thecapitol | some fool tries to challenge the throne (semi-open)

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some fool tries to challenge the throne (semi-open)

Who| Buddy Glass and anyone presently incarcerated.
What| Touring the prisoners to make sure everything's on the up and up and none of that nasty torture business is going down anymore. Even if it actually is.
Where| Central holding where ever that might be.
When| Idk guys. Anytime post-attempted jailbreaks through to the day before the Arena.
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of past torture/mutilation, gore, possible swearing, general unpleasantness.

It was roughly half past some utterly desolate, irredeemable hour in the afternoon when Buddy Glass felt that he was plucked, quite unceremoniously and with as little pomp and circumstances as was possible for a society built on such things, from the criminally disinteresting stark white of his cubical. He was dragged, metaphorically and not literally it should be noted, up several floors to have his security clearance verified once, twice, and a third time, before being hauled (again, metaphorically) back downward to the dank areas in which he usually was loath to tread. To clarify the point, edify for both his own benefit and that of the reader, Buddy was not afraid of the jail cells or their inhabitants. Even if he had a healthy regard for the emotional compartmentalization necessary to make a habit out of killing people on national TV every few weeks, they were harmless enough now. And besides, the same grunts who had so taciturnly scaled the building with him were still around and more impressively armed. There was no danger the jail could present to any of them, particularly not with the others ordered to stick around come hell or high water.

No, his avoidance of the jail was more practical than that. It was, after all, much easier to invent living conditions than it was to actively lie about them. There was something nasty about lying. Inventing presumably but not verifiably false information didn't carry the same weight. He sniffed, the air itself seemed to cling to them and it was noticeably darker here. It made him miss the sterile, white, windowlessness of his cubical. Not that there was sunlight down here either, but all the same. The only decent light came from a forcefield glowing eerily at the entrance to each individual cell.

Buddy was pulled from his distraction by the gruff voice of a member of his escort. The man was reading off information, he realize after slightly too lingering a moment of confusion. Names, dates of arrest, why each individual had been arrested (suspicion of murder, and aiding and abetting seemed to be the common theme, which he had known and so he felt a little annoyed to hear it repeated again), District association, and any personal notes the Peacekeeper in question felt like adding. He wondered vaguely how it felt to have the misfortunes of your life rattled off in front of you to someone else completely in earshot. It had to be difficult to hear, but at least Buddy would wager, not as difficult as it would be to tactfully respond to any questions from here on out. Ignorance had its benefits. To know anything effectively one had to learn as little as possible about it. He was almost entirely sure he'd read a proverb to that end somewhere.

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"You forgot 'bein' a tribute,'" the legless woman says, "on your list of crimes." She's one of the ones locked up three to a cell with forcefields between them. As a point of fact, she is a tribute, one from District Ten, and her name is Susannah Dean. She's one of the 'suspicion of murder' ones, with her two cell mates (District Nine Mentor Harleen Quinzel and District Four Tribute Roland Deschain) part of a failed jailbreak. Personal notes include that 'toilet privileges' have been removed for her and she's to be fed a liquid diet.

"Ooo yeah~ And let's not forget being criminally good looking." Chirped the bubbly blond from the other side of the cell behind an energy barrier. "If it isn't a crime to be this sexy it should be. We're so good at it!"

She was doing some stretches but they were slow and methodical because clearly it hurt for her. bruises and cuts were visible on her face as well as a fresh wound from her branding that was still healing. It was an ugly scab on her cheek that stood in striking defiance of her rosy pink complexion.

"That's a matter of opinion." Buddy replied, eying Harley in particular amongst the three. She was the most vocal, and seemed to be gunning for the attention and anyway, Susannah was difficult. He'd need to know as little about her as possible if he was going to continue this assignment.

"Frankly, Miss, you all look like hell." It was an honest statement at the very least, and he got the feeling the blond, Harley Quinn, knew it. He thought he caught her wincing during her last low lunge. "Now how about you calm down before you rip your stitches or something?"

"If you're askin' Harley to calm down," Susannah says, "you must've never met her before. I'm pretty sure her veins are full of fizzy cola, not blood." Her own brand is mostly healed, which was natural considering the murder suspects got theirs about a week before their putative rescuers.

"I suppose I was too specific. It shouldn't be 'Tribute' on our criminal record, should it? 'Not-Capitol,' maybe."

