The room stank of perfume and pretense, sickly sweet, sharp as chemicals, and thick enough to drown in. Capitol voices echoed off marble walls, laced with choreographed praise and compliments that rang hollow. This wasn’t a prep room, it was a stage, a sanctum of illusion. Gold leaf clung to every surface. Mirrors multiplied every gesture. Stylists moved like artists admiring their canvas, wearing smiles too bright to be real.

Casius stood to your left, arms stiff at his sides, eyes locked forward like a soldier awaiting orders. The suit they’d forced on him, a deep navy stitched with gold that gleamed beneath the lights, turning him into a walking prize. He looked carved from stone: broad shoulders, spine straight, jaw set.

But the way his fingers kept curling and uncurling, twitching with restrained violence, betrayed him.

One of the stylists stepped in to retouch the gold lines they’d painted over his scars. Thin streaks of metallic shimmer stretched across his cheek like lightning frozen mid-strike. He recoiled, not enough to draw gasps, but enough to make his disgust clear.

“I’m not your masterpiece,” he muttered, the stylist gave a paper-thin laugh and backed away. He didn’t turn to you, not fully, he never did. But you caught the flick of his gaze, sharp and dismissive. Just enough to let you know he saw you.

“I don’t know how you stand it,” he said, his voice low and bitter. But you didn’t answer, not with words. Just a faint smile, maybe genuine, maybe not. Maybe part of you did like the performance. The attention, this insignificant power that you´re trying to hold.

Either way, it only made him angrier.

He shifted closer, voice quiet but edged. “They dressed us like circus acts, and you look exactly like one of them." Before you could respond, the loudspeaker above crackled to life. “District Two, you’re up next. Second call.”