so much as a dressing gown to shield her freshly stripped skin), bathed and scrubbed her like a small child, and didn't listen when she insisted she was perfectly capable of washing herself.
Her nails—both fingers and toes—were cleaned and filed, and then they tackled her hair, shampooed and conditioned, and brushed out to its full length about halfway down her back, all the while tittering amongst themselves.
"How perfectly skinny she is!"
"What a good girl, if only my diet worked so well!"
"Not very curvy, but there's always extra padding to add in the costume. Shame they don't let us alter anything below the skin."
"Face isn't too bad, of course the freckles will have to be covered but her nose is small enough."
Any other girl might have been mortified to hear herself spoken about in such a manner, but the simple fact was that Lucy heard much worse from Anne's gang on a daily basis.
In the floor-to-ceiling mirror she watched her own ribs expand and deflate with every breath, sliding under pale skin, almost translucent and webbed with purple veins, the image of starvation she'd seen in more than one corpse back home, the image she'd tried so hard to conceal under saggy cotton blouses while Anne Featherstone called her the walking dead in lilting sing-song, now exposed as if it were a prize, silly Capitol accents babbling on about her perfect thigh gap as they worked.
The clock had nearly struck four in the afternoon by the time they broke for lunch and her real Stylist arrived, a tall woman with sharp eyes and a shock of poison-green hair who called herself Emerald.
"Passable," she said, and ordered most of the Prep Team out.
Three hours later Lucy's nails had been painted, hair twisted up with what seemed like a hundred pins, and finally the Prep Team brought out a bundle—her dress—and helped her into it, sliding up her legs as if she were slipping into a pool of cool water, adjusting until Emerald seemed satisfied.
Only then was she allowed to look in the mirror.
And the girl looking back wasn't Lucy.
Not the Lucy she'd been in District Eight, shabby orphaned schoolgirl in that stupid orange kerchief. Not the Lucy she'd been on the train, puffy and pink and hopelessly out of her depth.
The creature in the mirror was a fairytale, copper colored hair trundled up into a loose yet intricate bun, delicate silver cage woven through one side with few wisps left to curl gently at her jawline, neck and arms bare; the dress creamy white at the top, fading into a deep plum color as it gathered at her waist and fell into heavy silk bustles to the floor.
Her eyes looked bigger, rounder, no sign of redness or swelling, and subtle aqua accents brought out the green in their blue. Tiny jewels peeked from the corners like crystal dew drops, freckles hidden, skin glowing, blushing in rose hues that matched her lips.
It couldn't be her. It was... beautiful. Even more beautiful than Anne Featherstone.
Emerald gave a faint smirk in the mirror and offered Lucy the final touch: plum colored heels with wide soles, so that when the Prep Team helped her into them she didn't even wobble.
"Oh how perfect!"
"Why, she really can be pretty!"
Suddenly the day's work felt worth it. More than worth it. No one had ever made a fuss over her before.
"Let's be off, then," said Emerald in her thick Capitol accent, and guided Lucy away from the mirrors well before she'd drunk in her fill, Prep Team waving them off with smiles and well wishes as they stepped out into the hallway.
Their heels clicked in time on the marble floor, and Lucy reveled in the heavy swish of her skirt as they boarded an elevator and emerged a few moments later into a wide open earthy space, an underground, outdoor stable, rows of chariots stretching down the middle as dozens of people buzzed about, and she spotted Polly and Digory at once.
"Lucy!" called Digory with a grin, and beckoned them over so that Polly could pull her into a tight hug.
"Oh darling, you're stunning!" gasped Polly, holding Lucy back at arm's length to look her over.
"Thank you," Lucy giggled breathlessly, "It's all Emerald's work."
"No no, dear," tutted the stylist, "I may be the artist, but you are the canvas."
The mentors and stylist turned to greet each other like old friends, and when Lucy looked away she realized Caspian had arrived before her, standing on the other side of Eight's chariot with the horses.
A rich, high-collared cranberry coat trimmed with white-gold accentuated his imposing figure with sharp edges, a few strands of hair at his temples pulled back into tiny braids while the rest fell in glossy curtains around his face, and his dark eyes snapped to her the instant she noticed him.
She sucked in a sharp breath, cold sweat swept over her bare arms, already trembling with some combination of giddiness and nerves as she glanced back at the adults, but they were deep in conversation.
No. She was being ridiculous. Since when did she allow something like eye contact to scare her?
Perhaps that boy could snap her neck without a second thought, but this wasn't the arena, and the last thing she needed was another stretch of awkward silence digging into her gut when she already had enough to worry about.
She gathered her skirts and stepped around to the front of the chariot, ignoring the wild pounding in her chest as she opened her mouth to make some kind of greeting, but the only thing that came out was "You look very pretty."
No, wait, that wasn't what she'd meant to—
Caspian laughed.
A short, sudden bark which he covered quickly, but the corners of his mouth still twisted against an obvious attempt to hide it. "So do you."
A small giggle escaped her throat and she bit down hard on her lower lip.
Caspian smiled and averted his eyes, and Lucy couldn't help but think it made him three times as handsome.
Maybe he was just as nervous as she was.
She fumbled for something to do with her hands, moving to brush hair from her face before remembering at the last second that it was all pulled back, and she didn't have pockets to stuff them into. In the end she settled for gripping her skirt and hoping she didn't somehow ruin it.
"They let you feed the horses," said Caspian abruptly.
Lucy looked up, blinked, and then noticed his handful of sugar cubes.
"One of the attendants gave them to me," he supplied before she could ask, separating a few into his other hand and holding it out to her, as if in some temporary peace offering.
