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Tigris is morbidly grateful that one of District 12’s tributes is blonde.
She can work with blonde. It juxtaposes the district’s coal theme quite well, she thinks to herself.
Tigris watches the Reaping from the comfort of the Capitol.
Maysilee Donner is not skinny. She has high cheekbones and bright eyes, though it could have probably been the tears. When the cameras zoom in to capture a tight shot of Maysilee’s face, Tigris privately thinks that the merchant’s daughter resembles something close to beauty.
It’s a shame that she’s bound to die.
A girl from the Seam ascends the stage with Maysilee. Then two boys are called. Four tributes. 48 in total, all across Panem.
The Quarter Quell is a shameless bloodbath in the making, and Tigris had wanted nothing to do with it.
Despite her attempts to withdraw from the pool of games stylists, an assignment letter still slipped underneath her door days before.
She had broken the presidential seal with shaking fingers. Coryo’s slanted handwriting delivered the blow: Your request to retire as a games stylist has been denied.
Then, the typical one-liner. You will be assigned to District 12 for the 50th Hunger Games.
Tigris had received several letters of the sort throughout the years. You will be assigned to District 5 for the 23rd Hunger Games. You will be assigned to District 9 for the 36th Hunger Games. You will be assigned to District 1 for the 44th Hunger Games.
Decades worth of assignments. Decades worth of sending children off to their deaths.
This year’s assignment, though, featured a stern postscript underneath Coryo’s signature. One that Tigris knew was solely for her.
Snow lands on top, he had written.
Tigris is still so hung up on the phrase that she misses the camera’s close up on Haymitch Abernathy.
-
It’s Tigris’ first time styling District 12. She figures out everything she needs to know during the tributes’ first fitting.
Maysilee is well-off. (As well-off as someone from District 12 can be.) She knows a fair amount about fashion and asks Tigris all the right questions about silk, about cotton. She is quiet and unassuming, and Tigris thinks it’s a damn shame that she’s a tribute.
Cinder is angry. Her rage radiates off her in waves. She doesn’t talk to Tigris at all, merely stares straight ahead. Tigris wraps her measuring tape over the girl’s chest and feels the hammering of her heart under her ribs. She is understandably enraged; she is eighteen years old. She had been so close to escaping the games.
Cobalt is inconsolable. Tigris can barely piece together his story because he cries all throughout his designated half hour. She picks up the important bits: The eldest son, the breadwinner. He blabbers that he’s too young to die. Tigris gives him a linen handkerchief on his way out, and he only sobs harder.
And then there’s Haymitch. He’s arrogant, impolite, foul-mouthed. He carries himself like he’s above it all. The costumes, the games. Tigris measures his pant leg and thinks to herself that this boy has the makings of a Career tribute. That does not mean she hopes he will win.
Tigris hasn’t hoped for that in years.
-
Her first tributes were from District 4. She wove them fishnet kilts, painted their nails sea blue, turned seashells into crowns. Magazines called her the most promising stylist of that year’s games.
It didn’t matter. The District 4 tributes went down at the Cornucopia.
Her favorite tributes were from District 11. She sewed a hundred flower petals into their costumes, gave them bracelets with golden leaves, manufactured butterflies to flutter around them. The Capitol wore gold for months after.
It didn’t matter. The District 11 girl was killed by a Career; the boy died of dehydration.
It didn’t matter when Tigris clothed her District 5 tributes in crisp, pointy white, setting the precedent for the Capitol's obsession with futuristic fashion.
It didn’t matter when Tigris was called a genius for incorporating crushed bricks into her District 2 tributes’ costumes.
None of it matters. All of her tributes die.
So much for ‘snow lands on top’, she thinks to herself, as she books another vanity appointment.
-
“Why do you look like that?”
Tigris meets Haymitch’s curious gaze. “Like what?”
“Like a freak,” he says plainly. It makes Tigris laugh.
“I like tigers,” she says.
Haymitch stares intently, then shakes his head. “I’ll never understand you Capitol people,” he grumbles.
Tigris wants to respond that the feeling is mutual. Instead, she tells Haymitch, “Put your costume on. You’re going to be late.”
-
The hosts are vocal in their disappointment over Tigris’ performance. They had high hopes, they bemoaned, that the stellar stylist would turn around District 12’s fate.
Alas, it seemed like the Capitol’s darling had lost her spark— or perhaps the mining district was truly just a nightmare for all of the games’ stylists.
