"you might get away with it" [1/2], The Hunger Games, Cinna/Portia
t: you might get away with it
f: The Hunger Games
c: Cinna, Portia (Cinna/Portia)
ch: angst_bingo - moments lost
r/wc: PG-13/11,120
s: He loves her, but not enough to save her.
n: [Title from Electric Twist by A Fine Frenzy.] Spoilers for Catching Fire and some stuff mentioned in Mockingjay. I haven’t written a fic backwards in ages, mostly because it’s kind of hard and I am not that good at it, but I thought it would work here. And tbh you can just scroll to the bottom and work upwards. Chronology should hopefully work, omg this was hard. YES I SHIP THIS, SHUT UP OKAY. I should just write an AU where they are sexy people at a design school and nothing bad happens to anybody the end. Anyway, this isn’t that fic, oddly enough. So it’s sad and shit. You’ve been warned.
“They’ll kill us for this,” Portia says quietly. Her eyes - diamond lashes - are fixed on the screens showing the audience filing into their seats, her mouth twisting at the corners.
“They’ll kill me,” Cinna tells her, wanting to reach for her hand, her cold fingers, but Katniss is taking all his warmth, his confidence these days. His little Mockingjay, and sometimes he likes to think he’ll see her fly, knows he never will.
Portia laughs at that; the sound isn’t cruel, though he knows it could be, is glad for the reprieve. He loves her, but not enough to save her, and she loves him too much to run but not enough to convince him to stop doing these things that will destroy him. They both live with this.
“You were never that naive,” she tells him. “They’ll kill us both, and our prep teams, our tailors. They’d take our families if there was anyone left to take.”
His girl, his woman; pragmatic and sad and with him to the bitter end.
The audience is excited, happy, and the weight of expectation breaks across Cinna’s shoulders. He should have warned Katniss about what will become of her wedding dress, but it’s best that she doesn’t know. They’ll have to go in, have to watch his moment of glory, one last swansong.
“But she’ll be beautiful.” Portia’s murmur is soft.
“Yes,” he agrees, because if you’re going to be damned for something then that something had better be perfect. Portia slips an arm through his, pulls him towards Caesar’s auditorium, steady hands and head held high to the last. “Yes, she will.”
Finnick’s spine is rigid, perfect posture, another situation tumbling through his hands. Cinna thinks that he’d prefer another turn in the arena, even a fatal one, to another night in some bruising dignitary’s bed, but there’s nowhere safe to ask that question now.
Portia’s head is angled towards Finnick, moonlight glinting off her braided hair, and her expression is cool and smooth like the opals at her throat. Both of them stoic, chewing over smalltalk, and Cinna’s heart clenches just a little.
“You should design something for me,” Johanna remarks, something lurid purple and too strong in one hand, “they always dress me up like a fucking idiot.”
“That’s because you just look like a fucking idiot,” Finnick replies, soft and sharp at the same time.
Their friendship was never particularly stable, and the Quarter Quell has done nothing to help them. They’re all weighted down with things they can’t say, won’t say, will never say. Time ticking down in fragments and only the Girl On Fire gets to live. His Girl On Fire, and yet the sacrifices never get less heavy, less painful.
Coin holds all of Katniss’ Mockingjay outfit designs now, safe and perfect and waiting. Cinna hopes it’s enough. It has to be enough.
His fingers feel like feathers and flames, sleepless nights over a wedding dress that isn’t a wedding dress, his final contribution. He knows it will be his final contribution; it can be nothing else.
“It’s late,” Portia says, and he hears when did you last rest in her voice.
He doesn’t know. Maybe he hasn’t truly rested for years.
Portia leaves Finnick at the balcony railings, crossing to Cinna in clicking heels, and lays a hand on his cheek. Her eyes are sad, but her mouth is firm, stubborn.
“You should let her mother you,” Finnick says, less of a taunt than he’d probably like.
Annie is in Four. The only person here who can look after Finnick is Johanna, and she’s too dangerous to ever be sentimental. She’ll keep them both alive long enough though, and she’ll get what needs to be done done. That’s what she does.
“Come on,” Portia says, hand dropping, and Cinna lets her lead him back inside. His sombre, steady woman he once thought he knew.
He told Katniss once that he had no desire to hurt anyone but himself, and it was true. Then. Now, with the mixture of despair and bravery and sheer stubbornness on each tribute’s face, called back to a place they’ve told themselves they were safe from, it burns.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Portia whispers in his ear as she leaves him outside his quarters, lips against his ear, breathing a little unsteady. She laughs, sudden and broken. “Well. Aside from the stupid things you’re already doing.”
He kisses her cheek and she nods, pulling away, and he watches her walk down the hall until she turns the corner and she’s gone.
“I forget sometimes that they’re children.” Portia has curled her legs up, huddled into his couch. “We’ve pinned so much on them, but they’re children.”
Haymitch is angry, Effie distraught. Cinna isn’t sure he expected anything different of their District Twelve tributes, who’ve never gone for subtlety when breaking something could be considered so much more effective.
Now, Katniss and Peeta have training scores of twelve painted on each of their backs, and even with a tentative plan in place, well, they’d have done better to keep their damn heads down. Shot some arrows, painted some leaves across their faces, left well enough alone. But they’ve never done that, of course, and there’s no reason to assume why they would start now, with so little left, so much on the line.
Cinna sits down next to Portia, puts an arm around her shoulders, squeezes.
“I’m not Katniss,” she tells him, “that won’t comfort me.”
Her lips curve anyway, and she tips her head to rest against him. He knows how fond she’s grown of Peeta, who is smart and sweet and less brittle than Katniss, and he should probably be dead by now but Katniss will never let him die, and Cinna hopes that one day she’ll realise what that means.
“I trust them,” he says. There’s an arrogance in youth, and he thinks that the resistance could use a little of that fierce, stupid bravery. He still feels it in sparks sometimes, and Portia looks at him but she doesn’t try to temper it anymore.
“Of course you do,” Portia sighs. She doesn’t move, so he doesn’t either, and eventually she adds: “nothing we’ve done is going to improve this situation, you know.”
The Capitol is a powder keg right now anyway, and with Katniss and Peeta throwing in firecrackers, not to mention the vicious unpredictability of the other tributes, well, Cinna probably shouldn’t just hand them the matches.
It’s too late now, though, and even if he could he doesn’t think he’d turn back.
“No.” Portia looks from him to the feathered Mockingjay dress, and her eyes fill with angry tears. “No. No. No. You cannot do this to her. Not to her, not to us.”
“To me,” he corrects.
“To us,” she snaps. “We are a team, do you really think that I can play ignorant? That Katniss can play ignorant?”
Cinna swallows, but the Mockingjay dress is perfect and just what the revolution needs, the perfect symbol, sharp as the fire. They aren’t going to let her out of that arena alive, Heavensbee murmured when he last came to “check on their progress”. Coin is scrabbling to make plans before it’s too late. The revolution comes first, after all.
“If you go now,” he says quietly, “if you quit our team now-”
Portia slaps him, sending him reeling back more from the shock than from the feel of her hand connecting with his cheek.
