train rides, part two: waste
Go unnoticed, let the freedom wash away.
Losing focus, the pretense is second nature.
(I feel decayed…)
rhys intarsia, district three male
…
In the dark, Rhys slumbers.
Or, at the very least, he tries to. Sleep does not come easy when it precludes a bloodbath, and Rhys finds that no matter how he tries to purge the Games from his mind, he cannot keep the death knell from ringing inside his skull. His clock is winding down. Time is ticking away, days upon minutes upon hours, with no regard for the lives of those caught within its grasp. Eventually, the ticking will stop, and that will be the end of it. Regardless of what he wants. Regardless of how he feels.
Regardless of his regrets and shame over the incident that led him here.
Regardless of Esme Casper, and her dim-witted bastard of a husband.
He rolls onto his side, gazing out from the haven of his comfortable bed toward the dismal room, trussed up with rich furnishings more lavish than anything he'd been lucky to see back in District Three. Such luxury. He supposes that it's not a surprise for the Capitol's indulgences to turn his stomach, but all of it - the food, the furniture, this train - curdles his blood in ways he cannot rightly describe.
It's the excess of wealth. The excess of excess, really, when it comes right down to it. Even after years of scraping together what little money he'd made on the streets would hardly surmount to a fraction of the wealth a typical Capitolite possesses. And while Rhys loathes the very nature of politics, he has to admit…
The disparity angers him.
(Not that it matters. Not that he can change anything the Capitol does, or anything about the upper echelons of Three. His opinions are meaningless. His voice has no worth. Rhys knew that much even when he was a child, left to scrounge and scavenge for scraps in the glum hollows of an alley, abandoned not only by the parents who left him, but the society who never gave a fuck about his health or wellbeing. Three's community home was only good for putting a roof over his head, and its caretakers were neglectful at best. Nobody even batted an eye when Rhys left one day to strike out on his own, probably because they didn't even realize he was gone.)
(They probably took it as a blessing, more than anything. One less mouth to feed. One less body to clothe.)
(The orphanage was glad to be rid of him.)
Rhys sits up in bed slowly, his throat parched, his mind restless. His eyes fall on the thick curtains obscuring the room's sole window, keeping him tucked away in the dark, safe from the prying eyes of the world beyond. A part of him wonders whether the sun has risen in the sky, broken through the night to illuminate the day. Even if he's trapped in the draw of the Games, he wouldn't mind having a bit of light. Something he could use to still himself and quell the storm raging around his heart.
He runs a hand through his hair once, twice, then stands to his feet, bare soles resting against the cool wood of the train's floor. There's no chance that he'll be getting sleep tonight - that, Rhys already knows. The air's too thick, heavy with the burden of judgment. When he moves he can feel hands roaming his skin, spiteful green eyes affixed to his back, mouths atop his own slipping poison into his mouth between heady kisses and damnable lust…
He'd never wanted to be a prostitute. It was just one of the better means to an end for his existence in Three, a way of trying to elevate himself from his life on the streets and give himself a future worth having. So what if the price of his ambition was his autonomy and his self-esteem? He deserved more than just survival, a life defined by only pitfalls and missteps that cost him less than they rightly should have. Charm was the thing that had always gotten him by at the home; he knew how to flirt and manipulate and acquiesce when he had to. He didn't have to care about his suitors, and they didn't have to care about him. They just had to pay him, fuck him, and leave.
It wasn't supposed to be complicated.
I would've been better off sticking to old habits, expecting the worst rather than hoping for better. If you expect the worst, there's no room for disappointment.
Misery is eating him from the inside out.
(And at the heart of it all, there's them. The Caspers. The elites. The fucking mayor and his fucking wife, who figured it wasn't enough to simply expose Rhys for "the worthless slut he is," but sought to disavow him as much as demean him. Look at that, Silas! Your perfect little whore is going to the Hunger Games; he'll die on his knees, right where he belongs. Was Rhys Intarsia really worth your career? Did he manage to blind you to ambition as well as sense? You had everything and you gave it away for nothing.)
(He is nothing.)
(Silas is responsible for his misfortune. Esme is responsible for his undoing. If either of them are aware of that, they don't have the mind to care. Rhys was their plaything, their spectre and their trash, some filthy rat that Silas brought in off the streets to fuck in his marriage bed, bought entirely with the allure of money. And maybe it's Rhys' fault in the end, that he made himself so available, made himself so easy to take advantage of, despite his thickened skin and his hardened heart. He should've known that their arrangement was too good to be true, that the fortune he'd been allowed for so brief a time was too good to last, he should've known that his very desire to be seen as something would leave him to be a dead man walking, if only he'd stopped the visits when he first caught wind of who Silas was, if only he'd slipped away into the wind and left the pitiful mayor to his own devices before the man had a chance to take him home, if only, if only, if only…)
There are some mistakes that can't be undone.
pangaea o'shea, district ten female
…
Pangaea O'Shea is not supposed to be here.
