The prep team was gathered around me like a laugher filled gaggle of school girls, all blushing and whispering, which was funny considering there were no women present. They kept circling me, eyeing me, touching me, and talking with excitement about their plans, causing my skin to prickle, and heart to race in unpleasant ways. One seemed very intent on getting a particular reaction out of me as I stood naked for all to see.
He was a stout man with a waterfall of silvery blond hair that tumbled and cascaded from his head, and bright vivid makeup about his eyes that seemed to be an obscure representation of a butterfly. He ran a hand along my chest with a hungry smile. I clenched up instinctively, teeth gritting together as I did. I didn't like the way he was touching me.
"Oh he's a nice one!" the man gushed looking me over. "Muscular and tight!"
When I felt the finger running down my spine flatten out into a groping hand as it descended to dangerously low position I was ready to kill. They finally seemed to take notice when he took things too far I turned on him with raised fists. The stylist and senior beautition intervened, holding his hands up in a placating manner and walking between us.
"Now, now, that's enough." he said before looking at me. "You're just about perfect as is," he explained eyeing where bands of muscle had formed through virtue of my work. "So we're going to go for a 'natural look.'" he said bobbing the first and second fingers on each hand as he spoke. "Why don't you put on your underwear and we'll go from there."
"Oh pooh!" scoffed the stout man. "You never let me have any fun Leon!"
The stylist who seemed to be going for a 'natural look' himself and seemed to proudly wear his wrinkles with only a thin caking of makeup rolled his eyes. "Ajax, you have plenty of fun on your own, besides I'm sure our boy here would break that lovely face of yours if you pushed the issue."
"That's not all I'd push!" Ajax said in a sing-song tone, winking suggestively.
"Don't we know it." one of the others who'd moved away to ready his supplies muttered, the least interested in my form of the group.
My stomach knotted with the line of conversation, and Ajax glared daggers into his back, but like with everything else I pushed my emotions away, separating myself from what was going on around me, and refused to let the moment in. It was something I'd learned how to do a long time ago, something I was good at. Still, I put on my undergarments a little more quickly that I would have normally, the men giggled.
"I want a full scrub, nails filed, I'm going to fetch the bronzer and oil," Leon instructed Ajax and the disinterested man. To the third he gave a wry smile. "Cassiel, I want you to go check on our little friend." And like that the youngest was dipping out of one door while Leon stepped out of another.
After being given a stool to sit I watched slightly transfixed as the fourth man began to wash, buffer and pick at my hands and nails with a number of little tools and brushes. "What is this stain? This, pink, red? You're a more tan in other places." he mused, his best attempt at smalltalk most likely.
"Blood." I said giving him my short reply.
All work stopped in surprise, "What?"
"It's blood stain," I murmured, still being practical, still removed from the now. "I'm a butcher, when you work with blood long enough it gets into your skin. I also didn't wash very well before coming here."
I noticed a twinkle in the man's eyes, "The last few Tributes have been herders or breeders, but a butcher? We can definitely work with that!"
Suddenly all work on my hands stopped, instead a certain amount of detail went into accentuating my jaw line, adding shade to make it look even more square and powerful than it was already. I never gave much stock to my own looks before, but apparently I had a natural, rugged look. The words 'swoon worthy' were tossed about with some regularity.
"Butcher, I love it!" Leon enthused returning with the bronzer and oil around the same time Cassiel did from his little excursion.
"It will be especially nice with that little brat next door as your counterpart!" Cassiel added. "She is a blubbering mess, doesn't want anyone to touch her, really not that much to work with anyway, but our boy should look like a real killer next to her!"
The gossip broke off into nearly half a dozen different and equally excited conversations. As hard as I was trying to push everything away my interest and confusion must have shown anyway. "Oh you don't really believe that the Games are a competition for just the Tributes do you?" Leon laughing at me as though I were a naive child. "No, everyone gets in on it, escorts prep teams, stylists of course, we all want to be known as the best, we all want to win. And you my boy, you could be my golden opportunity for greatness!" The proudly aged man went on. Shock as his blatant disregard for our lives washed over me, but I pushed it down, crushed it beneath the heel of my own determination.