“You fucking idiot,” she hisses, voice thick, and he grabs her arms, pulls her into a hug that she fights for a moment before collapsing into him, mouth shivering against his throat. “And if you don’t know by now that I’ll follow you to whatever prison cell you’re dragging me to, then you really are an idiot.”
Cinna wants to apologise, and can’t. He holds her close instead, waits for her breathing to steady, keeps his eyes closed.
“So,” she says eventually, calm, the golden waves painted around her eyes undisturbed. “How are we going to make sure the feathers don’t catch light with the wedding dress?”
Portia has been a part of him for so long it’s sometimes hard to remember that she’s actually separate, that there are consequences for her that he can’t shield her from by taking them on himself, and it makes him feel itchy, lost in his own skin.
“Portia,” he begins, and she shakes her head, braids bouncing, eyes on the dress with nothing but cool contemplation, detached, a stylist’s vision.
Fuck, but he loves her.
Katniss’ hair is soft under his fingers as he weaves it into the familiar braids, her gaze on him in the mirror although he can tell she’s thinking about other things. In any case, he won’t cry like her prep team did, because he hasn’t cried for years. There’s nothing left to lose, after all.
Tonight, he and Portia have created something magnificent, something perfect for their tributes, who have burned away everything to be left simply with what’s left over, hard and blazing and impenetrable.
Unofficially, Portia’s been referring to these parade outfits as their Fuck The Audience costumes, but only after three a.m., only after alcohol, and only when she’s sure they won’t be overheard. The last days of self-preservation, before it will all stop mattering anyway.
It’s easier to watch strangers die than it is to watch familiar people die, and Cinna can’t quite judge the mood of the Capitol; excitement for a Quarter Quell of the games, especially in those too young to remember the first one - Cinna’s heard stories, of course, and shreds from a drunken Haymitch that made no sense and too much sense at the same time - but there’s a sense of tragedy there, of resentment. These are the people with Finnick Odair commemorative posters, after all, and there are still enough people who haven’t had the chance to woo him. Buy him. Whatever they’re calling it these days.
He doesn’t go to meet the train because he isn’t ready to see Katniss yet, not with the resistance scrambling to put together a plan where they can still win, where they won’t lose their precious Mockingjay, and he doesn’t sleep at night now as he sketches and resketches armour for Katniss that may yet prove superfluous.
“I don’t think revolutionaries are supposed to be making fashion statements,” Portia remarks softly, perched on the arm of his couch in the apartment he returns to only to sleep and eat, when he remembers. As official stylists, they’ll be moving tomorrow, into quarters near their tributes. It’s an honour, he’s been told, the same as he was told last year.
This apartment has never been home, but he’ll miss it anyway; there’s something here that isn’t safety, isn’t reassurance, but is his own, is something he likes to think they can’t tear away.
“You’re clearly going about this wrong,” he teases her, waving a page of half-finished clothing at her. “The prettier they are, the more the Capitol will like them.”
It isn’t true, but it is at the same time, and he doesn’t have to explain it because Portia already knows.
“You should dress all of Thirteen,” she tells him easily, managing a smile. “I think they could use a little tailoring.”
He laughs. “Only if you help me.”
“Of course,” she replies, false easiness in her voice.
On the television, tributes pour off trains, trying to look brave. Finnick, Johanna, Chaff, Katniss and Peeta. If Cinna doesn’t pay close attention to the broadcast, they all blur into one; someone else he can’t save, not with all the needles and thread in Panem.
“It needs more blue,” Portia decides, hair wound up behind her head and held in place with the styluses she uses for her tablet, barefoot on their workshop floor. She points to one of the screens they have on the wall; hours of footage of fires. On a bench are hundreds of burned-down candles, a mass of wax and charred wicks. “At the edges, there needs to be more blue.”
She’s right, and Cinna nods, making notes as he circles the mannequin with the beginnings of Katniss’ parade outfit beginning to take shape. Peeta’s is beside it, flickering softly, although the flames still look too cheap, too artificial.
Cinna doesn’t know what it would be like to work without Portia; without someone who knows what needs changing without either of them saying a word.
Portia rubs her eyes, reaches to pin the collar of Katniss’ costume up slightly, changing the shape. “Do you ever wish we’d picked another motif for them?” she asks, a wicked smirk curling her mouth. “Something that makes me feel less like I’m going blind, for example?”
Her smirk cracks at the edges, and the trick to doing this is not to ever think about why, not to ever think about who they’re making these for.
“Next time, we’ll do flowing water,” he tells her, pressing play on another recording of a fire, flames licking at the sky, angry and all-consuming.
They watch the broadcast in Portia’s apartment, side by side on the couch, ignoring the Quarter Quell announcement parties taking place on the streets.
Cinna’s mind is already preparing itself for the clothes he’ll have to make; they gave him Twelve again, back before things became quite so messy, and then of course they couldn’t demand it back because that would imply that there was a problem. He thinks about Katniss and maybe Peeta returning as mentors, wonders if they can hold their nerve, wonders if he can help them.
When Snow reads out the announcement that this year’s tributes will be reaped from the existing victors, he thinks his heart stops in his chest.
“It’s fixed,” Portia murmurs beside him, “it’s got to be,” and she bursts into tears.
It’s been a long time since he’s seen Portia cry, and he can’t make himself move to touch her, to comfort her, and even with the broadcast continuing on, Cinna can’t hear a word Snow is saying, can barely hear Portia sobbing angrily beside him, and he thinks I should phone Katniss and then I should start designing for her again and he still remains frozen.
Cinna never got into this to design wedding dresses, but then these wedding dresses are part of the increasingly thin line keeping Katniss Everdeen alive, so he gives each one the attention it deserves, orders what feels like acres of white and cream and pastel pink silk from Eight, orders lace and satin and velvet, starts designing shoes and veils and tiaras and headpieces, goes to his favourite jeweller to commission strings of flawless pearls.
A competition of a different kind, and maybe no one will die this time; the Capitol seem excited that they’ll be able to vote for the gown that Katniss will wear. Maybe it’s only fitting that a wedding being dictated by the television and the government have every last detail picked out by the public; none of it’s ever been in Katniss and Peeta’s hands, after all.
Sometimes, he wonders what would have happened if they’d been left in District Twelve; if Peeta would still be watching Katniss from a distance, never brave enough to say anything.
Portia comes by his workshop to look over his designs, to try on veils when he asks her to, to finger necklines and hemlines and frown at intricate beading. She’ll have to design Peter’s tuxedo, but this wedding is all about Katniss, of course; all Peeta will need to do is compliment her.
It’s different, seeing Portia here surrounded by the remnants of a wedding, diamonds dripping between her fingers, a potential tiara for Katniss perched slightly askew on her hair as she smiles at him. He wonders, just for a moment, what her wedding dress would have looked like. Will look like, maybe.
Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this.
It’s been too long, and they’re not those people anymore. Maybe they were never those people in the first place.
“Poor Katniss,” Portia sighs, dropping diamonds into a heap on top of a pile of lace that might become a veil. “Poor Peeta.”