More than that, she doesn't understand why she is here - sitting at a table beside Verity Renwick, her eyes watery with unshed tears, every bit of insecurity and discomfort she's tried to quash down for the past seventeen years spilling out of her body in the span of a couple days. Because the truth is that if Pangaea looks far enough back, she could've seen this coming. Her, being reaped. Her, being voted in.
Her, being hated.
Vukasin won't talk to her. She'd tried to approach him after they'd been whisked away to the Justice Building, made small talk as they headed out onto Capitol Landing to wait for the train, but the only thing she'd gotten for her efforts was an icy glare and a turned back.
… it's not worth fretting over, really. People like her and people like him don't mix, and that's not going to change just because they've been reaped. Vukasin is a rebel. Pangaea is a loyalist. Her family's been amongst the Capitol's most ardent supporters since before she was even born, and that's not going to change just because of the… unusual circumstances. And more aptly, she's not going to change because of the circumstances. Her parents raised her right, she trusts their judgment, and she trusts the system. If she plays by the rules, she'll turn out just fine, won't she? Sure, she's going into the Hunger Games, and there's a risk she might die (I'm going to die, I don't want to die, I don't even want to be here, why am I here, I did everything right?) but at the end of the day, she is not the enemy. She is on the right side, that's what her father always said, and so even if she's going into the arena, the Capitol's going to protect her. Somehow. Maybe. Possibly?
… no. Who is she kidding? District Ten - the place she's called home her whole life, the place her family has done their best to provide dedicated service to for over thirty years - sent her to the Games for one reason, and one reason only.
They want her gone.
(After everything she's learned, Pangaea can't even blame them.)
She's not supposed to be here, because she's loyal and her family's loyal and her father is loyal. She's not supposed to be here because her family is respected, devoted, diligent, admired…
She's not supposed to be here because the Capitol fucked up.
(So did her father.)
(And so did she.)
(How could I have been so naive?)
Her attention turns to the table. Verity is silent in the seat across from her, focus trained solely on her half-eaten breakfast. If Pangaea listens closely enough she can hear the noise of her mentor's metal fork scraping against a plaster plate, can make out the rattling of her coffee mug, haphazardly balanced on the arm of Verity's chair. She can even hear the click of her companion's jaw when she opens her mouth to chew, and the little wheeze that seems to be present with every inhale of her breath.
It's funny, she thinks, how much more you notice when you're paying attention. It's funny how much more you hear when you're really listening.
Donovan O'Shea had never told his children about the particulars of his relationship with the mayor. They were colleagues, yes, associates, yes, but not in as professional a capacity as Pangaea originally thought - she'd never paid much attention to the implications of Papa being an "independent contractor." His land development projects had always been just that: projects related to his work, implemented in some capacity, but only after administrative supervision. A few of them might've frustrated her peers now and then - your father's trying to split my family's property, just because we're on the cusp of the fifth sector, how the hell is that fair, O'Shea? - but he'd never really done any serious damage as far as Pangaea knew. Their neighborhood was nice, comfortable, safe and even. So were the neighborhoods in sectors two, three and four.
She'd never thought to ask about five through seventeen. If people from the District center knew her name when she went into the markets, or shot her the occasional glare, she just assumed it was because of her wealth, her appearance, something she said, something she did. She hadn't realized that her father was reviled by them for forcing them into squalor and seizing their property.
She didn't realize that the people saw her as a villain.
Call it naivete. Call it willful ignorance, nay, blissful ignorance. Pangaea hadn't questioned. She hadn't thought. She hadn't cared.
(She was just a seventeen year old girl, raised in a bubble, doing her best to adhere to the standards her family had set for her. She didn't do anything wrong, really, she just… hadn't done anything right, either. She was obedient. Friendly. Prim and proper when she needed to be, hospitable to the people she met, diligent about keeping up with her work and studies. Maybe she could be a bit abrasive… and stubborn, and distant, with a sharper tongue than either Mama or Papa would've liked… but that didn't necessarily make her a bad person, right? She's not a bad person for making mistakes, and neither is her father.)
(Right?)
I know they didn't mean to leave me in the dark… Pangaea muses, spearing a bit of egg on the end of her fork before spinning the utensil around in her fingers. She probably should eat something instead of just pushing things around the plate, but her stomach's aching something awful, and the ache's just getting worse the more she thinks. She's not sure she can trust herself to keep anything down right now. She definitely can't trust her nerves.
