FIC: Low Latent Inhibition [The Hunger Games]
Pairing/Characters: Cinna, hints of Cinna/Katniss
Rating: R for mentions of violence, probably more PG-13-y
Spoilers: Through Catching Fire.
Notes: Just some backstory, since I've been roleplaying as Cinna lately.
Summary: Low latent inhibition, as the psychiatrist said, means that Cinna sometimes tends to miss the big picture, because all he sees is details. He can't shut anything out. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop noticing.
This, he understands, is what makes him different. It's what makes him better.
- - - -
Cinna is eight years old, and he hasn't spoken a single word in eight and a half months. He knows this because his parents mark every day off on the calendar. They stare at him when they think he's not looking, and they talk about him when they think he's not listening, in worried, hushed tones. They think he might not understand English.
Today, he curls up on a sofa in a doctor's office, staring at a wire-frame contraption with little wooden beads. The object, he supposes, is to move the beads along the different-colored spirals. But there's nothing to it. The beads just go back and forth. One end to another.
"Cinna?"
The woman wears tight blue leggings, a loose black tunic. She has three bangles on her wrist, nails painted alternating blue and black, and her hair is messy.
Cinna slides off of the plaid-patterned chair (third in the row, with his parents taking the second and the fourth). He treads over thin carpet until he reaches black-and-white tile. He steps to avoid the black.
"Should we--?" asks Cinna's mother.
"First the doctor'll have a talk with him," the nurse assures. Cinna notices that her teeth are very white, and her gums are very red. He wonders if that means something frightening. He glances back to his parents. His mother chews her nails. His father is back to reading a magazine, the gloss-cover filled with the fate of the latest Hunger Games victor, a boy with a chiseled jaw and ice-blue eyes.
Cinna remembers that victor running from pursuers, the last game. Remembers that he crushed a field of tulips under his sprinting feet, and how Cinna cried. Not at the deaths, not at the life-and-death struggle, but at the crushed flowers.
The nurse takes his hand, briskly, and guides him through wooden double-doors, past a loud air conditioning unit, under ten fluorescent lights and into an office on the right.
He still hears the air conditioning, even after the door closes behind him.
"Cinna," smiles the doctor. "Please, sit down."
Cinna obeys.
The doctor begins asking him questions. Sometimes he nods. Shakes his head. On occasion, just to confirm that he's listening, that he understands. He knows there's something wrong with him. He's an island of wrong, in the midst of an ocean of confusion. The doctor won't realize that this is why Cinna doesn't speak. It's because he knows he's wrong, and all he wants is to make sure no one else feels this way.
The Hunger Games are the worst part.
In school, Cinna's class briefly touched on ancient failed civilizations. There were images of languages written in glyphs, curves and sweeps, little pictures drawn on paper, carved in stone that hid a language in their cryptic lines. The Hunger Games feels like that, to Cinna. Like everyone else sees excitement and drama and victory while he sees crushed flowers and broken bones and burns, glyphs that hide their meaning in inscrutability.
He just doesn't understand. And since everyone else does, it must be something wrong with him.
"I'm going to give you some tests," says the doctor. "Is that all right?"
Cinna counts three stacks of paper on the doctor's desk. Forty-seven books on the shelves. The lights in the room are blue, green and white. Everything in the room is blue, green and white. And the air conditioning continues to blow.
Cinna nods. It's all right.
"He's perfectly healthy," says the doctor, a few days later. "If you like, we can start him on a drug regimen, but I think he's just choosing not to speak."
Cinna steals a pen from the table, and starts drawing on the inside of his arm.
His parents argue, sigh, fret, worry, and eventually decide that the doctor is useless. They drag Cinna away.
~*~
Two days later, another.
This one crouches in front of him, as his legs dangle off of her pea-green couch. (There are no lights on; just wide windows, open to a view of candy-pink skyscrapers). She watches him, for a moment, and he feels mesmerized by her. Not uncomfortable. He doesn't want to look away.
She holds out her hand, for his, and he reaches out to her.
She turns his hand palm-up.
"What's this?" she asks, of the remnants of the design. It's faded by now, his skin scrubbed red by his irate mother.
He doesn't answer, of course.
