[open]

[buildingreality]

WHO | Ariadne, Elias, and any of the other mentors who want to jump in
WHAT | watching the Games
WHEN | a few nights into the Arena
WHERE | the mentors' green room
WARNINGS / NOTES | none right now; will update as necessary

Ariadne found very quickly that she didn't really enjoy the Games much more outside of the Arena. Of course, at least out here, she could put herself to some use. Getting the odd sponsor gift for some of her more preferred Tributes, those she wanted to go far, and generally ignoring the rest of them.

At that particular moment, she was only paying just enough attention to know exactly what was happening; her other eye was on the rest of the room, keeping watch over the other mentors.

Comments

[galaxyherder]

"Good," Shepard tells her with a nod, smiling in approval. "Use that as long as you can. You will be surprised how far it can get you."

They were still a novelty to these people. Something fresh and shiny and new. It still hadn't worn of for Shepard, either. But it would be stronger with Ariadne. The newest. The youngest. The most experienced inside the Arena. She couldn't quite imagine what the girl had gone through. How different her life must be now compared to the world that she knew.

"But you probably don't need me to tell you that," she continues. Because Ariadne has always been smart. Shepard has known that about her since the first time they met, there on that snowy mountainside of Arena 01.

[buildingreality]

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and Ariadne shrugged a little. "I noticed, actually. It's amazing what you can do if they like you enough, and you ask nicely." It had already come in handy once or twice, though most of the sponsors she'd found for people hadn't provided much. Every little bit helped, after all, and she knew that she wouldn't have survived in the Arenas as long as she had without some of the help provided.

"I'll see if I can't perpetuate it a little bit," she laughed quietly.

[galaxyherder]

"I have a feeling you won't have a problem with that. They love you here. You haven't had the opportunity to watch them watch you like I have," she tells her. "You've been a favourite among many of them for some time now."

"I was at a party when you won." it seems terrible to admit that to her. To tell her that she had been sipping cocktails and rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful of Panem while she had been inside the arena, bleeding and fighting for her life.

[buildingreality]

She really was surprised to hear that she was a favourite, though Arthur had told her once before, in what felt now like a dream, that there was something about her. It had been flattering, though she hadn't been quite sure how to take it; in the end, she'd all but ignored the comment, taking it as a statement of fact, and nothing more. Now it seemed as though she had intrigued the Capitol the way she'd intrigued him, and she wondered if that wouldn't pose a problem or two in the future, if they ever took to picking her brain long enough to learn what she did back home.

"I had no idea," Ariadne admitted, tipping her head to one side, birdlike. "How could you tell?"

She paused a moment then, smiling a little at the admission, "I'm not that surprised. The parties are almost as big a part as the Arenas themselves."