"Hmpf!" She stood up straighter and glanced to Susannah "can you believe this guy Susie? As if being beaten even more senseless then I already am wasn't enough. Now the Capitol is sending homely guys to say we 're ugly? No class! No class at all! I'll have you know I was runner up in the. "Ms. Arkham Asylum" beauty pageant"

He inhaled, held his breath for a moment, then exhaled. Paced a few steps, and then repeated the exercise. Seymour had memorized one of the vedas for this kind of occasion, but Buddy had never had his elder brother's skill with languages. He was proficient in a few, of course, but not to the level of fluency or, perhaps more enviably fluidity that Seymour managed. With Seymour it was poetry, with Buddy it was route memorization. Still, even that shallow brand of knowledge might have served him better here than simple breathing.

"Your complaints have been more eloquently voiced before without much reaction from my superiors." His voice held a certain energy to it that seemed contrary to his restrained tone. It nevertheless effectively communicated his pointed disinterest in the topic at hand. "Everyone in Panem is valued for the role they play in our society. You outsiders have a very limited understanding of our way of life if you can't see that. But anyhow, this is about you, not our people."

"Oh, I'm sure we've some value to you," Susannah says with a shrug. (She winces directly afterwards. There'd been a lot of bruising on that shoulder.) "People don't tend to own things that are completely worthless. But I think it'd be accurate to say that people who aren't Capitol aren't worth as much individually as people who are. I think the traditional ratio is five of us make three of you? Something like that? But I suppose I am complaining. Incarceration tends to put me in a rotten mood. What did you want to talk about, Mr...?"

In all comedy there is a time for silence, and while normally Harley can't find that time with both hands and a highlighter, she's silent enough to let the man introduce himself.

"Glass. I'm a writer, you don't have to fish around asking." It wasn't the complete truth, but it was close enough. Absently, Buddy adjusted his tie, as if it would provide some protection for his soul against the duplicity. As if the duplicity itself were the thing that mattered in such a context.

"And I'd actually like to talk about how you're all holding up, if that's alright. You can wax rhapsodical to me about the state of the government, too, but in fair warning, I'm lousy with really political writing. And, anyhow, I don't have the power to fix any of it for you." He sighed, the gesture drew itself from him wearily. At least that much had been true. "But I might be able to stir some sympathy for you all with an editorial or two."

Or he could turn it even more in the opposite direction. That was, after all, probably why he was there at all. "The people aren't too fond of you right now."

"No," Susannah says, "I suppose they wouldn't be. They think I'm a murderess--or at least a suspected one. They know I'm capable of killing. They've seen me do it in the arena. I didn't kill her, Mr Glass. I'm guilty of nothing beyond loving a wanted man."

Well, and being part of the rebellion, but she wasn't going to mention that.

"And more to the point...who cares?" Harley chirped up from her corner. She curled into a ball and began rolling around the room slowly, wincing with every roll.

"No one liked Penny did they? She was a creep even by my standards. Heck I was probably one of the only people who was nice to her and even I didn't like her that much. I mean sure some of that was because of her job but she fed on that fear. It was like a drug to her and she indulged as often as possible." Here she pouted her lips at Mr. Glass.

"Did you know she used to go to the park on her days off and poison the little critters?"

Mindy couldn't help but manage a small smile as she heard her offenses rattled off. Oh, but she had pissed them off the past few days, to the point she was threatened with avoxing when it came to her lack of speech. When she did speak, of course, they didn't like her answers, which were swimming with insinuations about their parentage and what they did with themselves when they were along. The beatings were enough to get them to simply make her regret everything she said, but at least they weren't trying to get her to sing. That was annoying. The only decent time was when those bastards left and she could spare some words with Sonja, who was right here with her.

Of course, barely being able to speak anyway helped. She let the guy talk: those fuckers LOVED to speak anyway. Really, it was all a blur, she could barely bother to care who was coming now. Was this another interrogation?

"What's the word?"

It wasn't another interrogation, and frankly, Buddy Glass hated to talk. He liked to write, to communicate, to see the way in which words could be used to influence and manipulate emotions. But talking? No. That had been scared out of him back in his days as a child radio wunderkind. The trouble with talking is that it left too much room for discussion.

