Chapter Text
Coriolanus. Core-ee-oh-lane-us. Coriolanus Snow. My name is Coriolanus Snow. She turns his name over in her mouth for a long while after he leaves, sweeping out of the room with his long strides, his movements controlled and precise, his scent lingering in the room around her.
It’s midday by the time she’s alone in her room, but she still pulls the white curtains over the window and sleeps. She tries to sleep in the bed, but it’s all wrong. She feels like she’s sinking into it like quicksand, like she's laying on a marshmallow. The blankets feel like water slipping through her fingers from the high quality of the silk, and there’s some fabric she’s never encountered before, but it’s the softest thing she’s ever felt. It’s like holding a cloud in her hands.
After a while tossing and turning in her marshmallow bed, she finally moves to the couch, dragging the cloud blanket with her. It’s still too comfortable to make her relax, but it’s more cramped, and the stiffer pillows with their cotton-thread embroidery remind her of home. She's not used to sleeping alone. Her heart screams quietly in her chest.
She falls, after a long while, into a fitful sleep.
She dreams of him. His voice echoes in every paint-dripping-through-water sequence she sees. She sees flashing silver and gold and she hears his voice whispering about sparkling snow.
She sees glass boxes and metal boxes and feels a lurching disorientation, as if the world is falling away beneath her.
She sees the bright snap of cameras, and the moon getting swallowed up by a deep maroon.
He hears his voice. My name is Coriolanus Snow.
When she shoots up from her cloud blanket and the small, stiff pillow, she barely makes it to the bathroom before throwing up the little she’d been able to eat before she boarded his train.
She stands from the toilet, scrubbing at her cheeks for tears that aren’t there. She moves to the counter and startles for a moment when she peers into the mirror. She’s never seen an image reflected in a mirror so crystal clear, at least, not anywhere but the lake in the early morning, before anything has disturbed its surface. It’s like a perfect piece of water, one never touched by anything but vain faces.
She gently grazes the surface of the mirror, half expecting little ripples to interrupt its polished glass. There are none. Just a little blurry circle where her index finger had been. She is grateful to see it can be made imperfect.
She then decides she will touch everything.
The cabinets and their painted wood. Really, how was it possible they could afford all this paint? All this wood? Even if a thousand Districts starved, surely it couldn’t pay for even one of these buildings, if they were all made this way.
She touches the walls and the floors and the paintings on the walls and the rugs on the floors. She tries to find any places where the wood creaks, a sign of age, a sign of the lives that have passed through the space. But no floorboard makes a whisper of sound. All silent under her socks with their little holes.
She stares for a long time at the shower. She’s seen one before. The Hob technically has one in the basement, but it’s never worked, it’s never been anything more than a chunk of rusted metal sticking out from the wall. She has a feeling this will be different.
This shower has a door. A door. As if it’s its own room! There’s 4 bottles of different soaps in there, a shiny, rust-free shower head, and a handle which points straight down, an H carved on one side, a C on the other. She stares at the little carved letters for a few minutes, refusing to believe that it could mean she can have hot water in a matter of seconds.
Her hand trembles a little as she reaches for the handle and pushes it towards the H. Water shoots from the metal top so fast she can’t pull her arms away before her sleeve gets soaked by a line of water.
She’s not even mad.
It’s burning hot water.
A laugh bubbles out of her. Hot water. Whenever she wants it. She tears her shirt and skirt and practically flies into the shower-room with its glass door. The water scalds her skin, but she can’t even bring herself to care. It feels like she’s burning alive, but she does not turn down the heat. She can’t shake the awful feeling that it will turn icy any second. Surely they don’t have an endless supply of hot water?
But no matter how long she stands in the water, the temperature never falters. She examines the bottles lining the back wall. Her heart skips a beat in her chest when she sees the word printed over the center of the second bottle from the left.
Her mothers image, perfectly preserved in time, flashes behind her eyes. Her widows peak, her bright, joyous smile, her deep hazel-green eyes. Her chest groans beneath the weight of that old, familiar pain. That never-ending longing, the relentless tide of grief, which sweeps through her day in and day out, the urge to cover her ears and sink to the floor and scream and cry until her mother just comes back . Because she cannot do this without her. She cannot live when her mother, her mom, is cold and dead and in the ground.
But she’s felt this feeling before. She feels it constantly. People say it gets easier. It doesn’t. You just forget what you used to feel like, and you learn to live with your broken self. Your half-self. The ghost who lives your life and wears your clothes and sleeps in your bed.
She leans against the side of the shower and takes deep breaths while the worst of it passes. It’s harder to get a sudden reminder. It’s one thing when it’s her mom’s birthday, or she plays her favorite song. It’s a whole different ball game when she’s not expecting it.
Shampoo. When her parents were younger, the Covey used to move. Like, really move. They’d float from District to District, performing anywhere that wanted them. Big stages, small ones, roadsides, and porches. Lucy Gray doesn’t really remember it. She remembers some things. Flashes of places that definitely aren’t 12, instruments and faces she’s never seen again. The old trains, before President Snow was elected and completely changed the game with all his fancy new technology.