She tilts her head, eyes narrowed. "Do you like to draw?"
He has never thought about it.
"I want you to draw whatever you like." And he glances up to the doctor in surprise. No tests? No emotional scales? Maybe she'll just skip all of that and put him on medication. Little green pills to make him happy, like his mother takes. Only sometimes they don't work for her, and she spends the night sobbing to the noise of a high-voiced blue-skinned singer. Her favorite.
A drawing pad is pressed into Cinna's hands. He touches the paper, feels the rough surface. He's never felt anything quite like it before. He takes a pen.
He expects her to watch him, and for a long moment, he doesn't draw a single line. It feels too much like speaking, like there's something raw in the center of his chest that could eat him up like acid if he set it free. But he glances up, after a moment, and she's at her desk, doing paperwork. Not really paying attention to him at all.
Cinna touches the pen to the paper.
His first effort is shaky, and he rips it up and crumples it, but then the next is good. He draws the ocean. He's never seen the ocean, not in person, but he draws it anyway. Lapping waves, a sun high above, birds like little arched V's wheeling in the sky. This isn't what's on his mind. This is just beautiful, and he finds that he wants to draw beautiful things.
After a time, she sits next to him.
"Do you remember the painting in the lobby?" she asks. He nods. A vase of flowers. He remembers wishing there was a real vase of flowers, because they were so bright that he wanted to pluck one right out of the painting. Give it to his mother.
He makes a passable imitation, hardly lifting his pen from the paper. She hmms, nods, and asks him to draw a few more things. The page is filled with little rough sketches, and by the end, Cinna feels invigorated. He smiles.
He stays in the corner, drawing, as she calls his parents in. He hears certain words, things he doesn't understand, like low latent inhibition, and his parents seem to look relieved and unhappy at the same time.
~*~
He draws often. He never draws what he's thinking. Never draws the things that make his stomach clench up or his throat choke tight. Instead, he draws flowers. Fire. Storms. Rainbows. Anything beautiful. He draws what he's not thinking, because it's what he's not thinking that he wishes the world had more of.
~*~
When Cinna turns nine, his parents move into a mansion.
It isn't their mansion, his mother tells him, repeatedly. It's the mansion of someone much richer and more powerful than them. Someone who is a political figure, an entertainment figure. His mother is simply the housekeeper, his father a grounds worker.
Cinna is swallowed up by long, smooth, deep wooden hallways. He is dissipated between the tall doorways, the shuttered windows, the thousands upon thousands of tiny wood-grain lines everywhere.
He wants to shut himself up in his room, but he can't. Everything is deafening. The change in routine is deafening.
But his mother needs his help.
~*~
Eventually, he speaks again.
~*~
The lady of the house has dozens of dresses. Blue silk rippling like water, green velvet that looks for all the world like she's wearing a tiny grassy field all over her skin. There is a short black one that comes barely to mid-thigh, and a purple-patterned frilly monstrosity that flutters at the knees.
Cinna is good with fabrics. He pays attention to detail, and he is quietly, precisely organized.
After the first month, the lady of the house fires her personal laundrywoman and increases Cinna's mother's salary to compensate for Cinna's work.
"You have an eye for beauty," she says, and she praises Cinna's drawings, encourages him, slips him extra food and buys him gifts.
Cinna is stolen away from his parents, bit by bit, before he realizes it.
Low latent inhibition, as the psychiatrist said, means that Cinna sometimes tends to miss the big picture, because all he sees is details. He can't shut anything out. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop noticing.
This, he understands, is what makes him different. It's what makes him better.
~*~
It's later, after his teenage years, that he finds out the lady of the house was infertile. Unable to have children. She took Cinna as her own for that reason, and that reason only.
~*~
That she sponsors his entrance into school is only expected; Cinna has spent every moment since the age of nine quietly brightening the world around him, in drawing, cleaning, setting a vase of daisies in the center of the kitchen table. He finds wall hangings, he changes the color of the carpet, he rearranges the furniture, until his father declares that he's a genius.
Cinna becomes a stylist.
He becomes famous.
He keeps his eye on his goal: to return to what made him feel in the first place. The Hunger Games. Finally, he is famous enough.
~*~
The first time Cinna sees Katniss Everdeen, he falls in love with her.
