Cecilia "Ceci" Kastner [Capitol]

You think money got her into modeling, but you're fairly sure her looks could have done it alone. She's tiny, but refuses to take a timid persona; her dark eyes arrest you through the camera and she moves like the whole world is here just for her to pose in it, smooth and self-assured. Every expression lands perfectly, and every fold in her outfit looks intentional.

It's a shame she spends so much time conforming to the Districts. She wears Capitol fashion well, making it cutting-edge and accessible at the same time, which is perhaps why she's so popular. I'm out of your league, says her glamour, but we could be friends anyway, say her eyes, whether she means it or not. Either part.

If you could get her to sing you could make her a star, but every time you ask she gives you that smile and shakes her head. She's been asked before, she explains in that warm, slightly raspy voice. Doesn't want to be that far in the spotlight.

You can't imagine why not.

oh, Cecilia

He's heard rumors and he doesn't think he should be talking to this stylish woman who listens with eyes too bright to only be curious (though he doesn't think it's flattering himself to feel it's partly that). But here among the District's higher-ups he's a nobody and he knows it and she's smiling at him and offering him drinks and, well, why not? It's not like she's writing everything he says in a notebook.

And he's surprised to find he genuinely likes her. Capitolites are weird, but she dances unabashedly badly in the way people do when they actually like the music. (And, perhaps, when they know they're pretty enough or rich enough or both that no one cares about their sense of rhythm.) More than that, she gives the impression that she actually enjoys listening to him. Though she doesn't say much, what she does say is clever, turning his own words back at him and making him think about his next sentence. She remembers him when he comes back from the hor d'oeuvres and she puts a hand on his arm as she laughs and really, what more can he ask for?

you're breaking my heart

I catch myself before I look away, but I think it shows in my face, because the camera woman stops for a moment, sweeping my face for another momentary trace of loneliness.

I cover it with a smile. So little in my life is mine, but my thoughts have never been anyone else's. I haven't spent this long keeping my own counsel to give it away to the third pretty face I happen to see today.

But when she puts the camera down and asks, careful but confident, how I would feel about dinner, I give her a real smile and my hand.

Wandering through the districts in a month-by-month progression of photo shoots and galas and reporting crews, worming my way into the trust of people I barely know before whisking away to feed their secrets to a mother I hardly know better, isn't what I thought I would be doing at twenty-two. Before I blacklisted myself trading Gamemaker business I wasn't supposed to have, I wanted--well, it doesn't matter. I do what I have to, same as the friends who walked away to protect their careers. This gives me something to do other than apply over and over again, between fights with my mother, to organizations that don't want me.

The people make it bearable. Even if all I have time for is a fling here, a dinner there, before I'm scheduled halfway across Panem. Even if the person this woman will either smile fondly about or sneer at in the years to come is half a fiction.

She takes the offered hand, and I lace our fingers, already knowing I'll tell myself I didn't have time to say goodbye.