Cinna nods, but in that moment it isn’t their District Twelve victors that he’s pitying.
All anybody wants to talk about are the clothes Katniss and Peeta have worn for their victory tour, which is actually a relief; while they’re discussing ballgowns and suits, they’re not discussing the way Panem is falling into pieces and Cinna is at least partially responsible.
Cinna and Portia are honoured guests at all kinds of parties; the kind of parties Cinna has never particularly wanted to go to, where he stands out because he hasn’t dyed his skin or set himself on fire - a trend he’s amused to see sweeping the Capitol, partially because they have no idea what they’re really wearing, and partially because most designers aren’t as good as he and Portia are, and everyone has to keep a fire extinguisher handy - but where everyone wants to talk to him. He grins and bears it and takes the compliments because, well, he’s certainly earned them.
“Careful, or they’ll turn you into a show pony too,” Finnick remarks, halfway down his third glass of something acid green that’s making his eyelids heavy, his body language loose. Cinna knows him too well to play this game, and in any case he knows what most people at this party don’t: namely, he knows about Annie Cresta.
“I’m not nearly interesting enough for that,” Cinna replies, looking to where Portia is talking to Johanna. Johanna’s smile looks more like she’s baring her teeth in warning, though she likes Portia well enough.
“You’ll be commissioned to dress every person in this room,” Finnick tells him. “And then maybe undress them too.”
He puckers his lips, bats his long eyelashes.
Cinna smiles, but lets it pass without comment. “I’ve got a wedding dress to design first.”
Something flickers in Finnick’s expression. “Ah yes, our lovestruck little backwoods murderers,” he muses. “Because no one in the Capitol can believe that poor people can feel love.”
“Don’t be cruel, Finnick.” Portia’s appeared from nowhere, the lights of the party flickering off her dress. She looks beautiful, and her exhaustion shows only in her eyes, if you know where to search for it.
“All I’ve got left, darling,” Finnick responds, a cheap imitation of flirting that sounds like it stings. “And don’t forget for a minute that all that Everdeen and Mellark have going for them is that they’re a novelty, dancing fucking ponies like the rest of us.”
No one’s forgotten that, but it sounds worse spilling from Finnick’s lips.
“I was going to ask you to dance to save me from everyone else,” Portia tells him, “but I think I’ll ask Cinna instead.”
Cinna takes her hand, leads her onto the dancefloor. He doesn’t look back at Finnick.
“Don’t be angry,” Portia tells him quietly.
“I’m not angry,” he replies, sliding his arms around her waist.
“You are,” she says, “but don’t be.”
He sighs, swallows down the myriad of emotions threatening to drown him, and manages: “how’s your evening been?”
Portia laughs. “I’ve been stuck talking to the Head Torturer for the last half an hour. He seems to think that telling me in great detail how they create an Avox is going to get him a date of some description.”
Cinna grimaces. “Romantic,” he says.
“Well, exactly,” she agrees, and steps back so that he can twirl her.
Sometimes, no matter how much you want to, you can’t help. The victory tour makes Cinna feel particularly helpless, particularly angry; Katniss and Peeta are driving each other mad with nightmares and tension and bitter revelations, facing the crowds of districts threatening to revolt, who won’t be consoled by false smiles and clasped hands, facing families of people that they killed in order to try and survive.
Eight is the worst, because it should be home and it isn’t anymore. He knows hardly any of the faces in the crowd, though it hasn’t been all that long since he left, and, well, he no longer has a family here. The locals look at him like he’s a stranger, one of the exotic creatures from the Capitol, and he wonders if he’s really changed so much.
Cinna always knew he could never go back, but the truth is still bitter on his tongue.
Portia comes to his quarters as the train speeds on through the night, hair loose around her shoulders, face clean from make-up, in a simple nightgown that brushes just below her knees.
“I know,” she says quietly.
Of course she knows. He still doesn’t know what district she’s from - she’s always kept that to herself - but whichever one it was they’ll have passed through it at some point.
He wants to voice his doubt aloud, his loneliness and confusion and what he quietly just wishes, but he’s kept himself strong this far, and Katniss needs him to be confident. He can’t give into this.
They share a bed for the first time in years that night, Portia curled into herself with the sheets tangled around her legs, Cinna pressed almost close enough to touch; not quite, but nearly.
Eleven is the first district they stop at, and the whole thing is an unmitigated disaster.
While Effie frets and complains at dignitaries, and Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta disappear to no-doubt regroup, now that people are being executed - presumably not part of anybody’s plan - Cinna finds Portia’s hand and they pretend to need the bathroom. Peacekeepers watch them, but no one attempts to stop them, and the first empty room they find, Cinna pulls Portia inside.
There’s nothing they can say that won’t be overheard, nothing it’s safe to say, and they’ll let Effie believe in cars backfiring and firecrackers but Cinna knows gunshots when he hears them and suddenly this tour looks like it’s going to be very, very long. There’s only so many dresses and hairstyles he can drape Katniss in to try and contain a situation rapidly spiralling before anyone is ready to correctly exacerbate it.
He hasn’t spoken to Coin in a while, it hasn’t been safe, but he knows that she doesn’t want this yet.
He pulls Portia close, buries his face in the stylish but sombre dress they picked out for her; something with class but designed to make her blend into the background, another part of the entourage.
She clenches a hand in the back of his collar, the only sign that she’s as scared as he is, and Cinna gives himself a second to murmur fuck fuck fuck fuck into her shoulder.
Past stylists all seem to want to talk to Cinna and Portia about how they should dress their tributes for their victory tour; Cinna nods and smiles and pretends to take their advice, and then goes back to what he’s always known he’ll have to use: his gut instinct, Haymitch’s murmured telephoned instructions, and what he knows Katniss will willingly wear.
If she wants to continue getting away with the berries stunt, then Cinna will need to design a whole lot of pretty, virginal dresses that make her look too innocent to be a girl considering pulling down the government. She’s in love, she was delirious, and tributes have gone mad before, they should be glad that she’s done it in such a pretty, photogenic way.
Finnick is in the Capitol at the moment, and Cinna finds him hanging around the workshop with Portia one afternoon. She’s surrounded by shirts for Peeta, hair wound through a golden tiara.
“Your first victory tour,” Finnick remarks, half congratulatory, half sneering. It comes across sour. “Word of advice: drink everything they offer you.”
“You were fourteen, your victory tour,” Cinna reminds him.
“So?” Finnick smirks, sharp, wolfish. “If you win the Games, no one will ever say ‘no’ to you. Ever.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on to Katniss and Peeta,” Cinna replies evenly.
Finnick always wants a reaction, but he also wants somewhere to hide, so Cinna doesn’t bother rising to his bait.
“If you’re going to be here for a while, you can help me with this,” Portia tells Finnick, tossing him a handful of black velvet that will eventually be a jacket for Peeta. “Sewing isn’t all that different from weaving a fishing net.”
Finnick rolls his eyes, but it isn’t the first time they’ve given him chores while he’s here, and he doesn’t bother protesting. Cinna watches him for a moment, and then turns his attention to a wall covered in designs for Katniss.