The reapings are on in the background, as he puts the finishing touches on a ball gown. A sweep of crimson like a waterfall of blood. He thinks that's appropriate. But the woman he makes it for won't see that; she'll see the bold color and the beauty of the cut and she'll be happy.
Cinna has watched the rest of the reapings already. Districts One to Eleven. Most have simply disappointed him.
But then there's a shout. A desperate cry. He looks up. His eyes catch on the black-haired, olive-skinned girl, the elaborate braid down her back, the protective way she stands in front of the child who was chosen.
He loves her instantly, painfully. She has saved the life of her sister, and almost certainly sacrificed her own in the process.
Blood-red fabric falls through his fingers and he darts to his phone. His eyes are on the dress as it rings. He thinks, distantly, not of blood but of fire.
"Portia," he says, his eyes on the screen. "District Twelve."
~*~
She thinks he's insane. "We're already famous," she tells him. "We could shoot for District Four. Abelena's getting old, and she likes us -- we could replace her for the 74th Games."
Cinna shakes his head. "We're taking twelve."
"Cinna!"
He won't budge.
Eventually, Portia sighs. "I suppose I'll take the girl, then?" She stares longingly at Peeta.
"I'll take Katniss," corrects Cinna.
Portia smiles.
~*~
Cinna's rebellion is, at first, a careful one. He has held his thoughts deep inside for so long. Not even his team knows him. Not even Portia. And yet, the first day, with Katniss, he reveals things. He trusts her. He doesn't know her, this lovely girl from District Twelve, but he trusts her, because he knows she fears and hates the games that will destroy her.
He befriends her so easily. So very easily.
~*~
Cinna makes quick assessments.
Peeta is genuine. He is a young man in love, and he is kind, and he wants to survive. The best way to portray him is through truth. He discusses this with Portia; she agrees. They do little to disguise him.
Haymitch is chaos in Cinna's careful decisions. He is an unknown. But Cinna watches him, observes the curl of his fingers (around a nonexistent bottle), the twitch of his eyes (rimmed with red), even the way he breathes. Cinna has heard of Haymitch, has seen him on television, has seen what the announcers of the games make of him. But now he looks through the illusion, and he sees a tortured soul. He wants to reach out, in sympathy, but he settles for staying reserved, and depending on Haymitch to bring these children through this ordeal.
Effie. It seems that he should instinctively dislike her, but he doesn't. There's more there than what meets the eye. She will do the best she can -- her ambition and her sympathies both work in the same direction. The unity of purpose, that is something that Cinna can believe in.
Katniss.
Cinna didn't light her on fire. She had it already.
Katniss. Katniss will be the winner of the 74th Hunger Games. Cinna is sure of it. He will make sure of it.
~*~
She is.
~*~
Eventually, Cinna's rebellion grows more daring. At first, he protects Katniss. He devotes himself to that completely, because someone should. Someone should believe in these children whose lives are so fragile, expended so carelessly.
He changes so slowly he almost doesn't notice himself. Forgoing smooth sheets and a soft mattress for a pallet in the train car full of Katniss's dresses. Making alterations long into the night, with just the darkness and the quiet click of train wheels to keep him company.
Cinna is never told about the plan, the rebellion. He doesn't care. He recklessly layers the wedding dress over wings of black and white. Take flight, he wishes he could tell Katniss. Fly away, mockingjay. He breathes this hope into every stitch.
He wants her to know that he loves her. That someone will always love her, no matter what happens -- not for her 'romance' with Peeta, or her clothes, or her grey eyes, but for the way she saved her sister's life.
~*~
Cinna remembers the mute nine-year-old boy, the one who didn't understand.
Now he understands the Hunger Games. He can manipulate them. He is a magician of image and beauty.
He feels the individual press of each of Katniss's fingers, clasped in his.
"Drink," he tells her, again, forcing her to take more sips of a glass of water. Anything that will keep her alive longer.
He steps away. The platform seals her in.
The last thing he remembers isn't the pain. Not his pain, anyhow -- yes, they beat him. Yes, there was blood, bruises, the snap of bones deep under his skin. But the last thing he remembers is the anguish in her eyes as the platform took her.