Tigris dresses her four tributes in their typical coal-miner outfits for the parade. Maysilee purses her lips, Cinder furrows her brows, Cobalt sniffles dejectedly, and Haymitch cusses the whole way down.
When Tigris gets back to her apartment, she’s not surprised to find a single wilted rose on the doorstep.
It’s a warning, she’s sure, but she can’t bring herself to care. She crushes the flower underneath her boot and lets the smell of rot fill the hallway.
-
Because it may be the last time any of them can have anything nice, Tigris often lets her tributes dictate what they want to wear for their interviews. The District 12 tributes all ask for different things.
Cobalt wants something in his favorite colors. Tigris puts him in a maroon suit set with a teal tie. In his interview, Cobalt talks about his family back home.
Cinder requests for something befitting her name. Tigris works on a gray skirt lined with the illusion of orange flames. Cinder resolutely tells Ceaser that she’s ready, but only Tigris knows that it’s not the ‘ready’ everyone else imagines it to be.
Maysilee pleads for Tigris’ best. Tigris obliges and comes up with a gorgeous white dress that shimmers every time Maysilee moves, charming Ceaser and the crowds. Later on, Tigris tells reporters that the piece was inspired by lamp lights in the coal mines.
Haymitch tells Tigris to give him something she already has on hand. When she asks why, he goes on a rant about overconsumption in the Capitol, about not wanting to be wasteful. She shuts him up by handing him one of the suits Coryo outgrew.
“So, Haymitch, what do you think of the games having one hundred per cent more competitors than usual?” Ceaser asks, and Haymitch raises his shoulders in a shrug.
“I don’t think that it makes much difference. They’ll still be one hundred per cent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same,” he says noncommittally.
The audience roars with laughter.
That evening, Coryo calls. Actually calls.
“Don’t ever insult me like that again,” he seethes, and it takes Tigris a moment too long to realize what he’s talking about. His old suit.
Tigris giggles.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re President of Panem,” she says slowly, clutching the phone so tight that she dents the plastic. “You will always be just Coryo to me.”
Not Coriolanus, not President Snow. Just Coryo. Vain, manipulative, self-preserving Coryo.
He ends the call without another word. Tigris sits alone in her living room and laughs until she’s crying.
-
A couple of years prior, the Gamemakers worked on a series of underground catacombs. The proper name for it were launch rooms. A tribute once told Tigris that the outer districts called it the Stockyard.
Where animals go before they’re slaughtered.
The four tributes share one launch room. The usual amenities are all doubled— two showers, two couches, four sandwiches, four bottles of water.
Haymitch is the only one who eats. Maysilee and Cobalt occupy the two showers. Cinder sits on the couch, staring at her hands. All four brush their teeth and, one by one, file over to Tigris for finishing touches.
She swipes rogue onto Maysilee’s cheeks. She pulls Cinder’s hair back into a bun. She wipes away ketchup on Haymitch’s chin. She straightens Cobalt’s collar.
Tigris is surprised to see that they all have district tokens.
Cobalt turns over the silver bangle around his wrist. Cinder smooths out a crumpled family photo. Haymitch absently fiddles with the onyx ring on his left hand.
Maysilee, meanwhile, secures an enamel pin over her chest. It’s an icon of a bird with an arrow in its beak, the pin itself chipping faded gold.
“That’s nice,” Tigris says.
Maysilee almost smiles.
“It’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she whispers.
Across the room, Haymitch nods.
-
Tigris watches. There’s nothing more that she can do.
She watches Cinder charge straight for a Career.
She watches Cobalt stumble up the snowcapped mountain.
She watches Maysilee dip darts into a stream.
She watches Haymitch dodge stinging butterflies.
The television in her apartment is on all day, all night.
When Cinder’s neck is snapped, Tigris gets a tattoo on her right arm.
When the canon sounds for Cobalt, Tigris schedules a session for whiskers.
Every year, she does it. A flat nose for the District 9 tribute. A shaved head for the boy from District 1.
She watches the games, nursing her new surgeries, and wonders what she will get for Haymitch and Maysilee.
-
Tigris used to cry over her tributes. After her fifth games, she thought she had no tears left.
But something angry and terrible and sad rises within her when the flock of candy-pink birds descend on Maysilee.
The mutations squawk and stab. Maysilee lets out a blood-curdling screech.
Tigris, unable to scream herself, sinks her teeth into the back of her palm.
Haymitch— unfriendly Haymitch, sarcastic Haymitch, cynical Haymitch— gets to his knees and holds Maysilee’s hand. He does not sob. He strokes her hair. He gently lays her down onto the grass when a cannon sounds in the distance.
