Sugarcubes // Finnick Odair - Hunger Games Fanfic

XIV.

"I hate your prep team."

I huff sitting down on my bed after my prep team exits and Alexander walks in. He looks at me, making me nervous, and then hands me a robe to cover myself. He looks hesitant and jumpy, and he walks towards the door and closes it, something which he's technically not supposed to do.

"Now, Kendria, we have a choice to make." He says, slowly walking towards me. "I could always put you in a dress which shines and have Caesar twirl you around like a doll, but I want to do something different this year."

"Which is?"

"Technically, wearing a dress isn't the important part of the games. It's catching the audience's attention." He says, as though I'm a small child he want to explain this to.

"I thought the hunger games pageant was all about dresses?" I ask, referring back to our first conversation as stylist and tribute.

"No, Kendria, I said the hunger games were all about clothing. Clothing in such a way you catch attention, to be specific." He corrects, and I nod, unsure of where this is going. He walks out of the room for a minute before returning pulling a rack with two hangers. "There are two choices for you today, Kendria."

He shows me the first one. The easy one. It's a green dress with flowers on top, fading into vines at the bottom. Really beautiful. Paired with it, I'd wear sparkly silver heels, let my hair down and trip a hundred times while walking to and from Caesar. "Kendria, this is what the Capitol wants you to wear. As one of the most promising tributes, the capitol sends a dress they want the tribute the wear to the stylist."

"So, you didn't design this one?" I ask.

"No. however, I did take inspiration from this dress and design something else for you to wear," He informs me, pulling out the second pieces of fabric. It's a two piece, I immediately notice that. I also notice it looks a lot like the lounge wear I first wore on the train. Out of the pale green fabric of the dress, he's made pants with start of narrow at the waist and grow wider as they go down. The shirt is made from the same material the gown I wore at the reaping was made of a soft white velvet fleece. The shirt is off shoulder, a small downfall, but the fact that I can wear canvas shoes on this outfit instead of heels throws that out of the window.

"Won't they kill me? If I don't wear the dress I'm supposed to?" I ask, a thought coming to my head before I take an action rather than after as It usually does.

"Well," he says, hooking the capitol's dress back on the rack and wheeling the rack outside, "not if you never saw the dress in the first place, Kendria. It's the stylist's decision what to make you wear."

"Well then, what about you?" I ask. I'm not usually the most caring person, but Alexander has made me feel more comfortable in extremely alien situations. I can't help but feel an ounce of care for him.

"It's my last year in the game anyways," He tells me, smiling, "might as well go out with a bang."

I'm about to ask him why this is his last year in the games, given that he's pretty young, but we're interrupted by Rosaline's high-pitched squeal demanding that we get out of the room quickly. I quickly dress in the decided outfit – both of us coming to an agreement very quickly, considering Rosaline is outside the door breathing down our necks. It looks gorgeous. And it looks like me. Alexander then wraps a green cloth around my waist making it look like a gown and tells me to take it off before I step on stage, but not a moment sooner so as not to alert anyone a moment too soon as to what we have done. He puts light eye shadow on my eyes but leaves the rest of my face untouched.

By the time we get out of the room Rosaline is in such a frenzy that she doesn't notice the shabbily put together outfit. Blight is so drunk that he doesn't care. Eero and Austin notice, I'm sure, but nobody says anything after a threatening look from my side. We make our way down to the designated waiting area. I watch the small TV screen, glancing nervously from Alexander at my right side and Austin at my left, hardly wanting my name to be announced. Each tribute seems to have finalized on an angle. The district one girl, I don't bother learning her name, it's unneeded attachment from my side of people I'm going to have to kill anyway, cries a lot, but promises a good game. She talks about her mom and dad which such love that I feel deeply envious of her. She's an only child, having no worries in the entire world. Until she was reaped for the games that is. The district one male, however, seems confident. At one point in his interview, he seems ready to snap Caesars head right off to demonstrate. He comes from the same wealthy district that his partner comes from, meaning no worries at all. He has a younger sister apparently, around my age, but the way he cracks his neck makes me doubt whether he is capable of showing any compassion towards her. He volunteered for these wretched games after all.