thecapitol | Thicker Than Blood Start

Thicker Than Blood Start

For Tributes with keen eyes, they'll notice that Peacekeeper presence seems increased and yet infinitely more ineffective in the last few weeks. Peacekeepers seem harried, as do the Stylists, and most of the Escorts titter and plot without alerting the Tributes as to what, exactly, is so exciting. They simply say that this weekend they'll know.

And so it happens that on the weekend in question, the Tributes are woken by their Escorts early and brought to a restaurant for a hearty breakfast. The restaurant is nothing spectacular, although they seem to be trying to make an impression on the television cameras that float around. The sleepy, cranky meal goes by and then the Tributes are led back to their Suites for a mandatory meeting.

Sitting on couches and the floor, in chairs and on windowsills, standing off to the side - people from the Tributes' homes are waiting to greet them in each District Suite. Some are confused, some accepting, some frightened and some elated to see their beloved. Either way, it should be an eventful reunion.

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"Well this is a far cry from how I imagined Dodge," Holliday said, the drawl sounding smug as he watched Wyatt walk in. He'd already managed to get his hands on some whiskey, which was good - for whatever strange dream this was, it seemed his imagination was fit enough to offer a decent year. "But then again, dreams are often the illustrators of the strange."

The smile flickered over his lips.

"Marshal Wyatt Earp, I do believe. It's a pleasure, though why I should dream of you, of all people, I could not begin to guess."

Given the last little surprise the Capitol had so kindly thought to spring on them, Wyatt had being preparing himself throughout the strange breakfast. Readying himself, he'd thought, for whatever new twist they were laying out.

When he first saw the group of strange faces waiting on the other end of the herding, he assumed it was merely a new batch of tributes. More than they usually went for in one go, certainly, but it still wasn't anything to set off the warning bells.

It wasn't until those around him began to greet one another, until he heard the fast intake of several breaths, saw the tears start on more than one face that he put it together. Reunions.

These were all people that his fellow tributes knew; that he, turning at the drawled sound of his name, knew.

There was no gasp from him, no tears, but still more than enough surprise to keep the audience happy.

"Holliday," he blinked. "Doctor John Henry Holliday."

An echo of the memory for so long ago, (two years, amere two years, against the lifetime that it felt). Shaking bloodied hands as Bill and Bat carried Sam from the Doc's office.

"Afraid ya missed yer stop, Doc." He stuck out his hand again, habit more than anything. The moment too strange for much else. (Why him? Why not Bat? Why not one of his brothers, if they'd wanted to twist the knife?) "Ya should'a got off the line a long ways back."

Edited 2014-04-15 15:29 (UTC)

He took the hand easily, shaking with a firm but simple grace, the half smile still flickering on his lips as if he was constantly amused with himself and the world around him.

"Well isn't that always just the case," He said smoothly. "Never did think I could travel quite this far, especially when I don't remember stepping on the train. But a familiar face always makes a nice welcome party."

"...Son of a bitch," Wyatt muttered, more to himself than to Doc as their hands met, as they shook. "Ya really are here."

He'd wondered for a moment, if it weren't a dream - his, rather than the one Doc claimed to be having. Something brought on by the arenas, all that weight, and then aching relief of his victory.

It would be a fine trick to finally get free only to be so damaged as to never enough it.

But the good Doc was warm and steady. Every bit as real as he.

Retrieving his hand, he went for a second glass.

If the man was really here, the least he could do was share.

"Anybody come with ya?" he asked, pouring himself a finger of whiskey - than another for good measure. "Bat, Charlie, any'a them fellas I was with..." He knew that sounded funny to the ear, but it couldn't be helped. "Ya see any of them durin' that long ride?"

"I've seen many a weird and wondrous thing on this little journey of mine, but nothing that I could call natural or familiar 'till I saw you," Holliday said with a shrug as he raised his own glass to his lips. "Well. That and this particularly poignant glass of whiskey, which is as firm a friend as any I'm like to make."

He took a long drink and then set the glass down to pour himself another.

"You seem quite a little more familiar with this particular venue than I do myself."

Edited 2014-04-15 16:18 (UTC)

"Don't beat yerself up over that," Wyatt replied, pulling out a chair across the table from Doc with the toe of his boot. Filling his mouth with fire as he sat. "I've been here awhile, you'll get there."

Another mouthful, holding the burning liquor on his tongue as he studied the man's face, weighing his next words.

(How many times had he had this conversation now? How many lives changed forever?)

