Notes: I'm so sorry for how long the wait has been. I've got a running doc with an upwards of like 20k words going that I fully intended to post before the movie dropped! I was really back and forth on breaking this chapter up because all of it has been written with a certain continuity in mind. But I'd gotten far enough that I think I can feel confident about not reverting to any more retroactive adds or edits to this first part at least, haha. What I was really worried about was the separation breaking some of the progression and build-up I was working at. But I think it's turning out okay. I think. 😅😥😐

Anyway, I'm still finishing up the last bits of the rest of this, but I think the next post will be ready within the next week or so! (This'll give me more time for a more thorough revision pass too, at least, haha! IT NEEDS IT. .-.) Thank you so much, everyone, for your patience! I hope you enjoy the read! :D


Chapter 7: Firedance
(Part I)

"Well, aren't you always bringing the cakes with all the cream?"

Lucy Gray eyes the spongy slice of something sweet looking Coriolanus has pushed in front of her while she busies at scooping the yogurt from the bottom of her glass.

He can't help his amusement at what a little critter she seems, licking the dollop clean from her spoon. Her appetite seems to have picked up over the past week.

Good.

Since the night of his drunken stumbling into the kitchen, this is by now, the third of their little shared midnight meals. Though it hardly serves him to be up so late, the convenience of the hour to reserve even a little bit of his precious time to visit Lucy Gray makes it an hour well spent. He's come each time bearing a small treat of sorts, suspecting that she'd likely be more delighted at seeing a dessert tray than the man delivering it. And it would appear that she's taken his allowance for her free roaming of the kitchen quite to heart. Each of those visits, he'd come to find her already seated to whatever scraps she'd manage to toss together for herself. It'd been some kind of cabbage slaw with mixed-in nuts that night, along with a plate of fall fruits with some of the peach diced up into her glassful of yogurt.

Along with the fibers and proteins there, Coriolanus is pleased to see her finish the yogurt. More probiotics she needs for her stomach to get healthy again. He wants to see her built up to a proper Capitol diet.

"There some special occasion going on? It's been a different cake each time you've come by," she muses, setting the cleaned glass down before she reaches for the plate. She prods curiously at the slice with her spoon, smiling at its tender consistency. It looks like a sandwich, with a top and bottom layer and what looks to be cream and a reddish berry-something in between, all of it topped with a dusting of that snowy kind of sugar she can't get enough of. "What were the last ones again? There was that really pillowy stuff…"

"Chiffon cake," he answers with a smile.

"Mmm. It was like biting into a cloud," she recalls, practically licking her lips as she scoops into the slice in front of her. The piece gives to her spoon splitting into it like it were butter. "And the one from a few nights ago?"

"Chocolate castella cake."

"I do love chocolate," she laughs, poking at the spoonful she's got with her finger. "Are all cakes here made so airy and light? What's this one called?"

"This one's a Victoria sponge cake."

Lucy Gray's bright eyes glance past the little scoop and across the table at him. "All with such grand sounding names, too? Wonder who this 'Victoria' was, to have a cake named after her."

Coriolanus smiles. There is such a charm to every roaming thought she voices that most never have any mind to even entertain. She manages to fill even the most banal of them with that natural wonder of hers. He could tell her that no one really knows this. Who this 'Victoria' is or was, or where and when even this dessert was conceived. But he has no taste in dampening any novelty she finds in it. That ability of hers to come up with the most fanciful musings and stories to fill what she can only guess at. And she does so with the readiness of any exuberantly minded child. The one in her has never quite gone in all her years, and he hopes she will exist there in her heart forevermore.

After giving the spoonful her customary whiff to sample its aroma, she finally takes the bite. Her eyes illuminate with the smile that teases the corners of her lips. "Can hardly remember the last time I had raspberries," she hums once that familiar flavor sets off her taste buds. "I love them." Lucy Gray gets a few more bites in, taking the chance to really savor the jam filling, now that she knows what it is. "Thank you for bringing this, Coryo. I wish I could give you something in return, but all I've got are scraps of this…" she laughs, offering her bowl of slaw in jest.

It takes everything in him to resist the natural urge to recoil, but apparently he can't hide his reflexes well enough beneath the polite wave of the hand and shaking head. "No, it's okay," he manages to mumble against the swell of her laughter.

She sets the bowl aside and goes back to poking at the slice of cake. "I know we've all got our weird quirks with what we eat," she hums delightedly before taking another bite. "So what did cabbage do to you to get that funny face looking like it wants to hurl so bad?"

He peers over at her with a poor attempt at containing his burgeoning grin. "Well…" If she could tell him her story about the honey, he could probably stomach this. "We…grew as much as we could during the war. Next to the Grandma'am's flowerbeds, of course. She'd have self-immolated before ever giving those up."