He narrowed his eyes at Mindy. She was what, according to the file? Right around Franny's age, but lacking any of Franny's delicacy or innocence. She had the snobbish air of that Ginny girl whose older sister hadn't given him the time of day in prep school, as if she considered everyone in the world to be drips of varying degree and him a particularly big one indeed. Maybe he was a drip, maybe he was the biggest goddamn drip in the country, but she didn't have to be rude about it.

"The word is that girls your age should speak when they're spoken to. You seem to have a problem with that."

Oh. One of those.

"Why don't you let me worry about what the fuck girls my age say." Her voice was hoarse, but was not lacking in feeling. This was him putting his foot forward. She was showing him it was shooting himself in the foot.

"Ok, so we've established I don't talk to the people beating and torturing me. What are you here for?"

Pruna wasn't asleep, there was no point in sleeping when she just got woke up again, either by guards or by Sandy's whimpers as the other girl had nightmares. She claimed those reasons and refused to think of the other reasons why she couldn't sleep.

There was a forcefield between the little girl and the other member of the cell, who was also a little girl. Pruna wasn't branded but she was pretty beaten up. Breaking a suspected murderer out of jail seemed to be her crime.

At least she was actually guilty of that crime, unlike Sandy who Pruna refused to believe killed anyone nevermind Penny. More because of the other girls lack of skill rather than anything else.

The girl looked up at the words, her eyes are oddly blank. She was still holding onto the emptiness, if by a mere thread. She inevitably lost control of it whenever they tried to make her speak but in here she tried to keep it up, tried to be strong for Sandy.

She glared at the men now as they read off information about Sandy and her. She stiffened wondering if they were coming to hurt them, no one came to the cell if not to hurt them. She glanced at Sandy, wondering if the other girl was asleep.

Sandy visibly stiffened on the floor at Pruna's voice. Clearly she was awake but trying to pretend she was sleeping.

That probably wouldn't last long though. She'd been kicked hard for such tactics.

Of the two of them she was worse for wear with bandages wrapped around each finger, and on her face covering one if her eyes.the other eye was clamped shut.

Hard to imagine such a tiny thing could be suspected of murder.

He'd found it hard to believe when they told him there were children wrapped up in all this. Well, not hard to believe, exactly, but hard to accept. It would have been easier to think that they'd been manipulated, dragged in by some seditious-minded adult who knew full-well the appeal of innocence. But, knowing their records and knowing as well as anyone in Panem did what children were actually capable of, Buddy couldn't put aside the nagging feeling that these two might be just as culpable as anyone else. It made him sick if he really bothered to think about it. God, they were younger than Franny.

Tilting his head, he dropped down to his knees, ignoring the way the cool concrete of the floor worked a chill all the way through his grey flannel pants. "Come on, sweetheart," he intoned, taking trouble to keep his typically boisterous voice from echoing in the poor acoustics. The words were directed at Sandy, but he'd have considered a reaction from either girl a small victory. "Try not to cry now. Have you gotten your meals today? There's some sandwiches upstairs in the cafeteria. They're roast beef today. Dry as hell, but not bad with some mustard. If you're hungry I'll have somebody send one down."

Pruna glared at him harder. It seemed Sandy was awake and she hated him for waking her when she needed all the rest she could get, and scaring her when she didn't deserve to be any more frightened than she already was.

"We do no be crying." She hissed at him, she was missing some teeth and it made her voice lispy. There was a note on her file, saying she was likely to bite.

She glared at his offer, did he think they were going to fall to such obvious tricks? "And we do no be fucking stupid either."

Seeing as her foolproof disguise of pretending to be asleep had failed Sandy rolled onto her hands and knees quickly, scurrying as far away from buddy as the force field would allow and curling up into a ball to hide behind her knees.

Sandy had been one of the original suspects brought in on this murder, and from her reputation in the arena it seemed unlikely. In six arenas she'd never successfully killed a single human. The closest she'd ever come was distracting others while Pruna killed them.

After Pruna had broken Sandy out they'd been on the lamb for three whole days before Peacekeepers found them and dragged them back. It seemed the interrogations with Sandy had been doubled in frequency since then and she was not handling it well at all. Often she would scream at her interrogators about angels and spiders and horrible furry beast men. Nothing even close to what they were looking for.

She wasn't screaming now though. Just watching him with one wide eye that was bloodshot and ringed with dark bags. Who could expect a good nights sleep after all that?

