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

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa drank to that, heartily - or, well, half to Enjolras' funeral and half to his own, and partly to neither, because neither could really be said to have fulfilled their purpose as funerals. He dug for a joke to make about Enjolras' bizarre wake-- maybe something poetic, about the sweet sleep of death?-- but swiftly gave it up.

"Think nothing of it," he said instead, with a dismissive wave. "You're hardly to blame - They've chosen rather a... startling venue." He'd almost gotten used to the shifting colors, but he found himself looking at Enjolras a little too fixedly, trying to keep all of him in color at once.

"...I liked the statue," he added, though, conversationally, because he'd missed seeing Enjolras' original reaction to its installment. He was hopeful that even a diluted version thereof would be worth being stuck with the mental image again.

[orestes]

"Oh, I most certainly did not." Not that they'd cared of course. He hid his displeasure with another sip of the champagne. The statue was an unpleasant topic, it seemed to loom mockingly over him whenever he dared venture out of the Tribute areas. It was far too tall and far too naked for his liking.

"Perhaps they would erect a monument to your eventual victory, my friend." There's a bite to the suggestion, denoting that perhaps Enjolras knew exactly what Neffa was attempting. He's a poor liar even on the best of days and was thus unable to deny the other man the satisfaction of his distaste for the display, but Neffa was far from the first person to try such a thing. "Better the David than a plaster elephant's carcass, I suppose."

[lessthanelementary]

Enjolras's distaste is a pleasant thing to see. Neffa doesn't really take any pleasure in seeing him butt his head uselessly against the behemoth of the Capitol's control over him, but their ludicrous replies to his earnest attempt at protest is honestly kind of satisfying.

"An elephant?" That's oddly specific. He considers, with a little too much gravity. "Yes, I suppose it is more flattering this way. I'll ask them to make mine on the model of yours, when I take the Arena by storm." (It's clear in his tone how probable he believes that to be.)

"...But that means you'll be mentoring now!" That's... something he's going to have to see before he can properly picture.

[orestes]

"... It does," Enjolras agrees reluctantly. It was one thing for the Capitol to tear his dignity from him in the Arenas, it was quite another thing to have to at least in appearances, agree with their system. He'd been mentally celebrating everything he could accomplish without the Arena's hanging over him every few weeks, but now he didn't quite know what to do. It's as if they invented the role of the mentor to keep Victors busy and, thus, benign to them. Place another distraction in front of them, tantalize them with the well being of their district-mates, to whom they each presumably now had some kind of attachment, and force them to keep their noses out of anything more serious. It's brilliant if impossibly frustrating. He could shirk those responsibilities, of course, but to what end? Shepherd could take care of herself, and the Trolls still frightened him more than he cared to admit, but what of Venus? And what if Little Rock were still somewhere in the Capitol?

This time his reply is bitter and curt, a statement of unpleasant fact. There's a clench of his jaw and though it's merely angry, it reads as haughty and somewhat arrogant. "The cruelties of the Capitol never cease."

They would eventually, he would see to it that they would. Abruptly, he turns back to Neffa, making a good attempt at channeling the righteous fury abruptly burning inside of him into flippancy suitable to their petty feud. "A pity you are not in my District, is it not? Do not take offense, monsieur, but there is so much you do not know. Though I suppose it would take a more talented tutor than myself to teach you anything."

[lessthanelementary]

For a brief instant, genuine anger flares in Neffa's chest. He'd had a second there of something almost like sympathy-- a moment where he'd seen beneath the thin veneer of their stupid feud to something else, to an underlying mix of discomfort and regret and fear that was familiar to him.

There is nothing there. Gods, but he had to be desperate, to try to change sympathy for sympathy here.

"Fortunate for me, I have no use for a tutor in the higher arts of hiding," he says, with an apologetic twist to his mouth. It could be construed as self-deprecating, were it not for the bite in his tone. "Fortunate for me, I suppose, that I'm not in your district-- I cannot imagine that I have anything to learn from you."

[orestes]

Enjolras raises his chin haughtily, his eyes more than dismissive as he surveys Neffa's reaction. "Perhaps your mentors are better suited to teaching you the finer points of murder. So much the better for them, I suppose."

Despite the flack he'd gotten for his actions within the Arena, Enjolras had very few regrets regarding his tactics. While there was no way to escape the event entirely unscathed, it was better, in his mind, to be a coward than to be an assassin and vehicle for the Capitol's sadism. He wasn't prepared to have that illusion ripped from him just yet.

"Moreover, I would think it very fortunate for the both of us that we do not share a District." Actually, it was probably better for all of Panem.

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa knows he doesn't have room to talk. He's seen two arenas and hasn't come close to killing anyone; he'd died hiding the last time. Disdain for Enjolras on that front is misplaced.

...Not that that prevents him being disdainful. He lifts his glass to Enjolras, with a tight smile. "I'll drink to that, my friend. Look on the bright side-- when next you see me in the arena, you have only to turn off the screen to be free of me, and I will see you not at all." His voice is falsely bright.

[orestes]

"I will not be watching." The reply accompanies an equally strained smile. Pleasantries, genuine or otherwise have never come naturally to him. He knows that do not get along, not in the slightest, and Enjolras childishly longs for the day when they can be honest about such things. Free men are permitted to have likes and dislikes, and open feuds between them.

Still, the rebuttal is less of an insult to Neffa, and more a statement of his newest form of protest. If the Games are meant to be watched, so that the Capitol might further imprison its denizens, then he should simply not watch them. What would he see other than the suffering of individuals he's come to care about? "I should return to my table. My escorts can be quite coddling, if I leave them for too long."

[lessthanelementary]

This is honest, in Neffa's expert opinion. He usually goes to a great deal of trouble to make sure that those he dislikes are not aware of his feelings; that he doesn't bother to make his courtesies sound genuine is the most pointed slap in the face he, personally, can think of.

The words might not be meant as an insult, but Neffa chooses to take it that way nonetheless. It makes the entire exchange simpler.

"I should hate to keep the Victor too long-- discontented escorts could make my life substantially more difficult." Your leaving is in no way the problem here. "It was good, as ever, to see you, Enjolras-- how fortunate, to return from my hiatus in time to see you reap the fruits of your victory."

He bows, because it feels like the courteous thing to do.