𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | 𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑶𝒅𝒂𝒊𝒓

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍.

Red or White?

Cia took a step closer. The elderly woman was freakishly tall for a woman of her age. She stood an inch or two taller than Finnick, easily over six-foot which left Rosie feeling small. Something that, at five-foot-ten and almost always taller than the women around her, she didn't often feel. 

Rosie felt like the little girl who walked around teenagers trying to kill her, lost in the crowd of people wanting a second with her.

Rosie wasn't that girl anymore. Rosie wasn't the Sweet Seductress. Rosie wasn't Mary.

With a stiff shove Rosie was thrown back on the bed, the velvet dragged against her skin unpleasantly. Quickly as she could, she sat back up, not wanting to be more vulnerable than she was. Her dress having ridden up, Cia had a straight shot of looking down her front.

"Put it on or I will handcuff you and put it on for you," she demanded, taking Rosie's wrist and forcing her hand to take it. "You've got thirty seconds, Sweet Seductress."

Rosie's heart thrashed in her chest, she looked at the shirt, then back up to Valencia who had tormented her for over a year. She swallowed thickly, not knowing what she was meant to do. "Trousers? Shorts? The shirt is cropped," Rosie mumbled. She wasn't giving up, not yet. She was certifiably stalling. Biding her time until some bright idea of getting away struck her.

Valencia shook her head, "Pointless putting them on to take them back off again." She smirked. "Strip. Stop stalling."

Acting on instinct, enraged to be forced to hold a shirt that had so many of Rosie's nightmares embedded into its fabric, she grabbed the nearest heavy object to her. Her fingers wrapped around a statue of herself, the ceramic was heavy and about the size of her forearm. Without letting herself overthink it, knowing the second she touched it she couldn't take it back, Rosie swung it against Cia's head.

She was hoping it'd knock the woman out, but it didn't, she merely stumbled back, blood seeping front a wound on her temple.

"You little bitch!" The old woman screamed. Cia was shockingly strong for an old woman—she was nothing like the elderly from the Districts, if they made it to seventy they were seldom able to even walk. Grabbing a handful of Rosie's blonde hair she yanked her to a standing position and smashed her face into the corner of a chest of drawers. Pain bloomed in the teenager's nose, blood instantly rushing from her nostrils, dripping down her chin, and dropping onto her dress. "You are just like Clarise! You do not appreciate me! You will get exactly what she got."

Rosie didn't know who Clarise was, but whatever happened to her, couldn't have been pleasant.

Weak from not eating, and lack of sleep, Rosie was being dragged around like a rag doll. Pulled in whatever direction Valencia wanted.

"One more chance, Mary. Put the shirt on," Cia demanded, pushing the shirt against Rosie's chest.

Rosie felt like she was back there, the irony tang of blood invading her mouth, the thump of dehydration in her head and the swirling feeling of an incoming concussion. Not to mention the overwhelming urge to just lie down and pretend she was back in her bed in District 9. Her old bed, not the new one which was too squishy.

"Fine. You want shorts, I'll get you the skirt you wore the first night you met me," Cia walked across the room, leaving Rosie to catatonically hold the shirt. Standing in the room which felt like a shrine. As she looked around blankly she saw pictures of her in the Games. Standing on the pedestal before the timer ticked down; dashing for the bag; running hand in hand with Toby away from the lizards; wading through the water, having her side washed out; sharing a meal with Toby; singing to Toby whilst he bled out; eating the bread the District 4 Tributes left behind; laying at the end of the creek; fighting Jett; standing up, covered in mud and blood, looking pale and thin, having just won. It was all in chronological order, from left to right you saw the timeline of her win. The skirt was handed to Rosie and Valencia once more ordered her to get dressed and meet the woman back in the sitting room, where she no doubt will have drugged a drink.