“Cinna-” Haymitch begins; damnably sober, sharp-faced, and determined.
“I know,” Cinna cuts him off. “It’s in hand. Really.”
There are murmurs everywhere, if you know where to listen, and Katniss and Peeta aren’t out of danger yet. In fact, they’re in for a whole lot more danger than they were in the arena, and Cinna knows that everything he dresses Katniss in from now on needs to protect her; armour made of frills and silk and glitter.
Haymitch studies his expression for a moment, then claps a hand against his arm, thanks going unsaid but writ large on his face anyway.
The world stops when Katniss pours the berries into her palm. Haymitch sucks in a breath between his teeth, reaches for the nearest drink, and downs it.
Portia’s hand closes around Cinna’s wrist, nails digging into his skin. Her eyes are wide, her lips pressed together in a tight line.
Cinna wants not to be watching this in public, wants to not be at this party of mentors and stylists and sponsors, aware that people keep looking at their corner because, well, District Twelve are the only people left alive. For now.
The District Six stylists are clutching one another, cooing about how romantic it is, and Cinna distantly notes one of the sponsors crying, pressing a lilac handkerchief to her eyes. The mentors are all silent, largely expressionless, although Johanna looks like she’s swallowing down a laugh, and Finnick’s head is tipped slightly to one side, while he refuses to show that he’s impressed.
“Oh, stupid girl, what have you done,” Haymitch mumbles, reaching for another drink. Cinna dimly thinks he’d like one himself, because what Katniss is doing is foolish and dangerous and perfect and he is so proud of her that it stings.
When Seneca Crane’s voice booms through the arena, stopping Katniss and Peeta from what was rapidly becoming a suicide pact, the room erupts into applause. Some of it is frenzied and genuine, some of it is bemused and hesitant, and the applause from the mentors, all of them past victors, is slow and measured and deliberate.
Portia’s fingers peel from his wrist, though she doesn’t start clapping, and Haymitch wipes a hand across his face, mind clearly already putting together contingency plans, pretty lies, frantic tap-dancing to hide the truth, the extent of the damage.
All Cinna can feel, bone deep and burning, is relief.
“How many Games have we watched together?” Portia asks. It’s three a.m., and they’re watching Cato and Clove sitting around a fire, sharpening cruel knives.
Cinna’s designed sixteen different victory dresses for Katniss, because he isn’t giving up hope, no matter what anyone says to him. She’s smart, and she’s sharp, and she’ll keep herself and Peeta alive.
“I don’t know,” Cinna replies, because he doesn’t want to count how many children they’ve seen massacred. “Too many.”
She smiles, humourless, hugging her knees. “True.”
As people behind the scenes, they’ve seen more than what was broadcast to the public; he saw what Katniss did for Rue’s body, saw her singing to the little girl in her final moments, and there’s unrest peeling through the building, bitter and anxious, and it makes him scared because they don’t ever forget or forgive these things.
They take everything from you for a lot less: Cinna learned that the hard way, after all.
“Do you really think they’ll let them have two victors this year?” Portia asks after a while, because it’s late, because they’re alone, and because sooner or later someone has to ask that question.
Cinna doesn’t know; he doubts it, because the games have only ever been cruel, never merciful, and star-crossed lovers can only get away with things for so long. He’s learned that one too.
He stays silent, and in the end Portia just nods and sighs, doesn’t push for an answer or ask for anything else.
It’s strange, watching the Games like this, being part of it, knowing the tributes, knowing the stylists and mentors and prep teams. When the dying children on the screen are more than just sacrifices, when you’ve met them, walked past them, spoken to them.
Sometimes, he feels guilty wanting Katniss to succeed at the expense of these other tributes, at the expense of Peeta. But Katniss... there is something about her, something that people have latched onto, something that wasn’t just created by his clothing designs, and he thinks that they need her to survive.
He doesn’t mention this to Portia, of course; Peeta’s hers, and she looks exhausted enough these days already.
Maybe this is what the Games are about after all.
Once Katniss has been sent to the arena, the room seems too small, too silent, and Cinna’s hands are shaking.
He always had to send her away. Everything was building towards this, he knows, and he kept himself strong for Katniss’ sake, and now all he wants to do is run, drag her back, fold her away somewhere safe.
There isn’t much time until the Games begin, and he should find a screen so he can see how she fares. If she’ll become yet another victim of the cornucopia, or if she’ll listen to advice. He doesn’t want to watch, he can’t not watch, this terrified, strong girl he’s already turned into an icon.
He finds Portia in the elevator, cheeks wet with tears, a shaky half-smile shoved into place.
“How’s Peeta?” he asks.
She shakes her head, and he can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s alright; he doesn’t want to talk about Katniss, about the look in her eyes before she left.
He reaches for her hand, and she knots their fingers together, tight.
They find Haymitch and Effie in the crowded room upstairs, everyone packed in to watch the beginning of the Games. Tributes looking drawn and fearful in the sunlight, the little ones who won’t stand a chance. Watching this never gets any easier, and Portia hasn’t let go of his hand yet. He doesn’t think he’d let her if she tried.
His mouth moves silently, counting down the numbers, unable to look at anyone else, at Effie’s anxious fluttering, at Haymitch’s drawn and sober face. There’s nothing any of them can do now, except wait, and watch, and hope.
Portia is drinking dark purple wine, a thick handknitted shawl around her shoulders, pulled tight. She looks tired, bitter, make-up smudging down her cheeks.
Cinna doesn’t bother asking if she intends to sleep tonight; he knows that he won’t, and he’s grateful for the company.
“She’s maimed Peeta,” Portia mumbles into her glass. “I mean, the medics did what they could, but his hands are a mess.”
“He took a risk,” Cinna replies, devil’s advocate, perhaps. He’ll give credit where it’s due, though: “he was perfect.”
Portia nods, sighing, taking another mouthful of wine. “He was,” she agrees. “He came up with something neither of us could.”
Cinna thinks of Katniss, unable to smile for the cameras, to take part in the necessary circus of noise and grinning and pretty, pretty lies, and the dress he made in the hope it would save her.
It’s been a long night.
“They weren’t quite what we were expecting, were they?” he asks, sitting down beside her. Stating the obvious, true, but it’s worth saying. After all, these ones are unpredictable; shooting arrows at Gamemakers, stealing the spotlight, falling in love with each other. If the Gamemakers had known in advance that District Twelve were going to turn out to be so interesting, they would probably have given them a more famous stylist; not that Cinna has anything to complain about.
Portia laughs, curls into his side. “You can say that again,” she replies, handing him the wine.
Cinna kisses her temple, and thinks about Katniss’ anger, Peeta’s bleeding hands, Haymitch’s bitter exhaustion, his Girl On Fire spinning in her dress, and a confession on camera that changed all of the odds. Peeta is brave and stupid and so very clever, and Cinna admires him.
After all, he’s never been able to admit to being in love with anyone.
“I suppose we sit back and wait for their next bad idea,” he muses, and Portia laughs beside him, like she’s thinking about meaning it.