"I never said you were stupid. I'm not thinking it either, sweetheart, just so we're clear." He looked from Sandy to Pruna and back again with the patient irritation of an elder sibling. Circumstances aside, this wasn't so different from dealing with Zooey when he got into one of his fits. Franny had always been softer around the edges, but then again, she was like that. Being the baby had only reinforced her that tendency within her.

"You can't tell me sandwiches don't sound good right about now. I'm not about to let you two outta here again, but that doesn't mean we can't work something out to make it easier for you. I'm not the fire and brimstone type myself. Never had the stomach for it."

Pruna glanced over at Sandy, but Sandy looked the same way she had since Pruna had rescued her, terrified and broken. This was not good because Pruna often relied on Sandy for social cues. Pruna had to go with what she knew instead, this man was obviously powerful, he was from the Capitol. He was an enemy.

And enemies didn't bring prisoners sandwiches. Jailers didn't bring prisoners sandwiches. No one brought prisoners sandwiches it didn't make sense. Unless he wanted them to be in his debt for some reason. Buy their loyalty with food. Like they were stray cats to be lured with sweet milk and then caged and used to practice torture on.

Except they'd already been tortured, that example made no sense. Something worse then... some over reason they wanted their defenses down.

"We do no be wanting your fucking sandwiches you cocksucking motherfucking cumdumpster, goddamn smacktarded son of a whore." She smushed together two of the curses Howard had taught her and hoped they made sense together. It's not like she understands what half those words mean.

Sandy however, had grown up in New York City and therefore understood every word very clearly. She had heard Pruna swear before but never so creatively.

Her eyes were still wide with fear but for a moment, just a flicker there was a twitch of a smile on her lips for her best friend.

It also served to distract her from starring at the scary man who may or may not be here to torment them.

"My big brother told me a long time ago that it was only people who had nothing really worth saying that needed to highlight their lack of an argument with a bunch of language like that." He narrowed his eyes, stern but still shy of truly menacing. The implication was there enough from his escort and his affiliation with the Peacekeepers in the first place. It would only intensify if the girls had any ideas about his service record. Still, there was no reason to ruin what Buddy still considered to be an at least half-salvageable situation.

"Besides, pretty girls like you two don't need the extra attention. Now I'm gonna give you a shot at that again, just because I really, honestly, am here to help you." He turned his attention from Pruna (the less salvageable of the two, likely) to Sandy. "How 'bout it, sweetheart? You think we can manage a polite conversation for a few minutes?"

Pruna was shaking with anger at this point and his calm response just made it worse. She glared back at him and the peacekeeper and the escort. Hating them all.

She wanted to hit him, to tear his tongue out and destroy his eyes. How dare he come here where Sandy was so hurt and claim he wanted to help. He wouldn't help, if he were a helper he wouldn't have a peacekeeper with him.

She scowled at him but let Sandy speak, she trusted her friend not to be so stupid to fall for his very obvious trick.

"I'm not pretty."

Her voice rasped from where she had taken refuge in the corner.

"I've never been pretty, or smart, and I'm not very strong either. I'm just a girl who dies alot."

With a trembling arm she pointed at Pruna, the bandages on her finger had become darker as old cuts on her fingertips were bleeding anew from how tightly she had been clenching her fists.

"She may be cursing, but at least she's honest. If you don't think she has anything worth saying just because she talks the way she's been taught you're just as bad as the rest of the deaf, dumb and blind people who do whatever the Capitol says. Including arresting little girls, ripping out their finger nails, have grown men punch them in the face and burning their flesh while they scream and cry and beg for parents they'll never see again."

The tiny speech had boiled up from somewhere inside her scattered and anxious mind. Her eyes still vibrating in her head as each word sounded like tiny cry. She wasn't defiant out of anger or inner strength, it was still based in her fear. Her fear of this man and everything he stood for. Only focusing on Pruna allowed her to piece together the words to describe just how he made her feel.

"I don't want sandwiches. I want to go home. I want my mom and my daddy and my best friend to come with me...or to go with her to her home. Anywhere but a place where I can get tortured even though I didn't do anything."

"Accused," came another voice, rough and low from between the split lips of another one from District Ten.

It might have been hard to tell, the bruised, beaten man leaning against the wall of his divided cell (sharing with Maximus of 3 and Venus of 5) looking nothing like the photo attached to his file, but the sheet insisted it was Wyatt Earp.

His head tipped, looking up at the stranger with the eye that wasn't bruised shut.

"Still waitin' on my trial."