When he earns another song of laughter out of her for the quip, he can't help but feel at least a little gratified here. He's still capable of carrying a competent conversation with her. Getting her to smile, to laugh at all. Not by accident either. And without even an ounce of inebriation to pad it out this time. Though he's sure the sweetness of the cake helps it along.

He pauses, smiling to himself while he thinks of how to best tell this. She'd asked to hear his stories. He wants to tell one just as good as those she weaves up. But Lucy Gray is just as good at listening to stories as she is making them. It's a funny thing, how he can get in front of the cameras and a whole forum of thousands to deliver a speech and easily expect their applause for it. But the crippling pressure of the way she's staring with the spoonful of cake in her mouth, looking like she's hanging onto each one of the words he's still trying to think up just seems to seize his brain for that moment. So he stops thinking so hard. Just says what comes before the words have a chance to dry up again.

"Grandma'am had a knack for knowing certain things. Her 'presentiments,' she'd call them. Told us to start planting some to grow for ourselves. And then the siege happened."

Lucy Gray's pace on the slice of cake slows as she listens on.

"Who would've thought? And we'd end up living on that stuff until I got sick to my stomach. Cabbage soup. Cabbage salad. Cabbage casserole…god." He grimaces as though the very thought would make him vomit where he sits. "Once, I even had a whole head of it stolen right out of my hands on the street," he muses with some morbid humor layered behind his reminiscing. Though his distant, pondering gaze has wandered too far into those memories now to notice the amusement waning from Lucy Gray's countenance. "I…almost felt relieved at not having to suffer another few nights of the stuff. If, you know…we weren't practically starving," he gently laughs. He can only find it in himself to do so with enough years in between now and that bleak memory. "And we'd be neck-deep in more heads and heads of it all the way up to my last year in the Academy."

It's a slow descent, how he sees it dawning on her while she starts numbering the years in her head. Starts remembering whatever she does of that time.

"The year of the Games. When we…met…?" she lowers her eyes in thought. "I know we joked a bit about it then. But you always had nice snacks to bring for me most days."

His mirth, too, begins to sink away when he realizes where her ruminations are leading.

"And you went home each time, then…to nothing but scraps of cabbage for dinner after?" All the light seems gone from her countenance then when she turns her gaze back across the table. "You hardly ever said anything. Why…?"

Because of the Plinth Prize. Because he needed to win. He needed a way to keep from losing their rundown shell of a home and his chances at an education. His entire future.

What the fuck was he supposed to say to this?

"You were the one who needed to survive, Lucy Gray."

As much as he tries, the thought still manages to invade his conscience before he banishes it away completely to the recesses where it belongs. But even that passing momentary second it creeps in is enough to bring with it all the shame it carries, bleeding through his entire being. And even worse yet, having it all come to nothing in the end anyway for all his efforts then. And what's he got to show for it?

You're in the Presidential Manor with your broken-hearted girl sitting in front of you.

He'd never fucking dare say this out loud. Not to her. Not even to himself. So he falls back on what he does know. For all he'd done, for all he'd reaped and wrought, he knew with the certainty of death that at the heart of it all, her survival was what mattered most. He'd managed to do that much, at least. Coriolanus smiles where she can't now.

"What was a few more days of making do?" he tells her. "In the worst of the war, I'd gone maybe a whole week with nothing but those scraps." He points to the bits in her bowl, trying again to regain their blithe spirits when he realizes how much he's managed to dampen her heart again with his own deaf words. "Rabbit food, right?"

Lucy Gray looks down wanly at her near-empty bowl. At least she feels full this time.

"I'm sure you've gone through worse yourself." He means for the lament in his words to urge her away from dwelling on the thought any longer, but his intentions in relieving her guilt don't quite reach.

"…It doesn't matter, Coryo. It's awful. I'm sorry," she speaks quietly. She already knew she'd been the boy's burden then. The circumstances that made her so hardly makes a difference; she understands too well herself what his sentiments are for him to say all this. It's something she'd always feared Maude Ivory might one day figure out and realize for herself, and it's a god-awful feeling to have.

"You didn't do anything, Lucy Gray."

She'd concluded once, too, that he was not at fault for her being in that zoo enclosure. For being reaped. For the districts being in the state that they were in. Even when he'd permitted her every natural right to hate him for it all, there'd never been a touch of it to be found in her heart. The grace of her forgiveness continues to endure even now.

"It doesn't matter how long you've gone. I couldn't even say for myself. Keeping count of the days only makes it worse," she continues to speak to this. "All I ever knew was…I just never wanted to feel what that empty stomach felt like ever again. Made damn sure, too, that Maude Ivory wouldn't ever know." She raises her depleted gaze from the bottom of that bowl of hers at last. "And you either, Coryo. No one should ever have to."

She says it like that unspoken promise imposed on them by the stars above. They were responsible for one another. That was all that mattered. Simple as that.

