The room was too clean. Too white. The overhead lights fell with cold precision onto every smooth surface, reflecting off the metal panels and the tall mirrors that surrounded the center of the room as if there were no place to hide anything inside. Peeta sat in front of the main mirror while several hands worked around him, adjusting fabrics, tucking in the collar of his suit, correcting tiny folds invisible to anyone who wasn’t obsessed with the cameras.

The white of the uniform made his skin look even paler.

One of the stylists said something about hope and unity with an automatic smile that vanished as soon as the sentence ended. Peeta didn’t respond. His eyes remained fixed on the reflection in front of him not exactly on himself, but on the version they were constructing. Polished, serene, confident, and useful.

Someone’s fingers brushed his jaw to better adjust the angle of his face, and the impulse to pull away came so fast he had to hold it back before it turned into actual movement. His hands remained still on his legs, though the tension in his fingers told a different story.

“We need you to look calm,” a voice behind him remarked. “People listen more when you don’t look scared.”

People…as if he still knew who people were.

Peeta exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of the fabric on his shoulders as the words continued to pile up around him: stability, peace, safety, war. They all sounded hollow now, repeated so many times that they had lost their shape, blending with other things he couldn’t quite make sense of either. Fragmented memories. Images flashing by too quickly. Voices that sometimes seemed real and sometimes didn’t.

Because inside, everything still felt misaligned, as if something had been torn from its place and put back incorrectly. Thoughts that folded in on themselves. Doubts that appeared even in memories that had once seemed simple.

One of the assistants finally stepped back, observing the result with restrained satisfaction.

“Perfect.”

The word hung in the air for a few seconds.

Peeta lowered his gaze slightly to the white sleeves of his uniform, watching as the fabric completely hid any trace of trembling in his hands.