Something she remembers completely, though, her mother and her shampoo. She can remember it so vividly that if she closes her eyes, she can still smell it. It was breezy and warm. Coconut and vanilla. Her mom had been obsessed with shampoo, and every District they went to, she would steal as many bottles as she could.
When they settled in at 12, she remembers her mom whispering to her about how all the shampoo she had hoarded was only going to be for the girls. Lucy Gray remembers roaring with giggles. The shampoo had run out when she was 14.
Her and her mother spent months trying to come up with a way to make it themselves. It was never like the real stuff, but soap, milk, and rosemary oil was usually what they used. They would go wander out in the woods to find the loveliest, brightest smelling flowers to press oil for the scent.
Lavender flowers were always her favorite to use.
She’d left her lavender shampoo at home for the girls. She scrubs the Presidential Suite shampoo into her scalp. It smells of lemon.
She’s not sure what conditioner is, so she ignores that bottle and uses the lemon soap and a washcloth for her body.
Thoughts of her mother linger in the air around her. For the thousandth time, she wishes she could speak to her mom, even if it was only for a few minutes. She falls back into the old habit so easily, the one where she makes bargains in her head, thinking of all the things so would give up. Promises things like she’ll never cry again, never make any mistake or do anything wrong, she’ll never want for anything again, only for a few minutes with her mother.
She makes these promises to no one but herself, doesn’t even voice them to the air around her, because she’s not delusional, and speaking promises to empty rooms will not make her mother appear.
But, god, she wants. She wants her mom to tell her what to do, what to see, what not to see. What she’s supposed to say when Snow gets these lines in his face like he’s nervous as he looks into her eyes and says that he’s sorry .
This is a horrible thing for him to do, because it’s much easier for her to believe he is not capable of empathy. She is still not fully convinced.
The water pounds against her, and her hands rise to drag through her soaking hair, and wipe at her traitorous eyes. Sick, twisted, traitorous eyes. They keep seeing things, catching things she doesn’t want to catch. She closes her eyes tight, pressing the heels of her palms to them, but he’s still there, moments from earlier lingering in her mind like the smell of rain after a downfall.
The corner of his mouth as he flashes her a half-smile, one that is boyish and mischievous and almost…charming. Charming the way she found Billy Taupe charming when he’d shake the lake water from his hair, giving her a sneaky grin and heated eyes.
The bewilderment and undeniable want on his face when she dropped her things into his hands, sweetly calling him by his title.
She doesn’t leave the shower when she’s done, instead wastes time washing her hair again. She sits on the floor and draws little watery shapes on the glass door until the hunger cramping her stomach becomes too hard to ignore.
Three white towels softer than a lamb are hanging outside the glass shower, she wraps one around herself and leaves the others. She’s not sure why one person should need so many. She’s about to change back into her clothes when a knock rings through the suite.
She pads cautiously to the door, keeping the towel tight around her, dread crawling her spine at the thought of it being him behind the door. It’s late, she’s not exactly sure what time, but the sun has started to set, casting the room in a honey-gold glow. If it’s him, what could he be here so late in the day for? A perilous whisper in the back of her mind supplies a reason. A very real reason he might be turning up outside her door as the day falls into night. Her heart starts to race, blood rushing in her ears like ocean waves crashing. She crushes the thought to dust in her mind.
But still, she wonders.
Would he still be in his dark red suit, buttons all done, every inch of it smoothed and laying perfectly tailored to his body? What would his voice be like tonight? She’s quickly learning there’s more shades to his voice than she had previously thought. Besides his arrogant, self-assured smoothness, there’s a firm one, one which brokers no arguments, and demands you fall in line.
“Look at me.” Snow says, something in his voice sharp-edged and precise. It grabs her attention and holds it, briefly quieting the restless anxiety which had been building in her since the Capitol came into view and the crowds started swarming.“When we get out there, there’s going to be a lot of people and they’re going to be loud and very, very curious about you. If they ask you questions, do not answer. Don’t look at them, just focus on Kori, he’ll be in front of you, and get to the car.”
She’s slightly agitated at being treated like an idiot. “I’m not a child, I’ll be fine—”
“I know you will. But you’re going to be fine, and stay close to me while you do it. Understand?” Her mouth goes dry, his words ringing clear and true and familiar in her mind, so similar to what she’d said to Clerk Carmine when she’d found him crying on the steps weeks ago. She’d told him she knew he was fine, but that they were going to be fine together. She’d never thought there could be a similarity drawn between President Snow and herself. But she was staring right at it. A protectiveness. One she understands very well. “Understand?”
“Yes.” She breathes back. It’s as if a layer had been peeled away from him. She felt, for a moment, like she was about to see something very important. Some strange tilting of her world. As if everything had changed now. Then she looks away from him, back to the howling crowds outside the windows, and she blinks away the odd sensation. She must be light-headed from the stress.
