poppy rohan. / district 5 (fin)

you should see me in a crown

i'm gonna run this nothing town

Told to you time and time again as a child, the meeting of your parents was a memorable one. Nilah and Maximus first saw one another during the hottest summer in nearly a decade. She was out with friends, catching up after a spell of sickness had kept her a recluse for nearly a month. And he just so happened to be in the same place at the same time, having a few drinks after a hard day at work. It was a rainy night, unusual for the time of year, but your mother can remember the details so clearly even after all these years, for she’s always thought rainfall was so beautiful. Cheesy, but oh, so romantic. He’d nearly knocked her on her ass coming out of a bar too quick as she walked by with her friends. He’d slammed into her, but caught her swiftly in his arms before she landed face-first on the pavement.

He swept me off my feet, she hums during the re-telling, every single time, without fail. Despite the ways in which your father and his actions has scarred her and you for life, without regard to the twenty or so women you've seen him with and told her of throughout the city, paying no mind to the severe aching within you know has made a home within her chest. You look back on these moments, the times you've heard this supposed great love story, much older and far wiser now, no longer naive nor blind to his illicit affairs, and see it to be only one thing: the genesis of your mother's demise.

A spark of love that would one day come to ruin her.

And yet you were still born loved, wanted and cherished in every sense of the words. Your life was a gift, after all. For your parents had tried to conceive a child for nearly seven years prior, and after many a heartbreaking miscarriage, their bundle of joy made it to full term. A precious baby girl. Though your father had made it more than clear on numerous ‘accidental’ slip-ups that he would have much preferred a boy. A proper son to be his spitting image, of whom he could make into the perfect man to be his legacy. Instead he’d received a flower. A disappointment, apparently. Before you could even walk, you had let him down somehow, someway; and he never lets you forget it.

It was this—this resentment for something totally your of her control—that led to your childhood being filled not with hugs and kisses, but imagined slights and cock-eyed glances. Not a love affair between a wide-eyed baby girl and fresh-faced parents, but a game between two people who never should have had a child to begin with; who enjoyed their battles more than taking their child to the park; who would rather spend the night fighting than shape and mold the human being they brought into the world. Maximus would rather stomp his feet in defiance of a so-called ‘crazy’ wife, and Nilah would rather feign exaggerated innocence in the face of the man—the horrible monster—she'd chosen to marry.

Each fight turned into an attack to the death, a battle for control in a marriage that had so clearly been doomed from the moment your father proposed and your mother had said yes. And as the years drew on, Nilah slowly became something he loved to look at but never touch; admire from afar for her beauty and regality, but not someone he would ever immerse himself in fully, in the way a man should truly love his wife.

You were eleven the first time you saw him kiss another woman, so sweetly the way he held the side of her face. So tender the way he ran his fingers through her blonde hair. At first you didn't believe it, didn't fully understand what you were seeing. Nor did you know this was just one of his many conquests, one of the many women who turn weak in the knees and soft in the head at the sight of his money, his power, and his supposed glory. And it wasn’t as if you couldn’t see it after that, couldn’t hear them fighting in the next room and know exactly what it was about. The gritted teeth at the breakfast table and the snide remarks under hushed breath in passing.

It started early, the tricking and the lying. Your father called it fibbing, actually. A little white lie told to protect someone from the truth so it wouldn't cause them pain. He’d sit you down to explain the concept, then proceed to ask you to do it to your mother. Don’t tell her what you saw. Mommy doesn't need to know. It would just hurt her. You don't want to hurt her, do you, Poppy?

No, you'd say. Even though what you saw was daddy walking arm-in-arm with a woman who wasn't your mother. Even though what you saw was your father with his hand up some strange brunette's skirt, then a redhead a week later, and another blonde the following month. He claimed they were friends, co-workers, people who required his attention, far more important than you or your mother. But by your fourteenth birthday, you knew the truth.
 
You were young, but you weren't stupid.

That was your first lie, though. First of many, and you remember it so clearly because it was easy, not saying anything. Keeping it to yourself was no problem, and in fact proved rather useful three months later when you wanted new material to make the perfect dress for Samara's birthday party. Just one little mention of it — Daddy, I'd hate to slip up and let Mommy know what I saw you doing on Friday night — and your father handed over all the cash in his wallet.

It was power, or it felt like you were at least. Like you held him in the palm of your hand. Like father like daughter, some could suppose, but you simply saw something you wanted and did whatever you had to do to get it. You'd seen your father do it a million times, watched him bend people to his will for far less than a mere dress. And you had to look your best, hotter than anyone else; this was the only way.

What were you supposed to do, work for it?

And just like your father (you would think, much to his approval), you've always run rather hot—warmer than most in every definition of the little, three letter word—a temper forever on the brink of utter destruction, with a spark at the tips of your fingers and a certain smoky, devilish glow to the hue of your gaze. You command a certain amount of attention when you walk into a room, due in large part to your father’s incessant influences, yes. His continuous imparted machinations, his maneuvers and plots to use anyone and anything to get whatever your heart desires drilled into your head over and over. How to perfectly execute your assumed fantasies of money and respect, and most importantly, notoriety. How to slice a throat with just one look. How to bruise an ego with just one word. How to spot someone’s desperation and feed on it, to use it to get anything useful out of them.

Maximus has taught his daughter so many things, all in the name of survival. And then he’s shocked when she uses such skills to get what she wants from him.

That’s what you get for having secrets, daddy, you crooned sweetly, a knife-sharp smirk painted along your face.

He was just the first; one of many people you would soon cut down at the knees to get exactly what you want.

Attention, notoriety, infamy.

Fashion calls to you the moment you watch your first games, sitting on the edge of the couch with such an eager glance toward all the spectacular Capitol outfits, all the ways in which people express themselves through clothes and aesthetic. It forms a pit of resentment toward your district, and you decide then and there that you will get out of this place one day. Your name will be written in lights, poured from the mouths of crowds, praised by past lovers and cursed by those who are jealous—those who you deem unworthy of your time. 

Ambition coils around your insides, it's snake-like venom sickly sweet, laced with enough poison to turn even the strongest of heart into something evil, something to be feared. It's no wonder your father cowers before you now, relenting into whatever you desire, offering up anything you ask for with a shaking hand and eyes that won't meet your own. 

You're just like him, if not worse. But you do it so much better, don't you? They call you bitch. They call you the devil. They curse you, call upon god himself to smite you back down from whence you came. But this isn't a fair world, nor is it a just one. Those who succeed take what they want from others and claim it as their own. And you do exactly that, but in the cutest dress anyone has ever seen.

Where can I get that? They ask, fingertips reaching out to brush against the silky, glittering fabric of your latest creation.

You can't, you smile sweetly, a calculated brush dancing along your cheeks. Not yet.

But one day—one day it'll be Poppy Rohan they'll ask for; they'll cry out; they'll worship. You'll make sure of it. And you can't wait for that day to come.

your silence is my favorite sound
watch me make them bow one by one by one