I'm just a girl who's fighting her time

[designatedfreak]

Who| Max Guevara and OTA
What| Hiding from all the "happy" reunions
Where| Training Center, Tribute Towers, Wherever
When| During the Family Plot
Warnings/Notes|


Max had patiently allowed the stylists to dress her up and fix her one again short hair as best they could. Following orders was second nature to Max even in this confusing world; they said to wake early, Max woke early (not that she had still been asleep). Without a word she ate and then arrived for the mandatory meeting. Around the District 11 suite were strangers dressed up like they were meeting someone important. At first she believed these people to be Citizens but quickly she realized they stood out too much, looked to aware of things to be Citizens. It dawned on her that these people were from the homes of the Tributes. Family and friends come to reunite for a short time. Max anxiously waited to see who the Capitol had brought from her home, secretly hoping that Zac or Jondi would appear in the crowd. She waited.

And waited.

And waited as others hugged, cried, yelled, and even ignored the new arrivals. There was no one for her. There was a pain in her chest that she couldn't explain. Carefully she moved herself into the shadows before eventually fleeing the common room. Even Courfeyrac had someone (someones?) to greet him. Max was alone. Again. Fine, she could be alone. She was a soldier and a soldier did not get attached to the dead, and it was quite likely everyone else was dead and that was why no one had called for her in an eager voice.

Max decided that the best course of action was to maintain her schedule of training and leave the others to their reunions. There was no reason to bother her fellow Tributes just because she was lonely.

Comments

[fire_punk]

Kevin had no one from home, either. After the breakfast, he retreated down to the Training Center. He wanted to practice the tree climbing Guy had started teaching him. He grunted as he pulled himself up onto the next branch. And paused, looking for which branch he could reach next. That was when he heard someone else. "Hello?"

[designatedfreak]

She didn't expect anyone to be in the Training Center so soon and had she been anyone else the sudden voice would have startled her. Max watched the boy climb, or attempt to climb, for a moment before walking under the tree and looking up through the branches.

"It's easier if you're barefoot."

[fire_punk]

"It is?"

He sat on a branch to take off his shoes and socks, dropping them at the foot of the tree.

[designatedfreak]

"At first." Even with her shoes, Max was able to quickly climb the tree until she shared the branch with Kevin. "Your feet need to feel the familiar form of climbing and you need to feel your feet." She had never needed any extensive training when it came to climbing. Feline DNA was sometimes quite a blessing.

[vissernone]

Eva, too, is in the Training Center, and like Max, she's finding the absence of family rather keen. It's not as if most of the Mentors have visitors, and yet some part of her heart slipped past the guards of logic and resignation and dared not to hope, but to fantasize, for just a second-

And yet she knew when she woke up her son wouldn't be there, and unsurprisingly, he isn't. She throws punch after punch as a sandbag as if punishing herself for the indulgence that she must pay for, that of dreaming, of forming an idea that was so lofty and out of reach she couldn't help but fall from it. She stops when she sees someone out of the corner of her eye pass, someone quiet as a shadow slipping between dummies and starting their own regimen.

"Aren't you supposed to be upstairs?"

[designatedfreak]

Max didn't stop walking as she answered Eva. "I have no visitor." There. It was a slight weakness in Max's mind that she would care if she had a visitor. She began to hit a training dummy with military focus; a reminder that she didn't need a visitor. It was hard to ignore the empty feeling in her chest, but she'd had to ignore her emotions all her life. It didn't make things easier, but it did make them bearable for a little while.

"Shouldn't you be chaperoning your Tributes?"

[vissernone]

"Watching their tearful reunions is hardly on my itinerary. I'm a Mentor, not an Escort."

She starts wrapping her hands for punching a kick bag. "Maybe they'll do a little TV show on you instead."

[designatedfreak]

Max didn't spend anytime with her own District Mentor or Escorts, so she couldn't say anything in regards to Eva's words.

She tried not to make a face at the idea of being followed around even more than usual. "Why? The others have been here longer. They have support and Sponsors." Max didn't need her routine disturbed anymore than it already was with trying to get Courfeyrac into the Training Center.

[vissernone]

"That's why they might want to focus on you. Put your name out there. Clearly you have talent, or you wouldn't have been able to rig those explosives in the last Arena."

Yes, she'd been watching. Even after all her Tributes but Mindy and Donatello had fallen.

"Is that what you have in mind for the next one?"

[designatedfreak]

Max shrugged, a habit she was forming as there was no longer someone to yell at her for the motion. "If I need to. They're easy to set and take out large areas. It would have been better if I had an actual field of battle that was not a museum." Since returning to the Capitol, Max had spent a day or two learning about that arena and even gone to a museum within the Capitol that held more displays about the Games than history.

[vissernone]

"You would prefer foxholes?" Eva goes over to the punching bag and throws a remarkably strong punch for her age and size. "What sort of battlefields are you used to?"

[orestes]

Since Venus' scolding, Enjolras had been doing his best to maintain some sort of routine. The morning's festivities had messed him up, and so, as soon as they were granted a free moment, he found himself sneaking off to the Training Center to fight his discombobulation one way or another.

Midday saw him practicing basic calisthenics before moving onto the throwing knives he was only just beginning to master. It was as good a distraction as any other, and he almost found himself lost in it. That was, of course, until Max's small shadow caught his attention. She creeped along the periphery of his vision, and he had the distinct suspicion that had she actually been trying, she could have eluded him altogether. Perhaps she, too, wanted a distraction.

He pulled himself up, brushing sweaty bangs back with one hand. It was high-time Courfeyrac's friends knew each other. "Good day, mademoiselle."