A fresh knock has her contemplating if she should race to put her clothes back on or try and pretend she’s not here or simply open the door. She decides she needs more information first. “Who is it?”
“Room service!” Comes the chirping reply. Lucy Gray ponders what exactly room service entails, and why they’re here. “I have your dinner, Miss Baird.” The person behind the door clarifies at her brief silence.
She dresses quicker than she ever has and flies to the door. When the cart, because it’s a full cart, gets rolled into her room, it takes her a good long while to be able to form a full thought.
This amount of food could feed the entire Covey for days. Maybe it’s an exaggeration. But no, it’s not, because there’s 5 different plates bigger than her head, each offering a different meal. Chicken, steak, lobster, lamb, and some kind of fish that she’s uncertain of what it is. The serving size is outrageous, she’s not even sure she could finish one of the plates. Not to mention the smaller plates dotting all open spaces on the cart. Potatoes, steamed vegetables, fruit, and sauces with colors so rich she’s not convinced you’re meant to eat it.
There’s water and wine hanging off the side of the cart, as well as one regular glass and a perfect crystal wine glass, long stemmed and a rim thin as paper.
The boy who’d rolled the cart in, because he is a boy, Lucy Gray guesses maybe 15, stands next to the cart awkwardly with a look on his face that swings between confusion at her awe, curiosity, and anxiety. She puts a smile on her face, realizing she had been staring slack-jawed like a fool. “Well, I’m not sure how I’ll eat all of this, but thank you kindly for bringing it up…”
“Vic.” He supplies, seemingly excited by the prospect of being useful. “I mean Victor. But, my mom calls me Vic. And my brother, and like, all my friends.”
Victor. She tries not to be nauseous at the name or what may have inspired it. “Well, Vic, my friends call me Lucy Gray.” She says, approaching the cart with her brows lowering, running her fingertips over the edge of the wine glass. “So, did he poison it, then?”
Vic glaces around for a half-second, as if there must be someone more important to answer this question. He’s got a sweet face, with blue eyes wide as the dinner plates in front of her. He looks like he hasn’t really grown into his height yet, his face still soft with youth. She thinks fondly that Maude Ivory would have a crush on him. “Uh - what?”
Lucy Gray leans her head down a little to inhale the food, her mouth dropping open a little at the magnificent scent. She can’t take another breath fast enough. “The President. Did he poison it?”
A shocked noise jumps from Vic’s mouth and he looks like he’s making fish faces at her, his mouth opening and closing in shock and confusion. “Um– Miss Baird, the President was very clear about the treatment you were to receive, if anyone is going to poison you I don’t think it would be him.” He says slowly, and she’s curious as to what the President may have said to the staff about this supposed ‘treatment’ she was to receive. “Besides,” Vic continues, eyes brightening. “I’ve heard he’s got assassins, like, real assassins. How cool is that? I bet if he wanted you dead poison isn’t how he’d do it.”
“Well, Vic, that’s very nice to know.”
Vic grins, and it’s sweet and young and any nausea she has about his name fades away. He’s only a boy. “Did you need anything else, Miss Baird?”
“Lucy Gray.” She corrects.
“Oh, I couldn’t, Miss Baird.” He says quickly, shaking his head back and forth as if to clear her name from his thoughts, like it scares him.
“Why not? I’m calling you by your name, it’s only good manners.” She says playfully, trying to bait Vic into loosening up around her.
He shakes his head again, peeking towards the door like someone might be listening. “You’re to be treated as an honored guest.”
“Ah, I see, so the President said you aren’t allowed to call me by my name.” She says with a nod, her tone solemn with mock-understanding.
“Well,” He says, thinking. His head lolls back and forth a little as if re-playing earlier events in his mind. “I mean, no, but–”
“Good, then. I’m telling you to call me Lucy Gray.” She pours some of the water into the normal glass, and holds it up to the light as if she might be able to see any possible contamination. Vic looks very uncertain.
“What are you looking for?” He asks, cocking his head to the side, a little amusement creeping onto his face. It makes him look more like a child. As he should, she thinks.
She flashes him a smile, swirling the water a little in the glass. “Poison.”
—
She wakes with the sun the next morning. Sits on the floor in front of the huge window and cries as the sun rises over the city. It’s so stupid, and she doesn’t even have a real reason for crying. Or she does, but there’s a thousand reasons and she’s not even sure what her reason is. She might be crying about the fact that she didn’t even know windows could be like this, and it’s so amazing to have this sheet of glass as a wall, showing her the entire world. She might be crying because the red-orange light spills over the city like water, like gold running through the streets. She might be crying because she and Billy Taupe used to wake up early to watch the sunrise over 12. She might be crying because she didn’t say goodbye to him. She might be crying because she misses her family, the color of Tam Amber’s eyes, the dry wit of Clerk Carmine, the humming of Maude Ivory while she brushes her hair, the barking laughter of Barb Azure. She misses the way the sun rises over 12. She hates the beauty of the sun rising over the Capitol.
