AN: Once again, thanks to everyone who reviews and reads and just hangs in there! Everyone has been so great. I'm going to give you a heads up, I've started my senior year of high school, so I apologize if there are long periods of nothingness. Hope you enjoy as always and keep the lovely reviews coming. You all are too much. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games nor any canon characters. I love Suzanne Collins for what she has given me and would never in my life steal from her.
Grey light is leaking through the curtains when Effie wakes me. "Time to go, Phoenix." I hear through the door. She tries to sound as light and encouraging as possible. "It's going to be a big, big, big day." The inflection of her voice is dying. Sad. My parents always described her as having an annoyingly preppy voice you never wanted to hear first thing in the morning. Times change.
I take a warm shower and slip into a flowing lavender dress. Just before I walk out of my compartment, I remember the mockingjay pin still stuck to my reaping dress. I sit on the ground, unfastening the pin carefully and holding it solemnly in my hand. I am the daughter of the mockingjay. No, I am the new mockingjay. Something doesn't feel right about that at all. It isn't that I don't want to help the next rebellion. It isn't that I don't want to inspire Panem. It's that my mother was the mockingjay and I am not my mother.
Nevertheless, I pin the gold mockingjay over my heart and enter the dining car where Haymitch, Char, and Effie eat quietly. Haymitch pats a chair next to him where I sit and am suddenly served more food than I can handle. "I gave you last night," he says sternly. "Now eat." I suspect he's still upset with me from my lack of confidence.
My parents being victors and my father being a baker, food was never a rare treat in my home. A lot of what is on my plate, I've tasted before. Perhaps only once, but I've tried it. I gulp down my orange juice. Like my mother, I dislike coffee so I opt for the hot chocolate instead. I eat the fried potatoes, the ham, the rolls. I force a couple of spoonfuls of eggs down but still prefer Papa's scrambled eggs to any fine chef's.
I've got to stop that. This is my problem, I'm spoiled. My parents were reaped starved and skilled at getting what they needed. Everything's always been provided for me. I'm not a mockingjay, I'm a stuffed turkey. I've been fattened up by luxuries all my life only to be killed and eaten when the time is right.
Charlton, on the other hand, eats like he'll never see food again. He's worked for food. There's not much fat on him, but plenty of muscle. He could break my arm in a heartbeat, much less my neck. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. There goes my confidence issue again. Char doesn't say anything, though. Haymitch is too protective of me to help him, or they talk every time I'm not in the room. It really isn't fair.
The train finally begins to slow and suddenly bright light floods the compartment. Both Char and I look out the window to see what we've only seen on television, the Capitol. Even after its brutal attack years ago, the Capitol is glorious and fully refurbished. Capitol citizens, however, have changed considerably. They still have outrageous hairstyles, yes. Their makeup is still very dramatic, the clothes still modern and vividly colored, but the people themselves, their expressions when we pull into the station, they are not excited. They're afraid for us.
Peacekeepers lead us through the crowd. They applaud, but it's because they admire our sacrifice. Ever since the Capitol children were forced to have their own Hunger Games, these citizens saw everything differently. They felt our pain. Now it is no more a joke to them as it has been to us.
An older Capitol man with metallic gold hair braided back and tied by a ribbon manages to squeeze past peacekeepers and grab my shoulder. Not harassingly, but comfortingly. "Rise," he says before Peacekeepers push him away.
AN: I apologize, I know that was short, but I wanted to get something out to you tonight and I decided I wanted the stylists and opening ceremony to have their own chapter. Or chapters. I haven't decided that either. Working on it.