When Haymitch stands, his blood-stained fists are balled at his sides.
Tigris is the only one who notices that Maysilee no longer has her district token.
-
Tigris is the first friendly face to greet him after he emerges from the arena.
“You did it. You bastard, you did it,” she cries, pushing the matted hair out of Haymitch’s face.
He smiles grimly. They had to operate on him, had to put his intestines back in all the right places.
“Hey, tiger,” he says weakly. “I guess my odds were actually better this time around, huh?”
“To hell with the odds. The win was all you,” she says, and Haymitch’s smile widens in the slightest.
-
For the post-games interview, Tigris reworks an amber tuxedo in the back of her closet. She switches out the buttons and tailor fits the suit to Haymitch’s frame.
She painstakingly embroiders three icons onto a secondhand tie.
A piece of metal, a bonfire, a blue jay. (Cobalt, Cinder, Maysilee.)
Haymitch holds it in his hands like it’s fragile, like it might be taken away from him at any second.
Tigris tightens the tie’s knot closer to his neck. “There,” she purrs. “Good to go.”
For the first time ever, Haymitch thanks her.
-
Tigris sees him off with gifts. Haymitch writes to her, days later, from his shiny new home in the Victor’s Village. He sends thanks from his mother and his girlfriend, both of whom fawn over Tigris’ work.
It humbles her beyond measure. She sends back more garments and strikes up a correspondence.
She writes Haymitch, They’re still wearing amber here in the Capitol.
He responds, Mum said it was too bright. I think it was perfect.
She asks, Does your girlfriend want anything from here? What about your brother?
He answers, She told me to say ‘no’, but she keeps raving about those flowers that last forever. And my brother— he likes running shoes. I can pay you for them, tiger.
Tigris purchases dozens of plastic flowers in all shapes and sizes. She buys two pairs of rubber shoes from the Capitol’s most well-known brand. She throws in some old scarves of hers for Haymitch’s mother, and when she thinks it’s not enough, she encloses belts and wallets and hair clips with bows.
She packs them all into a box and scribbles on a postcard, No payment necessary.
-
Tigris draws her shawl around her face. She has never been embarrassed of her surgical enhancements, but in the gray, dreary streets of District 12, she is an anomaly.
She walks past the exhausted coal miners, the red brick merchant shops, the seedy black market. Finally, she comes to a stop in front of the Victors’ Village.
District 12’s Victor’s Village is derelict and untended. Only one home in the row of houses seems to be occupied.
When she gets to Haymitch’s, she knocks thrice on the front door. No one responds.
She raps her fist with more force and is surprised when the door creaks open. Unlocked.
She creeps in, quiet as her namesake, and reluctantly calls out, “Haymitch?”
Tigris gasps and nearly drops her purse. Haymitch is splayed out on the floor, a half empty bottle of liquor in his hand.
“Haymitch!”
Despite his drunken stupor, he manages to squint up at Tigris.
Haymitch, who told Tigris all about his family and his girl. Haymitch, who wrote every day once he got home. Haymitch, whose letters stopped coming with no warning.
Tigris had boarded a train to District 12 to check on him. The death of Victors often elicited more fanfare, but those from the outer districts tended to pass in silence. Tigris thought, briefly, of the girl with the rainbow dress who no one ever heard from again.
“Tiger,” Haymitch slurs. “Are you real?”
She kneels down next to him. “Where’s your family?” she asks delicately. “Your girl?”
Haymitch furrows his brows. “Dead, I think,” he says, and Tigris draws back like she had been hit.
“Dead?”
“Killed,” he corrects.
He attempts to take another swig of his lager. Tigris knocks the bottle out of his hand. He stares up at her, appalled.
“What do you mean ‘killed’?” Tigris demands. “Who killed them?”
Haymitch, despite his inebriation, levels Tigris a firm look. One that screams, ‘You know who killed them.’
Tigris fights the urge to tell him he’s wrong. Coryo was many things, but certainly not a murderer.
She changes her line of questioning. “When?”
“Two weeks— two weeks after I got here,” Haymitch chokes out. He claws at the beer that spilled on the floor and places his fingers to his lips, lapping it all up. Tigris watches on, pitying and horrified.
Why, she wants to ask. Haymitch fills in the blanks. “It’s because I won,” he says.
Unexpectedly, he bursts into peals of laughter. He curls into himself, clutching his stomach, and says in between laughs, “I won— and it wasn’t— their spectacle. The fiftieth— ending with a District 12 boy— winning! Because he— I used the fucking forcefield— and— and— didn’t even— fight.”