Vic appears around 9. He rolls in a fresh cart and takes away the one she mauled, and he tells her about everything on the cart. He tells her that usually he drinks apple juice in the morning but the cook insisted on sending up water, coffee, and orange juice. He makes sure she knows he tried to talk the cook into sending her apple juice. She thanks him for fighting on her behalf.
She’s tearing into the hashbrowns on one of the plates when the ringing pierces the air. It startles her enough that she knocks her glass of orange juice over, and she swears as she rushes to set the glass upright. Her head whips around and she stands to chase the sound through the rooms. She follows it all the way to her bedroom, and cautiously approaches the bedside table and the odd box perched atop it. It’s got a piece that looks like it detaches, and is tied to the box with a spiral cord, as well as numbers going from 0-9 next to the piece that (might) detach. She remembers Snow gesturing to it, talking about speed numbers or something.
The ringing chime continues, steady as a metronome, and she tries pressing the 1 button to stop it. It does not. She tries 2. Nothing. She tries smashing her hand over all the buttons. The ringing box is unbothered.
She lifts the curved piece, and it detaches easily from the rest of the box, and silences the ringing. It’s hovering a few inches above where it had been resting while she studies the machine a little further, trying to figure out what it does. Then a voice comes from the curved handpiece.
“Hello? Miss Baird?” Valeria’s voice. It’s quiet, so she pulls it closer to her ear to hear her voice better. She wonders if it’s a recording of some sort. “Miss Baird, are you there?”
“Valeria?”
“Yes, hi, did you sleep well? I hope the room and food has all been to your liking.” She says, and through the odd handpiece she can hear other people and sounds, as if she’s surrounded by noise.
“I - well, yes, thank you, but how? How, um-” Lucy Gray stumbles, so unsure of where to start in her confusion about how they’re talking right now. Valeria breezes right past her incoherency, efficient as ever.
“Wonderful. Well, if you’re up for it, you could have a visitor in a few hours. Does that sound okay to you?”
“A visitor? It’s not him, is it?” Lucy Gray says warily. She’s barely processed the last time they were in the same room, she’s not eager for another encounter so soon. Perhaps she could barricade her door? She’s eyeing the dresser as a good option while Valeria huffs a quiet laugh through the speaker.
“No,” Valeria says, still laughing a little. There’s another faint sound over the handpiece speaker, one very similar to the ringing that had come from hers a few moments ago. Valeria must be at work. “He’s much too busy today. He has to make up for all the work he missed while in District 12. But, I’m sure if he did have a second of time he’d — No, Dev, out, he’s in a meeting with the VP right now.” Her voice is much sharper when speaking to this Dev person, and quieter, like she’d pulled the handpiece from her mouth. “No, he’s meeting with Price then. I’ll reschedule you. Well, frankly, that’s not my problem or his, so out. I’ll email you. Out .”
Lucy Gray finds herself smiling a little when Valeria heaves a put-upon sigh.
“Sorry about that. Anyways, no, it’s not the President. It’s the designer who’ll dress you for your shows.”
Lucy Gray twirls the curling cord around her fingers, eyebrows scrunching. “I thought you said I wouldn’t start performing for another month or so.”
“You won’t,” Valeria replies. “But she wants your measurements so she can have plenty of options for you by the time you debut.” Valeria’s voice goes a pitch quieter, a little mischief shining through her voice. “And between me and you, she’s dying to meet you.”
“Who is she?”
“She’ll introduce herself.” Valeria says smoothly, and Lucy Gray is curious and slightly nervous at the dodged question. “So, you’re up for it then?”
She chews the inside of her cheek a bit before she answers. On the one hand, she’s not jumping at the chance to meet another one of Snow’s worshiping citizens, but on the other, she’s nothing but a vanity who loves pretty things. She’s curious as to what a Capitol performer might wear. “Why does she want to meet me?”
“Miss Baird, everyone wants to meet you.”
—
The knock on her door came exactly two hours later. After her call with Valeria, she’d wandered into the bathroom to deal with her messy curls and hair wash her face. She had to settle with just pinning a few pieces back and finger combing them as best she could, as running a brush through them would have turned them into a complete bird’s nest.
She’s not sure if it’s fair to make a judgment on someone based on the way they knock, but this dressmaker seemed… enthusiastic. Lucy Gray pulled open the door and didn’t even have time to plant a smile on her face before the woman was past her and through the doorway, and a flurry of girls and carts of fabrics were being rolled into her room.
Lucy Gray whirled around to see the woman standing in the center of the room with a warm, bright smile on her face. She was beautiful in a way Lucy Gray didn’t often see. She was tall and willowy, angular and ethereal in a way that made her look angelic, or simply not of this world. Something about her was achingly familiar, yet she was sure she’d never met her before.
