I could feel myself growing colder

[gluteus]

Who| Maximus and OPEN
What| Maximus is a ball of fury and vengeance
Where| Around the tribute center, mostly in the training center
When| During and after the mini-arena
Warnings/Notes| rage, lots of rage

His metal leg clicked under him, whining with the strain. His tunic was folded down his waist, his chest bare, slick with sweat as he thrust his sword hard into the target, piercing its chest and coming out the other side. He'd been at this for hours - no, for days, in and out of the training center with barely a pause. His muscles were taut under his tanned skin, even more well defined than they'd been when he'd won his arena. He had, after all, been training nearly constantly since District 3 was destroyed.

For the most part, he kept to himself. He was still rooming with Wyatt, but they spent less and less time together, so instead when he wasn't in the training center he was either in the District 3 suites, or in the common room, where he mostly (these days) took his meals alone.

Whenever he saw another member of the District 3 suites, he invited them (or perhaps threatened them) to join him for training. He was absolutely determined to be in top form, and anyone he knew or had any regard for he was determined to see them in it too.

He was quieter, sterner, the easy smiles that had come when he'd regularly been seen with Wyatt had now completely disappeared.

He was gearing himself up for blood, and one way or another, he was going to get some.

Comments

during the mini arena!

[gladiayyygirl]

It now stood a standard that Gannicus rose late and descended in to the training centre long after the morning was over. It was the self-inflicted ever-present hangover that delayed his appearances; he spent his mornings asleep and grumpy, dealing with whatever potent cocktails the bartenders of the Capitol thought it was hilarious to ply him with the previous night.
When he finally appeared in the training centre - each time pulling off whatever fresh shirt his stylists have attempted to shoehorn him in to that day - he looked decidedly worse for wear. Charmingly shabby, hair in disarray; certainly far removed from the lean, athletic gladiator he should be.

He had seen Maximus in the training center, of course, but had fallen short of approaching him. It was a point of pride - purely professional, not personal in the least - that had kept him aloof and minding his own business. Today, however, curiosity finally gets the better of Gannicus.

With a short sword hefted in each hand he paused in the middle of his own training and wandered with too-casual idleness to watch the other man in his practice. After a long moment of critical study he grins broadly, interrupting Maximus's moves with an easy laugh.

"You fight well, against wooden men."

[the_marshal]

It had been a long time building. Or, looking at more honestly, a long time coming apart.

Wyatt couldn’t point to a defining moment, could think of nothing said or done that had been the start, but he knew it had been sometime after his victory. Somewhere around the opening of the new arena, something had changed.

It had started slowly - restlessness in the night, Max pulling away in his sleep – with little worries easily soothed, but it had built steadily.
Worsened as time had gone on. It crept into every part of their lives, a quiet tension, a distance that Wyatt tried desperately to cross… only to find the way blocked at every turn.

Jokes met with vague nods, smiles with strained twitches, touches with distant responses.

He knew part of it was on the Capitol - he’d certainly seen a dramatic increase in their troubles after the destruction of Three - but he knew just as well that part of it was him. He knew he wasn’t what Max wanted him to be. What Max needed him to be.

He wasn’t a soldier, ready to follow orders. He wasn’t a gladiator, unblinking in the face of blood and death.

He wasn’t a wife, dutifully waving goodbye.

He tried to make up for it, dared to hope they might be able to overcome his shortcomings, but it only got worse. The distance only widened, Max pulling away more and more until they only time they saw each other was when the man forced himself into Wyatt’s bed at night for a few strained hours of them lying like slabs next to each other. All but strangers, sharing the same space.

Wyatt was little more than a whore, and a bad one at that.

He was little more than a shadow, slipping into the training center because he knew that was where he could find the man he still loved against everything. Slipping in, watching him for several long minutes, knowing it should have been him there with him—

And knowing he couldn’t.

Turning, he left. Left the training center, the Tower.

Left Max to those who could actually help him.

[earthborn]

Shepard is not a woman new to the art of war. When she was a child, the ancient nightmares of the human race came true- aliens, strange and terrible, equipped beyond the ken of human engineering, descending from the sky in a conquering army. When she was twenty-seven, the same thing happened again, but this time she was the alien. And then again, more recently, but it wasn't just humanity's fears that came true.

Now, here, it's her turn to be the invader, a more subtle alien this time. Maximus is a man of harder purpose, his duty not so subtle but no less arduous. She sees the hitch in his stride where the metal leg takes his weight. It's slight, but she notices, knows that pain. She lost more than a limb over Alchera...

District 3 hit him hard, apparently. Maybe it was the breadth of destruction, or the familiarity of it. Maybe it was the ease with which it had happened, or the effect on his tributes. Maybe-- no, Shepard can definitely sympathize with the idea of a man with an ache that won't leave and a spirit that cannot quite be broken. And a mission, on the horizon.

He honed his body, she maintained her trim, they had not spoken. So, she slid, without a word, into the place across from him and ate her own midday meal in silence. And again the next day, when she set in front of him a bottle of water, gleaming cool and clear with condensation. A peace offering, for their mutual silence, if a poor one.

"You can't actually outrun the truth, you know. No matter how hard you work at it," She didn't think he'd want anything stronger, though it might have helped, "It's easy for me to forget that not everyone here knows what to expect from this. Now that's my mistake. Will you talk with me about it?"

[gardienne]

"Sir?" Eponine approached him quietly. She was back to her usual 'Parisian' look after the last arena, scrawny all over again. She leaned up against the practise mats stacked neatly against the wall.

"I... I think I need to fight. Properly. But I don't know how. I tire of dying." She hesitated, before moving a little bit closer.

"I know... what - everything - I've done. I know you don't like me. But I don't know where else to go."

And, she wanted to add that she was scared. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't make herself say it out loud. She didn't want to admit that particular weakness to Max, especially not when, as likely as not, he was going to dismiss her straight off and tell her to get lost. She crossed her arms over her waist and prepared to go as quietly as she came when he told her no.