forgotten manners { maggie x lionel }

m a r g u e r i t e

Ready or not (Uh-huh), here I come, you can't hide
Gonna find you and make you want me

Marguerite had taken to sitting in the dining hall recollecting what she had learned about the other tributes in training that day. Having spent so much of her time in the same sort of drills the trainers threw at them, she found it far more practical to make a list of strengths and weaknesses of her fellow competitors. Which ones were clumsy? Which ones had all the confidence and none of the skill? Were there known weak points to exploit?

She had been musing over whether the girl from eleven was worth her time – she admired her composure for someone with a last name that put a target on her back – when out of nowhere, a chain of events followed that left Marguerite thrown entirely off balance.

The boy from five reached out and took – without asking – a tart she had placed upon her plate and proceeded to take a bite before putting it back.

She could have taken her fork, grabbed his hand, and stabbed right through his palm to pin him to the table. Or she could’ve gotten up and punched him right in the throat until he choked.

But she knew that there had to be some sort of punishment in hurting her opponents before the games. If she went so far as to make a scene, it’d have said more about her, too than the boy from five’s antics. A girl like her had all the expectations of lashing out at this boy for some small slight. And who wasn’t to say that like most boys, he wasn’t just an idiot?

“Excuse you, Five.” Marguerite’s voice rang out flat but heavy as it cut though the din, “Do you always take things that you want without asking?”

She pushed back from her chair and leaned forward across the table. “Or were you just raised that way?”