For someone who has his own talents spinning stories a certain way, somehow he loses the words for it when it's her who's listening. Something uncanny about Lucy Gray Baird being the audience. Something in her gaze, in her attention that just draws out the hidden candor in him with such ease. It's the same reason why he'd spoken to her so openly about his own dead parents across those enclosure bars. His home. His life. All cursory things, but things he'd never otherwise feel inclined to tell any stranger, no matter how perfect.

But he realizes too unbelievably late that there's really nothing novel about what he's telling her this time. No amusement, no charm to be had in any of it. He feels the sands ticking away with the time, right through his fingers. Like all that gold dust lost. He regrets ever bringing this stupid story up at all. Dulling and soiling everything in sight between them.

"I'm sorry," he utters, thinning his lips as he turns his gaze, despondently pondering what else to possibly say. "I'm…absolute shit at telling stories, aren't I…?" The words roll from his tangled tongue before he even realizes. It's her following dead silence that finally draws his hapless gaze back across the table, only to see the child in her cracking through that thick, somber pall cast between them.

That hadn't been…intended.

Lucy Gray can feel the spasm hit her lungs as she bites back the impulses. By the time she manages to bring her hand over that creeping grin at her lips, her entire composure crumbles away beneath it.

"Yeah. You know, you really are," she agrees wholeheartedly. She doesn't know if she might just cry before she dies laughing right then, finding herself unable to fathom this fantastic dummy of a man and his wonderful way with his words.

Okay, so the best kind of humor that seems to work for her are the things that aren't completely untrue. He should really remember not to try so hard, then.

"Doesn't mean I don't want to hear them."

He almost doesn't believe that. But he's cracking that same infectious smile she's got, too, now.

"Well, I've got one for you, then," she says, trying to clear her throat. "A palate cleanser."

Now she's got him rolling right along with her. But sure. It's not like they couldn't use one anyway.

"I don't know about you, but our mamas would've slapped us upside the head for passing up perfectly good food. Got a few licks myself whenever it came to anything with onions in it," she tells, still chuckling to herself. "Can't stand them. Why do the worst things grow so easy, I wonder?" she mutters before digging her spoon into that slice of cake again.

He doesn't mind them himself. But he does remember them being plentiful, too, in their little rooftop 'victory garden.'

"I hid a bulb of that stuff once. Left it in some dark musty corner little me thought no one would find. Hated the thought of a fifth meal in a row of it. Of course, Mama found it a month or something later. By then, it'd multiplied itself a few friends."

Her sheer distaste is more than palpable in how her nose and brows crinkle, but she's still smiling beneath that little frown.

"Would've gotten even more licks for pulling that, too. But we ended up having onions enough for almost a whole week of meals after, so…" she shrugs. "Worked out, I guess."

"Maybe it's a certain touch. I had a strange talent for growing parsley, apparently."

Lucy Gray sings at this, delighting at the charming notion. "Little Coryo with his green thumb… Grows up and gets himself a whole greenhouse," she laughs gently to herself. "If Mama had ever met that little boy peddling his parsley, she'd have taken him up on whatever he was willing to sell."

"You think?"

"Of course. With all our onions? Parsley and onion go together like feathers on a birdie."

The charm of her novel little Covey-isms never fails to delight him. Even if the actual words in all their peculiarity escape him, he remembers their disparate strangeness always bringing some added levity to the exchanging banter. Especially when matched to his own. Against hers, his speech always felt too conventional. Too over-articulated and needlessly urbane.

"…Birds of a covey," he blithely remarks, joining in the lyrical wordplay. Until he sees it again. The tempering smile dampening with the passing sentiment that crosses her thoughts. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything. But she was already reminiscing about her mother, so why not play at the thought? What was the difference?

It takes a moment before dawning on his mind. The Covey were at least still somewhere in the world she could seek out. Somewhere she must know is a place she can't ever go back to. Where had her mother been? Someplace she knows she can't even reach.

Just like his.

He should stop this. No good in dredging up memories of a past life. Of things dead and buried. Lucy Gray is here with him now.

"…Do you think—"

"—Oh, I forgot about these," Coriolanus' words cross over hers as their thoughts coincide.

She pauses, watching as he bends over to reach into the pocket of his jacket draped over the back of his chair. He reveals a wadded kerchief in light colored gingham. Wrapped in its folds are two flower-shaped shortbread cookies. The merest smile teases at her lips when she can already catch a whiff of their aroma—something floral and pungent, just the complement to their little cutout shapes.

There is something strangely nostalgic about this. Bringing back the days when he'd passed puddings, fruits, and cookies hidden away in napkins to his girl across enclosure bars. When everything spoken between them never rose much above a whisper, with the eyes and ears of the onlookers keen all around.

But no…this time was different.

There is nothing between them. He can offer her these things freely, even take her hands in his, cradle them, entwine their fingers if he so wished.

If she'd allowed.

And yet there is an echo in his thoughts that keeps him from doing so. From reaching farther than he dares.

'…Not all cages have ugly steel bars like that old zoo, Coryo.'

