thecapitol | Let's celebrate life!

Entry tags:

Let's celebrate life!

Who| Everyone who wants to mourn Orc, or wants free food
What| A mingle log, where Holly is holding a memorial party on the roof to celebrate Orc's life
Where| The roof
When| A couple of days before the arena
Warnings/Notes| N/A unless you count people being sad about death

Orc's death really shook Holly up. There's nothing she can do about it, nor does she have the courage to speak out about it. But she doesn't have it in her to just pretend it never happened. She was quite fond of Orc, he deserves to be remembered and people deserve to have a place they can do so, regardless of whether or not he was a rebel.

So, a couple of days prior, she starts posting fliers and handing them out to anyone who will take one. They're sparkly, colorful and visually loud just like the Capitol. But their intent is clear; on the roof, she's holding a memorial party for Orc for anyone and everyone to come and celebrate his life.

The memorial is held in the evening, and when the time comes, there is a buffet table with various foods, snacks and drinks, all supplied by Holly herself, and Jolie who helped a little as well. The area is cleared around Eponine's secret place, where a little shrine is set up with a picture of Orc surrounded by candles and other mementos relating to the boy. There's also a podium, where anyone is free to say a few words for him if they so choose.

It's the closest to a funeral that she can get, because she knows she'll never have permission to hold a real one.

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Eponine is, of course , there, feeling horribly guilty. She's guilty over Orc's death, over the fact that he had died to save her because he loved her so much, because for ages and ages, she's not loved him in return. It's horrible, fighting that knowledge, and that, more than anything, makes her cry.

She sits by her 'secret place', which isn't really secret, but a small flowerbed set around an unusually shaped black rock. She 's been using the rock to hide things: she had stashed the hairbrush Sigma had given her here so her dad couldn't sell it or break it. Now, a porcupine t-shirt takes pride of place.

She sits on the floor, with her arms about her poodle, Bisoux. Her hair is pulled carefully back, so it can't catch in her sticky, still oozing wound, which has been creamed and padded out with a foam pad and covered over with a plastic stuff held in place with medical tape. It's uncomfortable , but the best she can do to prevent infection. It means she can't speak properly, though. Her words are muffled by the tape that fixes over the left side of her lips.

She sits, trying not to draw attention to herself, here because she has to be.

Jolie didn't know Orc personally, she hadn't spent much time in Holly's district or gotten to know her tributes particularly well. Yet, her involvement in the jailbreak makes her feel the strangest amount of guilt for someone she couldn't even pretend to know. At least a small part of being here was to support Holly. It was hard enough having her tributes dragged off to jail, she doesn't want to remember the pain of knowing they're gone for good. She's been in the business long enough that the death of a tribute isn't the strangest thing, but the strangeness of the circumstances makes it all the more miserable.

Feeling the appropriate amount of awkward given that she doesn't know much about the guy they're paying respects to, she's waffling around the outskirts of the gathering with a drink in her hand. She's looking pensively at nothing in particular, but when someone approaches she'll offer them a soft smile and depending on how well she knows them, she'll drape on them.

Every person, however, will be asked one simple question. "How're you holding up?"

Despite being dressed in a fine gown like any self respecting Capitolite, when Jolie spies Eponine she wastes no time sinking to the floor alongside her with a soft, slightly unladylike grunt. She's happy to stay silent until Eponine makes it clear whether she even wants her there, but she'll raise a careful hand to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze and offers her a small smile.

Cyrus vaguely remembers Orc. Granted, it's a little less vaguely than he remembers most Tributes; he's seen the footage of his execution, and recently. He'd spent a good ten minutes afterward with his face buried in his hands, playing it over and over in his head, trying to think of any way to explain this to the public that wasn't going to light another damned spark under the rebellious sensibilities of the greater idiots among the Tributes.

He wishes, wholeheartedly, that it hadn't happened. He wishes their jailbreak, ill-conceived and clumsily executed as it was, could have gone off without a death. He wishes as sincerely as any Tribute that Orc were alive, and his death not a potential rebel weapon for which the Capitol will now have to scramble.

Cyrus attends the memorial because he wishes that Orc's death hadn't happened, and whatever his own thoughts on the matter may be, he's determined to make that as public as he possibly can. He comes dressed soberly; even the sparkle of the small jewels in his cuff links seems subdued. He'd asked his own stylist for something appropriate for mourning, and been given an ensemble of black and dark, dark red.

