The Scent of Roses || Coriolanus Snow

Chapter XV

It was late into the night as you were finished the last of your assignments. The clock read almost 3 am as you continued flipping through pages, highlighting important passages, and jotting down your impressions. The front pieces of your hair kept falling out of place and into your eyes, irritating you to the point you wanted to shave your head.

You should started these readings and reflections days ago, but you were too distracted with your social life. Cesar storming into the bathroom and essentially calling you a whore, Alice becoming the closest thing you had to a friend, and Coriolanus Snow plaguing your every thought. It had gotten to the point where you couldn't do anything, even brushing your teeth, without thinking of him. Even now, as you were trying to finish your work due in 6 hours, he was all your mind could conjure.

It was a few minutes until you figured out you had written his name onto your paper five times in a row instead of the notes you needed to be taking. You erased them as quickly as possible and tried to start over again, biting your lip as you tried to shake the wanting away. You could still feel the place he had touched on your hand, see the details of his body when his shirt lifted slightly out from the tucked position in his jeans.

You smacked yourself in the face, trying to draw your attention away from the fantasies that now plagued your life.

Sure, he was charming, handsome, well-dressed, and well-spoken. But his personality was terrifying. He had conjured from the depths of hell such sick and evil defilements on human life and put them into practice. You could only imagine the sinister thoughts that took place in his mind.

Reminding yourself of that other side of him helped you forget the side you were swooned by. It made it easier to focus on what was important to you: graduating and moving on with your life.

You hoped to teach in your future, or possibly academics. You loved learning and furthering the knowledge of others, but there was something satisfying about bringing a proper understanding of complicated subjects to the youth. Panem was not an easy subject to comprehend, and you wanted to ensure that future generations were far better educated than you had been.

However, it would be hard for you to promote the positive image of the Capitol that had been so strictly upheld. You didn't believe the Capitol was good anymore; you had been shown that in its purest form during the Hunger Games.

A true and just nation would not condone such egregious actions or oppress its citizens to the point most, if not all, lived in extreme poverty and were constantly on the cusp of death. The thought of teaching the younger generations their governments' actions were necessary was not something you could picture yourself doing, at least not anymore.

Your eyes rolled over to the clock that now read 3:17 am. The partially bullshitted assignment you had conjured up was good enough to submit. All you needed right now was to sleep.

You shuffled over to your bathroom sink, half awake, as you brushed your teeth one final time. Throughout your homework session, you'd snacked on various items that you had gotten from the grocery store that Coriolanus had purchased for you. Though he might've been a sadistic proponent of children murdering each other on film in a controlled arena, he was strangely kind to you, and you couldn't quite figure out why.

The sheets of your bed were warm and welcoming as you wrapped yourself up in them, finally ready for bed around 3:30 in the morning. Adequate rest would not be something you gained tonight, but that had been your fault. You needed to stop worrying about the theatrics going on in your personal life and start making your studies a top priority. By the time you graduated, everyone around you in this Academy would be a distant memory.

You were startled from your slow drift off to sleep by a loud banging on your door. You slowly rose from your bed, heart beating rapidly in your chest. The pounding was loud, but it sounded more urgent than it did menacing. Still, your body was shaking as you grabbed a metal curtain rod from under your bed, wielding it like a bat as you slowly approached the door.