thecapitol | Was It Worth All This War Just to Win? [OPEN]

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Was It Worth All This War Just to Win? [OPEN]

WHO| Venus and open
WHAT| Venus reunites with old friends and hopefully meets new ones.
WHERE| Any restaurant in the Capitol, especially places with dessert, or the Training Center.
WHEN| A few days before the finale
WARNINGS| None yet.

She doesn't hold any hard feelings about having lost. She never does. She never quite intends to win, not really, finding it almost contradictory to putting on a good show at times. And death hardly fazes her when she came into her own as a mutant by ripping herself molecule from molecule. Furthermore, the weight of worrying abuot Enjolras has been somewhat lessened (he seems to have survived his first spell as a Mentor intact), and she finds herself feeling almost peppy. Getting back onto her medication is a bit rough, but the side effects are infinitely easier to hide when she isn't under the scrutiny of the Arena. Mostly, she just zones out when people are talking to her at times and has strange dreams about tendriled flowers blossoming out of her stomach.

What she does care about is making sure the people she cares about are taking this as well as she is, and that means slipping notes under their doors. Not wanting to impose - at least, not yet - she lets them set the time.

Find me when you're ready! -Venus

And she wears her swag, of course. Her goodie bag came with a scent like matchsticks and honey, which she finds an interesting choice, a bright pink lipstick and a fitted top with her name scrawled in glitter across the front. It's all a little obvious even by her standards, but a brand is a brand, and with her hair fastened in a little 'District 5' clip, she hits the town. Ever since getting tastebuds, she's been enamored with sugar, especially fruit, and she finds that she doesn't even have to use her ample kill money if she goes to a different shop every meal. Restaurateurs are happy for the free publicity that comes with serving a popular Tribute and give out samples with abandon.

She'd worry about her physique if she didn't spend so many hours at the Training Center. For most of the week she can alternately be found with her feet propped up in a cafe, sucking on spoons with a yogurt or smoothie in hand, catching up on Capitol news she missed while fighting for her life, or, clothing dampened with sweat, beating the hell out of a tackling dummy in the Training Center. She stops and waves at every Tribute she sees, even if she hasn't met them.

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It's in the Training Center that he appears, a basket of something that smells sweet on one arm. "Hello. I intend on having a rematch." He puts his hand in the basket and draws out—

—a freshly baked madeleine, warm and perfect. "Would you like a madeleine?"

He spots her at the cafe, when he's beginning to make his rounds through the Capitol. He doesn't expect the wave, so he cocks his head to one side and lifts a brow, pausing for a moment. Then he's walking over to her in quick strides.

He looks much more at ease than he did in the arena, but really, who wouldn't? But it is a marked difference. In a collared shirt and coat and with a confident step, he looks much more like himself-- a different person from the blindsided Tribute, really.

"That's hardly a breakfast of champions."

Edited 2014-03-04 22:27 (UTC)

Some is out - looking for a shop that sells the right weight of twine - when he catches her wave through a window. He hesitates a moment, but comes into the cafe, ducking in the front door and tipping his hat back. He looks particularly large inside the small establishment, lanky as he is, and takes particular care not to knock into anything as he approaches her table. Or anyone.

Kankri's been avoiding the District 5 suite. He hasn't wanted to watch the television, it's sickening, and yet- and yet, he can't seem to look away when the people he knows, people he cares about, come up. And there's been too much shown on there.

Especially about Venus.

He wouldn't be out at all tonight, but his Escort all but shoved him out of the tower, telling him he needed to go show his face to the people in the Capitol, ask them to help him find whatever sort of place he'd like to go so he'd look cute and helpless. (Claudia had, thankfully, been more reassuring when she'd dressed him up to go out, or he might have just sat outside the tower and sulked until the Escort had to go do something besides watch the doors.)

People are all too eager to give him directions to where they think the best place to get something warm and sweet to drink is, and then insist on escorting him there. Then they're happy to read the menu out for him, which is both nice and humiliating. He ends up ordering a hot cider, which sounds relatively appealing from their descriptions. When he takes out the slips of paper he was given for his interview with Cecil and mentions that he doesn't know what value each of them has, everyone jostling around him is only too quick to make sure he gets exact change.

They fire questions at him, far too many to answer, but he finds that staring down at his drink and occasionally murmuring something gets them to back off, with simpering sighs about what a shy little thing he is. After that, though, it's nice enough, as long as people are leaving him alone. Occasionally someone wanders up and asks him something, but it's at least not the crowd he had before.

