This City's Already So Full of Bodies It Does Not Need One More [Open]

[vissernone]

WHO| Eva Salazar and open
WHAT| Eva's alive and not well.
WHERE| The garden behind the Training Center
WHEN| Week 7
WARNINGS| Brain damage.

They brought her back, but they did not bring her back whole.

Eva's vaguely aware of the mechanics behind how the Tributes are revived, and knew going in that the Mentors would only be brought back with experimental technology. She didn't know what that meant until a few hours after she woke up from death, reading and rereading the pamphlet about blood flow to the brain without retaining information. Your brain was dead. We brought it back.

Bright lights and loud noises take a physical form, smothering her, smashing through her thoughts like bullets. Crowds seem to raise the barometric pressure in a room. Her words are jumbled at times, missing patches of sentences at others. Reading, her usual passtime, has become difficult, as whole parts of lines seem to disappear, flaking off the page like mange.

It'll get better as the brain starts to heal itself, they say. She hopes they're right. For now, she keeps away from large gatherings and wears a sheer veil over her face to protect her eyes from the worst of the light.

Unable to get her mind to cooperate enough to read, she instead turns to tending the earth. The garden outside the Training Center is a good place to start, the little isolated, tranquil corner behind the building. Trellis, small fountain, marble path, and a hundred varieties of crossbred flowers.

She rips up weeds and shreds them in her fingers. She tells herself it's physical therapy, using her fingers like that even when they only obey her half the time. She doesn't bother to go out and make apologies to the people she killed. She doesn't look for her allies, either. Without her mind, she feels more alone that ever, just a rickety shell taking up space and muddling through each hour.

At least she'll have Eponine with her. It's something.

Comments

[gardienne]

"... Until I went away." Eponine echoes Eva's thoughts anyway.

"But you knew I wouldn't stay. I wouldn't make you kill me at the end. And I had to find that Howard of mine. You know, he saved my life too. He wouldn't leave me when he knocked me out. And I know he insisted on bringing me, because M 'sieur Maximus and that other man would not save me. They don't like me."

She hugs Eva tighter. "I'm sorry I asked you to kill me when I was in the cave. That was a wrong thing to do, Madame Eva."

[vissernone]

She finally lets go, wiping her hands on her pants and brushing hair and some of the veil protecting her eyes back. Eponine's voice seems to saw through Eva's brain, but she pushes the impending headache away - it's not the girl's fault that the revival process made Eva sensitive to noise.

"It was an understandable request. I just hope you know I'll never grant it."

[gardienne]

"Perhaps one day... it might be the right thing to do, you know? That's why Katniss shot me. When she killed Howard... she knew I would not be able to move again. So she helped me. It didn't hurt."

Eponine tilts her head, studying Eva's face carefully.

"You look tired, Eva. Perhaps you should be in bed, not digging a flower. Come - you can show me my new home, and I can put you to bed and make a hot brandy for you."

[vissernone]

"I'm glad it didn't. We've all been through enough." She gets up, feeling age soaking into her knees. "That sounds wonderful. And you can see your bed, too."

[gardienne]

Eponine moves to help her, catching Eva's elbow, and tucking her arm through so that Eva might lean on her.

"Did I give you my flu? I'm sorry - we were both so ill and you nursed us. Well, I will nurse you. I can make gruel, if you can take it? And perhaps tea."

She chatters on in an attempt to take Eva's mind off her apparent flu. This is going to be a disaster: Eponine doesn't know how to use a kettle.

[vissernone]

"No, I'm just having a bit of difficulty recovering from the Arena. Trouble sleeping, and that's all." Eva leans a bit, not because she terribly needs it but so Eponine feels more useful.

"Tea sounds wonderful. Come, we can hail a cab. I trust you've recovered from the flu?"

[gardienne]

"A cab?" She laughs in pure delight. "I've never been in one, you know. I just walk everywhere. Oh what fun!"

She'd clap her hands if she wasn't holding onto Eva. Even so, she hurries her steps, eager to experience a cab and see her new home.

"Ah, the flu. Yes - he is gone. It is not so bad, you know. I have been a lot worse than that. Perhaps it was that I did not want to get well. I really did not want to come back here with them laughing at me. They are though, but I don't care. They have all taken Howard's side, and that is about right, is it not?"

