cold war. terra, seventh.

It's nice, this disguise. Dark hair, it had faded slightly since Babe had pasted her hair with dye in the Capitol bathrooms. Her roots had grown in, an obnoxious streak of gold, and then she had refused to open her next padded envelope until someone from the Capitol dropped off extra boxes and an instruction manual. Claimed it helped with their projects, blonde hair splayed across banners - nobody expects a brunette in the dark to slit their throat.

And she finds she can move about Ten more freely now, walking down the hill of the village to what's left of the town square she once knew. The shells of buildings bowled down to make room for petroleum tanks and truck parking, rows upon rows of metal machines, glistening puddles of oil strewn everywhere. The odd shop, the odd market, people struggling to make ends meet. She wanders through the storefronts, boots splashing in the rainbow shimmers after a rainy spring morning, she smiles at the people that hand her goods in exchange for an endless supply of coin that turns up in bags on her doorstep like clockwork on Tuesdays.

They used to shy away, close their doors, twist signs from open to closed. Now they gladly do business with the quiet brunette dressed in a brown leather jacket, thinking nothing of her.

Only sometimes do they squint, double-take at her appearance - but by that time Terra is long-gone, the tolling of a shop bell she cannot hear the only thing left to suggest she was ever there in the first place.

And secretly, quietly, she likes this disguise most of all because it separates her from Cordelia Blake. Lethal blondes, one after the other, she rinses her hair out in the claw bathroom upstairs to rid herself of their likeness. Stained water streaking porcelain, sucked down the drain. Terra looks at the girl with damp, dark hair in the mirror and exhales through her nose.

I'm not like her, she tells her reflection. I'm not like her.

The knife hidden in her boot says otherwise.