thecapitol | when the moon doesn't tell you something... ( OPEN! )

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when the moon doesn't tell you something... ( OPEN! )

Who| Jack and YOU! (cameo by man in moon)
What| Jack is in need of a little fun...
Where| Rooftops of the Training Center!
When| Now!
Warnings/Notes| n/a

This wasn't right. None of it was. Living here was a constant, throbbing pain; there was no fun, there was no happiness. How could you possibly be happy here, knowing that in you will probably die (again) in the possible future? There were amusement parks and attractions all through the Capitol, but Jack couldn't find any fun in it. Or rather, he couldn't find anyone actually having true fun from it.

He was a human through and through now; his death in the arena was an example of that. There was no way to describe how dying felt, after living for more than 300 years. It was cold, and it was scary. It was enough to give him nightmares when he actually slept. The fact that Pitch wasn't here to be the cause of said nightmares didn't really help him at all.

Bunny said that this moon wasn't their moon, but he wanted to try all the same.

"What am I doing here?" Jack mumbled, wrapping his arms around his middle. Maybe if he asked, someone could make a little replica of his staff..."I don't understand this. Do you even understand this?"

He started to pace back and forth. "I don't understand how I'm a full fledged Guardian one minute, and then the next I'm helping a bunch of people get their kicks from watching people kill each other. That's not fun. That's not what I wanted to do when I agreed to this!

"Maybe I'm really not a Guardian. That would already make sense since, y'know, I can't do anything anymore. I can't even make a snowball."

Jack sighed. "What's the point of me when there's no fun here?"

A very good question indeed.

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"You're here because they want you to die. Over and over again." A low voice, harsh and grating, came from behind one of the many bushes growing from the rooftop. On the other side, Eponine had been lying in the grass, plaiting strands of it into bracelets. She hadn't really been sleeping, between the screaming from her District-mates and the heavy guilt that came with knowing that you were at least partly responsible for the obliteration of District 3.

So she lay on the rooftop instead, and counted the stars, one through ten, over and over until she lost count of how many times she had got to ten. Not that it mattered.

But here was a boy, speaking to the air, as she had so often done, and Eponine rolled and peered through the leaves of the bush at Jack.

"There is no fun for us, you know, Sir. Perhaps sometimes. Not for a long time now though. But we bring 'enjoyment to the masses'. That is what they will tell you."

The voice made Jack jump. He wasn't even embarrassed by the fact that he "talked to nothing" anymore; maybe they were kind of right. Maybe Man in Moon wasn't really, truly here. But he didn't want to think that.

"I know." He mumbled under his breath, turning away from the moon to face the stranger. "I was supposed to bring fun to everyone." Jack was saying this like everybody knew that he was the actual Jack Frost. He wasn't sure if he wasn't supposed to be known by everyone, or just another thing that made people cold and froze everyone's water pipes. "I'm the Guardian of Fun, and I'm not...nobody's having fun, except the people who don't want to have fun. It feels like I'm not doing anything right."

He looked down, sighing. "I don't know what to do."

"A Guardian of Fun? Yeah?" Eponine laughed. "I have never heard of that before. Do you make it up? Although, you know, I had a brother, Gavroche is his name, and he was so full of fun in Paris. Always, he was running here and there and grabbing bits from all the toffs - always that happiness in his eyes. He used to take me to the theatre on the time, and that was about the most fun I have ever had, you know?"

She patted the ground next to her. "I do not know what you can do. God, you have the wrong person to tell you the right thing, for I am always in trouble here. But... is it magic, Sir? Your fun thing?"

A smile came across Jack's face as she started to describe her tale. It had felt like forever since he had heard of a good story like this. Moments like these were rare in Panem...as incredibly sad as that was to say. Jack watched her, in case that her good spirits started to settle down. It was his job to make sure there was at least a little fun around here.

Even though the fun never really lasted.

He paused for a moment, before taking a seat next to her. Jack was silent, listening respectfully until she asked her question. An even bigger smile came to his face. "Yeah." He brought up one leg, holding it close to his chest. "Back home, I was Jack Frost. My job was to make things were nice and cold, and to make sure that children were having fun."

Some good his job was.

"Nice and cold?" Eponine repeated Jack's words, quite unable to understand how anything could be nice and cold at the same time. It was one or the other. The weather could not be both.
She shook her head.

