thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Guy and Julian, Guy and YOU
WHAT| Guy's post-arena stuff
WHEN| Catch-all, week 6 through to right before the Crowning, some threads timed after
WHERE| All over, just state where you're catching him in the subject
WARNINGS| cw: violence and mild gore in the Azula thread

Guy's Room - Closed to Julian

Guy was not having a good time of things right after the arena.

He was a lump now. Apparently that was the next stage in human evolution where he was from, lumpdom, and the stress of the last arena had caused him to evolve. He was a creature of the lump, a Lumpy One, living in his little nest under his blankets in his room. That was the place he slept every night, rather than using the mattress, which always left him with the creeping feeling he was sleeping in some creature's open mouth.

It was a comfy nest and one he apparently had decided he was never leaving from again if he could help it.

District Six Common Area - Open

A few days had passed since the arena and Guy was feeling a little better. The feeling of being trapped in this place was growing more and more intense as time went on, so he'd spent quite some time walking around the city.

The people there and their attention irritated him, though, and the city just wasn't big enough. Other than the parks, it wasn't full of things he actually wanted to see, just endless concrete and glass.

It wasn't natural, having all these people crammed into such artificial places.

So he was back in the District Six common room because even if he had to stay still, it was safe from the outside world.

Right now he kneeling on the floor working on something, curled around it with the same interest a child might show an anthill. He'd broken a vase for the pieces and gently ushered away the avox that had tried to clean it up, planning on cleaning it up himself so the poor thing didn't have to. He was working with the multicolored pieces, sanding down the edges so they weren't sharp and scratching holes in them to make them and other odds and ends into a little necklace.

A thank you gift for someone.

Though occupied with his work, he wasn't averse to talking to people, though. (When was he ever?) So any of his district mates - or visitors passing on through - would find him fairly chatty if they struck up a conversation.

Training Area - Open

Guy knew he needed to learn to fight better, which was why he had decided to spend more time in the Training Center. There was only so much you could learn by throwing things at targets, though, and he didn't quite trust the trainers so he was hoping people he knew might be willing to teach him things.

Of course, he had plenty himself he could teach in turn, something people passing by might see as he occupied himself in the areas that taught survival skills. Fire sprang from his fingertips within seconds the times he worked on making them, and the complicated traps from vines he made snapped up the dummies he tossed into them and flung them around violently.

No reason he couldn't work on getting better at the skills he already had, right? and there was always the chance someone might be interested in learning and teaching him something he didn't know in turn.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Julian had kept a close enough eye on the Arena after his death, at least the people he was concerned with, to know exactly how badly things went for Guy. And it was worrisome to him--he could sympathize, but he couldn't truly know how badly it had affected him without checking up.

And, well. He was a doctor. Meddling in other people's affairs came with the territory sometimes.

District 6's rooms were...not quite as loud as 7's, which was a blessed difference. After Justin's racket, Julian would take what he could get. At least he could be fairly sure that Guy would hear him knocking, and he could hear his friend's reply.

"Guy? It's Julian. Are you in there?"

His voice was muffled and not just by the door.

"Nooo."

Yes, obviously.

Nice try there, Guy, very sneaky. Unfortunately, Julian is not fooled at all.

"May I come in?"

Anyone else, at any other time, he might have just...invited himself. But it was wiser to be a bit more mindful of people's boundaries, when stuck in a situation like this.

There was silence for a little while.

Then, finally, "Okay."

When Julian entered he'd find nothing but a lump of blankets and pillows on the floor, next to the bed, which had been shoved to the side as if it was simply in the way.

One of the lumps was suspiciously Guy-sized.

Julian is quiet, stepping lightly over the carpet with bare feet. He crouches next to the pile of blankets, able to see the slight rise and fall of them from Guy's breathing.

He smiles slightly, reaches out, and lays a hand where he guesses Guy's shoulder is.

"Would you mind terribly if I kept you company for a while?" It's blessedly quiet in here, peaceful, which is something he desperately misses. And he knows that after what Guy went through at the end of that Arena, he might just need the company as well.

There was a quiet rise and fall of his chest, but he didn't squirm away and he eventually said, "That would be nice."

In fact, he scooted slightly under the blankets to get closer, a hand wrapped up in blankets resting on the one Julian had put on his shoulder.

He shifts so he's sitting, cross-legged, without breaking contact. Guy's still under the blankets, but really--Julian doesn't blame him. He thinks he would be too, if the same thing had happened to him. As it was, he'd just kept himself isolated from everything in his own way...not that it had been difficult, dying early as he had.

"There's too much light pollution to see the stars here, or I'd offer to show you," Julian says, when the silence gets to be too much for him.

"You have names for them, don't you?" Guy said, voice still muffled. "You'd have to have names for them if you travel around in the same ones a lot."

"Oh yes, of course--there's the old names for them, and other races have their own...the star charts are all standardized with numbers so we can all know what we're referring to, but those of us from Earth still tend to use the names we grew up learning. Like Polaris, Cygnus, Betelgeuse, Proxima..."

Julian stops before he can get ahead of himself with a little smile. "There's bound to be some kind of planetarium around here. We could find one when you're feeling up to it."

"Okay."

His voice went a little higher pitched and squeaky.

"It's, ah, it's gonna be a little while, but then that would be nice."

He'd done pretty well up until the end there but tar. Of all things, it had to be tar.

He didn't like thinking about it. The loss, he could deal with, he'd long since moved on from, but he didn't like thinking about what had happened to his family after he left them behind and that had made it hard not to.

"Take all the time you need, of course." And he probably didn't want to talk about it, at least Julian knew that he wouldn't--not if he understood the situation at all.

Well, he wasn't a counselor anyway. His duty was to heal the body, not the soul.

"Johanna had some choice words for me, with no one else 'round to hear them. She seems to think I'm not applying myself." Which he wasn't. But he wasn't about to actively try murdering people.

"She's the really cranky mentor, right?" Guy said, still hiding under the blankets. Apparently that was where he intended to spend the rest of the conversation. "Some of the people here don't understand it's not just about winning the short battles. It's not just about surviving, especially since we can come back."

He paused.

"It's not just about survival of the body, it's about survival of the self."

The soul, if you went in for that kind of thing. The concept of a soul was one that was familiar to him and yet not - it was just a wisp of thing, still being made into a concept at all back home and here, it was a full idea already.

"Yes, she's strong, and very, very angry." Julian shrugs. "It's a bit of an adventure, living in District 7 at times. What are they like here?"

Julian's hand tightens on Guy's shoulder a bit in reassurance, as if he could forget that Julian was there because he couldn't be seen.

"Exactly so. And what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, or so the saying goes."

"Punchy plays his church really loud at all hours of the night but usually I can get him to turn it down if I'm trying to sleep. The others are friendly enough but mostly keep to themselves and I'm out of our rooms a lot."

Most of his friends were in other districts, after all, and what with not being able to leave the city to wander, he tended to let out a lot of his pent up energy by training.