She had blonde hair so light it was almost white, which was artfully swept from her face in swooping, sleek curls. Her skin pale as starlight, her eyes the exact shade of iris flowers blooming in early April. “Oh, look at you, you know, you are just as lovely as Val said! I’m so glad to be finally meeting you, Miss Baird.” She reaches out and shakes Lucy Gray’s hand with a strong handshake.
Lucy Gray loves to meet new people. She always has. Somehow, she thinks this woman and her may have been friends in another life. Something about the shade of her hair and the way she holds herself creates a strange sense of deja-vu in Lucy Gray, like they already know each other, and surely that is divine. How can you know someone when you’ve never seen them before? They must have been made to know one another.
But a glance over her shoulder at all the rich, expensive fabrics make her angry and aching with the wonder of how many people wouldn’t freeze to death on the streets of 12 in January if they had even one piece of clothing made with such fine material.
“Pleasure’s mine, though I can’t say I know your name half so well as you know mine.” Lucy Gray says, tilting her head a bit.
“Oh, yes, of course. I’m Tigris.”
Curious to not offer a last name. But, maybe she wants to be called by her first name and not her last, which Lucy Gray understands, so she can’t entirely fault her for that. “That’s a strong name.” Lucy Gray says. “I like it.”
“I like yours, too.”
“Then, please call me Lucy Gray. Everyone here is calling me ‘Miss’, and I can’t get them to stop.” Lucy Gray says with a roll of her eyes.
Tigris laughs, waving her hand through the air like she’s shooing off the thought. “Yes, well, I’m sure Coriolanus threatened everyone into doing it so don’t be too upset with them.”
Shock hits Lucy Gray right in the center of her chest at Tigris’s casual use of the President’s first name, and her careless references to threatening. If her encounters with the screaming crowd and Vic were anything to go by, the President of Panem was revered. Adored. Yet, Tigris did not speak of him fondly or, frankly, respectfully. She wonders briefly if Tigris has been sent to trap her into disrespecting the President, so she can run back to him and whisper in his ear. The immediate liking she had taken to Tigris dampens into distrust.
“Well!” Tigris says, getting distracted when one of the girls who had brought in the mountains of fabrics hands her a large white leather book. Tigris flips it open to reveal it as a sketchbook, one bursting with drawings and little squares of fabric, scraps of chain, lace, and buttons taped to its pages. “No time to lose,” Tigris gestures to the couch, and they sit. “Tell me what you like.”
“What I…like?” She parrots, confused. She had assumed that the designer would only take her measurements and then just give her dresses to wear, like costumes.
“Yes.” Tigris says, the book resting open in her lap. “What colors, what fabrics, what dress styles, that sort of thing. I’ll also have you look through some of my past designs and you can point out things you like or don’t like, that way I can draw you some dresses you’re sure to love.”
Tigris flips the sketchbook open to a certain section of pages, one which is covered with designs for dresses. Lucy Gray is immediately enchanted by each and every pencil line. She doesn’t speak much, but watches closely while Tigris flips through the pages, pointing out interesting aspects of each dress. They’re all wonderful.
The most beautiful ideas ever. Each pencil gray sketch excites her, each one interesting and lively in its own way, each one something she would be thrilled to wear. Each one unique and daring and sweet and eye-catching, and she says so at each turn of the page. Tigris weaves questions into all of Lucy Gray’s marveling, and is patient when she asks questions or reaches her fingers over to brush her fingers over the dry white pages and their lead drawn potential.
“I love every color,” Lucy Grays says in response to Tigris asking about her favorites. “They’re all beautiful.”
“But if you had to pick a few favorites…”
Lucy Gray hums, brushing her fingers over the ruffles drawn on the hem of the newest sketch Tigris reveals with a turned page. “Purple—I love purple, and you don’t see lots of it in 12– and yellow, and blue, of course, and pink, but the lighter shades of pink. If I had to pick favorites.”
There’s a younger girl off to the side with dark brown hair in a tight bun who’s writing down everything Lucy Gray says, which makes her vaguely nervous about answering questions, even though in every other situation, they’re questions she’d be thrilled to answer. “Perfect, wonderful.” Tigris says, posing another question. “And the styles? Are there any elements you’d like to see in your own dresses, things you know you don’t want?”
“Well, I like things that twirl well, if that makes sense, skirts with tiers and that sort of thing. Embroidery, and just, lots of color.” Lucy Gray found it odd and uncomfortable to ask for things in this way. It was so rarely up to you. What was available was what you got, what was affordable, what was realistic, what was time-allotting.
The pen in the dark-haired girl’s hand flies, and Lucy Gray is hit suddenly with another thought as Tigris stands and says they should move on to measurements. “Wait,” She says. “Hold on, I won’t be able to pay for any of this, at least, not until I’ve performed a few times—”
Tigris cuts her off with a laugh. “Don’t be silly, Coriolanus will cover it.”
