Some said it was easy to get caught up in the lore of the games but even in her youth Ashe had been horrified by the displays put on to honor the uprisings and to punish the districts. The Capitol residents were all safe gluttonous individuals. In her short time there, Ashe had seen more than enough of the prideful inhuman looking crowds. They worried about eating too much food, about the way their hair curled or laid flat. They worried about a scuff on a perfectly fine shoe or a blemish on their skin. Their thought process seemed perfectly tedious and only had her mood further darkened.
To have so many people worry about the pallor of her skin or the clothes she wore had her irritated. While her stylist was a relatively calm and collected young man, his mind didn’t worry the way hers did. When she frowned, he threatened to pin her lips into a smile. When she brushed him away he nearly clocked her. Yolo had no patience for her bitterness or the frizz her hair became after a night's rest. Yet in the days he’d spent dressing her and trying to make her care for the interviews he’d come to realize it was far more than a tart mood. Ashe didn’t like the luxury of it all. It made her jumpy to be seated in a train car with velvet and satin seat cushions, to look beyond glass that wasn’t dusted with dyes or industrial exhaust. It wasn’t her. It was foreign and alien instead.
The interview had made Ashe feel so far from herself. Yolo had been beyond ecstatic with her scores in the training room and following her flirtatiousness with the crowd he’d been grinning over her shoulder as he teased her short blond hair that morning. “You’re marvelous, keep up the act sourpuss,” he had encouraged her with a beaming smile. She was unnerved by his excitement and more than anything she hadn't believed him.
Recalling the nickname made her wince, closing her eyes as she remembered Yolo's words. Ashe sat close to the window and as the side of her face leaned into the glass she could only sigh with relief to have escaped the Capitol for now. She had dressed earlier in the outfit she’d been given for the feast. It was all arranged given that they would enter the house in the same clothes and be seen for the first time on camera. It was all to make yet another statement, as if there was one left to give.
Ashe couldn’t help but be contrite the more she thought about the costume she’d worn for the parade, the things she’d said to Caesar and more than anything the last words she’d had with her family members before being whisked away. With the exuberance of the tributes from two and four, the lovestruck girl from twelve and her male counterpart, Ashe knew she was disappearing into a crowd. Having been collected and pleasant during her interview, even as flirtatious as she had been, did her no good. The same act had been put on by half a dozen of the other girls. She had been nice and likeable but not enough to be memorable. There was no fact that stood out. She'd confessed to liking a boy who liked another boy. Ashe felt more like a fool than accomplished.
There was the girl who’d been escorted back to her seat by peacekeepers, the boy from eleven who liked the crier even. Scandals! And then the rest seemed very obsessed with the boy from two. They were unique characters, people you empathized with and yet wanted to win. She found herself lost to the charade and hating it all the while, trying to mask her fear with a smile that she had never worn.
Sourpuss.
She could just remember Jasper saying it, her brother looking up at her from the treetops as he balanced himself on a beam, reaching out for a bundle of hidden fishing spears and tools they used to scour the land for something more edible than the bitter porridge and hard tack brought in from the factories. Memories of his swollen body filled her mind, enough to make her bite the inside of her cheek to bring her back from the reverie.
With her family so beyond reach and her brother dead, she felt completely and utterly alone. The silence of the train compartment was compounded by the sound of muffled voices from the hall. She could hear the slam of a door and the click of another as some of the other tributes began to leave for the feast. Ashe pushed her lips and looked at a small clock on the wall opposite her, feeling her cheek off the glass to stand and smooth the folds of her dress, another black lace ensemble with a leather corset cinched around her waist to show off her thin body. Sighing she moved to exit the cabin, finding that Yossarian had left already. He didn’t seem to approve of what she thought of him. When he’d mounted their chariot dressed as she had been and as hairless as she was, the blond couldn’t help but laugh. “Serves you right all things considered,” she’d thought. Now whenever she saw him, remembering the slightly mortified look on his face when she’d noticed his shaved arms and legs, she couldn’t help but smirk much to his disdain. “I always have at least one enemy.”
As Ashe entered the hallway she scanned it attentively, finding two of the female tributes down the length of the railcar talking curtly before one turned away with a blown kiss to walk away. As she squinted to take them in, Ashe recognized the male and female tributes from District 12. The lovers, she thought bitterly. They had been memorable too, especially since they had gone first and she’d nearly cried at the thought of her friend dying. The more she looked at them, the more she felt her odds slipping. The girl was loved and the boy she liked was handsome. He wouldn't want you, Ashe chided herself in thought before turning her glance away.
I’d have no problem killing Yossarian, Ashe thought bitterly, moving to walk slowly in her heels across to the feast car where the others were congregating. Her frown was gone, replaced by a weak smile and determined eyes.