It never got easier.

"This ain't a dream, Doc. All'a this--" he gestured with his glass hand to the room at large, the hovering cameras, the tittering team rushing to and fro, the other tributes. "This is as real as you an' me. Ya ain't in Dodge, ya ain't in Kansas. Ya ain't even in the States no more."

Not really.

"This is Panem. The Capitol."

"The Capitol," Doc repeated, rolling the word over his tongue. He didn't sit down, wandering over to the window instead, looking out over the city. He would have said he'd known stranger things, except that he really hadn't.

"Too much to hope it was a dream, I suppose," He said, gazing out over the impossible. "More like to be hell, or at my best guess, purgatory."

He turned to look at Wyatt again before strolling over and pulling out the chair.

"My dreams never were quite so colourful," he said, leaning back and taking another long drink. "And usually my company much fairer, no offense offered."

"None taken," Wyatt replied easily, not offended in the slightest. "Seein' as ya ain't far off, on either count."

It wasn't like Holliday was his definition of a sweet dream either.

Polishing off the last of his whiskey, he shifted in his chair and reached for the doctor's bottle, pouring himself a second. The shock past, he'd enjoy this one. (Doc had found himself a fine year.)

"I ain't sure when it is, exactly, I don't think they use the same calendar we did, but best I can figure, it's been a thousand years er so since you an' I met that day."

Edited 2014-04-15 18:16 (UTC)

"Go on, pull my other one," Doc said, smirking as he twirled the whiskey around in his glass. "But I'll play to your game. If it's been a thousand years between this moment and the one where I set my head down last night, why are we so very young and full of vigor?"

It was more than a little sarcastic. He could feel his death around his neck and in his lungs just as heavily as the night before.

"Ain't my game." Wyatt leaned back against his chair, and slanted pale eyes toward one of the metal spheres, humming closing. Buzzing, as it hovered. He tipped his head toward it. "Their's. The people here, the one's that run things, there ain't a lot they can't do. These people--"

He uncurled a callused finger from his glass to point toward the other tributes, many of them in the midst of their own hurried conversations.

(He thought of Howard. Of Max. Wondered if they'd found a loved one waiting when they'd returned.)

"Most of 'em, weren't born here. Like you, like me, they were brought here. Snatched up from all over the damn place. Different countries, different times, hell, different planets in some cases."

"Time traveling kidnappers." He wet his lips, still looking almost painfully amused. "Why I don't think I've heard a tale so long in all my life, and I have heard some painfully long tales."

And told some.

"But I can hardly deny the evidence of my own eyes," He said, sipping his whiskey as he motioned out the window. "I take that to mean that you're no longer the law in these particular parts. Not even the fun kind."

Wyatt's nose wrinkled - but his mustache twitched, belying the dirty look he shot Holliday's way.

"What sorta Doc are ya? Rubbin' salt in it like that." His glass clinked softly against the table as he lifted it to his mouth. "Somebody pay ya before I got here?"

"If only they had," Doc said, playfully mournful, "I would have made an easy dollar or two. Last I saw you, Mister Earp, you didn't mind the slightly sadistic touch."

He smirked.

"So how long have you been living in the impossible, to make you so familiar. I can't imagine it's only been the day or two since you graced my very humble doorstep."

It wasn't his proudest memory, Sam writhing and screaming while Holliday dug into his leg. But it had gotten the job done.

They'd found Spike. Stopped him from killing again.

"The job wasn't always daisies," he replayed after a beat, glass hovering in front of his lips. "He coulda jus' answered the question."

He sipped, slow and long, and pushed the past away. Back where it belonged.

"Two years, give er take, since they brought me here."

"His mistake, and a lesson well learned, I think," Holliday said, offering a chuckle. But even his easy-going manner was put ill at ease after the revelation from Wyatt. His eyebrows raised and he let out a whistle, setting down his glass.

"Two years? I can hardly believe it. Hasn't been three days since I met you, and you don't look a day older." Though.. there was something. In the eyes. In the little scars, almost completely healed, that Doc could just barely see, and his lips fell open silently, bewildered. "... But you're telling me the truth. Aren't you."

Wyatt looked at him. A long, unbroken stare, the weight of time, of the arenas, of all the fighting and the death in his eyes.

"I figure I owe ya that much."

He wasn't Bat. Or Charlie, or Bill. Wasn't any of his brothers. But Doc had done quite a bit for him, in the short time they'd known him.

How many men would go barehanded into another man's leg with nary an introduction to go one?