There may not be visible bars here, but she sees them in those four walls around them. What's different is he's stepped into that enclosure with her this time, with no one to tell him 'not too close, boy,' lest the beast inside claw his throat clean open. He remembers what had become of that careless imbecile Arachne Crane.

But there is no beast here. Only a bird. His bird. And she needs her cage to keep her safe and sound. To keep her from flying away completely and lost. And perhaps…no bars would be needed if she is made to know her home. If the bird can know that she is safe where she flies back to.

'Convince me otherwise.'

Lucy Gray takes the little simple things into her palm. Once she brings them to her nose to sample closer, she realizes what those herb-like flecks baked into them must be. It's unmistakable.

"Lavender cookies? Now you're spoiling me, Coryo."

He smiles.

"These smell wonderful," she hums before taking her first bite into one. "And they taste even more lovely." Buttery and soft with each bit that crumbles between her teeth.

"…Like bedtime?" he asks, recalling that first of those strange, lyrical musings.

She shakes her head, laughing at his gentle tease. "Like something warm…" She pauses to savor what she tastes a little more, looking for the words for it. "Like a summer day." Closing her eyes, she takes another small bite from its petal edge. "…A mama's hug."

She isn't sure what it is, but it tastes of a familiar feeling. The two little cookies here are plain, without the fanciful finishings of the other desserts he's shown her so far. There aren't the complex layers of flavors in them like those cakes, but she tastes someone's touch in them.

"Did your cooks make these too?" she asks, curious.

Coriolanus shakes his head. "No, these were from a close acquaintance. I don't have your kind of sweet tooth to finish them, so I thought to save you some."

A close acquaintance?

A friend, he means? Giving it some thought, Lucy Gray realizes that other than Sejanus, she has never known who Coriolanus Snow's friends are. She is reminded, then, of the endless treats they'd always brought to the Covey on their visits. How there always seemed to be far too much for just the two of them to finish. As though whoever made them had the intention for it all to be shared among others. How sweet the boys had been to always think of them. For her boy to think of her.

"What were you about say?"

Lucy Gray looks up at the sound of his voice. "Hm?"

"I talked over you earlier. Sorry."

"Oh…" she murmurs. She goes back to tracing her idle fingers along the petal cutout contours of the cookies. "…It's nothing," she laughs, deciding the opportune moment for it had passed. "Forgot already."

Before that discerning curiosity of his has any chance to keep probing at the thought, she plucks the edges of the gingham kerchief back over the cookie-and-a-half remaining.

"You're not going to finish them?"

"I think I'll save these for later."

The way that small, brimming ember glows just enough beneath her gentle countenance is enough to push Coriolanus' lingering ambivalence aside. He's become familiar with her manners and habits well enough now. And that's on top of spending years learning to read the intentions behind all those accidental gestures and gazes people can never fully command. He figures, too, that there are just too many words left unsaid between them. He can forego a few more as long as she seems content.

So he takes the chance then to fill that void with others on his mind. He asks her how she has been adjusting. How has she been spending her days. Her idle time. She has so much of it now, he wants to know what else her heart might wish for to occupy it all.

"I just watch a lot of television most of the time, I guess. There's always something on, but I like the hand-drawn ones that show in the afternoons."

The cartoons that air in the hours after children come home from school. It doesn't surprise him that they should endear her so, with that child's heart still bright and alive within her. He learns with the more she shares that kids grew up with only the oldest kinds in District 12. And with so little access to functioning screens, they'd mostly existed in the form of faded prints and worn comics.

"When the mood strikes, I'll go for walks outside. Especially when the sun is high out. The spring breeze is a lot milder here than in Twelve."

He knows this with certainty already. Ever since the incident the previous week, his security detail has been noting keenly from a distance where she goes when she leaves this room. She spends more time out in the gardens than anywhere else, it would seem. But he also knows for a fact that much of that time is also spent in his greenhouse. He sees traces of her presence left every time he visits in the evenings. He's never managed to run into her there, but he always knows when she's come and gone. He knows she is mindful of how he keeps his things in order there, always replacing his tools back where she finds them. Making the effort to leave the space as pristine as she finds it.

But there are the smallest of signs that don't escape his notice—how one pair of his shears might be placed just off-kilter from the rest. How the watering can might be sitting to the left of his tool cart instead of the right. How by the time he's come at the end of his day, he finds some rows of his flowerbeds neatly pruned, others with freshly added topsoil, and those that were in need of it, all watered and tended. All of this takes time and care, and yet she speaks nothing of it. He can't imagine she means to hide the fact. Not when he can plainly see with his own eyes that fresh arrangement made from the cuttings from his own gardens, housed in its flawless crystalline vase set on the console table by her door.

"I take it you've been hanging onto that key I gave you?" It's more of a prompt than a question. An invitation for her to reveal what she thinks to all on her own.

