fic: Great, Wide Somewhere
Title: Great, Wide Somewhere
Rating: T (language, child abuse, disturbing themes, sexual harassment, sensualization of a minor)
Characters/Pairings: Glimmer and family, Marvel
Summary: She was the girl all the other girls would kill to be, until she wasn't.
Notes: Just a short ficlet written in hopes of getting to know Glimmer and District One's culture, particularly with regard to Careers. I'm trying to put together my thoughts on her backstory and would love any input. :)
Gather up your tears, keep 'em in your pocket
Save 'em for a time when you're really gonna need 'em -- The Band Perry
When she was a child, Glimmer was the girl all the other girls would kill to be. The one whose hair is never mussed and whose teeth are just a little too white and who walks with a graceful confidence that only comes from knowing she’s beautiful. She’s funny and friendly and very smart and fast on her feet. Her grades are good but not great, though she’s amazing at math and remembers winning some kind of contest when she was ten.
But mostly, she remembers running. She remembers bare feet on dewy wet grass before school when the spring sky paints the morning pink. She remembers trees and flowers and anthills and raindrops racing past her because none of those things can possibly catch her. She remembers a bubbly rush in her veins and the simple joy of breathing. She remembers playground sand and stealing Amethyst O’Brien’s hair ribbon and running and running away just because she can as the string of pink trails behind her in her fist like a flag. She remembers daring boys to kiss her in her proud, haughty voice because she knows that they can’t catch her no matter how much they want to. At the end of every summer, after the closing ceremonies of the Games, her parents finally say she is allowed to stop watching the television and go outside to run and run and run. And oh, if One is the Victor that year, she’ll be able to run forever, past all the celebration in the streets with their effervescent energy carrying her feet.
Summers go by, and she doesn’t run as much. She’s among the first in her class to wear a bra and is outgoing and good-humored enough not to flinch at the attention that brings her. Glimmer learns early how to secure the gazes of the older boys and how this can work to her advantage. Oh, she receives her share of hated stares from other girls, too, most of them accompanied by whispers of words like easy and dirty and occasionally whore, but she learns that a glittering smile full of very, very white teeth is the best retaliation and that all their hatred comes from bitter jealousy. She has no need of them, not the girls’ validation or the boys’ carnal offerings. She has the track team and the wind in her mane of golden hair that’s lost its curl as her hips rounded out. She has the pavement and her breath and the blue, blue sky. She doesn’t need them. She doesn’t need anyone.
It’s this, she thinks much later, that lands her a spot at the Academy.
She’s barely fourteen and standing before them in khaki pants and her favorite shirt, a soft blue thing that’s much too small for her now. They look her up and down like her teachers at a test, like the boys in the hallway, like machines analyzing every possible outcome. They touch her hair. They measure her. They draw blood and make her read an eye chart and look at her skin under a magnifying mirror. They get a mat and make her do as many pushups and sit-ups as she can until the stopwatch in one of their hands beeps. She does okay, but not great, she realizes later. They ask her why they should pick her. She tells them because they’ll be sorry if they don’t. One of them laughs derisively, and she winks at him in that way that makes the boys at school walk straight into a row of lockers. They scribble notes on their little handheld computers.
Then they tell her to run.
She gets her letter that next week. It comes in an unmarked manila envelope bearing nothing but her full name. Mail is rare in their part of the District, and Jasper brings it into the house and tosses it on the kitchen table and asks why anybody would be writing to his stinky old sister. Pasha grabs it from him and runs, yelling the whole way that she wants to open it, but Glimmer plucks the envelope from Pasha’s fingers which are stained with jam and just beginning to lose the chubbiness of early childhood. She knows what the letter is. She knows that this summer, there will be no celebrations and no running in solitude and no endless days of nothing and nothing and waiting. And that’s what her life’s been up until this day, she knows as Pasha and Jasper jump for the letter in her hands and whine at her for not sharing. Just waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen, for something bigger and better than what she is and what she has. And now she’s getting it.
That next month, she learns just how right she was and just how hard life can become and just how strong she really is, underneath the white teeth and the neat hair and the dangerous curves. She learns how to run with thirty others instead of all alone between the trees behind her house. She learns how to hurt in places she didn’t know she had and how long ten miles can really be in the simulators with fireballs and ice and thunderstorms and poisonous snakes being hurled at her at every turn. She learns how many different ways there are to kill someone and how many different weapons she can master and how to follow rules that she didn’t even know existed.