And they'd brought him here, this near stranger, simply because he was. Simply to prove a point. To remind him how far they could reach, how much they could hurt.

"What'd they tell ya?"

Edited 2014-04-15 22:52 (UTC)

"That I was dreaming," Doc said easily enough, still regarding Wyatt with a bewildered look. "Which was well easy to believe, considering. But I've never dreamed a whiskey so good or a face quite so sour. You don't owe me anything, Wyatt, I was paid well for my services and I have nary a complaint on that score. And neither have I any complaint being here. Nothing was holding me back there, save an early grave. What could I care to take a jaunting trip into the future?"

He brought his glass to his lips, tipping it back and emptying it down his throat before placing it with a hard tap back on the table.

"No need to fuel the injustice on my account."

To that point, Wyatt had assumed Doc's talk of dreams had merely been the man's hope. His way of trying to explain what was happening.

But now....

His brow wrinkled, eyebrows twitching slightly, a small vee appearing between them.

Why would they lie? Why tell a tribute he was here for anything other than the Games? They'd never tried to hide it before.

A cold tingle wormed up his spine in warning.

There was even more going on than met the eye.

"Ya can take a man's badge away," he said carefully, glancing toward the camera that buzzed closer. "But not his laws."

"And there's that face, turning even more sour," Doc said, following Wyatt's eyeline. He didn't even know what the flying things were - didn't even bother trying to guess. He was in the land of the impossible, and as Wyatt said, there wasn't anything that their hosts couldn't d--

It was strange, really, that the thought hadn't occurred to him before. Generally Holliday considered himself a man of rather quick wits and quicker reflexes, so the idea that he'd just let that comment slip by with nary a question was surprising, but it came back in force now.

"You say our hosts can do anything," He said, a strange gleam in his eye as something took hold in his chest. Something that wasn't just lingering death.

Wyatt may not have known Doctor John Henry Holliday particularly well yet, but he knew that look. That dawning light that crept into a face as an idea began to form. Like a lamp being lit in a dark room.

He didn't have to know the specifics, to know where the wheels in the man's head were turning him.

His head tipped, eyeing Holliday carefully.

"Near 'nough," he said slowly. "When it suits 'em."

Bring a man back from the arena, clean and whole, a half-dozen times, but watch him loose his leg in the Capitol.

"Even, ah, as one would say, medically speaking?" He wasn't exactly keen to talk about his condition, though he knew Wyatt would know soon enough, if he kept him in company. He was prone to coughing fits, and witnessing one was a dull inevitability.

"Professional interest," He added, giving Wyatt a sly grin. "You understand."

Wyatt's mouth opened, closed, a breath pushing through his nose. He wrestled with himself for a moment, the decided to hell with it. Doc was going to find out sooner or later.

Better at least, he figured, from a face he recognized.

Better before he was in there, dying.

Shifting, he reached for the bottle and poured the man another drink. Just in case.

"I can't give ya definite answer, not knowin' what yer askin' for, but I'll tell ya this," he said, returning the bottle to the table and sitting back in his chair to meet Doc's gaze. "Since they brought me here, I have died nine times. An' each time they have brought me back, good as new. Not even a scar to show for it."

"Well isn't that something," Holliday mused, the grin spreading over his lips. "Isn't that just something. Not even Jesus Christ himself could say the same, but I'm more inclined to believe what's before my eyes than otherwise."

He reached over for the bottle, pouring himself another glass.

"One tall tale after another and I've gone from skeptic to convert..."

"An' I imagine ya ain't even been outside yet," Wyatt snorted, mouth twisting. "Let me tell ya, all'a this, ain't nothin' on the first time ya really see it. That's somethin' an' a half."

His sipped from his own glass, letting the liquor roll linger on his lips - that low, pleasant buzz that reminded him of summer. Of sunshine and of bees.

(Of Max, distant, but never forgotten.)

"...Ya don't have to tell me, if ya don't want, but I see the gears turnin' there, an' jus' 'bout smell the smoke...."

"... And where there's smoke, there's sure to be fire," Holliday said wryly. "Well I can't see the harm, it was known well enough already, to those of good acquaintance."

He tipped his glass back again, letting the whisky take the sharp bitterness from his thoughts.

"Consumption," He said, strangely casual, as he put the glass down. "I'm a lunger, Mr Wyatt Earp, and my days are duly numbered."

Doc Holliday, For Wyatt

Re: Doc Holliday, For Wyatt

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