The Crowning of Enjolras

[etcircenses]

WHO| All Tributes and Victor, plus a few Capitol guests
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.

The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.

Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.

When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.

Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.

The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.

And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.

For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).

"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"

He awaits applause.

"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."

Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"

He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.

-/-

The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.

They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.

For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.

Comments

[carnagecarnival]

"THE LOST CORPSES OF NOSY LEGISLACERATORS," He snorts, trying to play off the way he shifts and nearly-squirms as she plays with his hair. Trying to play off how incredibly awkward he still feels. He tries to change the subject.

"What did she mean? BY PARTAKING IN DREAMS AND A WORLD OF THEM ALL SHARED LIKE?" He asks. "Can reach dreams multiple when the chucklevoodoo is back to he but that ain't the same."

[pythianjudgment]

"Dream bubbles," she says, letting go of his hair--and smoothing the bit she was holding back into place.

"That was how we talked with the dead, like I mentioned before. The people we took over from? I don't know how it worked, just that... When we went to sleep, we didn't dream. We entered dream bubbles--distortions outside of the Void, enclosed worlds that our minds created. Other dreamers could talk to us and visit us, too, but they would disappear if they woke up. The dead ones never disappeared."

"If there was more than one person, the dream bubbles could blend into each other at the edges. That got pretty disorienting. It was hard figuring out where you were going, and who's dream you were in. One minute I was in my tree on Alternia, and the next I was walking on a tree limb that somehow reached onto the moon." She shrugs, as if that spatial distortion was nothing major.

[carnagecarnival]

A place of wait before Shangri-La proper? He could recall vaguer, more cryptic bits of text and scripture that might suggest such. A place of waiting and lingering before the rowdy raucous proper came to be, before the minstrels began their rise. Until now though, there'd never been anything definitive. (The faith, of course, didn't need definitive. That's why it was motherfucking called "Faith".) It could spin a nug right off the torso-piece it up and could.

"DREAM BUBBLES," He repeats aloud, committing the word to memory. "Won't lie, sister; sounds of a sort of miracle," He adds, thinking of climbing a tree limb to a moon. A whole world of dreams. What could he do in that? What all couldn't he up and do?

As he thinks that, as he steps in a side shuffle, the floor in the dream where he stands goes purple. It fades back to it's normal hue after a moment of pause. Then the same happens again when he steps back. This ain't even in his control. If he had voodoo, it could be.

"SO YOU COULD FIND ME," He blurts without thinking. He tries to recover, speaking casually as he can. "Or, my motherfucking elder self I up and mean. YOU COULD ALL HAVE UP AND FOUND FOR HIM, IN POTENTIAL. Since I shall make like to be dead by then. AND YOU A SIGHTSEER OF SUCH THINGS."

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi falters a little at that, a visible hesitance in the way she muses over the question. Her face turns away and down just a little.

"Maybe. I guess?" She pauses more, then shakes her head. "I don't know. When we went through those bubbles, it was only ourselves--the players from our time, and the ones from the last iteration. We never met anyone else. I'm not sure that anyone else could experience the bubbles in the ways that we could. Alive or not."

But she wishes they could. If she could go back and find Fraysong in the dream bubbles... Well. A Fraysong that knew her, anyway. That would be okay, she thinks.

"If I could find you... I would have to make sure it's actually you. And not some version of you that didn't come here first. They would be out there, too. A lot of them. And somehow, I don't think that would go over well..."

[carnagecarnival]

"Ah," He says, lifting a hand to rub at his neck. "THAT WOULD MAKE ALL FOR HAVING SENSE TO IT."

It shouldn't be disappointing. He can carry right on to Shangri-la, skip whatever all hoofbeastshit there is to be laying between, for she and her fellow chosen, his descendent even. It's not disappointing, he corrects himself. If it was, it was only because the matters of time and waiting for the salvation of them to begin, he tells himself.

"He don't suppose perhaps a sister just didn't meet for no one else yet? SAID ALL SHE HADN'T MET FOR THE OTHERS OF THE LAST ROUND." He shakes his head. "Still only makes to apply such chosen though, don't it." He laughs. It's... a little hollow. "FOR THE BEST, THEN, THAT. A sister is right." He grins. "I'D SCARE YOU TO A MOTHERFUCKING BLOODPUSHER ATTACK. Any other of I would be making like to cause palpitation terminal."

Or worse. Or much worse. But he decides he doesn't want to think too much about that.

[pythianjudgment]

He grins, but Terezi's not sure that he really means it. It hurts a little, to think that he wouldn't be there in those dream bubbles if she went back. She doesn't want that. She doesn't want to be separated like that.

"Hey... I said I didn't know, right? It took us days to even run into a new bubble after leaving the old one. There were a lot that we flew past, just barely missed... We didn't even meet the previous set of players until after half a sweep had passed." She reaches up, tapping her fingers against his chin, where otherwise she might have touched his face. She doesn't know if doing that would smudge his paint here in this place.

"It's true, we might have just missed meeting anyone else. We only got to travel through a tiny fraction of the Void... There's really no telling what else was out there. Right?"

[carnagecarnival]

It's strange, trying to map and work out these new boundaries and lines. Where to start, where to stop. She knows what he thinks of her now. He knows what he thinks of her now. But what do with it, is still up in the motherfucking air and falling down slow like so much motherfucking stardust.

He blinks down at her at the touch. He's pretty certain she's just saying this all to reassure him. Not actual belief. But... there's something in that still. He smiles again, for real this time.

"SHE WOULD MAKE ALL TO KNOWING BETTER THAN I," He says. "Suppose we shall all discover eventual-like. SHE CAN'T FIND FOR HIM. Maybe all he can try and find for you. JUST MOTHERFUCKING THOUGHT."

[pythianjudgment]

"Maybe. I know that the... dead players could travel a lot more freely than we could." Her hesitance at the word dead is probably noticeable, but she tries not to linger on it too long.

"They weren't tired to a single dream bubble. Maybe you'll see our meteor crashing through the Void. Maybe you can come say hi." She's not sure how she feels about everyone else on the meteor meeting him, but... She smiles a little, bright and optimistic up at him. "I would like that."

[carnagecarnival]

He does notice. He suppose for her it must seem strange to think of someone standing before her as dead. There is a strangeness to it even to him, when he thinks about it all like that, that he is already dead in one sense, and still has so much time to live in another. He personally is not too bothered by the inevitable part.

The smile returned catches him much more. It has his eyes dart away for a moment, before coming back.

"I will do my best," He promises. "WILL KEEP AN EYE EVER OUT FOR HER MARK ACROSS DARK SKIES."

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi nods. It's a promise. A done deal. She smiles wider. For the first time in a while, she's almost eager to get back to her rightful time and place--if only to find out if he came through or not. She thinks he will.

"I'll do the same. For you, in my dreams." She pauses, and then carefully adds: "If we manage to get home, after all."

[carnagecarnival]

She lights up. She dazzles in that way what all is hard to look at. But... he thinks he likes her hope.

He nods in agreement and repeats after her. "If all we get back."

He doesn't call it home himself. But that's alright.