Eva Salazar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vissernone) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2013-12-01 05:23 pm
vissernone) wrote in thecapitol2013-12-01 05:23 pm
This City's Already So Full of Bodies It Does Not Need One More [Open]
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.
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.
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"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!"
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"It's the regular method of travel here. Well, that and the train. You'll like my home, I hope."
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"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.
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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."
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"Are we nearly there? Do you feel better now?"
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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."
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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?"
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"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.
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"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?"
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To make her nest anew.
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"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?"
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"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.
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She walks over to one of the armchairs that can view the kitchen and takes a seat, letting her normally rigid posture relax.
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"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."
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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.
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"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?"
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She pats at the sofa, gesturing for Eponine to sit down with her. "Here, I'll show you the perfect amount if you ever wish to make tea for me."
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She sits down to pay attention to the tea-making. The avoxes had always just handed her a mug, and she drank it, whichever way it came. It was quite nice to see someone fussing about how they liked it.
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She hands Eponine her cup. "Now, I'll arrange it with your Escort that you can spend as much time here as possible. And I'll give you some cash, so you can take a cab here when it's cold, alright?"
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Eponine sounds positively alarmed at the prospect of Eva giving her money. It's not even that: she just doesn't want anyone to mistake her for just looking for money alone.
"I do not mind the cold, or the snow. Truly. Or how I look. Indeed, my stylist is cross with my teeth, but she likes that my waist is so small even without a corset. She wishes to make it smaller still..." She sighs. "It is better than Valeria though."
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"It's alright to mind things around me, you know. If you ask for too much I won't hesitate to tell you if you're out of line."
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