(continued here)
f: The Hunger Games
c: Cinna, Portia (Cinna/Portia)
ch: angst_bingo - moments lost
r/wc: PG-13/11,120
s: He loves her, but not enough to save her.
n: [Title from Electric Twist by A Fine Frenzy.] Spoilers for Catching Fire and some stuff mentioned in Mockingjay. I haven’t written a fic backwards in ages, mostly because it’s kind of hard and I am not that good at it, but I thought it would work here. And tbh you can just scroll to the bottom and work upwards. Chronology should hopefully work, omg this was hard. YES I SHIP THIS, SHUT UP OKAY. I should just write an AU where they are sexy people at a design school and nothing bad happens to anybody the end. Anyway, this isn’t that fic, oddly enough. So it’s sad and shit. You’ve been warned.
“They’ll kill us for this,” Portia says quietly. Her eyes - diamond lashes - are fixed on the screens showing the audience filing into their seats, her mouth twisting at the corners.
“They’ll kill me,” Cinna tells her, wanting to reach for her hand, her cold fingers, but Katniss is taking all his warmth, his confidence these days. His little Mockingjay, and sometimes he likes to think he’ll see her fly, knows he never will.
Portia laughs at that; the sound isn’t cruel, though he knows it could be, is glad for the reprieve. He loves her, but not enough to save her, and she loves him too much to run but not enough to convince him to stop doing these things that will destroy him. They both live with this.
“You were never that naive,” she tells him. “They’ll kill us both, and our prep teams, our tailors. They’d take our families if there was anyone left to take.”
His girl, his woman; pragmatic and sad and with him to the bitter end.
The audience is excited, happy, and the weight of expectation breaks across Cinna’s shoulders. He should have warned Katniss about what will become of her wedding dress, but it’s best that she doesn’t know. They’ll have to go in, have to watch his moment of glory, one last swansong.
“But she’ll be beautiful.” Portia’s murmur is soft.
“Yes,” he agrees, because if you’re going to be damned for something then that something had better be perfect. Portia slips an arm through his, pulls him towards Caesar’s auditorium, steady hands and head held high to the last. “Yes, she will.”
Finnick’s spine is rigid, perfect posture, another situation tumbling through his hands. Cinna thinks that he’d prefer another turn in the arena, even a fatal one, to another night in some bruising dignitary’s bed, but there’s nowhere safe to ask that question now.
Portia’s head is angled towards Finnick, moonlight glinting off her braided hair, and her expression is cool and smooth like the opals at her throat. Both of them stoic, chewing over smalltalk, and Cinna’s heart clenches just a little.
“You should design something for me,” Johanna remarks, something lurid purple and too strong in one hand, “they always dress me up like a fucking idiot.”
“That’s because you just look like a fucking idiot,” Finnick replies, soft and sharp at the same time.
Their friendship was never particularly stable, and the Quarter Quell has done nothing to help them. They’re all weighted down with things they can’t say, won’t say, will never say. Time ticking down in fragments and only the Girl On Fire gets to live. His Girl On Fire, and yet the sacrifices never get less heavy, less painful.
Coin holds all of Katniss’ Mockingjay outfit designs now, safe and perfect and waiting. Cinna hopes it’s enough. It has to be enough.
His fingers feel like feathers and flames, sleepless nights over a wedding dress that isn’t a wedding dress, his final contribution. He knows it will be his final contribution; it can be nothing else.
“It’s late,” Portia says, and he hears when did you last rest in her voice.
He doesn’t know. Maybe he hasn’t truly rested for years.
Portia leaves Finnick at the balcony railings, crossing to Cinna in clicking heels, and lays a hand on his cheek. Her eyes are sad, but her mouth is firm, stubborn.
“You should let her mother you,” Finnick says, less of a taunt than he’d probably like.
Annie is in Four. The only person here who can look after Finnick is Johanna, and she’s too dangerous to ever be sentimental. She’ll keep them both alive long enough though, and she’ll get what needs to be done done. That’s what she does.
“Come on,” Portia says, hand dropping, and Cinna lets her lead him back inside. His sombre, steady woman he once thought he knew.
He told Katniss once that he had no desire to hurt anyone but himself, and it was true. Then. Now, with the mixture of despair and bravery and sheer stubbornness on each tribute’s face, called back to a place they’ve told themselves they were safe from, it burns.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Portia whispers in his ear as she leaves him outside his quarters, lips against his ear, breathing a little unsteady. She laughs, sudden and broken. “Well. Aside from the stupid things you’re already doing.”
He kisses her cheek and she nods, pulling away, and he watches her walk down the hall until she turns the corner and she’s gone.
“I forget sometimes that they’re children.” Portia has curled her legs up, huddled into his couch. “We’ve pinned so much on them, but they’re children.”
Haymitch is angry, Effie distraught. Cinna isn’t sure he expected anything different of their District Twelve tributes, who’ve never gone for subtlety when breaking something could be considered so much more effective.
Now, Katniss and Peeta have training scores of twelve painted on each of their backs, and even with a tentative plan in place, well, they’d have done better to keep their damn heads down. Shot some arrows, painted some leaves across their faces, left well enough alone. But they’ve never done that, of course, and there’s no reason to assume why they would start now, with so little left, so much on the line.
Cinna sits down next to Portia, puts an arm around her shoulders, squeezes.
“I’m not Katniss,” she tells him, “that won’t comfort me.”
Her lips curve anyway, and she tips her head to rest against him. He knows how fond she’s grown of Peeta, who is smart and sweet and less brittle than Katniss, and he should probably be dead by now but Katniss will never let him die, and Cinna hopes that one day she’ll realise what that means.
“I trust them,” he says. There’s an arrogance in youth, and he thinks that the resistance could use a little of that fierce, stupid bravery. He still feels it in sparks sometimes, and Portia looks at him but she doesn’t try to temper it anymore.
“Of course you do,” Portia sighs. She doesn’t move, so he doesn’t either, and eventually she adds: “nothing we’ve done is going to improve this situation, you know.”
The Capitol is a powder keg right now anyway, and with Katniss and Peeta throwing in firecrackers, not to mention the vicious unpredictability of the other tributes, well, Cinna probably shouldn’t just hand them the matches.
It’s too late now, though, and even if he could he doesn’t think he’d turn back.
“No.” Portia looks from him to the feathered Mockingjay dress, and her eyes fill with angry tears. “No. No. No. You cannot do this to her. Not to her, not to us.”
“To me,” he corrects.
“To us,” she snaps. “We are a team, do you really think that I can play ignorant? That Katniss can play ignorant?”
Cinna swallows, but the Mockingjay dress is perfect and just what the revolution needs, the perfect symbol, sharp as the fire. They aren’t going to let her out of that arena alive, Heavensbee murmured when he last came to “check on their progress”. Coin is scrabbling to make plans before it’s too late. The revolution comes first, after all.
“If you go now,” he says quietly, “if you quit our team now-”
Portia slaps him, sending him reeling back more from the shock than from the feel of her hand connecting with his cheek.