He's on his second cider when Venus comes in, swaggering up to the counter and ordering something - he can't hear her over the ambient noise. The barista nods and points over to the little table he's claimed. He glances back down to his mug so people don't see him make a face. Oh, well. It has to happen eventually. He looks back up at her, waves her over with a small, forced smile.

"You look well," is all he can think to say when she sits down.

Given he's developing something of an image that he must maintain, and that he wishes to demonstrate that he has certain skills (which, technically he's not exactly cultivated), Joly's been relatively hard at work for once, on skills that used to bore hell out of him.

Not that it is still untrue, but even so, he's spent the better part of the last few hours down here, rapier in hand, and he's actually been focused on it for once, in a way that he never was at home that might have actually impressed M. Duval, and possibly have made his father laugh that something actually made him care.

At the moment, though, Joly's raising the mask that he was strongly "encouraged" to use when he got down here to get a bit of air after taking some strikes at a practice target, and spotting Venus just a bit away. On his way to grab some water, to calm a tickle in his throat that he hopes does not become anything worse, he's coming closer, waving in return.

"So you've returned. It is VERY good to see you."

She hears him approach but doesn't even turn to see who it is until he speaks. She's relatively surprised when he seems friendly, given that most people have a decidedly less amiable reaction to the person that killed them in cold blood. She drops her hands and leans over the edge of the dummy, stopping it from swinging.

She pulls tight the wrapping around her knuckles. "Well, normally I try not to eat while I exercise, but that smells so good I might have to make an exception. Thank you." She holds a hand out.

Ah, smoothies. For once, the seam between Arena and Capitol wasn't marked by an abrupt metabolism shift— she's grateful for the small things. Like the size of the smoothies around here, to take an entirely delicious example. Portion control was for peasants and District-natives, apparantly.

"I hate men," she said, by way of introduction, flopping down in the chair beside Venus and her damn frozen yogurt, "I thought about it. I'm pretty sure that I'm just going to spend the rest of my life alone, and y'know what— I'm comin' to terms with it."

Chocolate blueberry smoothie. With some kind of...is that honey? Weird. Kind of amazing, too.

"What's up with you?"

"What, I'm not allowed to have a cookie every once in a while?" She tosses her head to the side so her hair makes a dramatic swoop, then brings her fingers up to clear away the District Five pin so it continues to be unobstructed and visible. It's a very intentional gesture.

She breaks her cookie in half and holds one part out to him. "So, you didn't last long."

Venus, for her part, scooches her chair out and pulls the table back to Some has more space around the table and isn't crammed up against the wall.

"Been a long time since I've seen you around." The last she saw of him was on the network, and she hasn't run into him in person since. "How are you?"

If Venus is bitter, she doesn't show it. After all, it'd be grossly hypocritical for her to get on Shepard's case about the broken ribs when Venus had, herself, put a shank through Shepard's forehead. So instead Venus greets Shep with a smile that reddens up the apples of her cheeks and a pat at the seat that Shep soon flops right into.

"Oh? Because if you're coming to me hoping for me to return the favor on romantic advice, you might be out of luck, sister." Venus' own beverage is pure strawberry, although it has a toupee of whipped cream on the top that she keeps having to wipe from her nose. "Then again, maybe I been getting lucky."

He still angles himself into the corner as he sits down, very aware of the nervous looks he's getting from the proprietor.

"Good, actually. I've just been back a few days. Long enough to get my feet under my legs again. Yourself?"

"You, too." She throws one last punch that lands solidly on the punching bag, sending it swinging on the chain, then leaps out of the way of its sand-filled return. She then turns her attention to Joly and places a fist on her hip. A little sweat shines on her forehead, and she brushes bangs away as they start to stick to her face.

And she walks up to him to give him a friendly embrace and once-over. By now she's seen how he died, of course, and there were definitely easier ways for him to go. She wonders how he's fared since, if the vulnerability he projected during the storm is localized to only those circumstances or if his nervousness is sewn into his nature.

"And how've you been since coming here?"

Venus' sunny disposition is cast in rainclouds as soon as she sits down. For a moment she believes he's looking down because he's sad, tired, worn out from his gruesome death and his inaugural revival, and it stirs up sympathy inside her, a sinking icewater feeling in her stomach, a numb shot through her hands like some sort of empathic stigmata.

