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Cashmere was coming home and Gloss truly hated himself for realizing that he’d ever doubted her. She was trained as she could have been. An exemplary District One Career. Sexy, unassuming, but lethal when she needed to be. It would be another year before his turn but he couldn’t wait to show Panem more of the same. I can’t volunteer next year, he reminded himself, not right after Cash. They wouldn’t let me win.
More than he wanted to admit, he jumped as a clothespin pierced his skin. It was so disappointing to realize how quickly his Academy training had left him when he felt a needle stabbed into his thigh. “Sorry, boy.” The apology was hollow, uninterested. He didn’t say a word, looking boredly for his mother and sister getting their fittings too. A hand wrapped itself around his thigh, caressing more than holding. It made him feel weird but he tried to keep his thoughts off of the intense touch and onto his sister.
Panem’s sixty-third Victor. The smile wouldn’t leave his face but he wasn’t exactly trying to keep it off. Cashmere Diives. The perfect Career. What would his title be, he wondered. His attachment to his sister would be featured but he still wanted to be his own entity, too. The hand on his thigh moved a bit higher as someone cuffed his pants to get them just right. Get used to that, he tried to tell himself, Victors have a lot of eyes and hands on them. He thought of Rhubae Gallrock and Temper Heavensmark. They’d been the most popular Victors from One until his sister had come along.
“Is that too tight, doll?” He shook his head and ignored the strange sensation of the hand still on his thighs coaxing life into his pants. He tried to make a comment but it fell on deaf ears. “Alright, let’s get you in this suit and work on that hair.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.” A laugh escaped his lips but it came out forced and nervous.
They put him in a dark green suit that just barely matched his eyes. Silk was in a tight, short dress that reminded him of the arena outfits One always wore. A muted green that he hated more than some of the other obnoxious colors. Their mother was put in a dress so dark green it was practically black and her blonde hair was styled with a tiara of dark green gems to match. We look fucking ridiculous, he wanted to say. He touched his hair that had been slicked back with too much gel and tried not to fluff it back up. What family coordinates colors this much? Cash is going to think we’re insane. No, she’ll understand we didn’t get a say.
The moment his sister was in her too-high heels and their mother had a stupid little clutch tacked under her arm, they were whisked off to the train station. Gloss felt like he was on fire but in all the best ways. Cashmere was coming home. He was getting his sister back.
“Let’s get the family on this mark.” One of the director’s minions tapped his leather shoe on the concrete. “We’re going to rehearse some shots we might need. Let’s get mom here. Handsome boy here. Daughter here.”
They moved into their assigned places. Silk grabbed his hand where the cameras likely wouldn’t see, practically dancing with excitement. “I want to see some tears on this first one. Get the waterworks going, people.” Around them, a crowd was gathering. He was sure some of them were trying to get their seconds of fame in the background of a shot, not that the cameras were recording yet, while others were genuinely too oblivious to figure out that they might be in the way. “Gloss, cry for me, come on. Be a big boy and cry.” The voice was practically screeching for his tears but he didn’t have them. Maybe not at all but certainly not for a rehearsal in front of a camera that wasn’t even uncapped yet.
The train came barreling into the station so loud and so fast that Silk yelped. He tried to comfort her but his attention was captured by the sight of that gorgeous Capitol engineering. Even better, the doors opens to two separate cars and Cashmere stepped out of one. The other produced no people but a group of avoxes in Capitol uniforms moved towards the undercarriage to pull out Lucullan’s pine box. Thank you, Gloss wanted to say, you died for her. Maybe not for her, but instead of her. He couldn’t imagine not seeing his sister come back today.
“Any words for the fallen?” The camera was shoved further into his face but he declined his reply.
Cashmere looked honestly awful when she found her family towards the front of the crowds. Her eyes were so sad, he noticed immediately, almost sunken into her face a bit. She hadn’t even starved, not in that arena that hardly lasted five days, but she looked rough. He noticed the way her steps were measured but hesitant, even when her family was the only goal in mind.
Gloss made sure to be the first one to hug her. The cameras ate it up but this was for him. She felt like a shell in his grasp. Her bones were hollow like a broken little bird, her breathing ragged against him. Even an inch or so taller than him, she was a crumbled mess. “You’re home,” he promised softly. She nodded and wiped her tears. As quick as they’d come out, they were replaced by a forlorn sort of smile and red eyes.
She hugged their sister and kissed her head. The mother was the last but the longest to receive her embrace. Gloss did his best not to eavesdrop but he could hear the woman speaking in hushed tones. A voice so quiet the cameras wouldn’t catch a word. He struggled as it was and he was hardly two feet from them.
“Alright, you absolute fox, can I get you over here for a quick few questions?”