The thought makes Lucy Gray’s stomach turn. Everything was earned, that’s just how it was. These events unfolding before her, they felt like a poorly disguised trap in a fable she would have been told as a child. Never trust things given freely, especially beautiful things. Diamond cities aren’t real, priceless dresses don’t just fall into your lap, a home all for herself with windows for walls don’t just build themselves beyond some golden road.
It was like glittering jaws closing around her, it was some unusual inverse of everything she was meant to believe. The trap had been presented to her clearly, perform in his city or else , but the stained glass and jewel tones her life was now being shrouded in was creeping up on her like shadows after sunset. All the trickery was entering the story after the fatal deal had been made, and what a strange thing it was.
Lucy Gray stands, still contemplating Tigris’s words, but moves to the center of the room as she instructs. Tigris moves around her with all the grace of leaves in the wind, wrapping her in the yellow ribbon-like measuring tool over and over again, jotting down every number she reads on its surface. She watches Tigris’s face, trying to read the thoughts behind her eyes when the lights catch them, trying to understand why parts of Tigris pull an uncomfortable ebb and flow of deja-vu through her.
When it is revealed, it makes ice frost over her spine, it makes her stomach sink faster than water into dry soil.
It’s a young girl’s fault, and Tigris clearly thinks so when her face goes hard as stone. “Miss Snow?” The girl pipes up, throwing her light brown ponytail over her shoulder as she raises a silver box with different necklace chains displayed on a bed of navy fabric. “Did you want to measure jewelry sizes as well?”
Air hisses in through Lucy Gray’s teeth as she cuts her eyes to Tigris, Tigris Snow. “Snow?”
Tigris’s mouth pulls into a straight line, and suddenly it’s so ridiculously obvious that Lucy Gray cannot believe she didn’t see it the second she laid her eyes on Tigris’s immaculate blonde hair and her ivory skin. The way she carries herself, almost regal. Royal. As if the blood in her veins runs with some divine rightness that the rest of them can only dream of. The way her jaw goes tight when something hasn’t gone the way she planned.
Tigris takes a breath, like she’s steadying herself for a fight. She meets Lucy Gray’s eyes with hers open and gentle, and nods her chin once. “Yes. Snow.”
Lucy Gray bites down on her tongue a little, building a new wall in her mind. Tigris is not to be trusted, she’s related to him, she must be his sister. Of course, that’s why she’s dressing Lucy Gray, that’s why she has what must be the loveliest fabrics in the Capitol, that’s why she has the otherworldly air about her, that unattainable beauty.
“But Lucy Gray, listen,” Tigris says, moving to try and meet Lucy Gray’s gaze again. “I’m not—”
“Not what?” Lucy Gray cuts in coldly.
“Myranda, Jola, Daphne, out.” Tigris’s voice reminds her of a striking serpent, the way it snaps from her lips as her head turns to the side, and the girls file out in a matter of seconds without a whisper of sound. Only once the door shuts completely behind them does Tigris turn to face her again. “I’m not your enemy.”
“Really?” Lucy Gray laughs with a bitter edge. “You sure look a lot like him.”
“Careful. Talking like that will get you killed here.” Tigris warns, continuing to hold different colored fabrics up to Lucy Gray. Some veil has been torn from their conversation, a new depth taking shape.
“Being District will get me killed here.”
Tigris’s eyes meet hers, bright and focused. “Any other District member, sure.” Her mouth cuts a straight slash across her face, not quite a smile, something about it searching and sharp-edged. “Maybe not you, Lucy Gray. Maybe not you.”
Lucy Gray doesn’t know what to say, or if she did know what to say she wouldn’t know how to say it. She turns her head away so she can stop seeing his ghost in her features, all that graceful lethality.
“You’re different to him.” Tigris continues.
She shakes her head a little, staring straight forward towards the window-wall. “Stop.”
“You’re different to him.” She repeats, like Lucy Gray is dumb enough not to have realized that already. “I mean, I don’t think you understand what this–”
“I don’t understand? ” Lucy Gray parrots incredulously, rounding on Tigris and the silk fabric spilling from her hands. “No, Tigris Snow, you don’t understand. You don’t understand anything, you don’t – have you ever even been out there? In the Districts? Have you ever seen their faces, the streets they sleep on?”
Tigris looks away, her mouth tilting down. “No, I haven’t.”
“You haven’t. I do understand, I understand that I’m not different to him, he just thinks I’m beautiful and those are not the same thing. He just wants to dress a District girl up in pretty things and remind himself of his own significance. He’ll grind me back into the dirt when he’s done with me.” The words are ashy and vitriolic on her tongue, and Tigris seems to flinch away from them.
Her midnight eyes are sad, and the way they express her feelings more than any contortion of her face reminds Lucy Gray of him. His watercolor eyes, changing and swaying and swirling and whispering. It’s quiet between them for a moment, the air tense and tight as if it’s holding its breath.
Tigris breaks it with her voice gentle and careful. “Maybe. Or maybe this changes everything.”