"You had a stupid job then, Sir. To make things cold - I hate it when it is cold, you know? So often, it was freezing in Paris - there was snow everywhere and my Pa would send me out for hours and hours with no shoes nor stockings and no coat, and just an old chemise and a rag of a skirt to warm me. God, how I hate the winter. It is so for the rich children to have fun, but do you not think of women like me, and old men dying from the cold? Do you not think your job is cruel?"

She was quite clearly fed up, though her temper wasn't all to do with Jack. But he was proving to be a good scapegoat to blame her past troubles on.

"Were you lying that that is your job? How can it be your job? Magic?"

"I guess he's still not talking." Clementine says quietly, her voice is much less sceptical than it was the last time they met.

After the things she'd seen and witnessed over the past few months the idea of a man in the moon seemed tame by comparison. "You shouldn't put yourself down," which is maybe funny for her to say, since she spent quite a bit of time after waking up again doing that to herself -- but others had picked her up when she needed it. "none of it's your fault."

There was a familiar voice. Jack turned, smiling at Clementine and giving her a little nod. "Nope. He's not."

A little part of Jack was agreeing with what she said. This wasn't his fault, or any of the Tribute's faults. If you really, really thought hard about it, it wasn't the citizen's fault either. They had all been brainwashed to enjoy this kind of entertainment, almost forced to. Jack would have to fix millions and millions of people...which wasn't possible. There was no way.

What kind of a Guardian was he?

"I still have to figure out how to make things better." Jack shook his head, looking back up to the stars. "There has to be something we all can do together, where we could have a day where nothing else matters. No Games, no training on how to kill people..."

He looked down. "Could we do that?"

"I'm sorry, I know it would make you feel better if he did."

Clementine comes closer to Jack slowly. "Of course we could. Just because this place is like it is... and we'll have to -- I mean we can still have fun if you want to. No one makes us train, though it's smart to, you can take a day off if you want. I've done plenty of fun things here."

Letting a kid give him some fun advice was different, but to be honest, it was a welcome change.

Jack turned to Clementine, and gave her a smile. If someone was having fun around here, that meant others were too, right? Or at least, they were trying to. Maybe he was being a little too hard on himself, or he just wasn't...thinking right. Then again, was anyone here?

"Yeah? Where'd ya go?"

"There's an arcade, and there's this thing called laser tag too that's pretty fun. Elsa said there's an ice rink as well but I've not been there yet. Oh, and I had a sleepover with some friends after I came out of the arena! That was a great night." Clementine tells him all this with growing enthusiasm, especially when she ends on the note of the sleepover. "We built a blanket fort and had pillow fights."

A yawn issued from one of the nearby bushes and a tangle of sticks and blond hair poked out of the leaves looking puzzled and sleepy.

"Pointy?" She wondered confused "Someone getting stabbed?" Apparently she'd misheard him while napping in the bushes.

Jack looked over to the puzzled figure, raising an eyebrow at her little statement. He was about to answer 'no', when an idea came to mind. Maybe he should stop sulking about things, and take his own advice: have a little fun.

"Yeah!" Jack nodded furiously, pointing down to the city streets below. "Can you see it?"

A look of excitement flashed across her rough features and she burst from the bushes scrambling over to the railing to try and get a better look.

"I can't see it!" she complained squinting at the ground and getting a profound sense of vertigo. "Where is it?" With how high up they were she was amazed he could see anyone really. They all just looked like ants to her.

She was excited about this?

Someone being excited should be a bad thing rather than good. But at the same time, this was kind of fun, wasn't it? He almost thought about pushing her off...until he remembered he had no staff. And he couldn't fly. So that kind of took that off of the list.

"It's down really far. You have to squint to see it." In the corner of his eye, Jack could see... was that a fountain? And a cup?

That would do, at least.

He carefully started to make his way over. "See it yet?"

She really was the perfect mark for a prank like this. She continued leaning on the railing as far as she could squinting.

"I still can't see em. Just a bunch of people coming in and out of the building. And some of those metal wagons on the road." The idea of a wagon without anyone to drag it was still baffling to Ruffnut.

"What do they look like? Where am I looking?" her bottom stuck out as she planted her feet against the railing and craned her neck.

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when the moon doesn't tell you something... ( OPEN! )

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