Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down

[dividedgirlofmine]

Who| Susannah Dean and Open
What| Panem's Eddie is gone and losing him doesn't get easier the second time around.
Where| Roof of the Tribute Center, later District Three suite
When| Just after Eddie's announcement
Warnings/Notes| Two prompts here, pick which one works best for your characters. There might end up being some DT spoilers.

Roof:

She doesn't quite know why she goes straight to the rooftop garden after she sees those hands grab Eddie. Maybe it's just that she'll feel less trapped in the open air. It's an illusion, of course. She's no more free on the roof than she was in the building.

If only she had a gun. If only she knew where those hands had taken him.

She parks her chair in the shade of an arbor, covers her face with her hands, and starts to cry.

D3:

Eventually, she goes back into the Tribute center. But instead of riding the elevator to her own floor, she rides past it, to Eddie's. Eddie's old floor. He won't be there. He'll never be there again.

She's been here before, of course, any number of time. Usually she brings pie or cookies down with her as a peace offering for taking up so much of their mentor's time. But it's just her now, looking lost by the elevator, wondering what she can even say to them.

Comments

Roof

[revvinguptheharley]

As she cries a figure slinks up behind her nearly silent. Perhaps she won't notice between her sobs.

She may notice however a box of tissues has appeared hovering near her head, held by four shiny painted black nails with red diamonds.

Harley is looming behind her wearing her doctors coat, a black skirt and glittery black blouse.

She is also holding a large bottle of wine in her free hand.

She is uncharacteristically quiet and doesn't crack a smile.

Re: Roof

[dividedgirlofmine]

Susannah notices being snuck up on. She's enough of a gunslinger for that. She uncovers drops the hands from her face to stare up at the interloper and when she notices that it's Harley she scowls. "Hoping to catch me on the rebound?" she spits out, bitterly.

She takes the tissues anyway.

Re: Roof

[revvinguptheharley]

"Better then letting you hit the ground." She mumbled in a soft low voice that is so startling unlike her it's almost unsettling. She's somber and respectful, humbled in her approach.

Who is this and what did she do with Harley Quinn.

Re: Roof

[dividedgirlofmine]

Susannah doesn't know and she doesn't trust it. "I've got other people to catch me. People I can actually trust. I'm not going to be your pet project again, Harley Quinn."

Re: Roof

[revvinguptheharley]

"Yeah well I notice you're not looking for any of them right now." She rolled her eyes in a brief moment of levity.

"I just happened to be up here wishing I was someone else, and here comes someone who is the perfect example of why." She brought the bottle other mouth and bit and tugged at the cork.

D3

[retrieverchef]

She's not the only one faltering just inside the District 3 suite. Eliot finds himself breathing heavily. This is the first time he's been sent to this floor since they'd taken his voice. Being assigned to Tribute Tower has been horrible, knowing he's there as a reminder that they're not safe even out of the Arena, but this seems even crueler.

Re: D3

[dividedgirlofmine]

Susannah frowns. She recognizes this man in an Avox's uniform. He's someone she's met in passing, at least, even if he's not anyone she's had a conversation with. It takes half a minute to place him. Then it comes to her. He's one of the mini-arena's victors.

"Eliot Spencer?"

Re: D3

[retrieverchef]

He looks up, eyes wide. He can only hope no one's actually listening to any of the cameras right now. He's not likely to be the only one who will get in trouble for this. He nods barely perceptibly, his eyes narrowing slightly in warning.

Re: D3

[dividedgirlofmine]

Right. Of course. You weren't supposed to treat the avoxes as people. If the tributes were glorified slaves, then the avoxes were their brothers and sisters in bondage, without even those golden metaphorical shackles.

This had been his District, hadn't it? She wonders if that's what'll happen to Eddie, if he'll have his tongue cut out, if he'll be stuck as a nothing no-person like poor Eliot Spencer.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, though she's fairly sure she had nothing to do with what caused them to do this to him.

D3

[splendid_roman]

Ian hadn't been doing much, aside from hanging around the District 3 suite trying to work out if it was possible to do anything useful without further retribution and not coming up with any answers. He saw Susannah enter, expected her to come into the suite properly, and when she didn't he went over to her.

He didn't really know what to say to her either - there weren't any words that were going to make it all better. But he did touch her arm and say, "You're welcome here, any time."

Re: D3

[dividedgirlofmine]

"Thank you, Ian," she says, looking up at him. "That means a lot to me."

She hesitates for a moment, not sure what else to say to him, and then the words, "I'm proud of him," come tumbling out and it's true, it really is, if Eddie's already dead, his body in the concrete of some new building project, then at least he died trying to do something, however small.

Re: D3

[splendid_roman]

He gave her a small smile, glad he could be of some comfort at least. "He was brave to do what he did." Not that Ian had believed what Penny said about the destruction of District 3, but he was glad to hear the truth confirmed by Eddie, who he trusted. "I wish..." He sighed, rather than finish that sentence.

