ladonna de montier [d6] fin

Dead people are so out of touch. 

How are you going to come into the undertakers thinking your black eye matches that jaundice skin? I mean, come on — that's why it is my job to give them a makeover, basically. So yeah, you could say I'm sort of a makeup artist... except for dead people. But hey, they are the best clients: they don't move and they don't talk back. And when you've been raised by the wolves I have, silence is often forgotten and never appreciated.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy my job. It pays decently because nobody wants to do it, but honestly, it's the closest I'm ever going to get to my dream job in Panem. There's no need for makeup in Six because everyone wears blood, sweat and tears as war paint, parading their trauma around the streets like everyone wants to know they are an orphan who had their sister die in the games. I don't really have an issue with the Hunger Games, more so the shameless trauma dumping that comes afterwards.

Okay... so your family member died... and what exactly do you want me to do about it? Just give me some cash and I'll make them look good enough for their open casket. That's all. And you can spare me the sob story, you're not getting a discount.

Honestly, I find it quite strange that people haven't accepted life as it is in Panem yet. It's been... who knows how many years since all of this began and pretty much the whole population is still damning the Capitol. Nothing has changed in years and I'm not the type of girl to dedicate my time to a lost cause. It's just how things are and whilst the wings of a butterfly may create a hurricane, nobody in Panem is a butterfly. Everyone here is a fucking moth: unashamedly flocking to the light, failing to realise it blinds them in the process. It does no good to think about all the things that could be, because they just... aren't.

My family has always been like that. More of a go with the status quo bloodline than try to disrupt it — but don't get that mixed up with not having opinions, because we have thousands of those. We're a loud and outspoken bunch — it comes from Mom. She wouldn't be able to keep her mouth closed if her life depended on it. She's always the first to let me know when I've stepped a toe out of line, and I'm always the first to let her know that she's old and probably doesn't have that much time left. It's all out of love.

I pray that she doesn't ever find out that I've been stealing the cosmetics from our work, though. Medical grade makeup probably isn't the same as the stuff they use in the Capitol, but it works for me. Each time a new shipment comes in, I pinch a couple of everything and add it to my personal collection. It gets stashed underneath the loose floorboard in my room and comes out when I'm home alone. I always add a little highlight to make my cheekbones look higher and fill in my eyebrows. I'm playing with fire, really, because I'll leave it until the second Mom walks through the door to hide it again, let alone wash it off of my face. I left some purple eyeshadow on and had to tell her I'd got into a fight at school.

She seemed proud.

It's only really half a lie, anyway, because I do get into fights at school, but I never come out worse for wear than the other person. I don't feel bad about any of them — if you're picking on someone you shouldn't be then trust, you will be dealt with. That's not even me being out of pocket, that's karma coming around to beat their ass. Karma that just so happens to look a lot like Ladonna de Montier.

I don't really care about having a bad reputation with my peers. They can talk about me behind my back as much as they like because I tell the dead to make sure there's a place in hell reserved for them all. The dead are my only friends, really. I wouldn't want real ones because they would just disappoint me. So I find solace in telling my secrets to the dead, safe in the fact they will never be told to anyone else.

Thank Ripred, really, because if my Mom found out about any of this, I know damn well she would beat my ass... but don't get it twisted — I'd beat hers back twice as hard.