Lucy Gray smiles as she tugs at something from under the flounces of her collar. "Close to my heart…" she says, drawing out the thin silver chain tucked beneath her blouse. Hanging on it is the little engraved key in question. "...So I'll always know exactly where it's at." So she never risks losing it like she had his last precious gift. "Took the chain from one of your necklaces," she adds, nodding towards the dresser stocked full of them and all manners of jewelry for her use. "Hope you don't mind."

In the eyes of a girl who'd seen so little, much less touched, and almost never even worn any of it in her life, the pieces all dazzled her. So she'd chosen the plainest of them she could find to borrow that chain from, tucking the little orphaned garnet pendant safely away with the rest.

And certainly, he couldn't care less for her ransacking of the things he's provided. Vandalized drapes, a broken cup, and now some plundered jewelry. What did it all matter when she needed something to safeguard that key in the best way she could think to? Dear Lucy Gray. He must see to it, then, to provide her with a proper piece that will better suit the accessory. One that will better suit her.

"…You still haven't taken me up on that offer for a walk in the garden."

It's Lucy Gray, as ever, who cuts across that lingering silence that always manages to find its way between them.

"I barely have time during the day as is. You know that, Lucy Gray." It sounds too much like an excuse, even if it's true.

"We can walk under the moon and stars, then. What's wrong with that?"

No matter how absurd the thought sounds, he knows she actually means this. They're already sharing midnight meals. Is a midnight stroll on the estate grounds so strange?

Surely, she has to know they can't go doing that.

But…really, what's stopping them?

If there was any single man who had every liberty to walk in any damned place he wanted, whenever he wanted, it was the fucking President of Panem.

But it's Lucy Gray asking this. There must be a reason she has to be asking this.

She wants something to do.

Somewhere to go.

Someone to be with.

What better way to show his bird that these walls are not her cage, then, but her home? All of this. To do as she pleases with every liberty the President can allot. The manor. The entire Capitol beyond it. Pacify that urge in her wanderer's heart to fly away. To be lost again to the unknown wilds.

"…What do you think about going out into the city instead, then?"

The thought has hardly even articulated completely in his head before he's already uttered it aloud. But it seems to do the trick, drawing her curiosity by degrees. There's that honed skeptic in her that senses some catch, some condition, some deal to be had here. But he can see, too, as it slowly loses out to the fascination brewing in her careful gaze, no matter how much she tries to temper it.

"You're talking about a night out, Coryo?" That coy little smile starts shaping her lips with the cautious tilt of her head.

He doesn't even know what it is he's proposing yet. Just get her to agree first. Details can be hashed out later. And there's one night he can think of that can be made available with certainty.

"This Saturday. You busy then?"

Lucy Gray smirks at the stupid quip. "How about I check my schedule and get back to you?"

The room begins to fill with the layers of their laughter intermingling.

There's something that warms her insides at the talk of all this. They've barely even got a plan going, but it's something she wishes they could have had the chance to do even just once back in District 12. But here? In the Capitol streets in plain view? Once her thoughts roam that far ahead, she pauses. What's to be expected once she sets foot out anywhere beyond those gates? It's hard enough to even feel right in the safest place for her in the world here. What would it be like out in the city? Among the people? Being seen again?

The trees of the woods never made her feel so anxious.

No, Lucy girl, this is silly.

If anyone is going to be drawing eyes, it's the President who she's accompanying. Who the hell is she anymore to anyone? Already dead to the world. And she'd been perfectly fine being just another of its ghosts. No, she shouldn't agonize over something so inconsequential. This is an invitation that she's going to take him up on. They'll go out into town. Go places, do things. And she'll appreciate it, whatever it is, because she gets to feel like she's someone who matters to somebody again.

"Should I dress nice for this?" she asks, not even sure what the occasion might even call for.

"You can dress however nice you want, Lucy Gray."

What a political answer for a man to tell a girl. Doesn't exactly help, but with that whole closet full of stuff, she'll figure it out.

"All right…Saturday it is, then, Mr. Snow," she answers.

Like a coalescence of something so familiar that hasn't been felt in far too long, she finds that taste of a new warm tune on her breath again. It's bright, coming like an embrace. It fills her ears. Her arms. Her heart. Even the room all around.

How sweet and delicate the sound.


'Miss Lucy Gray Baird.'

It's been a while since she's been called this, and possibly even longer so that she's felt like a lady again. She peers in the mirror, at that pretty miss she sees staring back.

Mirrors.

She even forgets what a luxury that simple thing is. Even a broken shard could make for a decent one well enough in Twelve. There were no such things out in the woods, only the open still waters on a calm day to look into. But why, even? There'd been exactly no one to look decent for out there.

But Lucy Gray always made a point to look her best when she could. Not for anyone's eyes. Only her own sense of self.

