Victor's Crown: A Hunger Games Story

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 [𝟴]

"Mags, why do you let her dress me like this?" Finnick forces every bit of piteous pleading he can muster into his eyes.

"Hush, you look dashing," she replies. She reaches up and smooths down errant waves of hair trying to escape the perfectly tousled coiffure Calliope has molded.

"I look like a Capitolite chump," Finnick grumbles, tugging at the sash at his waist.

"Trust me, if Calliope had a little more time and a couple more surgeons on hand, you would really look Capitol." Mags smacks at his worrying hands. "Now quit fussing before you mess it up."

"Can we at least get rid of the boots?"

Mags raises an eyebrow. "Would you prefer we go back to the parade costume instead?"

This shuts Finnick up, if only for a moment. He stares at himself in the full-length mirror and desperately tries to tell himself he looks good, or at least as Mags put it, "dashing." Calliope has forgone the traditional suit and opted to solidify Finnick's status as this year's total clown instead. The white shirt with billowing sleeves he can stomach, but the high-waisted pants and leather boots are a bit much. The blue-green sash tied around his waist is just tacky. Finnick almost bolted when Calliope suggested piercing his eras, but thankfully Mags vetoed the idea before any serious damage could be done.

A few paces away, Caspia and Abalone stand like Two brooding pillars of doom, sucking all the joy out of anyone who careless enough to drift within close proximity. She is sensational a deep blue suit accented with stud earrings and a ribbon tied around her neck, but she might as well be wearing a funeral shroud for how gloomy she looks. Finnick has only ever seen such a degree of foreboding emanate from the tributes from Two, who stand in front of the pair from Three. What Miles lacks in menace Bellona more than makes up for in an embroidered black jacket, skin-tight pants, and spiky leather boots.

To Finnick's astonishment and eternal pleasure, Mags gives him a pat on the cheek and smiles up at him with something like fondness warming her eyes. At the same time, she slips something cold and pointed into Finnick's pocket. "I have to go sit down. Put on the homewrecker smile I know you've got in you and go stand with the others." She goes over and taps on Abalone, who mutters something in Caspia's ear, squeezes her shoulder, and follows Mags out the door.

Finnick gives his hair—the only part of him Calliope has chosen to leave somewhat intact—a final fluff and joins the group of tributes huddled backstage. Caesar Flickerman has commenced his opening spiel—cracking jokes, telling stories, reminiscing about past Games—to loosen up the audience in preparation for the interviews. This year he is dyed a violent shade of green-blue, and even seeing him in person Finnick cannot begin to guess how old he might be. Anticipation, both from the crowd and his fellow tributes, hangs thick in the air, heady and electrifying.

"Wait!" It's Calliope, her commotion earning a few hushes from interview personnel as she barrels toward Finnick, brandishing a black pen in one hand and a powder brush in the other. "I've got to apply your eyeliner."

She proceeds to commit what Finnick can only describe as heinous Capitol torture to his person, chasing him down with surprising agility and trying to stab her pen into each of his eyes.

"Oh, stop it!" Calliope hisses when he resists. She gives him a firm shake, wrinkling his meticulously ironed shirt. "You're acting like a child!"

Maybe because I am one. The retort flies to his lips, scathing and bitter, but he bites it back. The other tributes can see him trying to evade Calliope's ministrations, and he sure his actions don't match those of the preening, self-obsessed character he's spent so much time manufacturing. So he grits his teeth, counts backward from ten, and allows Calliope to finish whatever she's doing to his abused eyelids. Mercifully, Calliope is practiced and swift. She caps her pen and dabs his face with her brush one last time before stepping back to admire her work.