The training for the second day and the third blurred into one another in Glace's eyes. After years of doing much the same routines in the glowing halls of District 1, the soberly dressed steel and rubber of the Capitol felt stark; lifeless. The glowing stones of her own Training Center held scars and secrets of shining steel in their blacklit center, but here there was nothing to center herself on, no private rooms, no solitary nights. Their movements were regimented in and out by agitated Peacekeepers, and within the Training Center only the black mirrors of the relentless television cameras provided any light.
Glace endeavoured not to look at them. On the one part, they reminded her of the distraught parents she had left to watch their daughter through the screened blinds of the Capitol; on another part, they reminded her of when she had done the same watching Rhys only a few years ago. He had stared into the camera as he coughed up blood, his brown eyes choked with hurt and pain.
Glace would not permit anyone the same fate for her, and so she learnt the positions of the cameras and scrupulously avoided their gaze. Besides, she cared little what the Capitol saw of her face. In fact, if anything, she afforded a certain modicum of vindictive pride from making their jobs harder.
Only a few matters had stood out to her, and those all concerned that of the other tributes. The Career pack, while temporarily separated by the chaos of the first few minutes of training, had tentatively rebanded and coalesced into a singular unit. While Glace moved amongst them she did so only to observe their movements; she wanted to know them and let them know her as little as possible. She did not want a Career alliance; she could predict only her own actions, and she could only put her trust in what she could predict.
But, subtracting herself from the equation, the Careers still numbered five; her One companion Sheen, the Twos Theon and Anna, and the Fours Ronan and Emma. While Sheen lived to be muscle and controlled brutality, and was quantifiable in Glace's eyes, the others remained frustratingly enigmatic for a Career pack.
Anna and Theon had formed an oscillating leadership between themselves; no informal consensus had been reached and there was no chance of a formal one. While Anna was dangerous and passionate, a smile on her face even now she had washed Chal's blood from it, she lacked control over herself; she could not even contain her bloodlust to the Games. Her reaping, Anna had blinded a girl with her thumbs- her training, she had sliced a tribute's throat for a comment she deemed worthy of death. She was unpredictable and uncontrollable, and it could spell victory or downfall. And Theon; Theon was Anna's antithesis. Controlled and calm, most of the group gravitated to him; perhaps because of his height, or build, or his rumoured Victor's heritage. But Glace privately believed that Theon's stillness and presence as a mediating force in the group had marked him as 'other', a leader because of his clear imposed distance on the others.
Ronan seemed unlikely for a Career, even amongst the curious pack that had emerged- bandy-legged and casual, he acted with crudity but moved with a finesse he could not hide, a dancer pretending to be a clown. Of all the Careers, Glace felt she would least want to fight him; he seemed to hide far more of himself than he gave away in sparring.
And Emma- Glace had not decided, not yet, what motivation drove Emma's sparring. She had observed her, like she had observed everyone, and Emma's movements were alternately frantic and lethargic, a swinging pendulum of motion and despair. Glace recognised the pattern from herself only a few years before- the desperation of grief. What had driven Glace to her frantic moments was the promise of a fight to avenge Rhys' death- what drove Emma to distraction nobody but her could say.
Glace had not just observed her 'fellow' Careers- if she was to truly be alone, she needed to know all alliances and outliers in order to know the movements of them all.
The Twelve boy and the Eight boy, Emil and Cesal, had become curiously inseperable; an odd alliance, given the muted and distant gaze of Emil and the firebranded mania that drove beneath Cesal's eyes. However, Glace could see the practicality; in an urban environment and in a rural environment, one could supplement the other.
Unless, of course, one decides the other is baggage they don't need or want to help.
Glace had also carefully observed the potential rebel, Elizabeth, with her long chestnut hair and her accidental unleashing of public chaos. It was rare to see someone so overtly revolutionary in the Games; Chal, on the other hand, while absent, seemed from what Glace had seen far less interested in pursuing a goal other than survival at the hands of any person to feed him. While Elizabeth would be better off without a now-injured burden, she seemed not to realize this; without her district partner, she had become increasingly more nervous in her motions, painfully aware that her actions had condemned the injured, such as the Twelve girl with the fractured arm, to death.