He stands near to the shrine with a drink in one hand and the other shoved into his pocket, looking at the mementos arranged around the photograph with a pensive frown. He hangs back from approaching people in conversation; he didn't come here to be social, and he doesn't think the attempt would be appreciated. But for those who approach the shrine, he will offer a brief touch of his hand to their arm or their shoulder, and a hushed murmur of, "My condolences. This shouldn't have happened."

Sabriel's stylist tended to dress her in black even when she wasn't attending a memorial service. Still, they'd picked out something relatively subdued, the only skull present in the form of a carved bone decoration on her choker.

She gave Cyrus a polite nod. She knew the act she had to put on- the one of an ominous necromancer- and had no interest in making him comfortable. Still, he was high ranking enough that threatening him would be stupid. So she stuffed down her anger and put her best manners on display.

"It shouldn't have," Sabriel echoed, "But unfortunately, everyone and everything has a time to die. I suppose that was his."

Eponine smiles ruefully back. She's not on the verge of tears any more, which can only be a good thing. But she's far from happy. She's exhausted.

"Thank you for coming, Miss."

She's quiet for a minute, just looking at the rock with Orc's picture balanced on it, whilst she hugs her dog's neck. "He would'a hated this, you know? He hated parties. Charles..."

Eponine, in turn, vaguely knows Cyrus' face, though she can't name him, or say what he does. What she does know is that he isn't a Tribute. And as far as she's concerned, he has absolutely no right to be stood at Orc's memorial in her special place after what had happened to the poor lad.

For a while, she merely watches Cyrus from her seat on the floor next to the rock, saying nothing. But when it becomes apparent that the man isn't going to move, she gets up, pulling the hood of her 'Porcupine' jumper up over her head in an attempt to cover her scars a little bit.

"Who are you, Sir? Did you know Charles? You are not a Tribute, are you?" She asks accusingly.

Cyrus looked at Sabriel with mild surprise under his veneer of sympathy. That was both more morbid than he had expected, and less angry. (...Was that a skull? Tasteful.)

He sighed. "I suppose," he said. "I only wish the circumstances had been different." He looked back at the photograph and shook his head. "Within the week, his memory will be a symbol. A tool. Tragic."

"Unfortunate," Sabriel agreed. Control control control. Privately, Sabriel could think of worse fates than martyrdom.

Be a reed, not an oak Sabriel reminded herself before speaking again, "You fear his death will add fuel to the fire? Or a means to snuff it out?"

Cyrus startles, just a little. With his concentration divided between the shrine and the people immediately surrounding him, he hadn't thought to look for the girl on the floor.

It's difficult not to startle again, when he gets half a look at her face. Here's a girl who looks like she got on the Capitol's wrong side and decided to buy property there. She's familiar, in a way that makes Cyrus think he must have seen her recently; but was it on some glittery evening talk show, or in surveillance footage?

But Cyrus isn't here to judge. He's not out to police anyone's involvement here. And so he gives Eponine a kind half-smile, tinged at the edges with sympathy and regret. As though he understands her anger, and so is choosing not to mirror it.

"No, I'm not a Tribute," he says. "And I'm afraid I didn't know Charles, either - at least, not personally." He puts out a hand to her to shake, a little hesitantly. "My name is Cyrus Reagan. I work for President Snow. And believe me-- if I could have prevented this, I would have. I'm here to mourn Charles, just as you are."

Edited (word choice!) 2014-08-18 05:01 (UTC)

Well. It looks like there is someone he knows here. Cyrus catches Jolie's eye as he approaches, lifting his glass briefly in greeting as he leaves his vigil by the shrine and makes his way carefully through the milling crowd to her.

The question that comes as he moves up beside her throws him, however. He actually has to take a second, to pull himself out of the mindset of the memorial and process it - to take stock of how he's actually feeling, and how much he's willing to say about how he's actually feeling. He blinks at her just a second too long to be natural.

"...Oh, fine," he says after a moment, with a swift, humorless smile. He steps more decisively into place next to her, out of the path of people passing. "Busy week. I'm sure you can imagine."