“You fucking idiot,” she hisses, voice thick, and he grabs her arms, pulls her into a hug that she fights for a moment before collapsing into him, mouth shivering against his throat. “And if you don’t know by now that I’ll follow you to whatever prison cell you’re dragging me to, then you really are an idiot.”
Cinna wants to apologise, and can’t. He holds her close instead, waits for her breathing to steady, keeps his eyes closed.
“So,” she says eventually, calm, the golden waves painted around her eyes undisturbed. “How are we going to make sure the feathers don’t catch light with the wedding dress?”
Portia has been a part of him for so long it’s sometimes hard to remember that she’s actually separate, that there are consequences for her that he can’t shield her from by taking them on himself, and it makes him feel itchy, lost in his own skin.
“Portia,” he begins, and she shakes her head, braids bouncing, eyes on the dress with nothing but cool contemplation, detached, a stylist’s vision.
Fuck, but he loves her.
Katniss’ hair is soft under his fingers as he weaves it into the familiar braids, her gaze on him in the mirror although he can tell she’s thinking about other things. In any case, he won’t cry like her prep team did, because he hasn’t cried for years. There’s nothing left to lose, after all.
Tonight, he and Portia have created something magnificent, something perfect for their tributes, who have burned away everything to be left simply with what’s left over, hard and blazing and impenetrable.
Unofficially, Portia’s been referring to these parade outfits as their Fuck The Audience costumes, but only after three a.m., only after alcohol, and only when she’s sure they won’t be overheard. The last days of self-preservation, before it will all stop mattering anyway.
It’s easier to watch strangers die than it is to watch familiar people die, and Cinna can’t quite judge the mood of the Capitol; excitement for a Quarter Quell of the games, especially in those too young to remember the first one - Cinna’s heard stories, of course, and shreds from a drunken Haymitch that made no sense and too much sense at the same time - but there’s a sense of tragedy there, of resentment. These are the people with Finnick Odair commemorative posters, after all, and there are still enough people who haven’t had the chance to woo him. Buy him. Whatever they’re calling it these days.
He doesn’t go to meet the train because he isn’t ready to see Katniss yet, not with the resistance scrambling to put together a plan where they can still win, where they won’t lose their precious Mockingjay, and he doesn’t sleep at night now as he sketches and resketches armour for Katniss that may yet prove superfluous.
“I don’t think revolutionaries are supposed to be making fashion statements,” Portia remarks softly, perched on the arm of his couch in the apartment he returns to only to sleep and eat, when he remembers. As official stylists, they’ll be moving tomorrow, into quarters near their tributes. It’s an honour, he’s been told, the same as he was told last year.
This apartment has never been home, but he’ll miss it anyway; there’s something here that isn’t safety, isn’t reassurance, but is his own, is something he likes to think they can’t tear away.
“You’re clearly going about this wrong,” he teases her, waving a page of half-finished clothing at her. “The prettier they are, the more the Capitol will like them.”
It isn’t true, but it is at the same time, and he doesn’t have to explain it because Portia already knows.
“You should dress all of Thirteen,” she tells him easily, managing a smile. “I think they could use a little tailoring.”
He laughs. “Only if you help me.”
“Of course,” she replies, false easiness in her voice.
On the television, tributes pour off trains, trying to look brave. Finnick, Johanna, Chaff, Katniss and Peeta. If Cinna doesn’t pay close attention to the broadcast, they all blur into one; someone else he can’t save, not with all the needles and thread in Panem.
“It needs more blue,” Portia decides, hair wound up behind her head and held in place with the styluses she uses for her tablet, barefoot on their workshop floor. She points to one of the screens they have on the wall; hours of footage of fires. On a bench are hundreds of burned-down candles, a mass of wax and charred wicks. “At the edges, there needs to be more blue.”
She’s right, and Cinna nods, making notes as he circles the mannequin with the beginnings of Katniss’ parade outfit beginning to take shape. Peeta’s is beside it, flickering softly, although the flames still look too cheap, too artificial.
Cinna doesn’t know what it would be like to work without Portia; without someone who knows what needs changing without either of them saying a word.
Portia rubs her eyes, reaches to pin the collar of Katniss’ costume up slightly, changing the shape. “Do you ever wish we’d picked another motif for them?” she asks, a wicked smirk curling her mouth. “Something that makes me feel less like I’m going blind, for example?”
Her smirk cracks at the edges, and the trick to doing this is not to ever think about why, not to ever think about who they’re making these for.
“Next time, we’ll do flowing water,” he tells her, pressing play on another recording of a fire, flames licking at the sky, angry and all-consuming.
They watch the broadcast in Portia’s apartment, side by side on the couch, ignoring the Quarter Quell announcement parties taking place on the streets.
Cinna’s mind is already preparing itself for the clothes he’ll have to make; they gave him Twelve again, back before things became quite so messy, and then of course they couldn’t demand it back because that would imply that there was a problem. He thinks about Katniss and maybe Peeta returning as mentors, wonders if they can hold their nerve, wonders if he can help them.
When Snow reads out the announcement that this year’s tributes will be reaped from the existing victors, he thinks his heart stops in his chest.
“It’s fixed,” Portia murmurs beside him, “it’s got to be,” and she bursts into tears.
It’s been a long time since he’s seen Portia cry, and he can’t make himself move to touch her, to comfort her, and even with the broadcast continuing on, Cinna can’t hear a word Snow is saying, can barely hear Portia sobbing angrily beside him, and he thinks I should phone Katniss and then I should start designing for her again and he still remains frozen.
Cinna never got into this to design wedding dresses, but then these wedding dresses are part of the increasingly thin line keeping Katniss Everdeen alive, so he gives each one the attention it deserves, orders what feels like acres of white and cream and pastel pink silk from Eight, orders lace and satin and velvet, starts designing shoes and veils and tiaras and headpieces, goes to his favourite jeweller to commission strings of flawless pearls.
A competition of a different kind, and maybe no one will die this time; the Capitol seem excited that they’ll be able to vote for the gown that Katniss will wear. Maybe it’s only fitting that a wedding being dictated by the television and the government have every last detail picked out by the public; none of it’s ever been in Katniss and Peeta’s hands, after all.
Sometimes, he wonders what would have happened if they’d been left in District Twelve; if Peeta would still be watching Katniss from a distance, never brave enough to say anything.
Portia comes by his workshop to look over his designs, to try on veils when he asks her to, to finger necklines and hemlines and frown at intricate beading. She’ll have to design Peter’s tuxedo, but this wedding is all about Katniss, of course; all Peeta will need to do is compliment her.
It’s different, seeing Portia here surrounded by the remnants of a wedding, diamonds dripping between her fingers, a potential tiara for Katniss perched slightly askew on her hair as she smiles at him. He wonders, just for a moment, what her wedding dress would have looked like. Will look like, maybe.
Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this. Cinna isn’t thinking about this.
It’s been too long, and they’re not those people anymore. Maybe they were never those people in the first place.
“Poor Katniss,” Portia sighs, dropping diamonds into a heap on top of a pile of lace that might become a veil. “Poor Peeta.”
