Title: Firelight
Author: karebear
Rating: T
Characters: Portia, Cinna
Standard Disclaimer (Hunger Games): The Hunger Games trilogy was written by and belongs to the brilliant Suzanne Collins. I'm just borrowing the characters and world for a short while.
Summary: "Portia and I spent a lot of hours watching fires." It was easy to think everything was fine, before "the tributes" became real kids, sent to die. When did they start paying attention? Portia/Cinna, the eve of the 74th Hunger Games.
Notes: I am not sure if this is a one-shot. It is for now. I have no plans to add to it, but I already have thoughts about how more of this story could be told.

"When it's time to function as a feeling human being, will your Bachelor of Arts help you get by?"
"I hope to study further, a few more years or so, I also hope to keep a steady high."
"Will you try to change things, use the power that you have, the power of a million new ideas?"
"What is this power you speak of and the need for things to change? I always thought that everything was fine."
- Chicago, "Dialogue"

She sits in front of the giant fireplace in the ridiculously large apartment the Capitol has provided for Cinna, sipping a glass of expensive red wine. In the flickering light of the flames it looks disturbingly like blood.

She has a place of her own, of course, identical to this one, but she is afraid of the nightmares she'll face if she tries to spend the night alone.

These new living quarters are completely unnecessary, of course.

The smaller apartment blocks, the relatively inexpensive housing where students and young adults just starting their lives tend to congregate, where she and Cinna spend the rest of their year, are not that far away from this complex - combination of studios and training gym and prison, launch point for the Games. Those in charge of this event just want them all easy to find.

She never expected it to be this hard, but in just one afternoon, these two children, Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, have ceased to be "the tributes" and become real, sixteen-year-old kids they are sending off to die for entertainment. Two of many. Twenty-three who will die (Cinna says the girl at least stands a good chance, but she's seen the stats of District 12, and privately she has to admit that he must be lying to himself. And even if he isn't, that's still one of their two that will be dead before the month is over).

And even the victor will be caged by the Capitol for life, required to "celebrate" their survival every six months like clockwork, Victory Tour and annual Games, every year until they do eventually die, of old age or addiction or any number of the lingering mental illnesses that tend to attack the arena's children in the long years after their win.

They'll live alone even in the District they used to call home, because they will have nothing in common with those they used to call friends and family.

Once the Capitol has claimed you, there is no going back.

It may be her first Games, just like Cinna, but she's paid enough attention in recent years. You don't just become a stylist, even for District 12. They've been working odd-jobs as part of the Games all through their art school careers, connections with professors and parents of classmates and every other kind of social networking getting them close enough to run errands for prep teams, getting them invites to the Victory Tour parties. Business cards here and there, practice in front of cameras, interviews, inflating their resumes just enough.

She remembers when this was what she wanted.

But somewhere along the line she saw the hollow haunted look in the victors' eyes as they attempt to coach each new year's sacrifices. She recognizes the fact that the particularly attractive among them slip through the requisite parties and gatherings with a new body on their arm each night, and she sees the way their touches slip away too quickly or cling too tightly, the way they never quite meet their "partner's" eye. There is something going on there, a dark secret she is almost certain she doesn't want to uncover. Just the suspicions are bad enough, tickling at the nagging guilt.

She is a part of this. She is complicit in this.

Does that make her a murderer?

She knows she didn't always think this way. She remembers laughing with Cinna on a couch in the house they shared with far too many students, crammed into a small space, drinking too much and placing bets on who would survive, watching the opening ceremonies with awe and glee and envy, the practiced eye of artists who studied design for a living and had serious ambitions toward finding a place of their own among those stylists one day.

They never even looked at the children wearing those costumes.

When did they start paying attention?

Cinna slips out from the kitchen with a plate of simple snacks: crackers, grapes, cheese. It's the kind of thing that would have seemed fancy to their college friends, but compared to the things they've had at the ceaseless dinners leading up to the Games, they seem like pale imitiations.

But they're perfect for him. She smiles as he joins her on the couch.

She's always wondered at that: his ability to live a life that's somehow perfect without alterations. While she joined the rest of their peers in experimenting with makeup thick as paint, colored hair, swirling tattoos, he never covered up anything. He let his hair grow long one summer, and she misses tangling her fingers through it, but she has to admit he's right: it does look better the way he has it cut now, no longer a wild mess. He still wears the thick jeans and long-sleeved shirts and hiking boots that would not look at all out of place in a forest. Or an arena. Or a District.

She knows full well he's city-born and bred the same as she is, she wonders how he managed to make that his trademark style. It looks good on him. It looks natural.

She's comforted by the familiar quirk of his lips, that half-smile. His eyes sparkle in the firelight. "What are you thinking about?"

She shrugs.

Is it less real if she doesn't put it into words?

He brought the food, but neither of them eat it.

They just stare into the fire.