[designatedfreak]

"Max. You can call me Max." Courfeyrac was the first she had told her real name to, but since everyone in this world knew not only her designation but her name she thought there was no reason to keep it secret.

She watched him for a moment before walking over to stand near him. "Your form is off. Why are you training?" Hadn't he won already? Although the idea of not training was appealing the truth was Max wouldn't know what to do with herself if she skipped her routine. Perhaps Enjolras was the same, although she remembered Courfeyrac saying they were not really soldiers.

[orestes]

"My form is always off. I am not very good at this." The admission was accompanied by a small smile. It was easier, Enjolras found, for him to be friendly to the children in Panem, and Max was no exception. "Max, then. My name is Enjolras. We have allies in common if I am not very much mistaken."

He wasn't. He had seen the videos of her through the Arena, and following Courfeyrac around the Capitol like a shadow. The more familiarity they had with one another on equal terms, the better off they would be. Of that, he was entirely convinced. "I am training because I do not believe our fight will be limited to the Arenas, and I do not wish to be a burden to my friends when our time comes."

[designatedfreak]

"Courfeyrac." He knew that, but it was good to state their commonality since the Frenchman was really all they had.

Max digested his words and came away with something familiar: freedom. Real freedom this time. The sort that Courfeyrac said he had died for back home. She wondered if Enjolras has also died for that mysterious freedom.

Walking over to the target, Max took the knives embedded in the frame and then moved next to the older man. "Courfeyrac should practice half as much. His form is poor and he's lazy." She threw the knife and it hit dead center. "He relies too much on luck."

[orestes]

He eyed her throw with admiration. It was no small feat, and he still couldn't get his own knives not to tail-spin, or veer somehow to the left. It was something in the movement of his wrist that he couldn't quite master yet. It would come.

"He has always been that way, I am sorry to say." Vivid was his recollection of Courfeyrac drinking and dancing around various cafés with various women when they should have been studying. His friend was less irresponsible than he was frivolous, always trusting that the best would work itself out for him. Courfeyrac was capable, of course, but that only added to the frustration in his general lack of direction.

Enjolras reached past her, grabbing a knife off the table and taking aim. "It took me a very long time to come to terms with the practicality of violence here, and he is of a softer disposition than myself. He will learn."

[designatedfreak]

Max tried not to frown. She wanted her brother to not just do his best, but to win and escape the Arenas. Enjolras was right in that Courfeyrac have a soldier's nature, but wasn't that all the more reason he should be training?

"He would much rather write about butterflies and kissing." Yes, now there was a barely perceptible pout that Courfeyrac would have no doubt picked up on. She wasn't jealous, just frustrated. "I'd have an easier time getting Marius or Joly in here."

[orestes]

"He requires a firm hand and motivation." Enjolras would have objected to the comparison if she had voiced it. Max was right in that Courfeyrac could be... Somewhat easily distracted. There was, however, a reason that Courfeyrac was one of his lieutenants. The man had a resourcefulness to him, and a tenacity in his good cheer. His pathos in Panem was entirely understandable, as was his urge to hide in more pleasurable activities. Too much of it was a vice, of course, but Enjolras had done his share of hiding. He couldn't begrudge his friend that.

And besides which, it was unkind. Joly was a hypochondriac, and Marius, a hopeless case. Courfeyrac had to be better than all of that.

He coughed, clearing his throat awkwardly to break up the silence. Max was as laser-focused as the object of her affections was diffuse. It was somewhat off-putting on someone so young. "My form is bad. Yours is very good. Correct me, if you would."

[gluteus]

Despite his own reunion, Maximus still spent a good amount of time in the training center. There were less tributes training than usual, but he made himself available to those that were - he took his duties as mentor seriously.

His metal leg creaked under him as he walked over to where Max was training. He took it upon himself to check on everyone, after all, and he couldn't deny he was impressed by what he saw in the girl, and he let out a low appreciative grunt.

"You're well trained," He murmured lowly.

[designatedfreak]

Max stopped and looked at the tall man. She had seen him around, but never spoken to or about him. He was a former Tribute, someone who had managed to win, but in a far more forceful way than Enjolras.

"I've been training my entire life." There was something about him that made her want to stand at attention and take note, as though he was one of her commanders.

[gluteus]

It saddened him, to find another girl he would have called a child so well trained in combat.

War was no place for children.

But he nodded, solemnly, and took up a sword.

"Spar with me?"

[designatedfreak]

Max looked at the sword uncertainly. Give her a gun or knife and she had the confidence of a veteran soldier, but a sword? Who even fought with swords? She nodded and took up a smaller sword, taking a moment to appreciate the weight and balance of the blade. It seemed the Capitol really did prepare for everything in the Training Center.

"Do you train with your Tributes?" Max had yet to see Wesker in the Training Center, but then she didn't really seek out the quiet man any more than he sought out her.

[gluteus]

He nodded. "As much as I can. But not just mine. I offer my services to any tribute who wishes for them." He watched her take the sword, and then took his own stance - steady, his weight on his back foot, sword at his side. He'd be playing defense, he decided.

"I am here nearly every day."

[designatedfreak]

Fighting with a sword was not something Manticore thought necessary to train them in, but that didn't mean Max was a novice. She watched and learned thanks to the recordings of past Arenas. Her familiarity with weapons and natural agility would make up for what she lacked in size.

Max attacked, every move deliberate and almost taunting. Show me your skills, was what she seemed to say. "Enjolras says we should help each other." Even as she spoke her breath stayed even.

[gluteus]

He blocked easily, each movement swift and to the point. Economical. He didn't waste energy where he didn't need to, but neither did he attack.

He wasn't about to let her goad him.

He allowed a small smile at her attempt, however.

"Are you a friend of his?" He asked, eyebrow raised, sword at the ready.