I wish they'd told me the truth. Even if it was just once. If Papa had been honest about the position we were in… if he'd just told me, or Kenor, or Ur, or Rodin… we could've done something to mediate the issue. We could've fixed things before they got to this point. "The O'Shea family sticks together," isn't that what he's always said? Even when Panno left, he told me we had to hold together because estrangement would've just torn us further apart.
Why didn't they trust me? Trust any of us? Did they just not want us kids to worry, or did they think they could keep us in the dark forever? They're our parents, don't they know it doesn't work like that? How could they lie to us?
Whatever. It doesn't matter now what her parents have done, why they tried to bury the full scope of their actions. Pangaea isn't in District Ten anymore. She's on a train, headed to the Capitol, getting ready to compete in the Hunger Games.
The only thing she can afford to focus on is the present. Dwelling on the past'll just do her in.
"Verity," she says, and smiles as her mentor looks up, wariness in her expression, but no clear signs of dismissal. Pangaea takes a deep breath and sets her fork down, pushing her plate aside.
"Any chance I could ask for some advice?"
rhys intarsia, district three male
…
He is sitting at a table with makeup on his skin, soft bronze dusted with hues of rose and gold, framing his eyes and accentuating his cheekbones. Before him stands a woman clad in gaudy pink, one hand resting on his cheek as she applies gloss to the downturned shape of his lips, her hand steady in a way that Rhys' own have never been, even when he tries to will them still.
"You have such lovely features," Three's escort whispers, "has anyone told you that?"
"No," Rhys lies, because the thought of praise still perturbs him as much as it excites him, and he's far too jaded to answer otherwise. Mostly because he knows the truth - that beauty really is skin deep, regardless of how many people try to insist otherwise. Jessamine's hands are little different from his clients' on his face, holding him still when there's nothing he'd like more than to thrash, complimenting him for his slim figure, his androgynous features, his plump lips and pretty hands.
"I'm not surprised," she continues, and Rhys closes his eyes, imagining that he's somewhere far away from it all, the Games and the train and the desperate place he called his home, allowing her words to wash over him without really hearing them. "Three has no eye for beauty. They're all about tech and cybernetics and corporate synthesis. That impetuous partner of yours is only the latest in a line of cyberjunkies."
The Capitolite's voice pauses, and Rhys blinks open one eye to watch as she grabs for another container of blush, intent on rouging up his complexion before their train hits its final destination.
"You're a breath of fresh air, Rhys," she settles on after some time, and Rhys does his best to smile.
"I aim to please," he responds in kind, straightening his back and righting his posture. It's a bit hard not to feel like he's preening when he does that, but he supposes having an ego's preferable to the Capitol. Being vain is a trait typically reserved for Careers, and one that always sets them apart. If he has to adapt to survive, then perhaps indulging his whims isn't a bad way to go. Sponsors appreciate spice, and Rhys is willing to indulge their chaos.
"How much longer until we hit the city?" He asks, raising his tone just an octave to make his voice sound more airy. Jessamine hums and waves a little brush over his cheeks, clearly unaware of the way the dust from the blush is drying Rhys' mouth, stinging his eyes.
"Six, maybe seven hours," she chirps. "Why, are you getting ready to dazzle them?"
Dazzle them with what, my "stunning" personality? My hideous reaping clothes, my piss-poor attitude, my complete and total awareness of how I'm going to die, all for one foolish mistake?
"Mm. Something like that," Rhys closes his mouth, tongue pressing tight to the inside of his teeth as his jaw clicks, protesting his stoic expression. Strange, given how often he seems to be wearing it; sometimes it's as if his face is a mask, tailored too tight, to the point where it seems like it's twisting him. He always feels so out of place. Like a mannequin, or a marionette, floundering about in high waters with its strings cut. Give him the smallest push and he'll fall apart and drown, a chance victim of the unyielding tides.
It wouldn't be so bad, would it? Letting the current tear me to shreds instead of trying to persist.
(My whole life all I've done is persist. Look where it's gotten me.)
"Do you think I have a chance?" He asks, and Jessamine's brushing stops, the shadow of her body pulling back from his own, allowing cool air to flood through the space between them.
Their silence draws on for so long it seems like she's lost track of what she's meant to say. A second draws into five, five draws into twenty.
Twenty hits sixty and the dam breaks.
"Of course you do!" His escort coos. "I mean, you're on the older side, for one. And you've got a great sense of style. Nice hair. A sweet voice. Literally, everyone's going to fall for you, and you know as well as I do that sponsors help people win! You'll be fine, Rhys, no, you'll be amazing. I just absolutely know it."
That's a lie, Rhys thinks. No, worse than a lie, you're full of shit. You don't really believe that sponsors win the Hunger Games, that anyone wins the Hunger Games? You can't be that blind to reality. You can't be that much of an airhead, you can't be that naive, I'll be dead even before I set foot in that arena.
(I died when they called my fucking name.)