“They— he— hates me. Fucking hates me! So he— he went after— my— my—”
“Oh, Haymitch,” Tigris says softly. She pulls him onto her lap. He buries his face into her long skirt and laughs, and sobs, and swears up and down that Coriolanus Snow was behind it all.
Tigris never steps foot in District 12 ever again.
-
It takes her three months to book an appointment with Coryo.
“Is it really so hard to get in touch with you?” she asks dryly as she slides into the seat opposite him.
Coryo raises an eyebrow. “Well, who’s trying to see me?” he shoots back. “Tigris my cousin, or Tigris the stylist?”
“Touché.” Tigris sips at the cup he set out. Rose water. His favorite.
Coryo leans back into his chair and wrings his hands together. “So, Tigris— to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I want to resign.”
“That won’t be happening.”
“Why not?”
“You’re one of the games’ most prized stylists. You’re needed, Tigris.”
“You’re the only one who needs me,” she says through her teeth. “Stylists are replaced all the time.”
“You won’t be,” Coryo says.
“I could just leave, you know,” she says, setting the cup down.
“No, you won’t.”
“Why not? Will you have me killed like Haymitch’s family?”
His stoic silence is the only confirmation she needs. “You killed his family,” she repeats, disbelieving. “And his girlfriend. All because— because he outsmarted you?”
“I think we’re done here,” Coryo says, dabbing a handkerchief at the corner of his mouth.
“No,” Tigris says firmly. “You will not dismiss me like one of your constituents, Coryo—”
Something dangerous flashes across his expression. “You may call me Coriolanus or President Snow,” he says icily.
Tigris rolls her jaw. “Did you have them killed, Coryo?”
“I told you—”
“Answer the question.”
“I will not—”
In a fit of animalistic rage, Tigris leaps across the table.
Coryo’s cutlery fall to the floor with a crash. His two wards burst into the room and haul Tigris off of him, holding her from either of her side.
She fails to draw blood, but his shirt is effectively ruined. She has never been more thankful that she sharpened her claws.
“Lock her up,” one of the Peacekeepers says.
“Wait,” Coryo huffs. His guards still.
“It was nothing more than a misunderstanding,” he says while breathing heavily. He gets to his feet and fixes a stern gaze onto Tigris. “Set her free.”
“But, sir—”
“This is not up for debate,” Coryo commands. The Peacekeepers fall silent. “If I hear that any harm has befallen Miss Tigris, I will personally hold you two accountable. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Coryo smiles. It looks more like a leer.
“I will see you at the next games,” he tells Tigris. (A thinly veiled threat.)
Tigris bares her teeth. “Thank you, President Snow,” she spits.
Something close to pain flashes across his face as the Peacemakers drag her away.
It’s the last time Tigris ever sees her cousin in person.
-
Tigris is a games stylist for 17 more years.
She never has another Victor. She watches 34 children die. She goes under the scalpel and the tattoo gun 34 more times.
She is never assigned to District 12 again after the Quarter Quell. It doesn’t matter.
She only ever sees Haymitch during the games. He is the district’s only surviving Victor, which makes him an unwilling mentor. He is drunk more often than not, and he is largely underestimated by all of the sponsors. He gets on the first train back to his District when his tributes go down.
Haymitch and Tigris run into each other occasionally, but they never exchange more than a cursory nod of recognition.
One day, she receives a letter. Your services as a game stylist will no longer be needed, it read. Thank you for your time.
She looks into her bathroom mirror and sees nothing of the blonde who was once sweet and vulnerable. She knows she is no longer pure as the driven snow, but she shakes her head nonetheless.
Her coward of a cousin, she thinks, couldn’t even fire her in person.
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
She’s free, Tigris thinks. Finally free.
-
Most of the Capitol is left in the dark about what happened to the famed games stylist, Tigris.
Her old neighbors say she moved out quite suddenly. They were surprised to find a ‘for sale’ sign over her highly coveted apartment.
The other games stylists gossip among themselves. Some say she got tired, got sick of clothing losers. Another theory is that she almost ran away with a lover from an outer district.
Even the anchors and hosts lament her absence. “Don’t you miss Tigris?” they ask during their parade spiels, during the tributes’ interviews.
Eventually, her name fades into a distant memory. Other stylists best her work.
The Capitol forgets.
Haymitch doesn’t.
-
With the money she earned from her decades as a stylist, Tigris opens up a store in the city fringes.
She sells fur clothes and undergarments to people who don’t know who she is. For a while, she is happy.
