Thicker Than Blood Start

[gamemakers]

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.

Comments

[the_marshal]

"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."

[imyerdaisy]

"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."

[the_marshal]

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?"

[imyerdaisy]

"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."

[the_marshal]

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."

[imyerdaisy]

"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."

[the_marshal]

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?"

[imyerdaisy]

"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."

[the_marshal]

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."

[imyerdaisy]

"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.

[the_marshal]

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.

[imyerdaisy]

"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."

[the_marshal]

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."

[imyerdaisy]

"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..."

[the_marshal]

"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...."

[imyerdaisy]

"... 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."

[the_marshal]

To his credit, Wyatt didn't shy. Didn't move back, or pull that calculating face folks did when they were trying measure what their chances were.

He'd certainly heard of it, seen it, and likely would have even put it together if he'd thought a bit harder about that day. The coughing hadn't been pronounced, but it had been there.

He merely sipped from his glass again and shook his head.

"Not here," he replied after a moment. "Not from that."

[imyerdaisy]

"Well now." He wet his lips, a sly grin flickering at their edges before taking over his face. "Isn't that something," He mused.

He wet his lips again, just to taste them, just for that shadow of whiskey.

"And where do I sign up?"

[the_marshal]

"Ya already have," Wyatt murmured in reply, shifting in his chair, crossing his boots at the ankle. Settling in. "Jus' by bein' here."

In for a penny, in for a pound.

"The Capitol don't jus' bring folks here out'a the goodness of their hearts. They got plans for us. For you."

[imyerdaisy]

"As everyone is so quick to remind me, the Good Lord had plans for me too," Holliday pointed out easily.

"But if this Capitol of yours have ones that keep me alive a little longer than his, I am all too happy to find myself under their guidance."

[the_marshal]

"They're a bit more direct 'bout their plans here," Wyatt said bemusedly. "A firm touch."

He polished off the rest of his glass in one shot, head knocking back.

"They call 'em The Games," he said after with a sigh, half-pleasure, half-pain as the liquor burned down his throat and settled into a warm pool in his chest. "They gather up all the tributes an' put 'em in the arena. Some ninety-odd people, usually,... an' usually only one comes out alive."

[imyerdaisy]

"And that is how a man full of such vigor as yourself has come to die nine times?" Holliday guessed, smirking.

"Sounds like the Coliseum, except never for a want of participants."

[the_marshal]

"As I understand it, they didn't want for neither," Wyatt muttered, slanting Doc a look as he thought of Max, press-ganged before any of them into being a gladiator. "I know one, an' he didn't do any volunteerin' either."

Then he nodded, tapping his glass on the table, before his hands hooking neatly on his belt-buckle.

"An' yes. Nine, would'a been ten, but I won the last one."

[imyerdaisy]

Doc whistled, raising his eyebrows. Knew one? That was a story he would have to ask later.

"Well. Tenth time's the charm, it seems," He said, teeth showing through the grin. "And what did you victory win you?"

[the_marshal]

"They used to tell us that they'd send us home, if we won," Wyatt said. "Then they promised winnin' meant we'd never have to go back in."

His mouth twisted wryly. A dark, bitter sort of amusement, curling one corner.

"They usually manage to keep that one."