He wishes they waited.
~*~
When death comes, Cinna welcomes it.
Rating: R for mentions of violence, probably more PG-13-y
Spoilers: Through Catching Fire.
Notes: Just some backstory, since I've been roleplaying as Cinna lately.
Summary: Low latent inhibition, as the psychiatrist said, means that Cinna sometimes tends to miss the big picture, because all he sees is details. He can't shut anything out. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop noticing.
This, he understands, is what makes him different. It's what makes him better.
- - - -
Cinna is eight years old, and he hasn't spoken a single word in eight and a half months. He knows this because his parents mark every day off on the calendar. They stare at him when they think he's not looking, and they talk about him when they think he's not listening, in worried, hushed tones. They think he might not understand English.
Today, he curls up on a sofa in a doctor's office, staring at a wire-frame contraption with little wooden beads. The object, he supposes, is to move the beads along the different-colored spirals. But there's nothing to it. The beads just go back and forth. One end to another.
"Cinna?"
The woman wears tight blue leggings, a loose black tunic. She has three bangles on her wrist, nails painted alternating blue and black, and her hair is messy.
Cinna slides off of the plaid-patterned chair (third in the row, with his parents taking the second and the fourth). He treads over thin carpet until he reaches black-and-white tile. He steps to avoid the black.
"Should we--?" asks Cinna's mother.
"First the doctor'll have a talk with him," the nurse assures. Cinna notices that her teeth are very white, and her gums are very red. He wonders if that means something frightening. He glances back to his parents. His mother chews her nails. His father is back to reading a magazine, the gloss-cover filled with the fate of the latest Hunger Games victor, a boy with a chiseled jaw and ice-blue eyes.
Cinna remembers that victor running from pursuers, the last game. Remembers that he crushed a field of tulips under his sprinting feet, and how Cinna cried. Not at the deaths, not at the life-and-death struggle, but at the crushed flowers.
The nurse takes his hand, briskly, and guides him through wooden double-doors, past a loud air conditioning unit, under ten fluorescent lights and into an office on the right.
He still hears the air conditioning, even after the door closes behind him.
"Cinna," smiles the doctor. "Please, sit down."
Cinna obeys.
The doctor begins asking him questions. Sometimes he nods. Shakes his head. On occasion, just to confirm that he's listening, that he understands. He knows there's something wrong with him. He's an island of wrong, in the midst of an ocean of confusion. The doctor won't realize that this is why Cinna doesn't speak. It's because he knows he's wrong, and all he wants is to make sure no one else feels this way.
The Hunger Games are the worst part.
In school, Cinna's class briefly touched on ancient failed civilizations. There were images of languages written in glyphs, curves and sweeps, little pictures drawn on paper, carved in stone that hid a language in their cryptic lines. The Hunger Games feels like that, to Cinna. Like everyone else sees excitement and drama and victory while he sees crushed flowers and broken bones and burns, glyphs that hide their meaning in inscrutability.
He just doesn't understand. And since everyone else does, it must be something wrong with him.
"I'm going to give you some tests," says the doctor. "Is that all right?"
Cinna counts three stacks of paper on the doctor's desk. Forty-seven books on the shelves. The lights in the room are blue, green and white. Everything in the room is blue, green and white. And the air conditioning continues to blow.
Cinna nods. It's all right.
"He's perfectly healthy," says the doctor, a few days later. "If you like, we can start him on a drug regimen, but I think he's just choosing not to speak."
Cinna steals a pen from the table, and starts drawing on the inside of his arm.
His parents argue, sigh, fret, worry, and eventually decide that the doctor is useless. They drag Cinna away.
~*~
Two days later, another.
This one crouches in front of him, as his legs dangle off of her pea-green couch. (There are no lights on; just wide windows, open to a view of candy-pink skyscrapers). She watches him, for a moment, and he feels mesmerized by her. Not uncomfortable. He doesn't want to look away.
She holds out her hand, for his, and he reaches out to her.
She turns his hand palm-up.
"What's this?" she asks, of the remnants of the design. It's faded by now, his skin scrubbed red by his irate mother.
He doesn't answer, of course.
She tilts her head, eyes narrowed. "Do you like to draw?"
He has never thought about it.