Tigris Snow leaves very soon after she speaks the words, the young girls sweeping through the room as Lucy Gray stands frozen in the center of it all, gathering all the fabrics and notebooks and yellow measuring ribbons. Tigris says goodbye to her, and casts a final glance over her shoulder before she disappears through the door, that same searching curiosity on her face. “I’m glad to have met you, Lucy Gray. No matter what.”
Then the door is closed and Lucy Gray is alone again in the perfection of the Presidential Suite.
She paces the floor for a while. She turns to her guitar, curls around it on the soft threads of the elaborate run, tries desperately to comfort herself with familiar melodies. But all of them make her eyes and throat burn like she’s going to start crying again and she just can’t. It reminds her vividly of the weeks after her parents death. She had practically hidden from her guitar, it startled her in the middle of the night when the terrible echo of the gunshots drove her from sleep. It’s strings called to her sadly, like it missed her as much as she missed it. But it had been a long time before she could force herself to rebuild the callouses on the tips of her fingers.
So she rests her fingers over the strings for a while, and gives up on her favorite melodies. She ponders Tigris Snow, replays the look in her eyes, replays the way she spoke the word: different.
You’re different to him.
The words are uncomfortable in her mind, scratching at the inside of her head like sandpaper. Her fingers move without her command, and she begins to pull a simple tune from her guitar.
My name is Coriolanus Snow.
Core-ee-oh-lane-us. What an odd name, she wonders what it means. She wonders if that’s even a thing people do here in the diamond city. Do they name their children for a reason? Coriolanus. What does that name mean?
E minor, A. E minor, A.
Lucy Gray had been named for a ballad. Was there an old ballad that used to be sung about a boy named Coriolanus?
E minor, A. E minor, A.
It suits him in some ways, she thinks. It’s important sounding with its sprawling syllables, certain and strong.
E minor, A. E minor, A. G, G.
But then, there’s something about it missing, or just not exactly what she might have pictured. Something maybe in the way his voice went so light when they were in that death-trap elevator, do you truly think I’d have faulty technology in my city? For the briefest moment, it had made her feel…uncertain.
E minor, A. E minor, A.
“How treasonous you are, Lucy Gray.” He says, an almost-laugh coming from his half-smile mouth, and his eyes lit with something playful and rakish.
E minor, A. E minor A.
“When it’s snowing,” He whispers, wistful and soft, “The entire city sparkles.” For once, he wasn’t upsetting her.
E minor, A. E minor, A. G, G.
She stops her slow strumming, silencing the strings under her palm. Thoughts like this are an unnecessary poison, a derailment she doesn’t need. Him having brief moments where he seems human doesn’t change all the thousands of other moments where he seems like he’s held together by metal and wires.
In fact, they make him far, far worse.
She stands, setting down her guitar and goes to the ornate door and its golden handle. She pulls it open, planning to go outside for a few moments, just for the clarity of fresh air, but she’s stopped by a white-wearing peacekeeper, who materializes in front of her before she can take a single step out the door.
“Miss Baird.” The man says in a curt greeting. He’s tall and broad, with a pointed chin and stern dark eyes. “Is there something I can do for you?”
She raises an eyebrow and begins to step around him. “No thanks, darling, I’ve got it under control.”
He stays firm, making it obvious he’s not about to clear her path. “I can have whatever you need brought to you, no need to leave your suite.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lysander, ma’am.”
“Lysander,” Lucy Gray says kindly. “Am I a prisoner?”
Lysander shakes his head once, hands held calmly behind his back. Lucy Gray does not miss the gun strapped to his waist, in the fashion of all peacekeepers. “No, ma’am.”
“Wonderful. Then if you’ll excuse me.”
Lysander does not move.
Lucy Gray sighs. “Is this one of those magic word moments?”
Lysander does not crack a smile, his stern dark eyes staring at some aimless point over her head. “What can I have brought to you, Miss Baird?”
“Fresh air and sunshine, could you have that brought up to me, darling?”
“I can open one of your windows, if you’d like.” He replies, tone calm and cordial.
Lucy Gray slouches against her door frame, peering up at him through her lashes. “I thought I wasn’t a prisoner. Are we lying to each other now, Lysander?”
He barely glances down at her. “I doubt prisoners get to open their windows, Miss Baird, it could certainly be worse.”
“I have a question.”
“Of course.”
“If I run out of here,” Lysander’s eyes dart to hers, and with militant focus he begins to watch her body language. She keeps herself loose and uncaring. “Are you going to drag me back or just follow me?”
He does not respond, save for the slightest raise of his eyebrows. He stays where he is, blocking her doorway with his hands knit behind his back.
Lucy Gray knocks her head back against the doorframe, thinking. “I’d like you to send Victor up here, he’s the boy who brings me my meals.”
“Are you hungry, ma’am? I can have the cook prepare you anything you’d like if—”
“No, thank you, just Vic.”
