Acacia Springwood, District Seven

Acacia was starting to suspect that she was going to die before she was allowed to be alone again. From the trains she was taken to the Training Center, where all of the other tributes were gathered. After that she was taken to her apartment where she met her mentor and sign partner, then she was taken to an entirely different area of the building where three excited people were chirping at her about one thing or another. They moved so fast and talked so similarly that she could barely tell them apart. It was almost as if they were smaller parts of one larger creature.

"So. We learned a bit from last time." One of them said.

"Yes we did. Personal growth is very important."

"Very important."

"Is there any particular reason I should care?" Acacia asked. The prep team continued on as if they hadn't heard her.

"So last year, we listened to advice from our tribute about her makeover. And it worked really well! She got to the finals last year."

"Lovely girl, really."

"Super lovely. But what we are trying to say is, do you have any preferences as to what we change? You've got good bone structure, although you do look a little starvation skinny."

"There is such a thing as too skinny, it turns out."

Acacia supposed that she should thank these people. Before this moment, she hadn't thought that she was capable of killing. "What are you asking me exactly?"

One of them sighed dramatically, "We're asking you if you want to weigh in on how we make you pretty. There's only so much we're allowed unfortunately. No skin dyes or advanced beautitech. But we could cut or dye your hair, do your nails, that sort of thing. And we are taking requests!"

"Although you can't say 'nothing', because you need a lot of work. I mean look at your nails."

She held her hand up in front of her and inspected her nails briefly: plain, short, clearly bitten in places. Acacia had never really thought about her nails before. She wasn't even entirely sure what you would do with them.

On some impulse, she turned her hand over and looked at her palm, running a finger over her calluses. She used to be proud of her hands. They were tough, like her, and they were strong. But perhaps they were too strong.

Her mind traveled back to the night of the top nine interviews, the night of the riots. Acacia hadn't meant any harm that night, exactly. She was just tired and angry and full of the dangerous notion that the world could change. The streets were full of people who felt the same as her. The air was full of hope.

She had gotten carried away. The initial violence hadn't bothered her much. How often did the peacekeepers whip someone publicly? How often was a home ransacked without explanation? The Capitol sowed destruction with their every action. Why couldn't the districts respond in kind.

Acacia still wasn't sure who had given her the molotov. She's not sure she even knew what it was when she threw it. All she knew was that her blood was singing and the world felt right.

Until that molotov hit a tree and the forest started to burn.

"I don't care what you do." Acacia growled, "if this theater makes you feel better about killing children, do what you want."

Chenille Garcia, District Eight

"A little bit lackluster, isn't she?" Chenille heard one of the stylists say. She couldn't tell which one it was because her eyes were stinging from the soap. After meeting her mentor, a particularly intimidating Career woman who barely talked to her, Chenille was ushered off to her prep team to make her look 'presentable'. They had pushed her from one station to the other, plucking at her and scrubbing her until her skin ached. It reminded her of when she was younger and some of her bullies held her head in a pee filled toilet. The water was cleaner, but she was just as helpless.

Looks were a complicated subject for Chenille. She knew early enough that she wasn't pretty. Her childhood was spent watching the standard propaganda videos and comparing the appearances of the women she saw there with her own face. Her skin seemed the wrong color, her nose too sharp, her elbows too bony. When she discovered horror movies, it was like she had discovered an entirely new world. The heroines in her favorite films were still pretty, but it was an entirely different kind of beauty. They were simple, relatable. Some of them even looked like her. Most importantly, these girls were clever and brave and resilient. They didn't need to be beautiful. Beautiful didn't always survive.

"I'm not lackluster." She protested, "I'm relatable."

"Relatable to who, honey?" one of the Capitolites said.

The sentence hit her like a punch to the gut. Ever since she was reaped, Chenille had tried to keep sane by thinking of it as her own personal horror movie. She was the protagonist, the final girl, and no matter how tough things got she would be able to get through them and see her family again. But she forgot to realize that if she was in a movie, she had an audience. And the audience was the Districts wouldn't be able to afford the money to give her sponsorship items. That meant the people she had to dazzle were people that she had nothing in common with. She thought back to the propaganda films she saw in the daytime, and of Kallia Haversham. Is that what relatable looked like in the Capitol?

"Does everybody here look like they were cut from marble?" she complained, "How do I even compete with that?"

"Apologize Aeris.." another voice said. Chenille imagined that it was from the woman behind her, styling her dark brown hair.

"I'm just telling the truth." The prep member called Aeris answered,

"You told a truth that was both harsh and useless. That's called being rude." The voice answered, then her tone shifted as she addressed Chenille, "Don't pay her any mind. She's just lazy. It's our job to make you stand out. So that's what we're going to do."

"I'm not sure I want to stand out, exactly." She thought back to all of the heroes from her movies. How everyone rooted for them even if they didn't instantly catch the eye, "I want to...I want people to think I could be their sister. Or their daughter. Or their friend. Can… can you do that?"

"Of course we can do that." Chenille felt the woman's fingers run through her hair, and was silently grateful that she found someone willing to help her this early in the Games.

Frazier Nelson, District Three

The Capitolite woman circled Frazier, a focused look in her eye. After she finished she stopped, looked him up and down, then grumbled to herself as she circled him again. Frazier found the whole thing rather comforting. It was like being back home at the station, with one production assistant or another fussing at him or his father speaking to him in short clipped sentences. It turned out that the Capitol was exactly what he thought it would be: the whole thing was just a show. Thankfully, Frazier was one hell of a performer.

