thecapitol | The Crowning of Enjolras

The Crowning of Enjolras

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.

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It doesn't take Terezi long to start looking for people she knows. Walking around in a shared dream is not all that unusual for her, oddly enough. It takes only a few moments for her to get her bearings straight, and then she's off through the theater while some people are still marveling at the novelty.

One of the first people she finds is the Initiate. She's not happy with the sudden forced dream or the method that they went about inducing it, but she's relieved. And she is glad to run into someone that she knows.

"Mister Makara," she greets him, using the name quietly between the two of them. She dips in a mockery of a curtsy, one hand lifting the edge of her large dress, just like she's seen others do it.

He starts when she sees her and he half expects her face, smiling kind as it is, to melt away to begin the inevitable nightmare. But it doesn't, far as he can tell, she's real. Or as real as anything is here.

He glances around and behind him, then lifts his chin to check around her a bit too. Just to be sure.

Then he bends into a bow to her, trying to smirk, but looking far too rigid. Like he's trying to hard and considering they'd done this similar exchange once before, it likely shows, the difference with how he moves.

"MY SEER, MISS PYROPE," He says.

Terezi grins at his greeting, but it's not nearly as wide as it should be. She notices the stiffness in his movements, and there's a bit of concern in her own. She touches his arm, just below his elbow.

"What do you think of this? Are you enjoying the dreamscape?" She asks because she knows that there's some novelty to this that others might enjoy, but also because she half-suspects that's where the source of the tension lies. She wouldn't blame him for being upset over their restraint. She doesn't imagine that it went any better for him than it did for her.

He's far too aware of her hand. He pulls his arm back a little, frowning. He doesn't want her to get the wrong idea, but what can he do?

"Ain't dead at motherfucking least. NOT DEAD WE ALL ARE." He falters. "Something ain't right up in this, Pyrope," He says. "THEY'VE MADE WORLD OF MIND- OF ALL OURS- BUT HOW ALL THE FUCK DO THEY KEEP AT AS THEY WILL IT? He can't feel anything up in here without his voodoo. HE AIN'T GOT ASSURANCE ALL ABOUT HIM FUCKERS WILL MANAGE SHOULD THINGS GET TO TURNING." He doesn't want anyone to see the things of his mind. Certainly not this way. He mutters, low, without looking at her, "Be careful round him in here, you motherfucking hear him?"

Edited 2013-12-21 20:37 (UTC)

Terezi nods at first, confirming that they aren't dead--at least not as much as she's aware. She still feels very much alive. But the smile she had been holding fades as he continues. He warns her against... himself? His voodoo, she thinks he means.

A valid concern, maybe, but not one that she thinks is needed.

"I've been in dreamscapes like this before. Shared dreams." She lets him pull his arm away, but that doesn't stop her from reaching for the lapels of his suit. She pulls on them a bit, straightening his jacket and tie. She's not going to comment on how sharp he smells, even if she's thinking it.

"It's not that easy to control. And even if it was, I doubt that they would let you in here if they thought for even a moment that you might be able to traumatize everyone else." She pauses to give him a reassuring smile. "You won't be getting your voodoo back in here. So you might as well enjoy yourself."

"YOU HAVE? When? HOW?" He starts as he's jerked awkwardly lower for her to fess with his suit. Which is strange and weird but he's got other things to worry about. He puts a hand over hers, stopping her. "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. His ownself not having it is the motherfucking problem, sister. IT DON'T... IT LEAVES MARKS, PYROPE, ONES WHAT ALL DON'T GO THE FUCK AWAY. Even if a motherfucker ain't able to make use now, them marks stay, dreams all only being just short of daymares, all what's needed is fear. IF HE HAD FOR HIS POWER HE'D BE ABLE TO SENSE AT LEAST... Don't trust Captiol's control cause always in control of the wicked shit they up and ain't. AND IT ALL STILL UP AND STANDS." He looks deeply unhappy as he sighs, "I'm motherfucking asking for her to give vigilance and hear what all he says. TELL HIM SHE CAN DO THAT MUCH."

Edited 2013-12-21 21:15 (UTC)

Her hands stop their busywork when she feels his over hers. She pauses, listening more carefully. There's a ghost of a frown on her lips when he finishes. She feels a little guilty for wanting so easily to write his worries off. She doesn't think there's anything to be cautious about... but it doesn't change the fact that he's worried.

"If you only want me to be careful and to listen, then I can do that. But don't ask me to go out of my way to avoid you on the off-chance that something might go wrong. I can't do that."

His nails dig in and he huffs. "You're nearest at to his ownself, you got to realising that, sister? DO YOU MOTHERFUCKING KEN THAT SHOULD SOMETHING UP AND GO ERRONEOUSLY YOU WILL BE THE FIRST WHAT ALL TO GET IT?" He huffs again.

He lets go over her hand and his own proceed to hover are shoulders, to return the favor and fix her sleeves better over those blade-like bits of her. Immediately though, as the thought really registers, his hands drop down.

He growls, "Suppose at if all what she says is all what he may get, it will do. BUT DON'T MOTHERFUCKING FORGET IT." He pauses. "...She looks nice."

Edited 2013-12-21 21:50 (UTC)

He huffs, but Terezi just smiles. She knows how close she is. "It's a good thing that I'm always acutely aware of my mental state. It would be difficult to cause any lasting damage without my notice." Not that she intends to ignore his warnings, she's said as much. But she'll pay careful attention to herself when around him.

His compliment catches her a little off-guard. She shrugs a little, then smiles wider. Her hands find the ones that he dropped to his sides, taking them both and squeezing them tight.

"Thanks. You smell good, too." She laughs a little, despite herself. She stands up on her tip-toes to get a closer smell of his face and hair. "I bet your stylists were excited to not have to tame your mane this time."

Edited 2013-12-26 07:14 (UTC)

He gets the feeling that there's no way he could impress enough to her the gravity or that she could convince him that she understood even if she did. He sighs and opts to let it go at last. He can't do much more than tell her to leave anyway and he doesn't really want to.

His shoulders rise with the squeeze of his hands. He's not sure what to do with this new line of physical contact-- or rather, the lack of it.

"NEVER UP AND HAD AT TO TOUCH HIS HAIR THEY ALL DID. He'd be just as motherfucking fine up without!" He grumps. It doesn't distract him near well enough to take the flush out of his ears, or the flustered edge off his tone.

Terezi's glad that he drops it because she doesn't want to spend the whole party trying to convince him that nothing's going to go wrong. If she notices how flustered he is, she doesn't remark on it.

She does, however, reach up to touch his hair. Just a small clump of it near the edge, which she lets slide through her fingers until she grasps the locks gently between her thumb and forefinger.

"Their combs are probably better off." She laughs a little, continuing with a more teasing air: "You hair is probably better off, too. How many brushes have they lost in there? Twenty? Do you bury treasure in there? Secrets?"

"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."

"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.

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."

Edited 2014-02-20 22:51 (UTC)

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..."

"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.

Edited 2014-02-25 17:48 (UTC)

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?"

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."

"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."

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."

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."

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.

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The Crowning of Enjolras

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