No, he's angry at her, and she knows he's right to be but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel a little bit insulted. While she easily concedes that their mutual persistence in the Arena was a cooperative effort, she still was doing the dirty work.

"You don't," she says, blunt but not harsh, like hot laundry. It's warm, an invitation to talk, a signal that she's aware there's a problem and that they might as well get it out of the way before they risk their bond cooling.

Pruna half recognised Venus, she knew her off the screens though they had never met. She waved back as best she could with a duck under one arm and an ice cream in the other. It's finally not stupid cold outside, though still colder than Pruna liked it.

But it did not stop her from eating ice cream. She skipped closer to the girl, she was wearing soft shoes, Effie had made good on that promise as well. And though they felt really weird they weren't pinchy and they kept her feet warm.

"You did be doing well." Starting conversations was a practiced art, and one Pruna was just starting to explore. But she found that actually, she liked talking to people. Except stupid people, but from what she had seen on the screens Venus was not stupid, and she had killed a good few people.

"I'm not," he replies, after a moment. There's no point in lying about it, when she was there nearly the entire time. He takes a long sip of his cider, thinking about where to even start.

"I had an interview, a few days ago," he says, stalling for time. "I didn't say anything, anything compromising about you. I know your image is important to you."

A little too important, considering what he's seen since his return. He glances up at her through his lashes, shy, uncertain. Nervous.

"You were hiding things from me, in the Arena."

Carlos was walking down the street when movement caught his eye. He turned his head to look: someone was waving at him from an outdoor seating area, feet up on the table, smoothie in hand.

He frowned, puzzled -- he didn't recognize her, but then again, that meant very little in a situation like his, where his slow death had been broadcast to an entire country.

"Uh...hello," he said, giving a small, awkward half-wave back.

"Thank you." It is important to her, although she isn't sure how he's managed to make such a benign sentence sound so accusatory.

She sets her bubble tea in the center of the little table and folds her hands, her lower lit jutting a little as she thinks. She doesn't want to escape the situation - she's never been a coward. A killer, a liar, a fake, but never a coward.

"You were turning a blind eye." The corner of her mouth twitches downwards. "I told you I wouldn't lie. I didn't say I wouldn't kill."

"I asked you if anything of note had happened whenever you came back, and you never told me what you were doing," Kankri shoots back, though he knows that he did ignore things, sometimes. "If you said anything, it was that you were in a fight, nothing beyond that. I don't need protecting from the truth, Venus. I know that I cannot expect the same commitment to nonviolence from everyone else that I have myself, everyone makes their own choice whether or not to play the game that's been set out for us or it wouldn't be a choice. But I kept you alive and we both know I did. Those lives are on my conscience. I don't need to be treated like a fragile doll to be shielded from everything uncomfortable, I have had enough of that before and I am dealing with too much of it from everyone else right now!"

His voice has risen, and he winces, has some more cider. When he speaks he's quieter again.

"I'm tired of people thinking my choices aren't worthy of respect. I'm tired of people thinking I'm not capable enough to handle anything on my own. And perhaps I'm accustomed to it from others but after everything, I didn't expect it from you." His hands tighten on the mug. "Was I just a little piece to add some emotion to your story? Were you going to snap my neck when I wasn't of use to you anymore? Did you not mean how you were acting before, because I did, it was real to me."

He can't look at her. He bites his lip and stares at the mug, his eyes bright.

She sits back and swallows, folds her arms across her chest like armor. But she doesn't look away (she never looks away). She doesn't shrink in the face of anger, doesn't bend and curl like twigs in flame.

She listens, and she doesn't agree. Had Kankri seem himself in the Arena, she wonders if he'd have come to the same conclusion about not needing protecting. If he'd been in her position, the one who could help usher the Arena to an end, the one providing the antidote to fear, would he have done the same? Would he have insisted on casting away the illusion that let Kankri sleep at night?

"Is that really what you think? That I just picked you up to add a little emotional interest to this Arena?"

Once again, it isn't an accusation, because she can't lead him to an answer there - it matters to her whether or not he understands that she was genuine. It matters in a way that boils her up inside, that stirs the seas inside her head. And it matters to if she has to walk away, because she's made a life out of being misunderstood, and out of being alone.

Kankri wilts. "No," he mumbles. "But I just don't know anything anymore. For all I knew you could have been killing my friends out there. I trusted you, and now I don't know if I should. I want to be able to trust you."

