thecapitol | Drown the Stale, Owning Stares All Around You [Open]

WHO| Venus and Open
WHAT| Venus reacts (or doesn't) to the exposé.
WHEN| Directly after the exposé and over the following days.
WHERE| Various cafes in the Capitol or her bedroom.
WARNINGS| None yet.

She'd braced herself. She could at least credit the Capitol for giving her a little warning before they character assassinated her, which is more than could be said for some of the paparazzi and celebrity news outlets back home. She was expecting the usual: skank, shallow airhead, probably slept her way to the top, all things that she was more than equipped to brush off. Her family's come up a few times before in the media, usually as an example about how mutants were dangerous and ought to be controlled, and the politics of it felt so divorced from her experience that it somehow didn't penetrate her armor.

She's ready, sitting in her bedroom with a pint of raspberry sherbet, fresh from a shower in one of those fluffy robes that's never seen cheap laundering before, when Insider Tales comes on and manages to slip past the fortress she previously thought impervious.

As soon as they show Jamal, she finds herself, for the first time in years, feeling outright breathless with a panic she can't explain. She holds her hand over her chest and she gasps and tries to remember the mental exercises she taught to Joly, tries not to let this suffocation feel like an old friend. She gets that under control just in time for them to show the footage of her family's death, which she never saw before, which cameras never saw before, and torn between panicking or shutting down, she does the latter.

Maintaining the illusion of apathy is a trying enough task as to be distracting, and she protects herself with that. She finishes her sherbet, even though it seems to sit unmelted in her stomach like a stone. She convinces herself that she can act her way until it's real - fake it until you make it - and she tells herself that she's fine with that.

And yet she can't convince her to go look for people, to explain herself or admit guilt or clarify or do any of the things she needs to do, and so she isolates herself for the next several days. Aside from the gym, she hides. She keeps up the happy starlet act for only the amount of time it takes to get to the secluded backs of cafes or between the bathroom and her bedroom. And then she spends her time staring at books she doesn't turn the pages of, focusing all her energy on never letting them see her cry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, it might have been a little bit different if you'd grown up in it the whole time."

At first she pauses when he pushes her sunglasses back - absently, she thinks that she should have put on mascara today - but as soon as his forehead's to hers it feels natural. Intimate but not invasive. It's a nice balancing act.

"You didn't have swings when you're from, right? I'll give you a push, it's pretty fun."

"Okay," he said, pulling back, flicking her sunglasses down again with a wide and gentle smile, and reaching out to clasp her hand again. "Not so much with those swing things though I have enjoyed a raucous afternoon or two swinging on some vines."

He started swinging her hand as they walked.

She stops at the edge of the park and points. "So, you sit on that and I'll push you. Then you can probably figure out how to stay in the air and get higher. It's kind of...I guess it's exhilarating as a kid but as an adult it's just relaxing."

It's not as good as flying, but it's more innocent, somehow. Maybe because everyone can swing and only little girls who blow up their houses can fly.

Guy ran up to the swing and make a running jump onto it, grabbing the chains and using his momentum to get it started a little bit, plopping his butt down onto the seat while it was still moving.

"How does this work? After you get me into the air, is there a button something? They love putting buttons on everything here."

"You pump with your legs!" Venus runs up behind him and waits until the downswing. She meets his back with her hands and pushes. "Legs straight when you go up, knees bent when you come back down!"

"Like this?" he called out.

He pumped his legs, leaning back as he held onto the ropes, bending his legs as he came back down.

Oh, this was fun. It was just like swinging on vines but set up so it was much easier.

Edited 2014-05-22 06:52 (UTC)

"Yeah, and then you get into the rhythm of it." She gives him a few more pushes and then joins him on the one next to it.

"I ain't done this since I was a kid."

"I haven't done this eeeever," he said on one downswing, in a silly voice.

He went back up again and came down again.

"But I like it."

"It's simple fun," Venus says as she slows down, her hair whipping around her jaw. She stares out at the Capitol skyline, at the skyscrapers rising like the bars of a cage to some-

-to her, it's been the opposite. She sees not the buildings but the sky behind them for the first time.

How fucked up is that, she thinks? That it took coming to a murder game to feel like a human being? That she doesn't necessarily enjoy that?

"Thanks for coming out here with me."

"I like simple." A pause. "I miss simple."

To him, it was a cage. The worst kind of cage. And every minute he spent in it, he felt a little less human and a little less alive.

But things like this made it just a little bit better - or at least a little less bad.

"I think I'm gonna jump! I have to get higher first, though."

Edited 2014-05-24 06:34 (UTC)

"Careful!" She hops off hers, losing the momentum within a few steps. "Make sure you land on the grass!"

A little bit of anticipation, as if she's just seen a parallel universe where he breaks his legs, grips her by the back of her thighs.

At the high point of his swing, he jumped off...

And landed horribly awkwardly, tripping over his own feet.

Right before he fell on his face, he tucked into a roll, using the momentum of his fall, and at the end of it popped up on his feet.

"Yes! Did you see that?"

"I did." She grins, then falls back as if collapsing - only to somersault backwards and end it in a handstand.

"But I can do it better."

"But can you do it while jumping off the swing?" Guy said with a raise of his eyebrow, running back over, this time prepared to push her.

She beats him to the swing, although she accepts the push - but only the first. After that she's gaining her own momentum, going higher, higher...

And so she vaults off the swing, all acrobatic grace as she repeats the movement from a greater height. She looks almost genuinely happy as she stares at him, this time from upside down.

"Ah but can you balance a Ramu egg on your head while you do it and spin around in the air five times?" Guy joked, his grin matching hers, jumping onto the swing, but standing on it as he started to swing. "Because then maaaybe I'll be impressed."

"I don't even know what that is." She giggles, then brushes some stray grass out of her hair. "Thank you, Guy. I'm feeling- I'm feeling a little better, I think. Fresh air doing me good."

"A ramu is a very large bird with horns that lays very large eggs that are hard to balance on your head unless you have a very large head. Eep can balance one while doing lots of things but that's because her hair is so big."

He was saying this in between swinging, so he swung back and then forward again, with an enthusiastic, "And when she does, it's adorable."

He was smiling as he swung back again and then towards her, still standing on the swing.

"And you don't have to thank me for this. You're my friend."

"You know, I could make my hair big. If I don't let my Stylists at it, I look like the head of a dandelion. After the petals fall off."

She gets back on the swing. "I didn't have friends before coming here, you know?"

Drown the Stale, Owning Stares All Around You [Open]

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