She runs her fingers through her hair, appreciating what the stylist was able to do for her pitiful tresses. Coming up on this day, she'd asked for one to come groom and trim it down a bit. The regular bathing had done well enough to clean it all on her own, but it'd still been a struggle to tame it into anything other than complete mayhem. Walks in the garden were one thing, but she couldn't go out into town still looking halfway like some wood witch.

The thought makes her giggle. The President bringing some wild girl on a night out in the heart of Panem's jewel city. Like some funny social prank. Bring on the hidden cameras. Wouldn't that be more fun to watch than a bunch of kids killing each other in a cage fight?

Her hair feels so much fuller and lighter than it's ever been. She watched the things the stylist had done for it—shortening it in layers, giving it a good shampooing along with other mixes of lathers and goop. She'd even left her with a number of things like serums and conditioners, all sorts of bottles of products that were unheard of in Twelve, and a regimen for it all she'd had to scrawl down so she wouldn't forget. And what wonders it had all worked. How much easier it'd been to pull her brush through now. Easier to tame, and easier to style ways that would have taken her hours with what she had between herself and Barb Azure.

Lucy Gray remembers the woman's surprise when she'd started fingering through it all to assess what she had to work with.

"You've got such lovely waves. It's going to take a bit of time and some good products to undo some of the damage here, though. I'll trim away some of the ends to clean it up a bit."

And she could glean, too, the swell of curiosity in her the farther along she'd worked. That respectful but prying chattiness that she remembers even of the neighborhood salon workers in Twelve. But more so, it'd been the wayward passing glances the woman would steal every so often, peering at this strange client in the mirror between snips of her shears when she didn't think she'd notice.

What a bizarre mystery she must have seemed to the woman. A lady with such raw and roughened hair unseen among any citizen of the Capitol. And other oddities like her unusual accent. Her seeming unfamiliarity with any of the regular beauty and care products she'd been shown. It'd been obvious this lady was not any ordinary resident of the Presidential Manor here.

"Goodness…looks like someone's been hacking away at it with a knife or something…"

The stylist's offhanded remark had been little more than a jest, really. She'd had no way of knowing Lucy Gray had no other means to tend to its length through her years out in the woods. She only politely laughed along with her pleasantries.

After what perhaps had been the woman's fifth peripheral glance caught through the mirror, she'd finally inquired as to what had doubtlessly been lingering on her mind.

"...So…you must be some close acquaintance of the President's, I take it?"

Her casual observance had come with a harmless little grin. And to that, she only spared a brief answer.

"Just a guest of his."

"'Just'...?"

Not a single beat missed.

Lucy Gray recalled that teeming smile she'd worn then, hands and attention uninterrupted in the middle of dividing and clipping up her locks before taking her shears to the free ends. For all the coquettish insinuations in the woman's leisured tones, Lucy Gray hadn't even noticed her own faint echoing of her expression. Not until she'd glimpsed that telltale curl on her lips reflected back through the mirror. Not until she'd found herself tempering it in a fluster that left her cheeks warm beneath the skin.

"...It's what he insists. Yes."

The clinical shift in her demeanor hadn't been entirely intended, but it'd done well enough to prompt the stylist back into minding her task.

"Because of the damage, your hair's just a bit dull right now. But it doesn't have to be. With the right TLC, we can get the luster back into these pretty brown locks. Make them shine like silk charmeuse."

She probed no further after that, and the woman continued on to finish her swift work within short time.

Peering into that same reflection looking back at her, Lucy Gray runs her fingers through those tresses once more to straighten the waves out. It's still a bit brittle, but she's at least able to make those locks look like something that isn't an absolute crow's nest. Out of all the accessories that line the compartments of the vanity before her, she chooses only a silver comb for the night, wrought into the shape of a butterfly among its flora. Tilting her head to the side, she twists a lock back behind her ear, tucking the silver comb in to fix it once she gets it the way she likes.

She studies the lady she sees in the mirror. It's an unfamiliar sight, just having one to look into each day, and it's still something she's learning to get used to again. It almost feels strange, getting to see herself like this. Getting to see everything that shows when you think it doesn't. Everything that's hidden when you think it's painted clear as day. And she's seen herself lose those rough edges over the past few weeks. Seen herself regain what she barely remembers was even there to see anymore.

Lucy Gray smiles.

Smiles at those long brown tresses around her shoulders. Smiles at the light dusting of shadow she's added with the fine liner to her eyes. The fair, amaranthine color to her lips that brightens the way they curl just so to match the rest of those outlined features. How enthralled she's been by how easily the pigments she's got here blend onto the skin. It's taken her several retouches before finding the right hand without overwhelming her face in their colors. (Just a little goes a long way with the good stuff, she's learning.)

She smiles, too, at the pretty floral dress she's picked out for herself from those endless racks in the closet, with their gossamer butterfly sleeves fluttered to the elbows. The hazy, printed petals like sheer watercolor floating over the delicate silk of something light and warm—mauve, or primrose, or something pale-pinkish. Something about it reminds her of home. Of her wildflower meadows behind their house. Maybe this way, she can take them with her wherever they're about to go, just so she doesn't feel so heartsick for it these thousand miles away.