Cashmere spoke up immediately, but almost sounded terrified. “How long will it take? I’m tired, Magnium.”
“Not long.” The man’s tone was clipped. She nodded, offered Gloss a reassuring smile that was definitely more for herself than her brother, and stepped back. “Alright, Mr Diives. On this marker here. And look into my eyes if you could. Not into the camera’s at least.”
Gloss nodded and answered all of the questions with the poise expected of a future District One Victor. “Of course I’m proud of her. It’s not been long since the last District One Victor but she’ll always be a favorite. I can say that, after all, I’m her brother.” The man, Magnium, asked her if he worried about her while she was gone. “It’s only natural. I knew she’d be fine, I promise I did, but anything could’ve happened. But she’s back now and I…well, I couldn’t be happier, Magnium.”
The man pursed his lips and something told Gloss never to call him that name again. I’ll never see him again, he tried to convince himself. “And a final question for you, Mr Diives.” He nodded and waited for it. “Is it your intention to follow in your sister’s footsteps?”
“When the time is right,” he replied. The smirk and proud look came easy. “I’m considering waiting a year. Gives the other Districts a chance next year, you know?”
The interview wrapped up shortly after that. Gloss returned to Cashmere’s side and put an arm over her shoulder. Even being a bit shorter than her, it just felt right. She sank into him with a relieved sort of noise. “Excellent, darling.” Magnium approached them with a beaming smile. “I look forward to seeing you very soon. You have a lovely family here.” Cashmere went rigid against his side. He noticed the way her eyes followed him, even after he’d pulled his hands off of her and retreated back to the train that had brought her home, but said nothing of it.
“I never much liked that man,” their mother said under her breath. She gave her eldest daughter a look over and then smiled. “I suppose he’s as average as they come for a Capitol man, isn’t he? All touching, no class, huh?”
Cashmere quirked a shy sort of smile and asked if they could go back home. “Yours or ours?” Silk laughed but the rest of them struggled to match that sort of naive energy. Gloss hadn’t slept back in his mother’s home in at least a year but he somehow thought it impossible to imagine their home without Cashmere there.
A team of avoxes was already most of the way through moving her affects out of their home when they strolled back to the Victor’s Village. She stopped on the green space between the old and new houses, frozen. “Honey,” their mother called out, “what’s the matter?” The girl, maybe now a woman, shook her head. They continued on in silence while her eyes never seemed to settle anywhere for too long.
“I’ll repaint this room.” The purple was certainly loud, annoying even. Gloss nodded and tried not to pay much mind to the way his sister’s voice felt as empty as her old bedroom. She sat down at the edge of her bare mattress and looked it over a final time. The avoxes bowed their heads and prepared to leave. “Thank you.” His sister was nothing if not courteous and caring, even to the nameless.
“I’ll help her unpack a bit and be back by dinner,” he told his mother. He hugged her one last time, not that it was at all necessary, and watched her pull Silk off the couch in the corner of Cashmere’s new bedroom and head downstairs.
His sister hadn’t moved an inch, staring blankly at her hands on the bare mattress and glowering. “I keep seeing their faces.” Her voice was an echo but he still heard it. He went to sit beside her but she jumped a bit too obviously for either of their liking. “Sorry.”
“Still in the arena?” She nodded. “I don’t get it, not yet, but I’m just happy you’re back. And I’m always here for you, you know?”
Her smile was so soft, so forced, that it hurt him to see. He met her eyes and couldn’t be sure which of them would tear up first. “Are you still slated for next year?” She leaned back into the bare mattress with a sigh so he decided to join her. He told her he was as good as guaranteed to be the volunteer next year. “Can you wait a year? I’m scared that-”
Her voice faltered and it didn’t seem like she’d tried to get it working again. “Oh, back-to-back Victors? Yeah, I’ll talk to them about it.” She shook her head, blond curls bouncing despite the bed beneath her. “What is it? Cash, you can tell me anything.”
“I can’t tell you what I want to, not anymore.” The laugh that slipped out of her was entirely stiff. Not forced but still not genuine. “It’s different now, G. Just promise me you won’t rush to be a Victor. Give it a year, at least.”
“I only have two years. If it’s not next year, I’ll barely make the cut.”
“But you’ll still make it,” she told him firmly. “I was just thinking about the family and how we really don’t need another Victor. Mom’s got her pension, I’ll have mine, and dad’s, well…he’s loaded even if we don’t see much of it.” Why did he even start a family if he just wanted to fuck off to the Capitol most years and only stops by for his own birthday? He shook his head clear of those thoughts.
“So you want to give other families a chance?” He respected that, even if it felt like a slight. What about my training? My dedication? Gloss rose from the side of the bed and looked over the room. “Can you tell me where your sheets are? I can make your bed and you can take a nap. Wake up to a freshly unpacked house.”
