thecapitol | And All My Wastelands Flower [Open]

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And All My Wastelands Flower [Open]

WHO| Eva and Open
WHAT| Diabolical schemes are set in motion and Eva commemorates an anniversary.
WHERE| A bar in the city.
WHEN| Week 5 of the Arena
WARNINGS| Mentions of death, potential mentions of sexual assault and alcoholism.

In a break from her usual routine, Eva doesn't order alcohol when she goes out tonight. She sits at the bar in a black dress with gold embroidery of ribs across her torso, nursing water, reminding herself of a time in her childhood when she and her family were so hungry that it was all they had to fill their stomachs for the night.

She'll need to be sober tonight, she'll need to be alert and vigilant. There are so many ways that she could create a snare for herself, find herself trapped with over thirty years of research and secrecy put to tragic waste. It's a risk she takes whenever she goes about dragging people into her web, and yet she sees herself not as the predator she is but as prey, scurrying from burrow to burrow under the watch of cameras and microphones.

"Put a dash of vodka in it," she says, not caring for flavor nor appearances. She convinces herself it's because she wants a trace of it on her breath tonight. She hums along with whatever moody song the bartender has playing and keeps her eyes out for her targets.

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Stephen winces again.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Salazar," he says, and though his tone up until now has been deliberately careless, it gains some gravity now. "I know it does." He lets out a quick breath: wow, this puts him in an awkward place. "Given that, I know it's rich of me to ask for your help, but it's not for me, it's for my Tributes."

Eva sits back with her alcohol and rubs her finger over the rim. Her smile is without mirth, chiseled onto her face like a gash in a mountainside.

"Hold on, I need to savor the moment if a Reagan's asking me for charity." She raises her eyebrow again. "Unless I misheard and you were offering me something. Do go on."

Stephen flushes, but he's resolute. He chooses his words carefully, trying his very hardest not to put his foot in his mouth. "One of my Tributes," Stephen says slowly, "insulted Hsiang a few weeks before the Arena. As revenge, she put him up for bids. I tried, but there was nothing I could do to reverse the decision." He pulls a breath, gets his thoughts in order, before he moves on. "You've been part of this system for a long time. If there's any way to discourage bidders," he says, "or -- or at least stave off the worst of it...I thought that you would know."

Though his words are phrased as statements, Stephen isn't telling, he's asking.

Eva pauses, covering for the sudden chill sweeping over her by taking another drink. She can't even be insulted or feel violated that everyone knows she's the Capitol's plaything - and that's what he means, of course. It's not just that she's guiding her own younger Mentors through the process, but that she has personal experience.

"It's your lucky day, Reagan. I'm feeling generous." She flags the bartender again and orders something with salt on the rim. It seems fitting. "Which Tribute?"

"Guy Crood," he says immediately, relief and gratitude flooding him. "He was never rebellious. He had a perfect record before this. But of course anything a Tribute has to say against a Peacekeeper is considered verbal assault." Stephen practically spits the words.

"What can I do for him?"

"And that Peacekeeper was Penny."

Eva had seen the incident in question. She hadn't realized how far it had gone behind the scenes, but she watches more than she comments. She saw exactly how innocuous the comment was.

A more experienced Escort probably would have warned all their Tributes against so much as looking at the Peacekeepers wrong, but Stephen seems almost naive, as if he thinks that this sort of pettiness is the sort of thing people still get outraged over. She casts a long glance at him, wondering if he's faking his indignation to get a reaction out of her.

"Once Hsiang's put him on the bidding list, no one's going to take him off for fear of having her find out it was them. So that would be out of the question." She takes her drink and holds it up to the light, elbow resting on the bar. "But just because someone's on the bidding list doesn't mean that anyone's renting them out. Do you follow?"

Oh no, it isn't fake. It's just a combination of circumstances led to Stephen being oblivious to a lot of the worst things about the Capitol. The biggest circumstance of course is named Cyrus Reagan, but the fact that Panem-native Tributes already knew the score and behaved meant that Stephen hadn't had to deal with this kind of thing before.

But he's listening. He nods. "Hsiang encouraged the initial bidders herself," Stephen informs her. "But she can't do that all the time. She has far more important things to do than ensure Guy Crood is constantly being bid on. So, how do I discourage bidders?"

"She'll lose interest before long. She's..." Eva glances over her shoulder, rubs her collarbone, fidgets as she looks for the microphones she will never find. "Petty. Most of them are. If they bothered to keep a blacklist for every slight they'd have no time to actually enforce our magnanimous legislation and regulation."

That was totally a dig at Cyrus.

"The key isn't in discouraging bidders. I mean, you can, and that's why I drink as much as I do, but he's still a novel enough creature that people will be interested anyway. What you have to do is market him for something more interesting than sex." She tilts her head over, rubbing salt from the rim of her glass with her thumb. "You weren't born yet when I won, but some of my bidders used me as a babysitter. I was the first mother to win an Arena, and it amused them."

The dig rankles Stephen's family loyalty, but he's never been as proud as his brother. After all, he's asking Eva for a favor, and he won't be rude to her. As she explains, comprehension dawns on Stephen's face like a glittery sunrise.

"Brilliant," he mutters, wheels turning. "I'm sure I can find something for him to be famous for. Art, maybe. He paints."