Getting to see herself in that mirror makes her miss being able to do this, playing at making herself feel pretty again. And it's got nothing to do with civility or survival. It isn't the vanity of covering or correcting flaws or shortcomings. No, her mama always taught her to love her face. But she loved pretty things, too. She loved what color could do to make those pretty things shine even more. It was the small things, the small choices and touches that made her feel like herself and not just some version of it. She loved looking her best and truest no matter what the occasion. Even for the Reaping, when called to march to her own slaughter—she resolved to walk that line looking every bit her own whole self. No one was going to take that away from her.

She's glad to feel like that Lucy girl again. To see her with her own eyes.

The three arrhythmic knocks at her door turn her attention from her mirror then. She finds herself scurrying as much as her uneven gait can bring her across the room, but it's those strange flutters in her belly that give her pause just as she reaches for that handle.

You've done this plenty times already, Lucy girl. Don't keep a fella waiting.

It's as though she has to will away that hesitation that stays her hand before she can bring herself to turn it. Even then, she can only manage a sliver for her eyes to steal a glimpse first. Something funny she still feels in that tummy of hers, that keeps her from tossing that white door completely open even if she feels all that eagerness to. She lingers behind it like a curtain waiting for the reveal. And the sight of those gentle brown peepers peering through are all it takes to earn her visitor's beaming smile in return.

With a tilt of the head, he questions the little door crack, "Am I early?"

He leaves it to her to draw that curtain when she's good and ready. Waits for that door to slowly swing open, perfectly silent on its shiny hinges. Until all the obstructions part and give way between the lady and her escort for the evening.

It takes little effort for Lucy Gray to reflect back what she sees in front of her this time.

"How'd I do?" she asks unassumingly, clearing the door frame. She glances down at her whole self with a brush of her hand to ease out a few folds in her skirt. "I still know how to clean up good, don't I?"

There's something in her that feels like little Lucy girl again, finally grown enough to wear one of Mama's dresses for the first time. Getting to show herself off looking like a proper lady. She's only teasing here, but part of her wants to hear what he thinks, being her company for the night.

"Think I look Capitol enough to be hitting up the big city streets?" she beams, if only to quell those butterflies still floating around in her stomach.

The usual tacit smile he's molded into the young President Snow's signature hardly gives anything away. He glances her over once before answering.

"No."

A simple and unembellished response.

It sounds humorless enough to bring her to a dampening pause. She can't help her eyes lowering demurely back to the skirt of her dress. Maybe what she'd chosen was too plain. Too boring. She's nothing glamorous, but she's never imagined herself being, never felt herself the plain and boring type. But what does she know of Capitolite fashions?

That was a stupid thing to ask. Maybe there's still time to pick out something else…

"You look like you, Lucy Gray."

Beautiful Lucy Gray. Just as she is.

It doesn't matter that she's dressed in something he thinks his mother would have worn. The districts are behind on just about anything relevant, but it has always been clear to him that her natural radiance was something that shone effortlessly from her presence—everything inside born out, from the baubles in her hair to the trimmings on her sleeve. What those things were never mattered. They weren't the things his eyes ever saw. Not the way she'd shone behind her guitar. When she'd been among her most cherished of keepsakes. Among the most beloved of people. Spending the most of her brief, treasured time right where she wanted to be. He'd witnessed it all before. He wishes to see it always whenever he looks to her. And he thinks, in spite of all things, that he might even see a bit of it again in her now.

He thinks he finds it there in that little self-deprecating laugh she gives when it dawns on her. At least he gets the humor right this time.

Lucy Gray can hardly help it herself. Letting this Capitol stiff pull the rug from under her like that. She almost wants to kick herself in the head if she could reach that bum leg of hers high enough. Stupid boys.

Stupid, sweet, honest boys.

It might be the rouge on her cheeks helping it along, but she's sure of the color welling in them now when she feels the warmth pooling under her skin there.

How she's forgotten that feeling. When a boy says something nice to you—something genuinely nice. That sweet, tingly bubbling it sends right by the ears. Feeling like your insides are grinning so hard, it might just leak all the way to the surface and make you look either like an idiot or a psychopath. You can never tell which, but it's something probably definitely not pretty.

And how Lucy Gray loves her pretty things. All those pretty feelings. This feels like one of them, even if she might be looking a fool on top of it all. Something in her hardly really even minds that.

And what of her boy?

Can she still spot him there in that man?

Sure, he appears the same as ever. But also not. Something in his presence rings familiar. But not all the stuff on its surface. She isn't sure if he's a stranger in the shell of a friend, or someone she knows so profoundly, buried deep in his guise.

Both.

Neither.

Does it really matter?

