[ti]Finished[/ti]Ara Chalcis // The Capitol (Take 2)

Growing up, Ara's family was doing decently for a family in District 2. Few in her District starved, but some were constantly on the brink. Like most, Ara's family managed along. Since she was very young, her parents had high hopes for her future, wanting her to transcend their average-ness and join the higher, rich class of the District. Specifically, they wanted her to become an engineer for the quarries, just like her cousin Jacob had. Wanting to please her parents, she delved into her work at school. The math was manageable but draining. When working, Ara felt like some automatic machine instead of a person. Meanwhile, she flourished in the arts. 

Ara was a dedicated member of the theater club at her high school. On her own, she'd been working in art for years. She started like most children, coloring and drawing with crude tools. Quickly, though, her skills evolved and her work became more and more beautiful. The feeling of creating something was intoxicating to her: the thought of making one of her ideas something tangible was thrilling. Art made her feel alive. At home, she worked on piece after piece. Sometimes, there were charcoal sketches of a neighbor she'd seen passing by her window. Other times, she watercolored the sky of the setting sun over an abandoned quarry. At the theater club, Ara designed costumes and sets for the performers. She spent hours of each day with the club. Soon, she wasn't able to isolate her work with the theater from her schoolwork. Sketches filled the margins of her worksheets and answers were left blank. The more time she spent in the theater, the farther her grades dropped. As her grades dropped, her parents lashed out, causing her to spend more time buried in her work, continuing the cycle.

The solace of the theater was not only in her work, though. In addition to allowing her to explore her passions, the theater provided Ara with a group of people she could interact with that would understand her and her circumstances. In particular, she was drawn to Elwes Ash. His family was known around town for their money, but El was known for his easygoing, always happy personality. Even at such a young age, he was sunny and accepting and exactly the type of force Are needed in her life.

After El was dragged out of theater club by his father and the war started, their friendship continued. In her childhood, Are had many good friends but none that she considered to be a “best” friend that she loved dearly. That is who El became to her, though.

As platonically as possible, she fell in love with him. Ara became fiercely loyal to Elwes, who made her smile with his talent and confidence and jokes, but who listened when she told him about her controlling parents and general problems with life. Ara came to learn that she wasn’t the only one in the friendship who needed an ear. When Elwes spoke about his father, the captain, and his vision of Elwes, the soldier, Ara listened with a heavy heart and desperately hoped for something better for him.

Beyond their careers, they began to relate in other matters. In another deviation from the “norm”, Ara found herself unlike any of the other girls at the school. While they were exploring the experience of being bedded by their boyfriends, Are found herself entirely uninterested in those activities. Sure, she had romantic interests, and she did find some people attractive in a purely aesthetic type of way. Instead of wanting to kiss them or bed them, she’d want to draw them instead. Ara felt like some massive anomaly, like no one could understand - not even Elwes. Their relationship came full circle, though, when they came out to each other: him as gay, her as asexual, a term she learned from someone in the theater.

Almost too perfectly, life fell into place. Elwes was to move to the Capitol to fulfill the newly created role of “gamemaker” and Ara was able to follow him. Neither of the pair was comfortable being themselves, so they resolved that the next best thing was to pretend together. Ara got to use him as her answer to the never ending “when will you find a boyfriend?” question from her family, and Elwes used her for roughly the same reason. For this reason, she was able to join him in the Capitol.

Now, in this masquerade, Ara crafted a version of herself that satisfied her parents: a wealthy socialite (through Elwes’s impressive paycheck, or so her family believed) with a partner and a purpose. Secretly, she was able to create her art at his house and sell it at private showings with no names. Though she was still living a lie, it felt far better than the truth might, and better than when she was living it alone.