"Good. That's a good start. Do you remember Barbara Wilson? You might have been to young, she was one of my Victors. Pretty little blonde thing, would have been chum in the water if she hadn't been so smart. She marketed herself as a motorcycle enthusiast, willing to teach even the most inept bidder."

She exhales deep.

"If you can get Guy Crood involved with children - teaching fingerpainting or so on - then that may help. People don't like it when their sons and daughters are mixing company with their hired whores."

Nannying Timaeus probably saved her from rape a hundred times. It's why she can't help but cling to him, even when there is so little worth loving in him. Desperation breeds strange values, asylum forms unorthodox bonds.

Give twenty years and it could have been Stephen or Cyrus she was swaddling.

"You're a genius, Eva," Stephen says, his mind working already. Caveman finger-painting for kids. Perfect.

"I owe you one. If you need a favor, Eva, let me know." He is genuinely grateful.

"I will." She hopes Stephen can't hear how the tone of her voice is the sound of a beartrap snapping shut, of its teeth pulling blood from unsuspecting flesh.

She takes a sip of her drink and licks the edge. "It's cute to see an Escort care about their Tributes."

The way she says it sends a thrill of fear through Stephen. He had never thought of Eva as a dangerous person, but he scents danger now.

He won't take it back, though. He does owe her a favor, and he's given his word. Besides, he thinks as he sips his wine, how bad could it be?

"Most of us do," he says, "in one way or another."

"Does it bother you, knowing how liable they are to die on you? That was always the most difficult part of being a Mentor, for me."

She has a memento from every Tribute that's come through her District. Usually it's a photograph or something they said jotted down on paper. Little tokens.

Someone has to remember them when the Capitol's attention's wandered elsewhere.

He stares at her for a long moment.

"...yes," he admits. "District 6 hasn't had a victor for a long time. Every year -- every year it got harder."

This is the first time Stephen has confessed this.

She's surprised to hear those words from his mouth. It sounds honest, unfiltered, shadowed by a dull sense of faded surprise that this life has not proven itself to be what he was promised. It is, possibly, the beginning of disillusionment.

When she speaks next, she imagines her word as lockpicks - practical, unemotional, and yet prying the tumblers of his mind to try and continue extracting the humanity she'd been quick to dismiss when he sat down with her.

"There's a reason your profession has a high burnout rate. And a reason that the veteran Escorts are all sociopaths." She takes another mouthful of her cocktail. "And a reason so many Mentors drink and use morphling. There's only so much we in the know can convince ourselves that this is worthwhile."

Stephen knows enough not to argue for the Games' merits. He knows the party line -- still believes a lot of it, even -- but he knows much better than to tell Eva Salazar that the Hunger Games are a good thing.

"I thought it would be easier, with the new Games," Stephen admits. "I thought that if the Tributes came back each time, then no one would have to die, like they did before. But that's not true. The Tributes do die; we just can't predict when. It's almost worse, sending them into the Arena and not knowing if they're coming back."

"Especially the ones you see over and over..." Eva's seen her entire District turn over by now, Donatello aside. Many of them she knew for the better part of a year, rather than merely a few weeks.

"I don't live in the District Suite for a reason. Distance does a body good, but it still feels as if I'm betraying them somehow. I'd be remiss in not getting close to them."

"It gets hard, watching them die." Stephen knew that this couldn't be what the old Tributes' friends in the Districts felt like, but perhaps what he felt was the ghost of that.

He's not sure he likes where this conversation has gone.

"I can't blame you for staying away. But I can't -- there are unpredictable Tributes in Six. I'd be nervous if I wasn't around. I'd be fighting the urge to check on them all the time." He gives a laugh, a laugh with very little real humor.

Eva's sized up Six. There's a reason, she thinks, that they haven't had any Victors lately.

"They need you to mother-hen them, that's it?" She laughs and finishes her drink. She rolls the glass stem between her fingers. "My Tributes try to treat me like a mother. It's humiliating."

Stephen opens his mouth, then closes it. He knows enough of Eva's history to realize that this is a delicate topic of conversation.

"I'm sorry," he says, with a level of delicacy that might be surprising. "I imagine that's embarrassing at best -- and painful at worst."

Family is important to the Reagans.

"It's mostly just irritating, that they think they're going to get parented here just because they're in it for the long haul. That's your job, you Escorts, that is. You train for it, you're getting paid nice money to wipe their noses and dry their tears." Eva sounds downright disgusted with not just the system, but the Tributes themselves. As if it's their fault for being disposable, broken human beings in a system designed to snap their backs.

Any matronliness is suddenly gone, but returns like the tide in her next words.

"Anyway. You'll be drying a lot of tears with Mr. Crood, it sounds like. Make sure the rest of your District gets the message about talking back to authority. Or talking at all to them."

Stephen is surprised by this glimpse into Eva Salazar. He doesn't know why he didn't expect harshness -- no, that's not true. He knows exactly why.

But the vitriol surprises him. He keeps the surprise from his face and processes it instead, squirreling it away for future consideration, for incorporation into his understanding of the woman in front of him.

He nods firmly. He's gotten the message: Stephen Reagan is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep this from happening again. However, he feels like it's time for him to leave. Eva, he thinks, doesn't want his company.

"Thank you for your time, Ms. Salazar."

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And All My Wastelands Flower [Open]

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