lore gaultier // d8 fin

( L  O  R  R  A  I  N  E )


"some boys try and some boys lie but
i don't let them play (no way)
only boys who save their pennies
make my rainy day,"

---

"C'mon, McCree, I've been on good behavior," she says, forehead pressed against the cab's tinted window. "It was only one goddamn purse, am I really gonna go back in for that?"

"Just one purse?"

"Okay, so there was a clutch in the purse."

"And a watch, and a set of earrings, and an Antoinette heel-"

"What, like I could fit two six inch platforms in there?"

Lore had had a large thorn in her back side for the longest, who's a girl got to kill to get some free discounts around here? McCree had left a dent in the bump of her extensions, left red marks around her wrists with the hand cuffs. He came around a good bit, they'd almost started to become friends; had he had half a brain or half a heart, she could get away with half the shit she needed to. First, he had caught her fishing quarters out of the laundromat, let her off with a warning and slipped her a 10 dollar bill for lunch. 

Which was great, she spent it on a pair of wool socks. You see, Lorraine was one of those stubborn people who, when they knew what they wanted, they'd do anything to achieve it. Which was great, as she had known exactly the kind of woman she wanted to grow up to be- she's known for a very long time. It wasn't even much of a question as she grew up, thankfully, of all the ways they disapproved of her, it was never a problem of how she was born. Lorraine as a young boy was just as materialistic and witty as she was into young adulthood. 

The problem here, however, was that she was just a bad apple from the get go. 

Selfish in the way she breathed, Lore had gotten her personality from capitol tabloids. That ideal of elegance, of elitism, of elevation, she had always caught herself obsessed in the way the stars twinkled from a far. A dream that caught her like a torment than anything else. It'd tear her from her families - both of them. Both the Greyborrows and the Haus of Gaultier; loyalties were wasted on the greedy. The ones who take and take, and give nothing but head aches. 

It was what she always wanted anyways, to be that tortured, starlet diva. Something that commanded love and refused it all in the same breath, "look, McCree, can't we just let bygones be bygones. You look the other way for a doll, and I sell the purse and the clutch and we can both pretend it never happened!" She could pocket that money and buy a tube top, or a purse! Wouldn't that be something, she scrunches her nose to kill an itch. 

"Oh yeah, 'cause that's how it works. Thanks for the reminder, Lorraine," she hated how he said it. That thick country accent, she'd learn by now that he was from the dirt end of district two. Like most cowboys had to be -- either two or ten and not a brain between either district. 

There's no light that can shine that bright yet, to illuminate from one coast to the next the way she pictured it. Lorraine didn't just want to be a factory girl from district eight, stitching her fur sheets onto cheap fabrics and wearing them like they cost something. She took the tesserae out every time she could, traded months of her life for the supplies, and then sold those for things that mattered. Real jewels, the way diamond glistened under the moon light, pearlescent rings and bracelets that coated her hands sugary, like candy to the eye. 

She couldn't get enough, and she knew what the times were coming to. Bombs in the district and kids dying, not just in the games, but to riots and ammunition and Shelby Leviane hid for a reason. Some girls were scared to be known, to be caught in the public eye, to die early, but not Lorraine. Not when there were so many things to kill her: a botched tit job could kill her before she's even thirty. They're all too terrified to truly live, and that's the one thing she had going for her. 

Lorraine, of anybody, knew just how to live. 

Whether the chardonnay was spiked or the karats were real, she would breathe and live and existed like it all was. Sneak off in the night to balls and dances, and smoke the goddamn hours away -- dirty windows or not, she didn't second guess it. She would be successful in spite of it, because of it.

"Look,"

"Where?"

"What? No- just, Lorraine, I know you're a good kid, you just do some dumb things, you know that right?"

She raised an eyebrow, felt her hair flatten against the peacekeeper car roof as they hit a pot hole, "I do?"

McCree groans, rubbing the wrinkled skin beneath his eyes. "Yes. But if you keeep this up, you'll just wind up deeper and deeper in it all - you know you will,"

"I do?"

"Yes!"

"Then I guess I do!" There was only one kind of authority she liked, but it involved handcuffs as well- fun coincidence. 

She had always been a confident girl, pressing her tongue to the window as if she'd break it with her piercing. "Am I going back to the center, be honest here Cree," she'd been twice already, made some good friends. Some fond memories, like the time she bartered a girl into shaving her hair off for a half a cigarette. Limitations breed creativity, success; and what was more oppressive than all of Panem? Snow would die and hell would freeze over before she'd stop kicking and screaming and fucking trying at least.

And - would you look at that - Snow's ding dong fucking dead, and he's the only one who knows how hell is doing at this point. He'd burn and she'd laugh at his replica tombstone they'd eventually build in district eight. She wondered how he would feel with his head in all the factory smog, as if he'd ever been to eight in person. All that said, she'd be his sugar baby if it meant getting to live it up in the Capitol. 

There were a lot of problems with how she was born, but the biggest was not being born up north. To all the money in the world- lord the things she could do with that much access. 

It didn't matter where McCree took her - detention center or not, she knew where she was going in life. Up and up until executive park burned at her feet and she waas something special, baby. It's just a matter of time. 

And, y'know, a lot of luck. 

"Yeah, you're going to the d.c., Lorraine."

"Oh, fuck my life."