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he tells her instead. "Even if we both know you're wrong."
pangaea o'shea, district ten female
…
When Pangaea was ten years old, her mother began pushing her to take etiquette courses.
You need to learn, she recalls Mila O'Shea stating as she stood straight-backed in front of a mirror, dressed in a prim, flowered sundress with stockings on her legs and a pair of just-shined Mary Janes hugging her feet, how to be a proper lady. Good posture, decent clothing, winning smile… that's a start, but you still have a long way to go. There are rules about interacting with other members of the social strata; how to shake a hand, how to hold a glass when raising a toast, how to ask a proper question when in dire circumstances.
Her mother's hands clapped roughly onto her shoulders, enough to startle Pangaea into raising her head, unvoiced questions coming unbidden to her lips.
But Mama, she remembers saying as Mila's nimble fingers began smoothing creases from the sleeves of her dress, Pangaea's hair already half-loose from the bows her mother tried to tie it back with. I already know all of that! Why can't I have music lessons with Panno instead? Or go out to ride the horses like the Rochester kids down the street? Kenor said he was nine when he started riding, so I'm old enough now, right? Maybe we could -
Mila's grip tightened immensely, her firm grasp holding her daughter still, so still that Pangaea could scarcely shift her position at all. She'd been left to stare at her reflection in the mirror, small stature nearly dwarfed by the form of her mother, who stood tall and sturdy behind her with a high head and squared shoulders.
(Even then, her legacy felt like an overbearing shadow. No matter where Pangaea went or what Pangaea did, there was always someone at her back, be it Mama or Papa or one of her brothers, telling her about what she ought to do, what she ought to say. Reminding her that she was an O'Shea, and that her duty was to uphold the family's position, to be social, graceful, and above all, loyal. It didn't matter if Pangaea didn't much care to be obeisant, because discipline was hammered into her before she was even conceived. She had to be dutiful. She had to be malleable.
She had to follow in her parents' footsteps, and be exactly what they wanted her to be.)
It is imperative, Pangaea, that you be attentive and courteous in every situation that faces you. One perceived slight, one little hint of rudeness, and it could be your undoing. Is that clear? She recalls Mila asking her, and she'd done her best to simply nod her head, stuffing her complaints away along with her desires, knowing that her protests and whimsy were not things her mother wanted to hear.
Yes, Mama, Pangaea responded, and if there was a note of sadness in her tone, Mila didn't bother to address it.
Good, was all her mother said, nodding appreciatively at her agreement. You'll begin tomorrow. We'll make a Capitolite out of you, yet.
A Capitolite. That's what she's meant to be, and what she thought she was, right up until she'd been reaped.
Pangaea had been fortunate compared to the rest of Ten. She'd been born holding a silver spoon that she'd always taken for granted, never having to question whether the world was fair, never having to experience life beyond the boundaries of Ten's upper sectors. Her family's estate was safe and luxurious, and she'd had access to everything she could possibly have needed - the best education, tutors in every subject, a sprawling ranch with fields to wander and plenty of dirt paths to race down on the back of a horse, wind whipping against her rosy skin.
If she'd gotten lonely from time to time, it wasn't worth mentioning.
(Just like her fears about the future weren't worth mentioning. Because her parents were going to take care of her, right? They took care of everything, and Pangaea - Pangaea was grateful. She was comfortable. And if she never really felt like she belonged… well, all teenagers feel that way at some point.)
She was fine with living a planned-out life. Fine with playing the role of an O'Shea, putting on a mask day after day and pretending to be an elite even when she knew she was nothing but a husk, an empty soul in pretty clothes. She was fine with letting her family choose what she did and what she thought, fine with having their ideals imposed on her and their expectations branded to her skin, because she was comfortable, and doesn't that matter more than being happy, isn't that safer than being real?
She steps down from the train. The arrival platform is densely packed, wild people in vibrant colors calling out for her attention, waving to her from every direction at once. Pangaea keeps her head up as she passes through the throng, her walk heralded by the sound of shouts and laughter, and she smiles when she sees the telltale flash of a camera, knowing that confidence is what they expect.
She's spent seventeen years surrounded by loyalists. She may not be a true Capitolite, but she knows how they want her to act, and she can say what they want her to say. If she just sticks to script and plays by the rules of their Game, maybe she has a chance at making it home. Her life doesn't have to end here just because it's supposed to. She can do this. She can win.
Pangaea O'Shea believes in the Capitol.
What else can she do?
A/N: Waste by Seether.
Sorry again for the length of time that's passed between chapters! Hopefully the content makes up for it in part. Thank you so much to R-B and Goldie for sending in Rhys and Pangaea; I had a wonderful time writing them and hope you are happy with my interpretations.
Just one more intro to go. I'll see you all soon!