"I want you to draw whatever you like." And he glances up to the doctor in surprise. No tests? No emotional scales? Maybe she'll just skip all of that and put him on medication. Little green pills to make him happy, like his mother takes. Only sometimes they don't work for her, and she spends the night sobbing to the noise of a high-voiced blue-skinned singer. Her favorite.
A drawing pad is pressed into Cinna's hands. He touches the paper, feels the rough surface. He's never felt anything quite like it before. He takes a pen.
He expects her to watch him, and for a long moment, he doesn't draw a single line. It feels too much like speaking, like there's something raw in the center of his chest that could eat him up like acid if he set it free. But he glances up, after a moment, and she's at her desk, doing paperwork. Not really paying attention to him at all.
Cinna touches the pen to the paper.
His first effort is shaky, and he rips it up and crumples it, but then the next is good. He draws the ocean. He's never seen the ocean, not in person, but he draws it anyway. Lapping waves, a sun high above, birds like little arched V's wheeling in the sky. This isn't what's on his mind. This is just beautiful, and he finds that he wants to draw beautiful things.
After a time, she sits next to him.
"Do you remember the painting in the lobby?" she asks. He nods. A vase of flowers. He remembers wishing there was a real vase of flowers, because they were so bright that he wanted to pluck one right out of the painting. Give it to his mother.
He makes a passable imitation, hardly lifting his pen from the paper. She hmms, nods, and asks him to draw a few more things. The page is filled with little rough sketches, and by the end, Cinna feels invigorated. He smiles.
He stays in the corner, drawing, as she calls his parents in. He hears certain words, things he doesn't understand, like low latent inhibition, and his parents seem to look relieved and unhappy at the same time.
~*~
He draws often. He never draws what he's thinking. Never draws the things that make his stomach clench up or his throat choke tight. Instead, he draws flowers. Fire. Storms. Rainbows. Anything beautiful. He draws what he's not thinking, because it's what he's not thinking that he wishes the world had more of.
~*~
When Cinna turns nine, his parents move into a mansion.
It isn't their mansion, his mother tells him, repeatedly. It's the mansion of someone much richer and more powerful than them. Someone who is a political figure, an entertainment figure. His mother is simply the housekeeper, his father a grounds worker.
Cinna is swallowed up by long, smooth, deep wooden hallways. He is dissipated between the tall doorways, the shuttered windows, the thousands upon thousands of tiny wood-grain lines everywhere.
He wants to shut himself up in his room, but he can't. Everything is deafening. The change in routine is deafening.
But his mother needs his help.
~*~
Eventually, he speaks again.
~*~
The lady of the house has dozens of dresses. Blue silk rippling like water, green velvet that looks for all the world like she's wearing a tiny grassy field all over her skin. There is a short black one that comes barely to mid-thigh, and a purple-patterned frilly monstrosity that flutters at the knees.
Cinna is good with fabrics. He pays attention to detail, and he is quietly, precisely organized.
After the first month, the lady of the house fires her personal laundrywoman and increases Cinna's mother's salary to compensate for Cinna's work.
"You have an eye for beauty," she says, and she praises Cinna's drawings, encourages him, slips him extra food and buys him gifts.
Cinna is stolen away from his parents, bit by bit, before he realizes it.
Low latent inhibition, as the psychiatrist said, means that Cinna sometimes tends to miss the big picture, because all he sees is details. He can't shut anything out. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop noticing.
This, he understands, is what makes him different. It's what makes him better.
~*~
It's later, after his teenage years, that he finds out the lady of the house was infertile. Unable to have children. She took Cinna as her own for that reason, and that reason only.
~*~
That she sponsors his entrance into school is only expected; Cinna has spent every moment since the age of nine quietly brightening the world around him, in drawing, cleaning, setting a vase of daisies in the center of the kitchen table. He finds wall hangings, he changes the color of the carpet, he rearranges the furniture, until his father declares that he's a genius.
Cinna becomes a stylist.
He becomes famous.
He keeps his eye on his goal: to return to what made him feel in the first place. The Hunger Games. Finally, he is famous enough.
~*~
The first time Cinna sees Katniss Everdeen, he falls in love with her.