And, somewhere between her first month with her cohort and her stay in Residential and her one-on-one strategy meeting when they take one roaming look at her body and inform her that her angle is sex, she learns that she is not a child anymore.
Glimmer was the girl all the other girls would kill to be. But she hasn’t been a girl in a very long time, and every new elimination test means longer and longer afterwards in the locker room with her shaking hands over her ears. She knows that she isn’t ready for the things they teach her to mimic in her interviews, but she doesn’t miss the comments about how she’s getting old enough and she’ll have to learn sometime. And even if she wins the Games, that just means ‘sometime’ has come at last and they’ll expect her to become the insatiable temptress she pretends to be. After drill one day when no one’s looking, Marvel slips a hand underneath her waistband and invites her home with him, and he calls her a slutbag tease when she shakes her head wordlessly and runs. She doesn’t speak to him after that, just thanks her legs the whole way home for being stronger and faster than him.
She was the prettiest and the friendliest and the funniest and the fastest and the strongest until she was surrounded by thirty other people who were just as pretty and friendly and funny and fast and strong. And now the pressure to stay that way wraps around her and chokes her, and she’s traded in one waiting game for another, except this time she’s waiting from the edge of a cliff by her fingernails with weights tied to her shoes, and the thing she’s waiting for is to be eaten by a lion. She thinks about Pasha who is turning ten this fall and growing like a weed and becoming more beautiful than adorable every day, about Jasper who is going to his first Reaping next month and is stronger than any boy in his class, and she hopes that they are not like her. She dreams about her body rotting in a coffin in the Tribute graveyard behind the Victor's Village as Pasha parades her little girl’s body to a sea of whistling onlookers and Jasper stands on the stage, tiny and beautiful and without a Volunteer. She wakes up on the floor tangled in sheets with a bloody lip.
One rare night when she’s home for dinner, Pasha asks her over a bowl of broccoli if she’ll come back when her Games are over. Glimmer practices her glowing camera smile - the sparkling one, not the sultry one - and says maybe.
Victor or not, Glimmer is never coming back. She knows this as clearly as she knows that CeeCee the baby, with her white-blond corkscrew curls and big blue eyes and tinkling laughter, will comfort her parents when she’s gone.
Rating: T (language, child abuse, disturbing themes, sexual harassment, sensualization of a minor)
Characters/Pairings: Glimmer and family, Marvel
Summary: She was the girl all the other girls would kill to be, until she wasn't.
Notes: Just a short ficlet written in hopes of getting to know Glimmer and District One's culture, particularly with regard to Careers. I'm trying to put together my thoughts on her backstory and would love any input. :)
Gather up your tears, keep 'em in your pocket
Save 'em for a time when you're really gonna need 'em -- The Band Perry
When she was a child, Glimmer was the girl all the other girls would kill to be. The one whose hair is never mussed and whose teeth are just a little too white and who walks with a graceful confidence that only comes from knowing she’s beautiful. She’s funny and friendly and very smart and fast on her feet. Her grades are good but not great, though she’s amazing at math and remembers winning some kind of contest when she was ten.
But mostly, she remembers running. She remembers bare feet on dewy wet grass before school when the spring sky paints the morning pink. She remembers trees and flowers and anthills and raindrops racing past her because none of those things can possibly catch her. She remembers a bubbly rush in her veins and the simple joy of breathing. She remembers playground sand and stealing Amethyst O’Brien’s hair ribbon and running and running away just because she can as the string of pink trails behind her in her fist like a flag. She remembers daring boys to kiss her in her proud, haughty voice because she knows that they can’t catch her no matter how much they want to. At the end of every summer, after the closing ceremonies of the Games, her parents finally say she is allowed to stop watching the television and go outside to run and run and run. And oh, if One is the Victor that year, she’ll be able to run forever, past all the celebration in the streets with their effervescent energy carrying her feet.
Summers go by, and she doesn’t run as much. She’s among the first in her class to wear a bra and is outgoing and good-humored enough not to flinch at the attention that brings her. Glimmer learns early how to secure the gazes of the older boys and how this can work to her advantage. Oh, she receives her share of hated stares from other girls, too, most of them accompanied by whispers of words like easy and dirty and occasionally whore, but she learns that a glittering smile full of very, very white teeth is the best retaliation and that all their hatred comes from bitter jealousy. She has no need of them, not the girls’ validation or the boys’ carnal offerings. She has the track team and the wind in her mane of golden hair that’s lost its curl as her hips rounded out. She has the pavement and her breath and the blue, blue sky. She doesn’t need them. She doesn’t need anyone.
