𝘉𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 [TBOSAS]

4 | Best shot in all of Panem

No personality, this one.

All he would do is sit in his chair, legs straight and hands placed over his lap. Smile and answer politely. Today, he was asking the tributes questions to tell the mentors where to stand and how to react to everyone. And yet, they were strange. District 1's tribute was weird.

His answers were too. For fun, he worked in the factory. Day in and day out, producing diamonds and gold he was nowhere able to touch. Coriolanus knew this by the way he mentioned his money, walk-in closets, and grand mansion. Coriolanus also knew that this was absolutely a lie, by the way he added them quickly and soon stuttered back to his sentence.

Also because Coriolanus told these lies as the money-hungry and pretentious teen, and again as a boy approaching manhood, obsessed with his image and the way people perceived him. But, not vainglorious like this boy, who said he caused trouble for attention and fame around the factory.

The only interesting thing about him was that on some days in the factory, he set up pranks. These pranks, as lowly as they were, weren't something you wanted to get caught in. Dumping glue all over an overworked employee (who quit on the spot), putting disgusting concoctions into people's lunches, and other tom-foolery.

And yet he kept talking, unable to stop talking about himself. Just as he started talking about the people he held dear to him, Coriolanus stopped him, asking him what made him worthy of being a winner. Coriolanus sighed through his stories of murdering animals and other things (these other things, as he referred to them, made Coriolanus a tad but suspicious of his home life), believing he was above such thuggery, no matter how his own life used to be.

District 1's boy had to be one of the most irritable people he'd met in years. And yet, 23 more to go. His day went worse, with the District four boy puking on the carpet, and the District 10 boy trying to murder him (Capitol guards quickly intervened) and the District 11 girl starting to violently sob at the sight of him.

Finally, the girl he had been hoping for stepped into the room. She had the same upbeat smile and calm aura as Lucy Gray.

"Hello," he said mechanically, and the girl simply nodded, smiling as she watched him with deep hope, her blue eyes glowing, identical to his. She sat down on the chair across him, her eyes wandering around the room, luxury clearly not a common thing to her.

"So, tell me a bit about yourself, young lady." he said casually, pretending to be distracted with papers, but he snuck glances at her, desperately trying to break anything in her face away from Lucy Gray.

She was 17, at oldest, and Lucy Gray Baird was in her 30's by now. This Lucy had blue eyes, while Lucy Gray had brown eyes. She wasn't Lucy Gray, but something about her haunted him like the plague. He needed a name for her. Lucy wasn't going to fit, especially with the ever-blurring lines between Lucy and Lucy Gray.

"Well," she started, keeping her blue eyes soft against the ground, "I'm Lucy Baird. I was abandoned, and I now have a new family, The Covey. We're musical performers in 12, although we belong to no place specifically. I grew up learning to de-" she paused, giving him a nervous glance, swiftly derailing the topic.

"And I learned to shoot a bow when I was young," she quipped, a pep-in-her-step rise in her tone, causing a sneaky smile to replace anything calm. Coriolanus sighed, writing this down on his paper, finding the last comment strange.

But onto the present, that was an addition. Evan, the nickname for the dorky, District 12 girl mentor, could use this to her advantage, both in and out of the arena. Coriolanus nodded, casually asking why she knew this, and she paused before responding.

"I know this because my grandfather taught me to hunt, and ever since I've started, I've been quite good at it. One of the last things he ever told me was that I was the best shot he'd ever seen." she reencountered, smiling softly, until realization brought her back from Cloud 9, and she straightened with nervous speed.

Looking back, he remembered the two things she said; she was a part of a band, and she was the best shot in all of Panem. Breaking it down, he saw that the best shot in all of Panem meant not that she had the best chance of surviving, just that she was good at shooting an arrow.

But it was shooting in any form, and pangs of soft, curly brown hair in a Peacekeeper helmet, asking him about the way he shot perfectly filled his brain. He shook it off. Sejanus was away, his whiny, yet supportive ways gone with him.

Despite that little memory game, he knew this band she mentioned was the Covey. He felt his heart pick up the pace, eager to remember the people he knew would help him, way back when he thought of the rest of his life as a Peacekeeper, with Lucy Gray by his side, written in the stars.

Oh, but how things change, he reminds himself, nodding softly to the end of her sentence.

His head ruched with thoughts, Sejanus, mockingjays, Lucy, District 12, the Hunger Games crossed his mind, jumbling around with an annoying ring that drove him insane. He could barely process anything in his head, let alone talk to someone while it was happening.

"Well, thank you Lucy. I'd like to hear some information on you during the official interviews, just to make it more exciting," he spewed out quickly, a fast, stuttering tone wrinkling his voice with a nervous tint.

She nodded, getting up without another word, causing Constantine to peak over, and see them. "Coriolanus Snow has officially ended the interviews," he said dreamily, watching her eyes flick up at the name, curiosity burning her until the Peacekeepers took her, leading her to her room.

Oh, and the one thing he did to make the games better. He had given them grand access to beautiful rooms, with golds and silvers and an ability to get mountains of food. But it made him feel a bit bad, giving them luxury before sending them to the arena.

But the games existed for a reason, and he had no intention of straying from that reason.

As she walked to her room, wonder and a shock filled her mind as she let the thoughts and doubts wash away, into one single truth. The man the Covey had told funny, affectionate stories about. The one her grandfather warned her about. The man who wasn't a District 12 myth, but real.

Coriolanus Snow, the supreme leader and president of Panem.