The reapings are on in the background, as he puts the finishing touches on a ball gown. A sweep of crimson like a waterfall of blood. He thinks that's appropriate. But the woman he makes it for won't see that; she'll see the bold color and the beauty of the cut and she'll be happy.
Cinna has watched the rest of the reapings already. Districts One to Eleven. Most have simply disappointed him.
But then there's a shout. A desperate cry. He looks up. His eyes catch on the black-haired, olive-skinned girl, the elaborate braid down her back, the protective way she stands in front of the child who was chosen.
He loves her instantly, painfully. She has saved the life of her sister, and almost certainly sacrificed her own in the process.
Blood-red fabric falls through his fingers and he darts to his phone. His eyes are on the dress as it rings. He thinks, distantly, not of blood but of fire.
"Portia," he says, his eyes on the screen. "District Twelve."
~*~
She thinks he's insane. "We're already famous," she tells him. "We could shoot for District Four. Abelena's getting old, and she likes us -- we could replace her for the 74th Games."
Cinna shakes his head. "We're taking twelve."
"Cinna!"
He won't budge.
Eventually, Portia sighs. "I suppose I'll take the girl, then?" She stares longingly at Peeta.
"I'll take Katniss," corrects Cinna.
Portia smiles.
~*~
Cinna's rebellion is, at first, a careful one. He has held his thoughts deep inside for so long. Not even his team knows him. Not even Portia. And yet, the first day, with Katniss, he reveals things. He trusts her. He doesn't know her, this lovely girl from District Twelve, but he trusts her, because he knows she fears and hates the games that will destroy her.
He befriends her so easily. So very easily.
~*~
Cinna makes quick assessments.
Peeta is genuine. He is a young man in love, and he is kind, and he wants to survive. The best way to portray him is through truth. He discusses this with Portia; she agrees. They do little to disguise him.
Haymitch is chaos in Cinna's careful decisions. He is an unknown. But Cinna watches him, observes the curl of his fingers (around a nonexistent bottle), the twitch of his eyes (rimmed with red), even the way he breathes. Cinna has heard of Haymitch, has seen him on television, has seen what the announcers of the games make of him. But now he looks through the illusion, and he sees a tortured soul. He wants to reach out, in sympathy, but he settles for staying reserved, and depending on Haymitch to bring these children through this ordeal.
Effie. It seems that he should instinctively dislike her, but he doesn't. There's more there than what meets the eye. She will do the best she can -- her ambition and her sympathies both work in the same direction. The unity of purpose, that is something that Cinna can believe in.
Katniss.
Cinna didn't light her on fire. She had it already.
Katniss. Katniss will be the winner of the 74th Hunger Games. Cinna is sure of it. He will make sure of it.
~*~
She is.
~*~
Eventually, Cinna's rebellion grows more daring. At first, he protects Katniss. He devotes himself to that completely, because someone should. Someone should believe in these children whose lives are so fragile, expended so carelessly.
He changes so slowly he almost doesn't notice himself. Forgoing smooth sheets and a soft mattress for a pallet in the train car full of Katniss's dresses. Making alterations long into the night, with just the darkness and the quiet click of train wheels to keep him company.
Cinna is never told about the plan, the rebellion. He doesn't care. He recklessly layers the wedding dress over wings of black and white. Take flight, he wishes he could tell Katniss. Fly away, mockingjay. He breathes this hope into every stitch.
He wants her to know that he loves her. That someone will always love her, no matter what happens -- not for her 'romance' with Peeta, or her clothes, or her grey eyes, but for the way she saved her sister's life.
~*~
Cinna remembers the mute nine-year-old boy, the one who didn't understand.
Now he understands the Hunger Games. He can manipulate them. He is a magician of image and beauty.
He feels the individual press of each of Katniss's fingers, clasped in his.
"Drink," he tells her, again, forcing her to take more sips of a glass of water. Anything that will keep her alive longer.
He steps away. The platform seals her in.
The last thing he remembers isn't the pain. Not his pain, anyhow -- yes, they beat him. Yes, there was blood, bruises, the snap of bones deep under his skin. But the last thing he remembers is the anguish in her eyes as the platform took her.
He wishes they waited.
~*~
When death comes, Cinna welcomes it.