"If you're looking for imperfections darling, you're not going to find any." he said to the woman, "At least not any that someone of your taste can't easily fix. I may be from the districts, but I know beauty when I see it. And I can maintain appearances with the best of them."

"You're arrogant." the woman, he was pretty sure her name was Mariana, answered.

"Arrogance isn't a problem. It makes me interesting."

"It makes you easy to kill." she retorted, though Frazier didn't get the impression she cared either way. She lifted his chin, looking at his various angles.

"We've all got to go sometime." he said, with a blinding smile, "And I'll make it something to remember."

Suddenly, Mariana broke into a grin, "Three has become a Career district after all. It's been years since I've had someone worth putting work into. We're going to make you shine, Nelson."

She let go of him, and started to rummage through her supplies. It was so easy to pretend that he was back at District Three. All of this was just one more interview, one more promotional tour. Sure, he'd have to kill some children afterwards, but once that was done he would have everything he wanted.

"Is your fellow career as prepared as you are?" the woman asked, and Frazier had to hold back a snort.

"Valency? No. She's barely a career at all. She goes to a fancy school for geniuses most of the time. Only does career training after school, and even then she doesn't always show up."

Frazier had known Valency since before he became a career. She was eight and he was ten when they first met at her father's TV station, where she was being interviewed about her first big invention. They barely talked, but from that moment Frazier knew that she hated her. She was carefree and unfocused and surrounded by two loving parents. Frazier always had to work to seem that effortless. He had to fight for attention while Valency just had it.

Since then, Frazier had seen Valency as a distant rival. He tried to make a song every time she invented something new, which left him with over a dozen albums by the time he was fourteen. He even invited her to one of his first concerts. That had been a mistake. He had come down with bronchitis and forgot to cancel. His father forced him to perform anyway, and he rasped his way through a set in utter humiliation. The crowd had laughed at him, booing him off the stage. It was the worst moment of his life and Valency had been there to see it. That seemed to be the way of things. Valency Adamant was always there to put a wrench in his perfect plans.

Why had she decided to volunteer during his Hunger Games?

"Sit down." Mariana said, waving towards a stylist chair, "Let's make you better than you already are."

That was exactly what he was here for. Frazier sat down in the chair with a smile.

Revalie Satyr, District Ten

One of her prep team handed her a mirror, and looked at her expectantly. It took all of her self control to not throw it against the wall. It wasn't that she looked bad. In fact, she thought that she cleaned up quite nicely. The prep team had somehow managed to control her curly red hair, which they allowed to cascade down in a high ponytail. Her skin was clearer than usual, and her eyebrows no longer threatened to overtake the rest of her face.

The problem was that looking as presentable as she did only brought back bad memories. It made her think of parties back when her father was mayor, and her sister and her were paraded around like dolls. Or the time after his death, when her uncle insisted that she talk to the peacekeepers looking as presentable as possible.

"Dirty is the same thing as guilty in their minds." she remembered him telling her, "They're already trying to pin this on you. Don't give them any leverage."

Revalie never cared much about appearances. Maybe that was why every time she looked even halfway presentable, it was on someone else's orders. She hated how powerless it made her feel, how used. But there was no choice at the moment. If she wanted to survive, she needed to use every possible advantage she could get. And appearances were incredibly important in the Hunger Games.

"My ancestors were technically from District Ten." The man who gave her the mirror said, "Way back when there was some mobility. I'm trying to work my way up to being an escort there. What's it like? Last thing I heard about was the last mayor being murdered."

Revalie's blood turned to ice as her father was brought up. Why was her luck so bad? First she got a mentor from District Ten, now someone who kept up on the news was part of her prep team. It was as if she was cursed by her past.

"That was years ago." She said, attempting to feign casualness, "And they never found out who did it. As for recent events...Well, actually do you know about my district partner?"

It felt wrong gossiping about Rudy. She hadn't properly met him, and only seen him a couple of times when the church came out to trade their goods. He was always with a partner, or in small groups. Church folk never went outside alone. But if she was to avoid talking about her own past, she would have to find someone with a more dramatic story than hers. Rudy was the only person in District Ten who even came close. Him being reaped alongside her was the only bit of luck she had so far.

The man raised his eyebrow in curiosity. "Only what I saw during the reaping. He certainly looks odd doesn't he?"

"It's more than that. He's from a cult."

"A cult? Really?"

Revalie wasn't sure if it was a cult, exactly. She didn't know the exact requirements that had to be met. But the church on the outskirts of District Ten always unsettled her a little. They had their own food, their own activities, even their own schools. The only time they came out of the church was to trade with the peacekeepers.

"I've heard some weird things about that church." Revalie continued, "They believe demons walk the earth or something. And that part of their congregation can see them. A peacekeeper told me they do blood rituals. And that Rudy lost his eye in one. But no one knows what exactly goes on in there. They don't let other people in."

This was a dirty trick, talking about someone else to keep her own secrets. But she had spent years walking underneath the shadow of her father's death. The one good thing about being forced into the Hunger Games was that not she was finally around people who didn't know who she was. She would do anything to preserve that anonymity as long as possible.

She knew she looked like a doll, but she wasn't going to let anyone use her again.

AN: It's been a super long time hasn't it? I am sorry for the delay. Can't say I have an excuse. But we're into our second round of PoVs! And to make things go a little faster, I'm doing four people per chapter now. Hopefully I haven't lost too many of you, because I am going to finish this fic if it kills me. If you're still reading, please let me know either with a review or a pm or...whatever really. I just want to hear from you. Thank you so much for reading!