He fiddles with the mug in his hands, turning it in little circles.

"I wasn't like other trolls," he says after a moment. His voice is small but infinitely bitter. "I was born different. My blood - you've seen it. I'm a mutant. Off the typical spectrum of blood colors. So those looking after the brooding caverns decided that I couldn't be allowed to grow up like other trolls. They told me it was for my safety when I asked. I was placed with an older troll of a higher caste, someone who knew what was best for me, who could be my cullparent."

He pauses to have a sip of his drink.

"She was kind enough, and I liked her, but she never treated me like a person. Just like a possession to be kept in good repair. I didn't need to worry myself about the state of the world around me, because I wasn't capable of comprehending it. I was too far apart from 'normal' trolls to see it as I should, which was to say, as she did. I just needed to listen to what she said and be happy and well-adjusted all the time. I was something to be protected, not a person who could go out and do anything for myself. And if Beforus hadn't ended a sweep and a half ago, I could have looked forward to this sort of treatment my entire life."

He looks up at Venus. His eyes are hard now. "It was humiliating. It was demeaning. There has never been anything wrong with me or my intellect. And if you can't let me make my own decisions and come to my own conclusions because you think I can't possibly handle them, then as far as I'm concerned, you're the same as she was. I'm a pacifist, not an imbecile."

Edited 2014-03-05 21:31 (UTC)

Of course she knows how that feels, to be shunted off for being 'different'. After her family, she was shuffled around between whatever relative could put up with her for a few years before foster care was her only option. And then running away. And then Xavier's.

She remembers coming to her aunt's house one day to find 'FREAK' spraypainted on the front door, her aunt in tears, the kitchen ransacked, knowing she brought this before her like humidity before the rain splits the clouds. She remembers dropping out of school because no student wanted to sit next to the 'time bomb', knowing she would be blamed if she let loose the chaos everyone else thought was inevitable. She remembers teleporting to the top of a bridge and wondering why her mutant body didn't even have the decency to die when she leaped to the bottom.

"You're not the only one who's a mutant." She isn't bitter. She's sad. This is the mud-and-tear-soaked train she drags behind her, the one, she realizes, that Kankri saw with the masks. That Kankri thought would have granted understanding, that she ignored.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I think there's something wrong with the Arenas." It's a difficult conclusion she's come to, one that a few Arenas ago she wouldn't have made. "Wanting to shield you from that doesn't mean I think there's something wrong with you."

"All of your feet?" She raises an eyebrow and smirks. "I'm doing pretty okay, myself. Rolling in money but I still haven't won. Rich murderess problems."

"Oh," he says quietly, because he's so used to it being something about him, something that's his problem, that he didn't even realize it might be something else. For the first time in this conversation, he lets the mug go from the death grip he's had on it.

"I just...I don't want to be kept away from things. Even if they're hard. I want to be able to figure out what I can and can't handle. And if me helping you means other people are going to die, I think I have a right to know. I don't want to know details or any such, and I don't like it, but. I'd certainly rather you were alive than that Kevin person, for example. And the fact is that most of the people I can know here will have killed people, there's no escaping that. I won't deny that I'll do my best to convince you not to do that all the time, but I...I know you're all right. So I'll stick with you. If you want me to," he adds, a touch shyly.

Venus, being an avid consumer of the Games, recognizes Pruna, as well. She pats at the seat next to her on the couch of the cafe, where she's sitting with a perfect view of the street and of a television running the current events in the games. Today it's fire, and Courfeyrac's jarringly cheerful "ohé, ohé"s are just audible over the chatter of the cafe.

"You have quite the record yourself, kiddo." She leans her head over to look at Pruna's ice cream. "Is that the blackberry honey ice cream? Tell me how it is, the chocolate mango is amazing."

"Hello. Carlos, right?" Venus leans forward in her seat, making sure not to knock of her smoothie-bubble tea-milkshake-yogurt combination monstrosity, and offers her hand to shake. "Carlos the scientist?"

He hadn't lasted terribly long, but given Cecil Palmer's fixation on him, Venus has Carlos earmarked as someone worth knowing. She sits back again and smiles. The texture of the picnic table in the outdoor seating area has left a little argyle pattern on her elbows.

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Was It Worth All This War Just to Win? [OPEN]

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Training Center:

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Re: Training Center:

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[cw: suicide talk]

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