—
She has Vic show her how the machine works. Vic tells her it’s called a telephone. She tells him as much as she can remember about what Snow had said, something about speed numbers. Vic translates, telling her about speed dial and how to start a call.
His eyes sparkle a little, his mouth dropping open a little as he whispers. “Are you really about to call the President?”
Lucy Gray winds the cord of the telephone around her finger for a moment, torn at her fondness for his young wonder, and her disdain for his admiration. She sheds herself once more of her sudden wave of dislike for Victor, for his Capitol mindset. He’s just a boy. “Sure am.”
“Can I stay here while you talk to him?”
“No, honey, I’m sorry, I’ll need to talk to him alone today. Another time, alright?” Vic pulls a bit of a face, but still gives her a friendly wave goodbye and a promise to see her later with her dinner.
While the sound of Vic shutting the door sits in the still air around Lucy Gray, she hovers her finger over the 1 button, trying to force herself to press down and trying to steel herself for anything. He might be anyone at all today. He might be threatening and acidic, he might be calm and condescending, he might be sharp and witty, he might be smooth and charismatic, he might be as cold-blooded and lawless as moonlight.
Who are you this very second, President Snow?
She presses down. A dull note rings in her ear for a second and then quiets. Then begins again and ends. Then begins once more before it’s cut off.
She breathes in.
“Lucy Gray?”
She breathes out.
“How are you?” His voice is strange over the speaker. Some dimmed version of it, not as clear as she’s used to. Some part of her hates it, finds it a pale intimidation of the real thing. She immediately abandons the thought.
“Call off your dogs.” Lucy Gray says.
She hears a slight sound, and can picture him shaking his head as he clicks his tongue. She rolls her shoulders, trying to clear her mind again. “I see you’ve met Lysander and Alekos. I thought you might like that.”
“Alekos? Who is– nevermind. I don’t want bodyguards, I didn’t agree to that.”
“Well,” He begins, and his voice makes her conjure an image of him in the room. She can see his ghost in the doorway, pulling his dark crimson suit straight at his wrists, pinning her with his snow-storm eyes. “I’m doing well, thank you for asking. Though there’s enough meetings on my schedule to make me rethink my career path.”
“I’m sure we’d all benefit if you did that, Mr. President. Call. Off. Your. Dogs.”
He laughs quietly in her ear, she pulls the telephone away a little, breathing in and out. “In the several conditions you made, bodyguards were not mentioned, so perhaps you should have thought through your terms more carefully.”
Her mouth falls open around a shocked scoff. “How was I supposed to know you’d get me a babysitter?”
“You weren’t.”
She grinds her back teeth together, focusing on not bursting a blood vessel. “I don’t want to be watched. Get rid of them.”
“No.”
"Y es. ”
“No. You’ll barely notice them, anyways.”
“Really?” She drawls. “Because I'm noticing that I’m not allowed to leave my room.”
There’s another little sound over the phone, and she can see it as if he’s right in front of her. The little tilt of his mouth he does, that sound, not amusement, not sarcasm, but some blend of it. “Yes, I would hate to not be allowed to leave the most lavish suite in the city. My cruelty is unending, I know. How do you like it, by the way?”
“Don’t change the subject.” She nearly growls.
“I’m not,” He says with mock-sincerity. “We’re still discussing this tragic imprisonment, that’s the word you used the other day, wasn’t it? Only now, we’re discussing that awful cell you’re being forced to stay in.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Well, I don’t get paid to be.” There’s a muted noise in her ear, it sounds like papers being shuffled. She wonders what he’s doing. She could ask. She won’t. There’s a few beats of quiet between them, and she can hear him breathing, in and out. “How are you, Lucy Gray?”
She looks around the room at her marshmallow bed, the window-wall, the bathroom with the hot water. She’s responding before she thinks to stop herself. “I’m okay.” Her voice comes out quiet. Sadder than she thought it would. She’s normally quite good at masking her tone, but sometimes, around him, things just pour out of her.
“Good.” He breathes.
She sees crimson flashing in the corner of her eye. It’s only a red bird soaring through the afternoon sky. “I want to go outside.”
“Tomorrow.” The tone of his voice reminds her of high-ceiling rooms. Airy, endless. “I promise you.”
“What makes you think I’d believe your promises?”
“You believed them enough to come here, didn’t you?” Their chessboard lays itself out once more, in shades of gold and silver. Her hand closes tighter over the telephone.
“Don’t push your luck. We’re not done with this babysitting situation.”
“I wouldn’t dare to dream you’d give up that easily.”
She says, watching the bird draw scarlett slashes over the sky. “I’m going outside tomorrow. Whether you keep your promise or not.”
That sound again. That tilt of his mouth. She tries over and over again to stop picturing it. “Of course.”
The bird disappears into the sun. “Goodbye, President Snow.”
“Goodbye, Lucy Gray.”
She slams the telephone down before she can hear him breathe again. She flies to the window, placing one hand against the cool glass, and another to her pounding heartbeat.
You’re different to him.