"Thanks," she murmured, staring for a moment before her wits rushed back to her and she accepted them carefully into her much smaller, paler hands and turned to the two black horses harnessed to their chariot.
Caspian reached out to stroke one of their huge heads, scratching it behind the jaw and feeding it a cube when it nosed his chest, so at home with the massive beasts Lucy wondered if he'd dealt much with them at the factories.
These creatures were more beautiful than cart horses, though, black eyes sparkling with an intelligence almost like the sort who could talk in the stories.
"Hello there," she whispered to the one closest to her, holding a sugar cube flat out on her palm and smiling at the tickle of its whiskers as it gobbled up the treat.
Caspian fed his another and popped a cube into his own mouth as the earthy cavern filled slowly with other tributes, but Lucy kept her eyes on her mare, stroking its soft nose and murmuring to it even after she ran out of sugar.
"You've been here a while, hm?" The sturdy heat of the horse's head brushed under her hand as it pressed down into her. "What's the Capitol like? I'm staying here for a bit, you see."
It bobbed its head, almost as if it understood, but then something bounced off her shoe and she looked down as Caspian's last two sugar cubes skittered over the ground, both horses bending after them as she glanced up and followed his distracted gaze to the elevator.
A tribute had just entered the stable, a boy of maybe sixteen with black hair, but when she glanced back at Caspian, it wasn't the boy he was looking at. It was his mentor. Fierce and pale but terribly beautiful, easily towering over every attendant bustling about her, blood red lips set into a hard, proud line.
Lucy tore her gaze away to find Caspian pale, too, and wearing an expression she couldn't read. Not quite fear. Something else.
"Are you alright?" she asked, voice low.
His eyes snapped back to her as if she'd brought him back from a trance. "Fine."
"Everyone in your chariots!" boomed a voice over speakers Lucy couldn't see. "Ceremony begins in five minutes!"
Caspian turned and mounted the chariot before Lucy could speak again, and she had to lift her skirts to make it around the other side where Digory offered her his arm and helped her and all her heavy skirts onto the raised platform, at least two feet off the ground. Their stylists rushed in to arrange their clothes.
"Remember to stand up straight," said Polly, "Keep your heads up, and smile. Give them something to root for."
Lucy's heart throbbed in her ears, and the countdown must have begun outside, too, because the crowd roared on the other side of the huge doors at the end of the stable.
Polly and Digory retreated back toward the remake center, horses stamping in anticipation as tributes mounted and stylists did their last minute work, adjusting the thin green gown of the pretty blonde girl straight ahead, leaves woven through her hair like some kind of woodland spirit.
"Good luck, Lils," her mentor called, and suddenly Lucy remembered her from the Reaping, crying very prettily on TV. Lilliandil.
Of course, even her name was pretty.
In front of Seven came Six, the black haired boy and his terrifying mentor shouting last minute orders too far away for Lucy to hear, and even further ahead of them the boy and girl from Three gestured as if deep into a heated argument, dressed all in silver and grey, young, maybe even younger than Lucy. Did they know each other? She wished she could hear what they were saying.
But the frontmost chariots were really impressive, District Two tall and noble in scanty armor flipping lightweight spears like toys, District One glittering in gold and jewels and laughing as if they were attending some upper class social function, even when the stable doors rumbled open and their chariot began to move.
As soon as One pulled ahead, Two followed, horses so well trained no-one had to tell them when to start, and Lucy briefly imagined they really were talking horses before her own chariot lurched into motion and she gripped the bar to keep from falling out.
The crowd roared as District One emerged onto the street, the dark-haired girl smiling just as brilliantly as she had at her own Reaping. Susan, Lucy remembered just as a deafening cheer erupted for Two and all her nerves crashed back full force, heart hammering against her ribcage.
The tinny voices of TV commentators echoed in her ears, laughing at the filthy girl on screen, but before she could seriously consider throwing herself out of the chariot, she caught sight of the crowd, raised up on bleachers like a sea of colorful birds, hundreds of them, thousands of them.
She clutched Caspian's arm and his eyes snapped to hers before she realized her mistake.
She froze, panicked, loosened her grip, but his other hand flew up to stop her.
"No, it's okay."
And then all in a rush their chariot burst out onto the street and turned down the wide avenue as she braced herself, gripped Caspian's arm tighter.
The crowd erupted into cheers.
What?
She stared around, searching for the source of the commotion, stands hollering and waving just like the station, people gasping, pointing.
And then she remembered, as if somehow she could have forgotten, the dress, the hair, the makeup. She was beautiful. She was holding her district partner's arm. And the crowd went wild. For her. For them.
They all wanted her attention.
She pried her free hand from the rail and waved back, and then she was laughing, at the ridiculous, otherworldly situation, at the colorful faces beaming back at her, for relief and for the sheer thrill of it all, and when she looked up at Caspian he was laughing too.
Electricity snapped through her bloodstream, reckless energy flooding every inch of her body. Amidst cheers for other tributes, her own name echoed.
Lucy Pevensie! Lucy! Lucy!
Flowers showered into the street, littering the pavement in bursts of pink and white as petals fluttered down on their heads, and in one quick motion Caspian snatched a red rose out of the air and handed it to her.
The crowd lost their minds.
For the first time in her life, people loved her, people adored her, thousands of people wanted her eyes on them.
For the first time in her life, she thought she understood what it truly meant to be alive.
And she could only imagine, with a great deal of satisfaction, what Anne Featherstone's face must look like right now, watching at home on her family's expensive TV.
By the time they reached the City Circle, she'd half decided the Hunger Games would be worth it if she got to come back to this.