"President Snow?" Eponine repeats. She folds her arms - the anger is growing inside her, but she can't let herself explode, not if it's going to land her in prison with more brands and torture and goodness knows what else, especially when Eva has worked so hard to get them both released.

But rage comes - this man who works for the man who had Orc executed, who has damaged both her own face, and Eva's beyond repair, who has slapped the heavy metal cuffs on both of her wrists - he comes here and says he is to mourn Orc?

"I think you ought to get out of here now, Sir." It's not really a request.

Clara never got the chance to get to know Orc very well. She knew he was a teenager and seemed incapable of cleaning up after himself in that way that most teenage boys are (and constantly found herself picking up after him so the Avoxes wouldn't have to) and that he had a girlfriend. Other than that, he's kind of been a mystery to her, but she always figured she'd have a chance to get to know him.

Of course, it turns out that she was wrong. Sure she knew early on that sometimes the Capitol decided against bringing certain people back, but this...this was nothing like that. He had died outside of the Arena and apparently there's no way to come back from that (or there's no way to come back from that that the Capitol will allow). While she never knew him well in life, that doesn't change the fact that they lived together for a time and she felt like she owed it to him to at least come by the memorial service.

She's perched somewhere on the roof, away from the edge, and keeps staring at the shrine, which is probably how someone on will find her if they want to talk to her.

Clara isn't sure why she's crying so much over someone she barely knew. Maybe it's the lost potential that comes with the loss of any young life. Maybe it's because D10 is suddenly so much cleaner than it usually is and that just feels so wrong. Either way, Clara's eyes are bright red when she looks up at the now draped over her Jolie, one hand holding a crumpled tissue that is close to falling apart on her simple black knee-length dress.

"As well as anyone is, I guess." A sad, teary laugh bubbles out of her. "I didn't even know him that well."

Shaggy stays by the buffet table, keeping up a stream of steady eating, although anyone who's spent much time around him where there's food around will notice that he's devouring the refreshments at a more subdued pace than is his normal wont. His shoulders are slumped. He keeps thinking of how he'd promised the rock man to solve the mystery of the scary Penny lady's death and now the rock man's dead too.

As it just so happens, Eridan decided to take part in this little social gathering. Funerals aren't really a thing on Alternia, they'd be a waste of time and resources for how many trolls die daily, much easier to let the local fauna devour the corpses anyway. Sure keeps the shadowdroppers numbers down, at least. He saw the fliers, but decided to come for the food, he didn't know Orc after all, and what better way to spend his time than to see a bunch of humans be miserable over something as pathetic as death? Exactly.

He has priorities, alright?

So when he feels a hand on his shoulder, he's jerking it away, before turning to see none other than Cyrus. His expression quickly shifts from something near disgusted from being touched, to something a bit more smug. Probably the closest expression he has to 'friendly'.

"I don't need your condolences, nor do I care if this should or shouldn't hawe happened," he offers plainly, "I really don't get the point of this, anyway."

He takes a sip from his drink as he stares at Cyrus.

"So, what're you here for? Tryin' to play up some sympathetic ruse for the tributes? I must say, you are dedicated."

Cyrus shakes his head. "Please," he says. "Starting tomorrow it'll be my responsibility to decide how best to spin this - how to bring up his name in press conferences, how to prevent some imitator doing something just as senseless in his memory." The bitterness in his voice is convincing, though who it's directed at isn't specified - it might be either the unfeeling system that would saddle him with such a cruel responsibility, or the unexpected workload. Either way: it is genuine. "Tonight, I'm only here to mourn, with the rest of you."

He takes a pensive sip of his drink, and then adds, "Did you know him?"

Cyrus gives Jolie the strangest feelings. The most conflicting feelings a person can have, really. The overwhelming sense of oh god he's hot followed by the down spiral of oh god he's talking. She's a pretty honest person, generally, but you don't exactly throw shade at a member of Snow's cabinet. The last time she got cocky about insulting politicians she got fired, whoops. Now that she's assisting tributes in rebellion, she feels like the punishment may be more severe.

She asks the question purely out of good manners, reading his expression as he hesitates without taking to much consideration in it. She doesn't have the attachment to Orc to be offended by it, but she has the opportunity to sell herself as a regular and well-behaved citizen.