Cinna nods, but in that moment it isn’t their District Twelve victors that he’s pitying.
All anybody wants to talk about are the clothes Katniss and Peeta have worn for their victory tour, which is actually a relief; while they’re discussing ballgowns and suits, they’re not discussing the way Panem is falling into pieces and Cinna is at least partially responsible.
Cinna and Portia are honoured guests at all kinds of parties; the kind of parties Cinna has never particularly wanted to go to, where he stands out because he hasn’t dyed his skin or set himself on fire - a trend he’s amused to see sweeping the Capitol, partially because they have no idea what they’re really wearing, and partially because most designers aren’t as good as he and Portia are, and everyone has to keep a fire extinguisher handy - but where everyone wants to talk to him. He grins and bears it and takes the compliments because, well, he’s certainly earned them.
“Careful, or they’ll turn you into a show pony too,” Finnick remarks, halfway down his third glass of something acid green that’s making his eyelids heavy, his body language loose. Cinna knows him too well to play this game, and in any case he knows what most people at this party don’t: namely, he knows about Annie Cresta.
“I’m not nearly interesting enough for that,” Cinna replies, looking to where Portia is talking to Johanna. Johanna’s smile looks more like she’s baring her teeth in warning, though she likes Portia well enough.
“You’ll be commissioned to dress every person in this room,” Finnick tells him. “And then maybe undress them too.”
He puckers his lips, bats his long eyelashes.
Cinna smiles, but lets it pass without comment. “I’ve got a wedding dress to design first.”
Something flickers in Finnick’s expression. “Ah yes, our lovestruck little backwoods murderers,” he muses. “Because no one in the Capitol can believe that poor people can feel love.”
“Don’t be cruel, Finnick.” Portia’s appeared from nowhere, the lights of the party flickering off her dress. She looks beautiful, and her exhaustion shows only in her eyes, if you know where to search for it.
“All I’ve got left, darling,” Finnick responds, a cheap imitation of flirting that sounds like it stings. “And don’t forget for a minute that all that Everdeen and Mellark have going for them is that they’re a novelty, dancing fucking ponies like the rest of us.”
No one’s forgotten that, but it sounds worse spilling from Finnick’s lips.
“I was going to ask you to dance to save me from everyone else,” Portia tells him, “but I think I’ll ask Cinna instead.”
Cinna takes her hand, leads her onto the dancefloor. He doesn’t look back at Finnick.
“Don’t be angry,” Portia tells him quietly.
“I’m not angry,” he replies, sliding his arms around her waist.
“You are,” she says, “but don’t be.”
He sighs, swallows down the myriad of emotions threatening to drown him, and manages: “how’s your evening been?”
Portia laughs. “I’ve been stuck talking to the Head Torturer for the last half an hour. He seems to think that telling me in great detail how they create an Avox is going to get him a date of some description.”
Cinna grimaces. “Romantic,” he says.
“Well, exactly,” she agrees, and steps back so that he can twirl her.
Sometimes, no matter how much you want to, you can’t help. The victory tour makes Cinna feel particularly helpless, particularly angry; Katniss and Peeta are driving each other mad with nightmares and tension and bitter revelations, facing the crowds of districts threatening to revolt, who won’t be consoled by false smiles and clasped hands, facing families of people that they killed in order to try and survive.
Eight is the worst, because it should be home and it isn’t anymore. He knows hardly any of the faces in the crowd, though it hasn’t been all that long since he left, and, well, he no longer has a family here. The locals look at him like he’s a stranger, one of the exotic creatures from the Capitol, and he wonders if he’s really changed so much.
Cinna always knew he could never go back, but the truth is still bitter on his tongue.
Portia comes to his quarters as the train speeds on through the night, hair loose around her shoulders, face clean from make-up, in a simple nightgown that brushes just below her knees.
“I know,” she says quietly.
Of course she knows. He still doesn’t know what district she’s from - she’s always kept that to herself - but whichever one it was they’ll have passed through it at some point.
He wants to voice his doubt aloud, his loneliness and confusion and what he quietly just wishes, but he’s kept himself strong this far, and Katniss needs him to be confident. He can’t give into this.
They share a bed for the first time in years that night, Portia curled into herself with the sheets tangled around her legs, Cinna pressed almost close enough to touch; not quite, but nearly.
Eleven is the first district they stop at, and the whole thing is an unmitigated disaster.
While Effie frets and complains at dignitaries, and Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta disappear to no-doubt regroup, now that people are being executed - presumably not part of anybody’s plan - Cinna finds Portia’s hand and they pretend to need the bathroom. Peacekeepers watch them, but no one attempts to stop them, and the first empty room they find, Cinna pulls Portia inside.
There’s nothing they can say that won’t be overheard, nothing it’s safe to say, and they’ll let Effie believe in cars backfiring and firecrackers but Cinna knows gunshots when he hears them and suddenly this tour looks like it’s going to be very, very long. There’s only so many dresses and hairstyles he can drape Katniss in to try and contain a situation rapidly spiralling before anyone is ready to correctly exacerbate it.
He hasn’t spoken to Coin in a while, it hasn’t been safe, but he knows that she doesn’t want this yet.
He pulls Portia close, buries his face in the stylish but sombre dress they picked out for her; something with class but designed to make her blend into the background, another part of the entourage.
She clenches a hand in the back of his collar, the only sign that she’s as scared as he is, and Cinna gives himself a second to murmur fuck fuck fuck fuck into her shoulder.
Past stylists all seem to want to talk to Cinna and Portia about how they should dress their tributes for their victory tour; Cinna nods and smiles and pretends to take their advice, and then goes back to what he’s always known he’ll have to use: his gut instinct, Haymitch’s murmured telephoned instructions, and what he knows Katniss will willingly wear.
If she wants to continue getting away with the berries stunt, then Cinna will need to design a whole lot of pretty, virginal dresses that make her look too innocent to be a girl considering pulling down the government. She’s in love, she was delirious, and tributes have gone mad before, they should be glad that she’s done it in such a pretty, photogenic way.
Finnick is in the Capitol at the moment, and Cinna finds him hanging around the workshop with Portia one afternoon. She’s surrounded by shirts for Peeta, hair wound through a golden tiara.
“Your first victory tour,” Finnick remarks, half congratulatory, half sneering. It comes across sour. “Word of advice: drink everything they offer you.”
“You were fourteen, your victory tour,” Cinna reminds him.
“So?” Finnick smirks, sharp, wolfish. “If you win the Games, no one will ever say ‘no’ to you. Ever.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on to Katniss and Peeta,” Cinna replies evenly.
Finnick always wants a reaction, but he also wants somewhere to hide, so Cinna doesn’t bother rising to his bait.
“If you’re going to be here for a while, you can help me with this,” Portia tells Finnick, tossing him a handful of black velvet that will eventually be a jacket for Peeta. “Sewing isn’t all that different from weaving a fishing net.”
Finnick rolls his eyes, but it isn’t the first time they’ve given him chores while he’s here, and he doesn’t bother protesting. Cinna watches him for a moment, and then turns his attention to a wall covered in designs for Katniss.
