Worth it | F.O.

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When Nivea returned that night to her room, she did not toss away the extravagant dress she had worn like it was insignificant. Nor did she shove it in a closet never to see the light of day again. Instead she requested it be mailed to her current district as a way to mark how far she had gotten in securing them a better future beyond their wildest dreams. 

It could also be considered an investment as she was sure, with all the finery sewn into it, that it most certainly was worth a lot more than any who had experienced such poverty as she had could fathom having in their very hands. She made sure to accompany it with a letter signed by her hand and detailing their right to do whatever they wished with it. Otherwise she was sure many would die from as simple of a mistake as that that she simply refused to make. 

Then, after that was done, she remained in her room. She stood alone in a vast emptiness of Capitol extravagance-y, fingers twitching by her sides as she felt her body relax under the suffocating silence pulling her in. 

A jolt of a sensation she had become accustomed to rocked through the muscles of her stomach as an unrelenting ghost of traumas endured, stealing away her breath with gritted teeth before all had returned to the way it had before as if nothing had occurred at all. 

Aside from the prep room, she didn't believe she had ever been inside one as large as this nor one that was even large enough for her to have the space necessary to feel this empty. Back at what she refused to call home for reasons unknown, they had all become used to the claustrophobia of tiny shacks falling apart and average tumbling buildings housing much more than they could and this change made her feel rather strange. It wasn't something she thought she could explain and most certainly not something on which she could put a finger on the attitude of it. 

She simply did not know whether it was good, bad, all of the above, neither, or between the lines. But she didn't care. 

Nivea walked forward after having abandoned the ankle breaker's and did so until she stood before the window taking up the entirety of her wall. If she had thought the Capitol was beautiful from the train then, glaring down at the monsters with her hand losing its heat to the cold of the glass where she remained in the tributes personal tower within a room at least 50 District 11 girls before her had done just what she was now, this was something more. 

The sparkling city lights beckoned her with the flickering of televisions and children's bedroom lights as their parents tucked them to bed after such an exciting day. The sky was dark, however, something she had found to add to her list of reasons to hate the Capitol. They enjoyed their power stolen from the districts so much so that they now used it to blot out the beautiful stars those very people witnessed day and night of their horrors. 

Nivea, for instance, had come to love the stars oh so very much. She loved the idea that the dots of light she saw in the sky could be viewed by all those around the world, even, as she had once willfully believed before being saved from that heartache of discovering it for herself, her parents despite where their bodies lay. Ever since she had been allowed outside the walls of grey and uniforms of that very same solidarity and had first laid her eyes upon them, that love had blossomed into life. 

But she saw none of those now in the Capitol. They could not see the same stars the districts did for they had blotted them from existence. She was sure it was another way they felt superior to those like her and the uneasiness she felt in having no way to indirectly meet eyes with the one she wished to see nor lay witness upon what had helped along the harshest of nights. 

The stars were there for her when no one was, blood dripping from open wounds, limbs twitching uncontrollably by her sides, and silent tears of anguish doing nothing to clear it all away as she wished they would. They understood her need to weep no matter how wrong of her it was to do so. The stars understood why her loyalty remained unwavering as it was despite how she strolled to death's door at their commands.