Re: D3

[dividedgirlofmine]

"Eddie was always braver than he thought he was," she agrees. That held true over any number of worlds. She doesn't ask what he wishes. He must have his own reasons for not finishing that sentence.

roof

[ecphrasis]

Molly has spent quite a bit of time on the roof since she had died in the arena. It has been traumatic, to say the least, but she's been dealing with it as best she can. Each day makes it a little easier to bear, though she still wakes up at night, images of her own death burning behind her eyes. She didn't even have to imagine it--she had seen highlights of it on the television shortly after she'd returned to her room. That had been a hard day.

When she gets up to the roof, she starts to wander and it isn't long before she hears the familiar sounds of someone crying. Concern outweighs wariness, and she slowly follows the sound until she sees a familiar form hunched over in a chair.

"Susannah?"

Re: roof

[dividedgirlofmine]

Susannah rubs her eyes. Mindy and Harley were already gone--and good riddance, she thought, when it came to Harley--but Susannah had stayed out on the roof and eventually, without her anger at Harley to distract her, the weeping had come back. She could imagine so many fates for Eddie, each worse than the last.

She looks up at the person who's addressing her this time. "Molly?"

[ecphrasis]

Molly's instinct to comfort instantly kicks in, and she moves closer to Susannah until she's standing just beside her. She might normally be embarrassed to stumble upon someone crying like this, but her time in this world has changed her. She knows that the tributes have to stick together as much as they can. "Are you alright? What's happened?"

[dividedgirlofmine]

"Didn't you see?" Maybe she hadn't. She knew some people shoved their communicators in drawers, not trusting themselves to keep their tempers when answering them. "Eddie got taken away. Eddie Dean, the District Three mentor, he was my man, he said the Capitol was lying about the gangs destroying Three so he got taken away."

Roof

[polyturtle]

Susannah wasn't the only one on the rooftop, or on their way to it. Seeing everything happen, seeing District 3 just be destroyed like that. Seeing those people and how they reacted. Knowing that truth and knowing how once more, the Tributes would be blamed.

Were they really that powerless? If that was the case, what other means could he possibly use to--

His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of crying. His head turned to see the source, and soon enough he found his feet briskly walking towards her.

"Susannah."

Re: Roof

[dividedgirlofmine]

"Donatello Dali!"

Susannah had decided she wasn't going to leave the roof until she'd cried herself dry. Given how even now, more than an hour after Eddie's announcement, tears still had the tendency to bubble up from her and spill out, she figured she'd be up here a while.

She looks up at him. "He's gone," she says. "They took him."

Re: Roof

[polyturtle]

"I know."

Everyone knew. It was hard not to have seen what happened. And even if Don didn't fully understand how important Eddie had been to Susannah, the point was that he was important to her period.

"Susannah, I'm so sorry..."

Re: Roof

[dividedgirlofmine]

"I know," she whispers. "Lord, Donnie, I don't know what's worse. Watching him die or him getting snatched away like that. Do you think that Penny woman's done with him? Why haven't I tried to storm her office? Why am I up here sobbing and not trying to rescue him?"

Except she doesn't know where they have him. Penny's office is only a guess.

D3

[confidentially]

Jessica is over crying. She feels like she's done nothing but cry for days and days, or maybe even weeks and she's done with it. She has no energy left to spend, nothing left to give at all. And she's exhausted. All she wants to do is curl up and sleep for the next century in a half. But she can't even do that right. Instead, her head keeps spinning, cycling through a thousand morbid and terrifying thoughts and keeping her from truly settling down. So instead she paces the suite, around and around, pausing every so often to fall to the floor and tearlessly sob.

She's in the middle of an episode of this behavior when she spots Susannah enter from the elevators. From her spot on the floor between some chairs, she looks up at the woman. Her expression is difficult, a mix of conflicting emotions. The most prevalent one is clearly grief. "Susannah?"

She only really knows Susannah from Eddie, but that little bit of knowledge is enough to clue Jess into why the other woman is here. She's not about to raise a fuss or kick her out or anything. After all, misery loves company.

[dividedgirlofmine]

Susannah parks her chair, then slips down from it, crawling on her stumps (the arena isn't over, they haven't returned her prosthetics) over to where Jessica is sitting.

"Jessica Wakefield." She recognizes her, for all that they've never talked. "I wish we could have been met in a better way."

[confidentially]

"Yeah. Same." She pushes her long blonde hair out of her face, watching as Susannah navigates her way toward her. Quite suddenly, her own grief seems to need a back seat. She's had a bit of time to cry for her family. For Susannah, the loss of Eddie must be so much heavier, so much fresher. "It's good you came here. He'd be super glad to know that you came."

[dividedgirlofmine]

"I'd like to think so," says Susannah. She arranges her skirt over the leg-stumps, obscuring them. "Did you know him well before you were reaped? Or at all, I suppose. Most of the districts seem fairly populous."