"We can always trade jobs." She offers with a small smirk. "I'll handle the people, you can hand-stitch sequins onto skimpy outfits while handing out hankies." With ease, she'll place a hand on his shoulder to bridge a the gap between being cold and being casual. Friends. Yay. "Didn't think I'd see you here, actually."

Damn. That had been the wrong thing to say. To his credit, Cyrus took half a step back - not conceding, not quite, but trying to mollify.

"Look," he said, putting up a hand in a way he hoped was placating. "I'm not here for President Snow. He didn't send me. He doesn't even know I'm here." Wouldn't care overmuch, either, but that was irrelevant. "I'm here for Orc. ...for Charles. I'm here because I wish this hadn't happened."

He spoke slowly, quietly, meeting her eyes (and managing, for the most part, not to meet her brand instead). If she was insistent, he'd simply have to leave before he intended to; but he rather hoped he could avoid that.

It doesn't surprise Jolie too much, honestly. Hearing about it had made her shed a few tears, if only because it's making her realise how bleak this feels. She hasn't really had the chance to celebrate any successes with how badly things had gone, but she's a good actor. She puts on her face every day, now is no exception.

Instantly she remembers how Clara comforted her when she'd needed it, so she doesn't waste time winding her arms a little tighter around her and pulling her in for a hug. She lets her head rest on top of Clara's, rubbing her hand on her back at an easy pace.

"Doesn't make it any less sad." She muses. "Kinda get used to people coming back around here, after all." It's sad to say, but she wants Clara to know she has a right to feel the way she does.

Hatred burned in Eponine's eyes.

"I don't believe you. That he don't know you're here. What, is he laughing at us, now that my Charles is dead? Is that why he wants you here, so you can use that magic thing to watch us and laugh at us?" She meant a camera, but in her rage, which she was still trying to keep cool, she had forgotten the word.

She advanced on Cyrus, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"I bet he laughed when he saw us going to the jail. I bet he laughed when they made me watch my Charles die. I bet he laughed when they held the irons to my face to leave their mark. Though perhaps it is that it were you who sat forward and watched then?' Eponine snorted an unhappy laugh, and pulled her hood down. "I see you looking. You can look properly if you want. Though if you work for President Snow, then you should know well what it is."

"It's the least I could do. Poor Holly is all worked up over it, too." She casts the escort a concerned look, but she's more focused on Eponine at the moment. Far more worried, too. She almost wants to offer to take her back to the couch in D8 and let her sleep, but she refrains for the moment.

She smiles a wry smile at the comment, thinking on how it ties into this being the least she could do. "Sometimes it isn't about what they'd like, I think. Some people gotta show that they care and they gotta do that by commiserating with other people who care." She gives her shoulders a small shrug. "Wouldn't feel right if they let him leave without saying goodbye the only way they know how."

"Let him leave?" Eponine looks back at Jolie, quite suddenly distressed.
"Miss, he didn't leave. He didn't want to die. It were... it were supposed to be me, not him. I didn't think I'd ever come back. He weren't even supposed to be there." She sounds a little bit blank.

"But he loved me too much to let me go by myself."

And you're not helping, Cyrus prevents himself from saying.

"I could say the same for you, Mr. Ampora," he says mildly instead. "In fact, if I had an ulterior motive, I think my own dedication to it couldn't possibly compare with your dedication to ferreting it out." A smile - because of course he doesn't have one. That would be terrible.

"I'm here to mourn." He lifts his drink a little in the direction of the shrine, at Orc's face and his small collection of mementos. "That's the point of this. To remember our friend Orc as he was in life, in the company of those who knew him." With a glance at Eridan-- "...I'm assuming you didn't know him."

"When I say him, I mean his moment. Y'know." She affirms, not wanting to be misunderstood. "When people die there's kind of a gap between when it happens and the point where you have to move on and you have to fill it with something. Everyone freaks out because they remember life is meant to be fleeting." Especially since, with the never-ending quell, it's like people forget there are ways to die forever outside the arenas.

The hand on one of Eponine's shoulders weaves around to the other so she can lean her closer, crossing her other arm in front of her for a side hug. "Nobody knew what was gonna happen. I'm betting he just knew he had to take care of you, can't say he didn't do that much. Now it's up to you to make the most of what he did for you."

Edited 2014-08-18 14:23 (UTC)

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Let's celebrate life!

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