Besides, I'd learned not to let myself feel from early on, not since I was six and had received my first real birthday present. A sweet little lamb I called Buttercup. I had hand reared her, fed her from a bottle, let her sleep in my bed, groomed and sheared her all myself for an entire year. Imagine my surprise when my seventh birthday rolled around and I was told that we were having mutton for dinner as the bleeding knife was placed in my hand. I'd hated both of my parents then, my father even more so as he stood over me in the squat little shed of meat hooks and knives, switch in hand to lash me with every time I hesitated. Now though I understood that what he was doing was to make me strong, help prepare me for the work I would be doing all my life.
Anyway, the lashings weren't just for my own benefit, but for Buttercup's as well. If I'd done it right the first time she would have felt only a small pinch and lost consciousness before she could have truly grasped what had happened. In the end though she died screaming in fear, betrayal flooding her eyes after three faulty cuts all off mark or far too shallow. Then I did it, the smell of blood soaked sawdust still fragrant in my nostrils if I concentrated hard enough. It was this frame of mind that I hoped to bring with me into the Games, they were all just animals, animals that needed slaughtering, and I was the one to do it.
The men were circling me critically as they had before, working pungent, runny liquids into my skin, staining and dying it, one instant, then toweling off the excess the next. As they worked I was acutely aware of Ajax at all times. While I determined to remove myself from the situation, I wasn't overly keen on being used for his own self indulgences. In the end they achieved a skin tone that I could often attribute to being my own during summer months when work was long, hot and beasts had to herded into the slaughter houses and away from the filth and flies. From there they spent a good deal of time oiling me until my muscles shown and rippled as though I'd been doing hard labor. They dressed me in tattered looking denim jeans with painstakingly placed droplets of pretend blood until they were satisfied with the achieved look.
From there they all took a step back and marvelled. "Oh, I do think we have the next Finnick Odair!" Ajax gushed.
The room fell silent as everyone turned to stare at the quickly paling man who's makeup never seemed more vivid until now. "You're dismissed, Ajax." Leon said evenly as the other two walked decidedly away from him.
"Bu-but I-I didn't mean-" the stout man struggled on in shock.
Leon cut him off with a sharp wave of the hand. "Dismissed." he reiterated sharply.
I couldn't help but to smile, whatever ever punishment they had planned for him, it was less than he deserved. Everyone knew that you didn't speak of a rebel by name, and especially not in a manner of praise. It was also why there now stood only two houses in each Victor's Square, one for the Mentor, and one for the Victor who would inherit their position and home the year following their win. Victors were dangerous, so, in a way even if you did win, you still had a exasperation date.
I was led out to where the chariots were and mounted mine with ease. "Remember," Leon said before leaving. "You're a killer."
He couldn't have been more right, I was a killer. I killed every day of my life, and then when it came time to vote, I'd gone straight for the throat and done what was best for the family, a family of six children and two adults that couldn't afford any more mouths to feed. I voted out the breeder among us and convinced the others to as well. Closing my eyes to banish the images of my mother's fallen betrayed face, it hadn't been in the family plan, my arguments cutting her deep. She didn't after all serve a purpose, not like my father, and the family could certainly do without her, and her pension for dropping children. I'd done the right thing I told myself.
Something small and trembling that my mind only had an instant to register as a hand squeezed mine lightly. I opened my eyes to see the little girl I had completely ignored on the train, thin, frail, and terrified standing beside me stepping closer as if hoping I could protect her somehow. My mind found itself dwelling on Buttercup and all I could think of was that this girl was just another lamb to the slaughter. I told it to myself firmly until I believed it. Then pulled my hand away. After a minute I thought better of it and grabbed her by the wrist, squeezing.
"Ow, ow stop!" she begged in a short whisper, eyes darting around whether looking for help, or other signs of danger I couldn't tell but I didn't care. Twisting her bird boned limb I ignored her whimpering and struggling. Where I'd ignored the girl on the train now, now I wanted her to know me, as she pulled to get away fingers a purplish red as I continued to squeeze and twist. When she couldn't take it and let out a shrill cry that caught the attention of a nearby Peace Keeper I released her. And turned away, a smile of satisfaction crossing my face at the lack of anything I felt in that moment. I truly felt nothing for what I had just done, remorse or otherwise.
Yes, I thought as she cried and cradled her injured arm, I was ready.