[vissernone]

"Well. Not all of them have sided against you," she says, giving Eponine's hand a squeeze as she hails a cab. It slows down, the car door opening automatically. Eva climbs in and waits for Eponine.

[gardienne]

"I don't care anyway!" She declares offhandedly, even as she slides into the car. But then she just stops and looks. And touches the seats carefully, and looks hard at the driver.

"These are not like those things they put us in to go to the arena. Isn't it comfortable?"

She pulls the door shut gently. "Do you always travel in these? It is so strange to be in a carriage, you know!"

[vissernone]

"Well, the cabbie gets well-tipped if we have a pleasant ride." Eva pulls a bill from her pocket and passes it forward.

"It's the regular method of travel here. Well, that and the train. You'll like my home, I hope."

[gardienne]

Eponine watches, obviously impressed with Eva's apparent wealth. The tributes only ever have those plastic credit cards, unless they kill - and, well, Eponine has thus never had real money, except what she's pinched.

"I bet I do, Madame. I have never been in a proper home, not since I was a small child, smaller even than Mademoiselle Pruna. I think it must be nice to have a house all to yourself. That is what I want, one day. Just a little house, with some flowers in the front, and perhaps a little wall around the garden. And a little kitchen and a larder and a sitting room with a rocking chair and a big fire, and a bed in the corner, for me and - well..." She trails off, and looks wistfully out of the window.

[vissernone]

In a way, it makes Eva feel a little bit self-conscious. She grew up, not as desperately poor as Eponine, but wanting. Bare feet in the summer, hunger for breakfast. Cavities not from sweetness but from plaque. One dress for work-days and one for special occasions, and her mother's clothing when her belly swelled with life.

Now she has a lavish house with a garden and birdfeeders made of stained glass.

"You'll sleep on the most beautiful bed tonight, I promise."

[gardienne]

"I don't care if I sleep on the floor. I'm just glad you're having me for a while, Eva." It's nice to get away from the Tribute Centre and the constant squabbling and caterwauling and sulking at Maximus and following-but-pretending-to-avoid Marius and definitely avoiding Howard and feeling awkward about Orc and now Ian and - and it's nice to just be with a woman for a change. It's nice to feel like she's a little bit free from the ever-watching Capitol.

"Are we nearly there? Do you feel better now?"

[vissernone]

"Much better."

The car pulls to a curb, and Eva leads Eponine through the wrought-iron gates to her door. The walls are high, and there's a little shed out back in the garden for Avoxes. She opens the doors to a kitchen made of rose-colored stone and glass.

Riches Eponine has likely never seen. Eva lets a scanner check her palm and enters some numbers.

"You can come in, dear. Welcome to my home." She takes Eponine's hand and holds it up. "Press it to the scanner and you'll be allowed to come and go as you wish. It'll record you as a keyholder."

[gardienne]

Eponine's jaw actually drops open when she sees the house. To her, it's like something out of a fairytale. It's so beautiful, so soft. So - it wasn't what she had expected of Eva. It's too pretty. But it is beautiful.

Eponine turns back to the tall gates she had passed through, going back to touch the sculpted iron, and to hold the bars, to press her face against them. They invoke memories of Paris, of the nights she sat outside Cosette's house, watching Marius and Cosette exchange whispered promises. She remembers touching those as well, wishing she really was a ghost so she could pass through them. She remembered finding a hole so she could creep through. And now, here she is, just walking through Eva's. Into that magical world where everything is perfect.

And now perhaps she will have beautiful clothes and a lovely man and everything, everything will be brilliant.

She goes back to the kitchen, still slack-jawed with wonder, and allows Eva to hold her hand up. She's not even looking; she's staring instead at the kitchen.

"Is this truly, truly your house?"

[vissernone]

"It is." Paid with some of the worst of Eva's nightmares, those which she hopes Eponine will never have to subject herself to again. She locks the gate and then the door behind Eponine, then gestures Eponine should have a seat.