It’s this, she thinks much later, that lands her a spot at the Academy.
She’s barely fourteen and standing before them in khaki pants and her favorite shirt, a soft blue thing that’s much too small for her now. They look her up and down like her teachers at a test, like the boys in the hallway, like machines analyzing every possible outcome. They touch her hair. They measure her. They draw blood and make her read an eye chart and look at her skin under a magnifying mirror. They get a mat and make her do as many pushups and sit-ups as she can until the stopwatch in one of their hands beeps. She does okay, but not great, she realizes later. They ask her why they should pick her. She tells them because they’ll be sorry if they don’t. One of them laughs derisively, and she winks at him in that way that makes the boys at school walk straight into a row of lockers. They scribble notes on their little handheld computers.
Then they tell her to run.
She gets her letter that next week. It comes in an unmarked manila envelope bearing nothing but her full name. Mail is rare in their part of the District, and Jasper brings it into the house and tosses it on the kitchen table and asks why anybody would be writing to his stinky old sister. Pasha grabs it from him and runs, yelling the whole way that she wants to open it, but Glimmer plucks the envelope from Pasha’s fingers which are stained with jam and just beginning to lose the chubbiness of early childhood. She knows what the letter is. She knows that this summer, there will be no celebrations and no running in solitude and no endless days of nothing and nothing and waiting. And that’s what her life’s been up until this day, she knows as Pasha and Jasper jump for the letter in her hands and whine at her for not sharing. Just waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen, for something bigger and better than what she is and what she has. And now she’s getting it.
That next month, she learns just how right she was and just how hard life can become and just how strong she really is, underneath the white teeth and the neat hair and the dangerous curves. She learns how to run with thirty others instead of all alone between the trees behind her house. She learns how to hurt in places she didn’t know she had and how long ten miles can really be in the simulators with fireballs and ice and thunderstorms and poisonous snakes being hurled at her at every turn. She learns how many different ways there are to kill someone and how many different weapons she can master and how to follow rules that she didn’t even know existed.
And, somewhere between her first month with her cohort and her stay in Residential and her one-on-one strategy meeting when they take one roaming look at her body and inform her that her angle is sex, she learns that she is not a child anymore.
Glimmer was the girl all the other girls would kill to be. But she hasn’t been a girl in a very long time, and every new elimination test means longer and longer afterwards in the locker room with her shaking hands over her ears. She knows that she isn’t ready for the things they teach her to mimic in her interviews, but she doesn’t miss the comments about how she’s getting old enough and she’ll have to learn sometime. And even if she wins the Games, that just means ‘sometime’ has come at last and they’ll expect her to become the insatiable temptress she pretends to be. After drill one day when no one’s looking, Marvel slips a hand underneath her waistband and invites her home with him, and he calls her a slutbag tease when she shakes her head wordlessly and runs. She doesn’t speak to him after that, just thanks her legs the whole way home for being stronger and faster than him.
She was the prettiest and the friendliest and the funniest and the fastest and the strongest until she was surrounded by thirty other people who were just as pretty and friendly and funny and fast and strong. And now the pressure to stay that way wraps around her and chokes her, and she’s traded in one waiting game for another, except this time she’s waiting from the edge of a cliff by her fingernails with weights tied to her shoes, and the thing she’s waiting for is to be eaten by a lion. She thinks about Pasha who is turning ten this fall and growing like a weed and becoming more beautiful than adorable every day, about Jasper who is going to his first Reaping next month and is stronger than any boy in his class, and she hopes that they are not like her. She dreams about her body rotting in a coffin in the Tribute graveyard behind the Victor's Village as Pasha parades her little girl’s body to a sea of whistling onlookers and Jasper stands on the stage, tiny and beautiful and without a Volunteer. She wakes up on the floor tangled in sheets with a bloody lip.
One rare night when she’s home for dinner, Pasha asks her over a bowl of broccoli if she’ll come back when her Games are over. Glimmer practices her glowing camera smile - the sparkling one, not the sultry one - and says maybe.
Victor or not, Glimmer is never coming back. She knows this as clearly as she knows that CeeCee the baby, with her white-blond corkscrew curls and big blue eyes and tinkling laughter, will comfort her parents when she’s gone.