Then, one evening, a rather stout man visits her shop.
“Good evening, Miss Tigris. I’m Plutarch Heavensbee,” he says benevolently. “A friend of mine, Haymitch Abernathy, sent me here. May we talk somewhere private?”
-
Haymitch has no Victors for 23 years.
On the 74th Hunger Games, he suddenly has two.
Tigris pulls all the stops to attend the Victor crowning. Unlike everyone else, though, she does not stand around hoping to catch a glimpse of the star-crossed lovers.
She weaves through the crowds and finds Haymitch on the sidelines, a silver flask in hand.
He smiles when he sees her. He’s older, now. Paunchy and scruffy. But his eyes are the same, and so is his snark when he greets her with, “Easy, tiger.”
Tigris realizes she hasn’t prepared for this moment. She isn’t sure what to say.
Haymitch straightens and Tigris sees that he’s wearing the tie. Cobalt, Cinder, Maysilee.
He gives Tigris’ shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” he says softly.
Tigris follows his gaze.
Katniss Everdeen stands on the stage in a yellow dress. On her chest, she bears Maysilee’s mockingjay pin.
-
The rebels come into her shop just as Plutarch said they would.
Katniss aims an arrow at Tigris’ face. Her associate stops her.
“She’s with us,” the girl says.
Tigris wordlessly ushers them in— the ‘Girl on Fire’, the soldiers, the Avox, the manacled Victor. As they’re settling into a cellar, Katniss approaches her.
“I know you,” Katniss says. “You were a stylist in the games.”
Tigris pushes back her hood, having no more reason to hide. Katniss’ gaze burns as she takes in Tigris’ appearance— the snout, the stripes, the stretched face. (Tigris is reminded of an impolite teenage boy from many years ago.)
“Until Snow decided I wasn’t pretty enough,” Tigris growls. It’s a half truth.
Katniss doesn’t hesitate. “I’m going to kill him,” she announces.
Tigris almost smiles.
-
Except Katniss doesn’t kill Coryo.
No one knows for sure what his cause of death is. Tigris hears the theories. Poison. Choking. Being trampled.
She closes down shop for the day.
Haymitch comes knocking at her door anyway.
“Everdeen has been acquitted,” he says before Tigris can even speak. “I’ll be heading back to District 12. Would you like to come?”
The invite draws a surprised laugh out of Tigris. “Why would I?”
“I could use a friend.”
“My life is here,” Tigris responds.
“All your family’s gone,” Haymitch says matter-of-factly.
She staves off a wince. “You knew?”
“Plutarch showed me your file years ago. He wanted to make sure you were trustworthy before inviting you to join the rebellion.”
“I didn’t do much,” she says wryly.
Haymitch shakes her head. “It mattered, tiger.”
The two of them sit in silence, the cups of tea between them growing cold.
“I want to stay,” Tigris decides. “I’ll still be your friend, wherever you go.”
“I’ll write,” Haymitch offers.
“I’d like that.”
-
Haymitch makes good on his promise. In one of his letters, he tells her about Katniss’ memory book. He asks if there’s anyone she wants to add.
Tigris doesn’t respond for two months.
She eventually mails Haymitch dozens of parchments. A log book of over a hundred dead tributes, with sketches of what they wore, and other bits and bobs.
A swath of the blue polish Marina from District 4 wore. She knew all the sea shanties known to man.
A pressed forget-me-not, for Aspen from District 11. His favorite food had been vegetable gratin.
She dedicates a whole page to her District 12 tributes.
Cobalt, who worked part-time in the mines to put food on the table. Cobalt, who cried while reading his mother’s worn romance novels. Cobalt, whose favorite colors were maroon and teal.
Cinder, who chose to die on her own terms. Cinder, who was particular about keeping her fingernails clean. Cinder, who made flat, dense loaves from her family’s monthly allotments of grain.
Maysilee, who left behind a twin and a pet canary. Maysilee, who had cavities from all the sweets she ate. Maysilee, who first brought the mockingjay pin to the arena.
Haymitch writes Tigris and thanks her for all of it.
He tells her that he took the pin out of desperation. He didn’t know how much longer he would have in the games, and he needed something, anything familiar.
Out of guilt, he would later return it to the Donners. He had no idea that Maysilee’s niece would someday inherit it and that she, in turn, would give it to Katniss.
Consider this the mockingjay’s song, he writes. It’s all over. We can breathe now, tiger.
Tigris folds the letter and keeps it in her pocket.
Free, she thinks to herself. Finally, finally free.