Chapter 11: Never Forget


Paloma, Age: 34, Lost, District 10


Once upon a time, there was a father, a mother, and a daughter who lived on a sheep farm in District Ten. It wasn't a big farm, and they weren't rich, but they never went hungry.

Paloma, the daughter, was too young to go to school, but not too young to help with the lambs or play with the dogs or explore the nearby hills covered in grasses and sagebrush. She was happy on the farm, they all had been. Her mother sang every day, her father's laughter filled the evenings.

The only time her parents seemed very sad was when the yearly show came on, the one everyone had to watch a lot of unless they were too young. Paloma only had to sit through bits of it, and she didn't mind because of how fascinated she was by all the costumes. She would try to recreate them later, using her dolls and bits of household rags and yarn and flowers from the little front garden when they were blooming. Her parents praised the results, even if they didn't like the inspiration.

"Our little girl's so creative! She has an artist's eye."

Life was good for Paloma of District Ten. But the happiness did not last.

The winter she turned six, a terrible sickness swept through the district. Only the wealthiest could afford the surest cure; everyone else had to manage as they could with lesser treatments. Many died, Paloma's mother among them.

The house and farm were too quiet without her. Paloma's father soon sold the farm and its animals, moving them to the district's urban center. He sent her to school, and went to work in a packaging factory.

Then he got into a fight with a Peacekeeper, the details of which Paloma never learned. The Head Peacekeeper, an older man about to end his term of service in the districts, sent him to prison, and took his good-as-orphaned daughter back to the Capitol with him.

That Peacekeeper was powerful and came from a rich family, his wife from an even richer one. They couldn't have children, and when it was near time for her husband to command soldiers from the comfort of his home city, the wife began looking for a child to adopt. None of the orphans in the Capitol at the time suited her specifications of age and appearance, but by chance, a certain little girl from District Ten did.

They gave her a new name, fortunately not an unbearable one, tried to spoil her, tried to make her forget her past. The Peacekeeper's wife liked to show her off, shaming her when she didn't look happy enough for their guests.

"You have no reason to be sad! You're our little girl now! You need to forget that backwater you came from!"

But Paloma had a good memory, good enough to replicate on a doll an outfit she'd seen once weeks earlier. She didn't forget.

When she grew up, she changed her appearance often, appearing to follow the crowd but in truth not wanting to look like the girl a rich Capitol couple had taken a liking to and stolen.

I'm not an accessory.

She did find an eye alteration early on that she kept consistent, just because she liked it so much. She stopped speaking to her so-called "parents" as well, just because she didn't want to. She went into the business of designing clothes better than most could, just because she wanted to.

She earned a career, one that gave her the opportunity to get close to a certain few citizens of District Ten. Through them, she learned that her father had died in prison, mere months after she'd been taken to the Capitol.

She didn't blame him, not for any of it. She knew where the real blame lay.

I'll never forget.

That blame filled her mind the night of the Game Recap and Victory Ceremony, as she curled her dyed dark green hair, applied a thin layer of silver glitter to her teal-toned cheeks, and put on a full-length black jumpsuit she'd designed herself, unadorned besides the simple geometric design of cutouts around the midriff. Besides the glitter, the only makeup she put on was some mascara to frame her bright blue eyes with cat-slit eyes.

Her current status gave her a standing invitation to each year's Victory Banquet since the Ninetieth Games. She didn't always go, but this year, with the Games ending on such an uncomfortable note for the Capitol, she wouldn't miss it for anything.

The banquet was the same as any grand Capitol occasion: loud and crowded and colorful. She applauded with everyone else when the latest Victor arrived. She moved through the crowd afterwards with practiced ease, responding to greetings with politeness, watching for both those she wanted to see and those she would prefer to avoid.

She found the person she most wanted to speak to near the least-crowded punch table, in a corner near windows overlooking part of the mansion gardens. "Quite the finale, wasn't it?"

Ava Smith looked up with a twisted smile. Her brown hair, threaded with gray but still incredibly long and glossy, hung straight down her back, other than a few strands at the front that had been pinned up out of her face. Her gown was long-sleeved with a narrow but flowing cut, the same color blue as Ten's early summer sky and embroidered heavily with gold and pearls around the bodice, waist, and cuffs. Her dark eyes were as unreadable as ever. "The recap was a 'pile of manure', so to speak." Her voice went under the babble of the party in a way that would be very difficult to pick up by anyone not specifically listening for her voice.

Paloma mimicked the Victor's tone. "Most of Panem saw everything the first time around. I'm sure the editors struggled with their assignment, though."

"They did." They turned quickly, then relaxed when they saw who had been eavesdropping. "Honestly, I'm impressed that the final product was watchable."

"Celeste," Ava said. "I'm so sorry about Plutarch."

The Snow shrugged, her blank expression on betrayed by the way she started fiddling with the ends of her curled hair and the brightness in her blue-green eyes. "We knew it was coming. And I got a promotion out of it, didn't I?"

Ava made some other comment, but Paloma's attention was on Celeste's dress. Under a strapless black bodice, the flowing skirt was comprised of layer upon layer of thin, translucent material in shades of subtle red, orange, yellow, and gray. The entire dress gave the impression of flickering flames shining through rippling smoke.

Cinna's work; I'd recognize it anywhere. And it's one of his calculated looks.

"That dress is a statement," she commented as Ava and Celeste reached a lull in their conversation about the recently-deceased Head Gamemaker. "Does it give us a hint about next year?"

"Perhaps." Celeste almost smiled. "Admittedly, even I haven't looked in the envelope yet. But I have an idea of what's going to be in it when my dear uncle makes the announcement. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

She swept off to respond to the exclamations of a gaggle of Capitolite elites.

With another strained smile, Ava said, "It's been a strange year."

"I doubt next year will be...any less strange. It'll probably be even more...interesting. Much more so."

"True. But we'll be ready for whatever comes, won't we, Soraya?"

District Three's current tribute stylist smiled back. "Yes, we'll be ready".

She had been for a very long time.


Soraya, Age: 34, Tribute Stylist, Capitol