Chapter Text
The room was a bare padded cell, she was in some sort of straight jacket. She tried to struggle out of it anyways. The last thing she remembered was lightning? The sky seemed to be falling down. She wondered if she was dead, was everyone else dead? She couldn’t have won again. She remembered the room she was placed in after her first games, there was no straight jacket, just a prep team and of course Gloss.
One wall showed a projection, it was the games- they were swimming up to the Cornucopia- Gloss had snuck up on Wiress, the woman had been nice, if slightly strange but that was refreshing compared to the capitalites Cashmere had come to know. When she was reaped, Gloss and Cashmere had promised each other to take her out quickly and, if at all possible, painlessly. They had made a similar promise for the others, she had killed Seeder within the first hours of the game, she convinced herself that she saved the old woman suffering.
Gloss stabbed Wiress- base of the skull a quick serving of the brain stem she would die within a few seconds she wouldn’t even have time to scream. Then, an arrow bloomed from Gloss’s chest. Cashmere’s scream seemed to come from someone else; she struggled against her restraints and rocked violently; she barely noticed the video continuing, Katniss dodging the knife Cashmere threw - Brutus knocking her out of the path of Johanna’s axe.
The video changed; Katniss was laughing; it was an interview footage from her engagement- it didn’t matter Katniss was laughing, then the arrow in Gloss’s chest. There was a close-up on Gloss now, he was still in shock, but Cashmere had learned too much from the academy to believe he was dead, that would come in minutes. Katniss’s laughter - Katniss’s singing - Katniss’s arrow in her brother’s chest.
It was impossible to tell time in the padded cell. Sometimes, someone came in to give her water or some thin oatmeal. Sometimes, someone changed the bucket in the corner. The videos continued; some were from her childhood. Gloss blew out a candle on a birthday cake. Her big brother protectively escorted her into the school on her first day.
Then the arrow, footage of Gloss’s body in a morgue.
The videos would occasionally stop, only for Cashmere to hear the screams in nearby cells. Through an adjoining wall, she heard a familiar whimper “Annie?” she asked, pressing herself as close to the wall as possible. The whimpers stopped for a moment.
“Leave me alone,” it was said in a pleading voice, totally without defiance, but Cashmere was desperate.
“Annie, Annie listen it’s me, it’s me, Cashmere Nicholo” She waited
“Cashmere?”
“Yes! Yes! It’s me, Cashmere listen, Annie you have to tell me what’s going on, I just woke up here, I don't know why”
“I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything!” Annie repeated frantically, Cashmere wondered what torture was going on in the adjoining room.
“Of course you don’t, Annie” Cashmere said in what she hoped was a reassuring manner, “of course you don’t”
“Cashmere-?”
“Yes?”
“Finnick?” Cashmere wondered how to respond. She could tell the woman a comforting lie, but maybe Finnick was in his own cell, maybe he died in the games, and his footage was being shown over and over like Gloss’s, perhaps their bodies were laid on identical metal stabs in the morgue, slowly decomposing together, besides Cashmere tried to be honest when she could- at least to other victors.
“The last time I saw him was in the arena, he was doing well he wasn’t hurt at all”
“Oh, okay, good” Annie didn’t say anything else.
Cashmere must have fallen asleep in the timeless cell because two guards were picking her up and shoving her out of the cell. She was put into a car- or at least a windowless compartment of one. The door seemed to melt into the wall making it impossble to reopen from her side. As if she wanted to escape. She had no where to go if she did. She didn’t resist; she was taken out of the car. She had been taken to the President’s mansion. A prep team came over to her; she was stripped and scrubbed, her hair washed and styled, and finally, she was put into a white dress.
“Don’t speak- stand still,” a peacekeeper told her and was ushered into a place next to her was Joanna Mason, wearing a similar white dress and an elaborately wrapped turban. Peeta Mellack was wearing a white suit, and then Coriolanus Snow sat in front of them. He made a speech spewing propaganda that she didn’t hear and was ushered back into the car. They swapped her clothes from the dress to her hospital-like gown. She wasn’t given the straight-jacket this time. Again, time failed to pass in her cell. Only the progress of her brother's rotting corpse proved any time had passed at all.
A new group of guards took her out of her cell. This time, she was taken to a helicopter; inside were the others. Without their makeup and styling, she noticed how hollow their faces were, Joanna especially since her head was shaved and her body covered in scabs. Annie shook furiously, but Peeta was still, too still like a reptile preparing to attack.
She realized that a guard was talking to her. She heard them saying, “You’re safe,” and she realized that these weren’t guards from the capital.