A/N: Written for the Starvation forum's monthly challenge, this one being "perfection." My first ever entry, so wish me luck. Title is deliberately uncapitalized; it's actually a reference to the song, Mr. Brightside by The Killers. Any constructive criticism would be lovely.

A warning for sexual content in the third part; please take the rating seriously.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

brightside.

"You look lovely already, darling," a violet-haired woman says, but it's not really a compliment. Like, I thought you'd look much worse.

She shrugs, feeling awfully vulnerable again, wearing nothing but her porcelain-white skin.

No one's ever called her pretty in her life, but then, no one has ever called her ugly either. A mirror is directly in front of her (too close), tall and glaring. She stares at her reflection, familiar and unfamiliar. Her shoulder blades are too visible, jutting out slightly as if she were growing wings. Are you lovely?

Maybe, the naked girl answers.

Smooth enough skin, a sprinkling of birthmarks. (She wishes she had her scars back, however ugly.) Light hair, dark gold, almost reaching her elbows. Saucer-like eyes. (She wishes she had darker eyes. Something mysterious.)

They bring out a garishly sparkling dress, all shiny silver and glittery skirts.

She supposes it would look good on someone else. It has an impossibly small waist (she wishes she hadn't starved quite so much), rising too high above her knees and too low down her chest. Her hair is the only decent part, pulled up in some kind of elegant knot she could have never done back home.

"I don't think—" she begins, staring at her ridiculous reflection. She's too pretty now, too Capitol-like. Her eyes are wide and startlingly blue in the midst of her pale skin and the dark makeup.

She doesn't look sixteen, but she can't tell if she looks younger or older, or which one she would prefer.

"Don't you like it?" her stylist asks, in a Capitol accent so pronounced it almost sounds fake, the metallic stars on her skin looking shinier than ever.

"Of course," she lies, surprisingly easily, the expression on her stylist's face so cheerful she can't bear to tell the truth. She wonders how she ever managed to win the Hunger Games.

Someone clasps a heavy silver rope around her neck. It feels like a noose against her collarbone.

"Now you're perfect," they all chorus, beaming.

"Stunning," adds another. It sounds more like they're praising themselves instead of her, but she still can't answer. (Is this what they think of perfection?)

Later, she forces a hopefully cordial smile as the president places that shiny crown on her head, eyes drifting down to her plunging neckline. She wants to throw up. Right on his stiffly starched suit. But she offers a cool smile and doesn't say a single word, teeth gritted.

She wants perfection, craves it. Because maybe if she was perfect, she wouldn't wake up screaming, wouldn't feel guilty for being a murderer at sixteen. She wouldn't have to make her smiles look genuine.

She wouldn't cringe everytime she hears his name, or looks into someone's eyes and finds out they're grey.

They say she's a victor, a winner, but she feels like she lost.

The only thing she ever asks her parents for is a piano of her own, a baby grand to sit in the parlor of their house in Victor's Village. Wood the color of coal, matching the raised keys. And the rest a pretty off-white, glossy and cold. Perfect.

They call it her talent, but it's more like a distraction.

She writes her own music, for the Capitol's sake, haunting pieces that come straight from her nightmares. Her sister says they're awful. She doesn't argue. They're gloomy and lovely and almost-but-not-quite perfect, and she likes them that way. Sometimes she messes up, hits the wrong note, but she can't bring herself to care. Perfection is subjective.

She hopes no one buys any of it.

"Is it supposed have a deeper meaning full of hidden angst or something like that?" her sister says teasingly, after a particularly dark one, the tempo quick and unsteady.

"It's just music," she says.

That night, the boy in her dreams laughs mockingly and calls her a liar.

And then he sprouts pink feathers and a long beak instead of a mouth, and she wakes up screaming, sheets sweaty and half warm, half cold.

She wonders if he'd like her music. Impefections and all. She imagines he would, that he'd sit on the bench with her and say, "It's perfect," even when it isn't. But she's only fooling herself, because he was never that perfect. Not even close.

(She wishes he was.)

The man in front of her has the palest skin she's ever seen. It almost glows in the darkness, the dim light burning her eyes. "Well, aren't you going to do something?" he whines in that irritating accent. "I paid a hell of a lot of money, you know?"

She feels nauseous, again.

He scowls, and for the first time she notices his eyes are completely black, the iris colored, almost like an insect. She shudders, curls of hair escaping the chignon, familiar against her shoulders. "Can you just leave?" she forces out. "Please."

"No way," he says impatiently, starting to remove his coat, "I've got a special bet with my friend."

She has a pretty good idea of what this bet entails. (Victors.) She wonders if the room has cameras, and the thought does nothing to settle the bile in her stomach. She can just imagine Snow shelving the dozens of tapes he surely has.

"Look, I'll pay you however much money you want," she tries, attempting to inconspicuously scoot farther away.

"I've already got money, sweetheart. And guess how I spent it?" He laughs, easily pushing her down to the bed, like a collector would pin a butterfly.

She closes her eyes and pretends like everything is ordinary and happy and uncomplicated. Because she can't be here, of all places, almost-seventeen (and scared) and wanting desperately to scream. But the walls in this room are probably soundproof, for reasons that make her want to gag.

They say that victors are lazy, selfish. They say that life in the Capitol is easy and perfect. (And they're so painfully wrong.)

And it hurts, a searing kind of pain, and she feels like she's suffocating from the inside out, eyes glued shut with glitter. He's inside her and it's wrong, and she can't feel anything except him, the breath on her face and too-soft skin rough against hers. He tears her in half and groans into her hair.

She doesn't know his name, but everyone one else in this whole goddamn country knows hers.

"Try to look on the bright side of things," her sister would say if she were here. Because she's never had to. She can't help but think that if her sister, her twin, had been reaped instead of her, she would have certainly died.

It's a guilty thought.

You won't ever know, she might answer, uncharacteristically serious. There can't be a bright side to this. But there is, and it's the fact that her family will still be waiting for her. Alive. She hates herself for wishing they weren't, that there was no one left to be the scapegoat for.

(There's no bright side except for you, and you don't even know it.)

In her paradise, things like the Hunger Games and threats and birds the color of her hair ribbons just don't exist. A dead boy takes her hand and laughs, and maybe it's directed, teasingly, at her. It's perfect, and that's why it's not real.

After, he smiles, satisfied. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

His breathing is loud, unsteady. Her body aches in all the wrong places, and she can't shake the lingering feeling of impurity from her skin. The blood is dark on the damp sheets, black and white. She can't tear her eyes away from it.

"Want something, sweetheart?" he asks. I want to die, she wants to say. I want you to die. She can feel the tears, wet against her cheek pressed to the mattress.

"Don't call me that," she says. He grins lazily and tells her she's perfect.

(She feels anything but.)