Worth it | F.O.

VIII

There were many things Nivea had been willing to sacrifice of herself all her life to get to this moment. However, for some absurd reason, she was having a very hard time dealing with the moment itself. 

She had, for most of her life, undergone extreme measures to test her ability to withstand both torture and loyalty, dealt with the grief of a love never known, held back the urge to cry herself to sleep with the sheer homesickness she felt deep in her bones, and worked the life of a slave outside of it all as if it were simply a second full time job. But despite all that she had faced and endured, for whatever reason she simply couldn't fathom, her dignity was something she had yet to lose nor want to. 

However, here, in a room in the capitol surrounded by those practically yelling at her to strip shamelessly as if it were something completely ordinary for a teenage girl to do before complete strangers, which sadly it was if the circumstances became bad enough for a girl and her family, it seemed she was about to. 

Nivea had been in there for maybe five minutes and had yet to move from where she stood, arms crossed and chin raised to look down upon the heckling crew with narrowed eyes. She may have been a weapon of the rebellion but that did not at all completely cancel out the fact that she was still a teenager with insecurities like the rest of them. And that simple existence of a man in her team, one with an opposite bodily organ(s) than her own, did not at all help her in any way. 

The scars littering the skin beneath her clothes would do her no favors either. They seemed to burn just as terribly as they did when they were first set upon there just in thinking about the marks ranging from tiny scratches to branching burns. When they, her team of what looked to be an eggplant and some parrots from some rainforest, saw those, they would know. 

She knew they would know something and so the hesitancy only mounted. 

A Capitol parrot with bright purples and reds cascading in strange shapes over her absolutely miniature form and a plume of bright pink looking an awfully lot like the feathers of a cockatoo upon her head squawked, “Good heavens, get out of that dreadful thing!”

Nivea huffed, muttering, “Watch your tone.”

Another somehow even smaller parrot that looked only to be about her age stood up for her friend, feathers placed about her body and barely managing to protect innocent eyes ruffled in protest. “Don't talk to her like that! If anyone should be watching your tone it's you, missy!” she shouted, her own white feathers donning the colors it reflected from beside her where the other two stood. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Nivea snarled, leaning forward with a feral look, Parrot Two leaning away as if she were now faced with a predator. She really was. “If you respect me, I respect you, missy. Good god, we're the same age, never say that again.”

The glare never left her eyes. “You bett-”

“Got it?”

She faltered. 

“Got it?”

A very hesitant nod was her answer. 

“Finally. Now, first note of the evening: don't disrespect the jumpsuit. You insult it, you insult me, and we already know that will not go down well.”

“Why?” the last of the parrot women asked, voice level and posture the slightest bit slumped to which Nivea couldn't help but be intrigued by as she had never before seen a being from the Capitol missing that trademarked perfect posture. The woman, towering over the other three and even taller than her, strode forward a step or two, the train of her dress various shades of green, grey, and blue trailing behind her. She was by far the least horrendous of the bunch and Nivea raised her eyebrows expectantly. “It has no flair, nothing to contrast the darkness. Why ever would you like such a thing? It seems dreadfully boring, if you ask me.”