Eyes were watching Elizabeth's, and not just Glace's. Peacekeepers were unsubtle in who they tracked across the room, and all eyes followed the deep red hair as it moved from station to station, hands clenching and unclenching on guns.
Quint Barkwater had also proved an enigma Glace watched. He spent most of his time in the more rural training stations, as could be expected of a Six tribute coming from the transport centers of Panem; oddly for his relative age, he seemed entirely absent of the reliance on drugs that riddled his District's older tributes in most years. His hands, when helping to preserve Chal's life, had been long-fingered, calloused and deft- they had pursued their course without faltering, without thought to the lifeblood covering them.
When Chal's throat had been cut, nobody had been watching Glace, and she had felt it safe to take a shuddering breath of horror without anyone noticing. But Quint's gaze had flicked across the room, over her face, and she worried that something damning had been revealed in her moment of private horror.
But he spent most of his time alone, absently trying stations, and Glace considered him an enigma and not a threat.
If I play my cards right, she thought to herself as she was escorted back to her apartment, I have little chance of losing.
She did not permit herself to think of the potential dangers of being a Career on the run. The pack would know she was a danger to their chances- they would prioritise her death the second they realised she had run from them.
As a District One tribute, her interviews had been drilled into her with precision, her outfits painstakingly designed. Little expense was spared on a One girl they could shower in diamonds. But while Sheen embodied the white suit and sparkling stones, the puffed dress with its layers of sparkling lace did not suit Glace. Her face, perhaps, gave the impression that she was as pure and childlike as the dress could make her seem; but her hair was still in her usual, practical tight bun, her expression austere, her eyes only conveying the emotion she permitted herself to feel.
She lived for control, and the layers of lace gave an unpredictable rustling at her feet she would have despised if she hadn't suppressed her own hatred of it.
She was waiting backstage, and she could hear a blare of music, a cheer of crowds, a laugh that was eminently and enthusiastically fake. An aide touched her shoulder, murmured that she had thirty seconds and manouvered her closer to the thin stairs leading her to the stage.
She closed her eyes and centered herself, ignoring the soft swishing of fabric at her ankles. She was in control, and everything was scripted and ready. She merely had to speak when cued and display herself when the Capitol desired her to.
She knew that would be her fate if she won or not; the Capitol was relentlessly desperate for more from their celebrities, more until there was nothing left for a Victor to give but their agonies.
She knew what fate she had chosen; but she had chosen it, and to her that was what mattered.
"Live from City Studios for the Seventy-Sixth Annual Hunger Games, please welcome your host- Caesar Flickerman!"
The music was upbeat, swollen with brass; Caesar had learned to hate it after a while, after it played without preamble for every single one of his shows. He had been doing his shows for decades now, the Games for five years- but never before had his smile been so forced, his patter so painful. Nobody in the audience noticed- or if they did, nobody cared. He would have mused on the uncaring nature of a crowd in shadow watching a jester in light, but he felt his analogy might fall short of many of his watchers.
Besides, he knew that Snow would be watching tonight.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it's the year after the Quell- and my god, wasn't it fantastic!" He had put in this piece to his opening monologue after his meeting with Snow- he felt he had to guage reaction, if he was met at groans from the loss of a Quell or cheers to the greeting of a new one.
He was met with both, and it became more of an effort to maintain his smile.
"Now, I know, I know- we're sad it's over. But the best thing is- now is when we really get to see the pure Games, the real Games." Caesar said, injecting enthusiasm into his voice. "Now- we get to see the tributes!"
The last line was swept with a fervent motion into the crowd, and the crowd returned it with cheers- a cheap trick, but always and inevitably one that worked.
Caesar grinned as Glace was ushered onto the City Studio stage.
One more night of this, and the tributes would be gone to whatever arena awaited them, to their deaths.
And if Caesar did not jest and pry at their deaths, to assuage the Capitol, to assuage the President- well. There wouldn't end up being much difference.
Caesar smiled as the tributes spent their last night in the lap of the Capitol.
He hoped it would not be his.
Remember when I said we'd be in the Games before the weekend's out?
We're going to enter the Games before the weekend's in.
Tomorrow, I finally get to stop laying pipe for the arena and start making it all happen- and god I am so excited for it. I hope you are too.
I've been waiting for this reveal a month now. Let's hope it lives up to both our expectations.