Lucy Gray takes a good look at him then. Like as though if she squints any harder, she might somehow be able to tell. But all she sees is the unchanged fairness of his complexion. How it is always made to glow against the immaculate sable wool he always seems to prefer. Two out of the three-piece suit he's chosen for the night bear nothing but that rich black. The only touch of color on him are the striking contrasts that trim the edges of his brilliantly brocaded waistcoat.

Her gaze then is drawn, following the only other thing matching that color on his person, down to the tuft of it hanging loosely in his forgotten grasp at his side.

"That a gift for me?" she teases. The curl on her lips only deepens seeing him blink away that utterly blanched expression he's wearing on that funny face. Like he's just been kicked into remembering the thing he's got in his hand there. Like he's been stalled speechless, stuck in something between absentmindedness and awe.

She isn't sure why that is, but his silent gawking makes her feel that inscrutable bubbling inside she can't explain. Maybe it's just because she hasn't had anyone come by her door, properly asking on her in so long. Hasn't felt seen in any way like this in all of those past five years. Hasn't had her efforts and delight in them acknowledged, because she's had no reason to, all alone in those woods.

Yeah, sure. She chalks it up to that.

And just like that, the glimpse of that demure boy spirits itself away, and the President returns in him. Coriolanus Snow does the patrician thing and raises the token he's brought with him—an imperial rose of impeccable Panem red, stem shorn of its thorns. He presents the proud bloom to her between his two fingers.

Something about red never really sang to her. Not the way other colors did. Red was bold. Sometimes even overpowering. She never liked how it could steal your eyes over the rest of the palette just by being there. Though it wasn't to say she didn't like some of the things it meant sometimes. Some of the things it evoked.

Flame red.

Passion red.

Love red.

She wonders what it means to him. To carry it. To give it away. Give it to her.

Unlike that day at the train station, Lucy Gray accepts the gift offered to her this time. Instead of tasting its petals on her tongue, she brings it to her nose to sample its scent instead. Awash in the fragrance so strong, she only realizes then that it is not the one that's been teasing at her senses since the moment she'd opened her door to him. The aroma hangs like a veil between them, carrying the faint but palpable notes of something else entirely. The sweetness of roses is but one essence among them. Another gentle inhale lets her follow all their traces back to the man standing before her. It's something she can't place, because it's so markedly different.

It's his scent.

And she knows as anything with him, 'different' is only ever deliberate.

Maybe he's figured now, the lure of aromas to her. After all, it'd drawn out the delinquent in her to go from trespassing to breaking and entering, following the trail of his private garden. What exactly is he daring her to do with this?

She brings the red bloom closer to her face, until its velvet petals brush against her lips and the tip of her nose. She needs to take another full breath of it again to clear the haze from her senses.

"I'd wear it on me if it matched what I've got on," she muses with whatever she can scrape up in her head to say. "Thank you, though. It's lovely. Like all your flowers." She manages what she can only feel is a halfhearted smile before leaving the doorway to put his precious rose away somewhere.

Coriolanus' expression pales as she disappears back into her room. She bears none of the skepticism of that girl he'd met at the train station. None of her audaciousness either. But something in him prefers that memory to the seemingly tempered acceptance she's given just now. Like as though that girl's brilliant colors have faded in the woman she's grown into.

Or, perhaps…it's the tinted lenses of the present that makes it all seem brighter through the memory's eye. He's never been too good a judge of this himself. He only hopes that this stem won't be left sitting alone to wither away in some drinking glass on the window sill like the last.

He decides to put this out of mind. There is still an entire spectacle beyond a pretty, red rose awaiting her for the night. More to do, more to take in. She has never seen this world, and there is a whole spectrum of color and lights outside of these walls to fill her sights.

"Come on," he says as Lucy Gray emerges again into the hallway. "Our ride's waiting for us."


Notes: I wanted a large part of this chapter to touch on Lucy Gray's feelings being here. How she's still feeling herself out again being 'back' in a sense? Like she's here, but she's also not really all here? Having been outside of the actual world for so long, I can only imagine what the process of her adjusting back to normal life might feel like. And to a life that's already hardly 'normal' to her to begin with? I think she desires some semblance of that normalcy again, even if she doesn't really know what that is yet. There's plenty she can remember and senses that yearning for, but it's finding it in this place that's going to be a challenge for her. And how Coryo goes about helping her with it is something that's going to keep progressing along the story. Intent VS action is always going to be the theme with him here.

If all goes well, I think might have part two of this up within a week or so (and just in time to celebrate the release of the film!) I GOT MAH TIX. I AM SO HYPE. LESSGOOOO, FAMMMM! (*goes back to listening to Can't Catch Me Now on eternal loop while I cry in my cave corner* I can't get over how perfect and heartbreaking that song is. Help. .-.)

As always, thank you everyone who's been reading along! I PROMISE, PROMISE THIS IS LAYING OUT THE GROUNDWORK FOR SOMETHING THAT WILL BE WORTH IT IN THE NEXT PART, FRIENDS. D:

11/5/23