Cashmere shook her head. “They won’t fit the new mattress. Just, um, pass me that.” She pointed to a ripped-open cardboard box. Looking inside, he found a salmon pink blanket he could recall from their childhood. He grabbed it for her and refused to let her take it from him. “I don’t need babying.” Her voice was a bit harsher than he knew she’d intended but he blamed the lack of sleep. She’d only been in the arena for five days but had been in the Capitol for another two weeks after. He could only imagine the parties she’d attended and lost sleep over.
“I want to baby you, brat. Now, get some rest. You look like shit.”
He tucked in the last corner of her blanket around her waist and made a face. “Can you wake me up for dinner? Mom promised she’s making my favorite with the…” Practically the moment she closed her eyes, she was asleep. Loudly and completely asleep. Somehow, her breathing pattern that used to keep him up back when they shared a bedroom was now music to his ears. A victory, in a way.
Unpacking box after box, Gloss did his best to sort through her mountains of disorganized clothes and items so everything at least had a place. There were a few things he didn’t know where to put but, otherwise, he organized it how he remembered her bedroom back home had been. All while being as quiet as he could, not that she’d hear over her own loud sleeping sounds. She wasn’t a snorer but she certainly wasn’t a peaceful sleeper either. He liked those noises, now. They served as a reminder that she was truly safe; truly home.
“Get off of me.” Her voice was a quiet mumble. So quiet that he almost missed it. She pushed the blanket off of herself and kicked out at the box he’d put on the foot of her bed. “That…hurts.”
“Cashmere?” He went to the side of her bed and knelt. Taking a limp hand in his, he tried to squeeze her away. “You’re sleeping. You’re back in One.”
She rolled over and took her hand with the motion. “Luke…I’m…stop…serious.” She kicked out again, foot hitting the cardboard box and sending the contents spilling onto the floor. Even the loud crashing of a few trophies and some jewelry boxes didn’t wake her. “Get off!” Gloss found it entirely strange. Cashmere had been an exemplary Career. She had hardly even gotten her hands dirty in the arena and had only killed when needed. He couldn’t recall a time when she would have needed to defend herself like she did in these dreams. Then again, he couldn’t see what she could.
“Cashmere.” He spoke more firmly. “Wake up.”
His sister jolted away with a scream. Her eyes were wild, unseeing, for a time. She looked right through him and then around the room but nothing seemed to register in her mind. “Where is he?” He shrugged and tried to follow her eye-line. “He’s going to…Gloss, you have to run. Gloss, please.”
“Cashmere, I’m not going anywhere without you.” To make his point, he launched himself onto the mattress beside her and took her shoulders into his hands. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you.”
“He’s going to get you.” She was sobbing into his shirt as quickly as she’d said it. The warm tears felt like hold irons on his skin. He was being scalded by the sadness falling from her in loud wails. Cursing under her breath, her voice dropped impossibly low as she begged him not to listen. “Gloss, you can’t volunteer. Promise me.”
The panic in her voice made him want to panic, too. She was startled, utterly terrified, so he decided he couldn’t panic. They couldn’t both be a mess at the same time, he decided. “I promise, Cash. I won’t volunteer. I’ll drop back into regularly school tomorrow.” She still continued to sob but it was almost different now. Relieved, in a way he didn’t understand. Gloss may have been the younger by less than a year but he tried his hardest to be the older brother she’d never had. He held her against his loaned Capitol suit and let her cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I shouldn’t have ever gone in. It was a mistake from the start. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” He left the argument at that. Even he didn’t know what she certainly now knew. He just knew he was terrified for his sister. “Was there anything good about it? You can be honest.”
She laughed and collapsed against the mattress instead of him. “I liked the food but it wasn’t worth it. Promise me, Gloss. You’re not going in that arena.” He promised three times before she settled down to rest some more. This time, she seemed hesitant to truly fall asleep. As if she’d embarrass herself or hurt him. He stayed by her side this time, though, and that seemed to help.
When she started to speak in her sleep again, the words were quieter. She wasn’t so much terrified as she sounded almost argumentative. She was begging, he realized. He’d never heard Cashmere beg in her life but now she was pleading in a dream he couldn’t make sense of. “Stop lying.” Curling her body against his, his sister was painfully small for once. “That hurts. Stop…stop lying.” This time, unless she started to get frantic again, he decided to let her sleep. He just held her, whispering his encouragement and hoping she’d win her imagined arguments or whatever was going on.
Who’s she talking to? He wondered. Whoever it was, he wanted to raze Panem to the ground to hurt them back. They’re probably dead, he realized, the kids in the arena are all dead. Lucullan and Delta and Laurel and the rest. All dead. They can’t hurt her anymore.
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