“Cinna-” Haymitch begins; damnably sober, sharp-faced, and determined.
“I know,” Cinna cuts him off. “It’s in hand. Really.”
There are murmurs everywhere, if you know where to listen, and Katniss and Peeta aren’t out of danger yet. In fact, they’re in for a whole lot more danger than they were in the arena, and Cinna knows that everything he dresses Katniss in from now on needs to protect her; armour made of frills and silk and glitter.
Haymitch studies his expression for a moment, then claps a hand against his arm, thanks going unsaid but writ large on his face anyway.
The world stops when Katniss pours the berries into her palm. Haymitch sucks in a breath between his teeth, reaches for the nearest drink, and downs it.
Portia’s hand closes around Cinna’s wrist, nails digging into his skin. Her eyes are wide, her lips pressed together in a tight line.
Cinna wants not to be watching this in public, wants to not be at this party of mentors and stylists and sponsors, aware that people keep looking at their corner because, well, District Twelve are the only people left alive. For now.
The District Six stylists are clutching one another, cooing about how romantic it is, and Cinna distantly notes one of the sponsors crying, pressing a lilac handkerchief to her eyes. The mentors are all silent, largely expressionless, although Johanna looks like she’s swallowing down a laugh, and Finnick’s head is tipped slightly to one side, while he refuses to show that he’s impressed.
“Oh, stupid girl, what have you done,” Haymitch mumbles, reaching for another drink. Cinna dimly thinks he’d like one himself, because what Katniss is doing is foolish and dangerous and perfect and he is so proud of her that it stings.
When Seneca Crane’s voice booms through the arena, stopping Katniss and Peeta from what was rapidly becoming a suicide pact, the room erupts into applause. Some of it is frenzied and genuine, some of it is bemused and hesitant, and the applause from the mentors, all of them past victors, is slow and measured and deliberate.
Portia’s fingers peel from his wrist, though she doesn’t start clapping, and Haymitch wipes a hand across his face, mind clearly already putting together contingency plans, pretty lies, frantic tap-dancing to hide the truth, the extent of the damage.
All Cinna can feel, bone deep and burning, is relief.
“How many Games have we watched together?” Portia asks. It’s three a.m., and they’re watching Cato and Clove sitting around a fire, sharpening cruel knives.
Cinna’s designed sixteen different victory dresses for Katniss, because he isn’t giving up hope, no matter what anyone says to him. She’s smart, and she’s sharp, and she’ll keep herself and Peeta alive.
“I don’t know,” Cinna replies, because he doesn’t want to count how many children they’ve seen massacred. “Too many.”
She smiles, humourless, hugging her knees. “True.”
As people behind the scenes, they’ve seen more than what was broadcast to the public; he saw what Katniss did for Rue’s body, saw her singing to the little girl in her final moments, and there’s unrest peeling through the building, bitter and anxious, and it makes him scared because they don’t ever forget or forgive these things.
They take everything from you for a lot less: Cinna learned that the hard way, after all.
“Do you really think they’ll let them have two victors this year?” Portia asks after a while, because it’s late, because they’re alone, and because sooner or later someone has to ask that question.
Cinna doesn’t know; he doubts it, because the games have only ever been cruel, never merciful, and star-crossed lovers can only get away with things for so long. He’s learned that one too.
He stays silent, and in the end Portia just nods and sighs, doesn’t push for an answer or ask for anything else.
It’s strange, watching the Games like this, being part of it, knowing the tributes, knowing the stylists and mentors and prep teams. When the dying children on the screen are more than just sacrifices, when you’ve met them, walked past them, spoken to them.
Sometimes, he feels guilty wanting Katniss to succeed at the expense of these other tributes, at the expense of Peeta. But Katniss... there is something about her, something that people have latched onto, something that wasn’t just created by his clothing designs, and he thinks that they need her to survive.
He doesn’t mention this to Portia, of course; Peeta’s hers, and she looks exhausted enough these days already.
Maybe this is what the Games are about after all.
Once Katniss has been sent to the arena, the room seems too small, too silent, and Cinna’s hands are shaking.
He always had to send her away. Everything was building towards this, he knows, and he kept himself strong for Katniss’ sake, and now all he wants to do is run, drag her back, fold her away somewhere safe.
There isn’t much time until the Games begin, and he should find a screen so he can see how she fares. If she’ll become yet another victim of the cornucopia, or if she’ll listen to advice. He doesn’t want to watch, he can’t not watch, this terrified, strong girl he’s already turned into an icon.
He finds Portia in the elevator, cheeks wet with tears, a shaky half-smile shoved into place.
“How’s Peeta?” he asks.
She shakes her head, and he can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s alright; he doesn’t want to talk about Katniss, about the look in her eyes before she left.
He reaches for her hand, and she knots their fingers together, tight.
They find Haymitch and Effie in the crowded room upstairs, everyone packed in to watch the beginning of the Games. Tributes looking drawn and fearful in the sunlight, the little ones who won’t stand a chance. Watching this never gets any easier, and Portia hasn’t let go of his hand yet. He doesn’t think he’d let her if she tried.
His mouth moves silently, counting down the numbers, unable to look at anyone else, at Effie’s anxious fluttering, at Haymitch’s drawn and sober face. There’s nothing any of them can do now, except wait, and watch, and hope.
Portia is drinking dark purple wine, a thick handknitted shawl around her shoulders, pulled tight. She looks tired, bitter, make-up smudging down her cheeks.
Cinna doesn’t bother asking if she intends to sleep tonight; he knows that he won’t, and he’s grateful for the company.
“She’s maimed Peeta,” Portia mumbles into her glass. “I mean, the medics did what they could, but his hands are a mess.”
“He took a risk,” Cinna replies, devil’s advocate, perhaps. He’ll give credit where it’s due, though: “he was perfect.”
Portia nods, sighing, taking another mouthful of wine. “He was,” she agrees. “He came up with something neither of us could.”
Cinna thinks of Katniss, unable to smile for the cameras, to take part in the necessary circus of noise and grinning and pretty, pretty lies, and the dress he made in the hope it would save her.
It’s been a long night.
“They weren’t quite what we were expecting, were they?” he asks, sitting down beside her. Stating the obvious, true, but it’s worth saying. After all, these ones are unpredictable; shooting arrows at Gamemakers, stealing the spotlight, falling in love with each other. If the Gamemakers had known in advance that District Twelve were going to turn out to be so interesting, they would probably have given them a more famous stylist; not that Cinna has anything to complain about.
Portia laughs, curls into his side. “You can say that again,” she replies, handing him the wine.
Cinna kisses her temple, and thinks about Katniss’ anger, Peeta’s bleeding hands, Haymitch’s bitter exhaustion, his Girl On Fire spinning in her dress, and a confession on camera that changed all of the odds. Peeta is brave and stupid and so very clever, and Cinna admires him.
After all, he’s never been able to admit to being in love with anyone.
“I suppose we sit back and wait for their next bad idea,” he muses, and Portia laughs beside him, like she’s thinking about meaning it.
(continued here)