The Desert's Edge ➣ Gloss/OC

And measured in these limitations, bound:

Chapter Eighteen | And measured in these limitations, bound:

"If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark."

2.1, 33 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Elara Winston has gotten used to being a Victor, but what she has not and will not ever get used to is mentoring for the Hunger Games. The first year after her own victory had been the hardest. With no idea as to how to actually advise two kids that are already destined to die, she had stumbled her way through the ordeal gracelessly. The tributes that year probably hadn't thought very highly of her. She wouldn't have blamed them for it.

She hadn't won her Games because she had a strategy. In her mind, it had been more luck and a burning need to survive than anything else. She had only killed a few tributes, and only because they had attacked her first. In her arena, she'd been the quiet one who skirted around the danger instead of throwing herself headlong into it. The only time she had killed with intention had been at the very end, when it had been just her and one other tribute. She had lured him to his death with a trap of her own making. Having been in the final countdown, Harley had finally managed to get her some sponsors to help her out.

Rigging the lake with electricity had been the easy part. Luring the final tribute to said lake and pushing him into it had been slightly more difficult, especially since he had been twice her size and extremely brawny. She'd almost fallen into her own trap in the process. It was only by some stroke of luck that she'd been able to overpower him enough to send him flying backwards off the rock that had become the scene of their final eulogy. The moment his skin met water, the electrical current zapped him to a long death.

The sound of his watery screams still haunts her, as does the sight of him flailing in the lake before his body had effectively short circuited.

In any case, District 5 has two mentors now, but even though this is her second year coming to the Capitol for this purpose, Elara is not very happy to be here. There's only one thing that makes her feel better, and that is the fact that Gloss will be there too. It's been a while since she's seen him last. They had parted rather abruptly the last time they'd been together in the Capitol. She's looking forward to seeing him again. He's become...a friend, of sorts. It's a funny way of describing their connection, but it somehow fits.

He understands her in ways very few people do. It isn't just because they're both Victors, or that Snow manipulates them similarly, or even that they have the same nightmares and fear the same things. She likes being around Gloss. He makes her laugh. He makes her feel like life isn't so bad after all, as if there's a silver lining to the stormy cloud that constantly hangs over them. That's what friendship is, right? She likes to think so. They occasionally take their clothes off and do things to each other that redefines that term entirely but – it's still friendship. Their own brand of it.

She likes to think that he sees her as a friend too. But suddenly she isn't so sure of that.

She's on her way to the public viewing room at the top of the Tribute Center, where Harley told her he'd be. It's only the second day of the Games and they have one tribute alive. The other died in the bloodbath the day before. Harley isn't much of a mentor. He's not very helpful, really, but Elara's hoping that she'll learn a little bit from him anyway. She's not a very good mentor, either.

In any case, she's about to turn the corner when she hears a low, aggravated voice hiss, "Would you stop pestering me about this? I told you there isn't anything else to it, Cash."

It's Gloss. She'd recognize his voice anywhere. There's a tone to it though, that makes her pause. Curiosity makes her linger by the corner, out of sight. The viewing room is a few halls down, but she somehow feels like it would be awkward to interrupt an obviously private moment between the District 1 siblings. Cashmere already dislikes Elara, and their desire to avoid each other is largely apparent to everyone else.