"You can sleep in-" No, Eva realizes. She had been about to offer Eponine her son's room, the one she hasn't been able to bear clearing out for the last twenty-five years. Aside from the bed being made, it still bears the memory of a teenage boy. "You can sleep on the couch until I have a bed delivered. I'll bring you blankets and pillows tonight."

Sometimes the fact that Eponine doesn't ask for much (and yet needs so much) can be advantageous.

[gardienne]

She stands gingerly in the kitchen. Eponine doesn't want to go further into this pristine, pretty house, in fear of messing anything up, or trailing dirt or grime in. Never, ever has she been in a house with so many rooms, and such lovely decorations. Not even the inn when she was little...

"I do not mind to sleep on the floor. Honestly, Eva, it is no trouble. Please. You need not order me a bed or anything. Anything at all. Even in the garden - you have such a lovely garden - I will look after it for you, if you like? The Bishop used to let me water his flowers sometimes, you know?"

[vissernone]

"Oh, I like working in my garden. It's relaxing. We can do it together." Eva begins to heat some water for tea. "And I insist you don't sleep on the floor. I'm allowing you to stay here, and you're allowing me to be a gracious host."

To make her nest anew.

[gardienne]

"Well, if you so insist." She grins, despite herself and moves a little further unto the kitchen.

"I will not refuse a comfortable bed, Eva, you know that. Oh - but what is that that you put the water in? Do you not use a pan?"

[vissernone]

"This is a kettle. It whistles when the water boils." She gestures to everything - despite the Avoxes that come once a week to clean, it's clearly a lived-in abode, covered in handprints and scuffs on cabinet doors. "You don't have to worry about dirtying anything, Eponine. Make yourself comfortable. Please."

[gardienne]

It is still, by far, the nicest room Eponine has ever been in. The Tribute Towers are nice, and clean and pure luxury... but Eva's place already feels like home.

"I should be making your tea... but you know, in my home, we had a fireplace, and we had a pot over the fire, and Mama would fill it with water or snow and we would have hot water just so, and then the tea - well, it was sold loose, not in bags like here. I think we would have dropped that in - Mama used to drop whatever we had in, no matter what it was. Sometimes rabbit, sometimes a bit of beef. Sometimes just some vegetable. Maybe a rat if we catch one. But I think I can make it from here.'

She hovers behind Eva, mimicking her movements, blatantly not comfortable and trying her best to seem so.

[vissernone]

"Well, I don't tend to eat rat, but I'm all ears if you have good recipes." She grins, even though one side of her mouth seems stiff and unresponsive. "Be my guest. Please. I mean that in every sense of the phrase."

She walks over to one of the armchairs that can view the kitchen and takes a seat, letting her normally rigid posture relax.

[gardienne]

"Recipe? No." Eponine laughs as she sits down crosslegged on the floor to wait for the whistle.

"We had no recipe. We put everything in and didn't care what it tasted like. It was not nice, but it filled a hole in my belly and kept the monsters away."

She jumps when the kettle actually whistles and lifts it, splashing water into two cups she finds on the side, and all over the counter as well.

Then she begins her rummage for the tea bags, eventually unearthing them. One is dumped in each cup and she peers at the liquid slowly turning brown. It doesn't look like the tea she's had at the Tribute Towers. She pokes the cup doubtfully with a finger.
Perhaps it will just turn right? She shrugs and carries a cup over to Eva, before going back for her own. She settles at Eva's feet.

"Is it right? It doesn't look the same... but it said 'tea' on the box."

[vissernone]

"That's perfect. That's exactly how you do it, dear. Could you get me some milk for the tea? It's in the refrigerator." She points, just in case Eponine doesn't know which machine that is. "And sugar is in the cupboard beneath that, in the white pot, if you want to use that."

She could get used to this, she finds. She could get used to filling the house with life. All she has now are houseplants and a cat that lives in the backyard and sometimes graces her with its presence.

[gardienne]

Eponine nods and carefully sets her cup on the floor, before running to get the milk and sugar. She opens the refrigerator, and gasps in delight when she sees the light come on and feels the cold against her skin.
"Ah, you have a cold cupboard too. The one in the kitchen at the Tower has ice cream in it."

Hint hint, Eva.

She returns with the sugar and the milk. "Do I just put it in? How much?"