[PREQUEL TO RADIANCE]
❝you have one job: convince me, or you may find yourself in the rubble of a ruin that was your own making.❞
ontari nightfall is the newest victor for the capitol to add to their list. she'd heard about the horrors that come wit...
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┍━━━━━━━♔━━━━━━━┑ CATHARSIS ┕━━━━━━━♔━━━━━━━┙
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ
WHEN ONTARI FINALLY embarks on her Victory Tour six months after her Games, her reputation is already well-established throughout Panem. Whatever impression she'd left on the citizens before or during the Games has been eliminated. Clever PR stunts and countless discussions of her on the Capitol Report have transformed her image. If someone had thought she was forgettable during her pre-Games interview, that opinion is already scrubbed clean. Hadn't she always been a little promiscuous? Wasn't the smile she gave Caesar Flickerman in her initial interview a bit suggestive? Her dress, too short?
It's already as if the Ontari from before the reaping had never existed. She has never been average. The Capitol had cleverly shifted the narrative to make her fit the mold they'd chosen for her, made her into a spectacle, and stripped her of any remaining innocence.
According to the Capitol Report, which still discusses the most recent Games regularly, keeping her name in constant circulation, she hadn't slit the throat of the boy from Twelve with stealth and cunning out of necessity for survival. She'd distracted him with her beauty. And Alder and Dew, her former allies, must have been coerced by her charm. Hadn't Ontari made dehydration and exhaustion the new trend?
According to Eytelia, a few people in the Captiol are actually walking around with dry, cracked lips and rings under their eyes on purpose. Of course, it's not a sign of suffering— it's all makeup. They'd turned her look of near death into a fashion statement.
The recent discussions on television haven't done anything to soften the public's opinion of her. In District Two, she's met with the hard, unyielding stares of the family of Cerise Lockwind, the tribute she'd killed to win the games. One of her older brothers — Ontari can tell because they look almost identical, except for the pattern of freckles splashed across their faces — gives her a crude gesture when she makes eye contact with him. It makes her briefly stumble over her words. The speeches — the same one in every district — were written by Cabel and thus overly dramatic, fall robotically from her lips.
Afterward, Eytelia admonishes her for stuttering.
This is the first time that Ontari is getting a glimpse of the other districts. Granted, she is allowed to see the most polished parts: the train station, the Justice Building — only the areas under as much control as possible. Nowhere she can see how people truly live. Still, she should be fascinated by the taste of the world outside of Eight, but instead of curiosity, she feels the prickles of hatred jabbing into her skin like tiny needles, animosity reflected wherever she looks, and she quickly realizes that it's easier to let the crowd blend into nothing than to remember the faces staring up at her.