It probably helped that they had been seen off and on around town together for months, but it took surprisingly little effort to understand how these seemingly disparate three had come to be locked up together. Even without their collective rap sheets being read allowed. Wyatt wasn't the most physically notable, of course, that distinction was given wholesale to Maximus, but between the context clues and the varying degrees of talent associated with Panem's police sketch artists, Buddy had a simple enough time connecting the dots.

The other two seemed disinterested enough as they made their way through. He couldn't blame them exactly. Were the tables turned by some cheap trick of fate, he'd do his damnedest to ignore everyone who came solely to gawk at him as well. That didn't stop him from smiling at the gruff words from Wyatt's corner of the cell. His expression was equal parts pity and amusement. Being that invested in your own fate especially when you had no control over it probably wasn't the most enlightened way to go about things, but it certainly made them more interesting.

"If I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath." He replied, voice surprisingly strong and clear for someone who appeared otherwise to be calculated to the point of timidity. "You've been accused of assassinating a public official and anyhow I probably don't need to remind you of how tenuous your living situation here is."

Tributes, after all, existed by the grace of the Capitol. That would have been true even if they weren't dealing with a bunch of people from foreign worlds. The qualifiers just made for more or less paperwork, depending on the day.

Wyatt would have had to be blind (well, blinder), deaf, and dumb to believe he was going to get anything like fair treatment from the Capitol. He hadn't even needed the beatings for that, he'd been full aware of it just living in the city.

Being a tribute.

But it was always interesting how defensive they got, about being reminded of what they were doing.

He snorted, the corner of his split mouth pulling taught as it curled at the corner in a dark smirk.

"An' I'm the one from the backward time."

Fairness was a matter of perspective. By Buddy's standards (and after all of this came to light, he'd suspect), the Tributes were being treated entirely fairly. It wasn't the fault, after all, of the average citizen that they were there, and if it eased the tensions between the Capitol and the Districts, who was to complain about it?

He narrowed his eyes, attempting to focus his vision in the poor light of the cell. "I don't know anything about your time and I wouldn't hazard to guess. All of that is pretty irrelevant though, from where I'm sitting anyhow. Right now it seems like what you should be doing is concentrating on working within our system to make things easier for yourself and your friends."

Wyatt's face wrinkled, a twist of wry bemusement - a quick sneer of disgust - that broke open a few blisters on his mutilated cheek. They wept, a clear wet trail down his cheek, where he would not.

"Ya'll don't even hear yerselves, do ya? Anymore than ya hear us." He shifted, back moving against the concert, bare feet crossing at the ankles. "Ya wanna make things easier, ya go on make yer mark on the little forms there an' git it over with. We all know it ain't gunna end any other way."

A sharp blue eye fixed on Buddy's face, bright, unshying, even now.

"They're jus' doin' it for the pleasure."

"I think you might just have a problem hearing yourself, Mr. Earp. If our government is so terrible to you, who we can't really claim any social expectations on, what do you think would happen if someone like me attempted what you're in for?" For his part, Buddy could guess exactly what would happen, and it was a sobering thought. The Tributes were lucky in that most of them didn't have relatives who could be disappeared in the night to places unknown. The Capitol would probably start with Les and Bessie, the public would revere the loss of the aging stars, but only their children would really mourn them. Maybe Lionel would get sick after a routine round of vaccines, it was simply a risk with some children.

"Nothing in Panem happens for our pleasure. What happens is what is necessary for our society to continue."

"I feel sorry for the lot'a ya," Wyatt replied, blowing a heavy breath out through his nose. "Too blind, too scared, er maybe jus' too plain dumb to see the difference between law an' justice."

His eyes closed, dismissively.

"But whichever lets ya sleep at night, I 'spose."

As if from habit, only two of the trio in Venus' cell sleep at any given time. She isn't quite sure of the logic behind it, given that they can't especially fight back if they're ambushed at rest, but all the same there's an unspoken agreement between her, Wyatt and Maximus that someone will always keep watch. Right now she draws some comfort from the uneven snores and snorts from her companions, the occasional whimper that reminds her that their demons followed them into slumber.

The Peacekeepers have taken the cuffs from her wrists. They haven't given her any new bruises in the last few days, either. They've moved on to less visible forms of interrogation, water and trash bags, asphyxiation, force-feeding. The game has become about drawing fear out like a fermata, rather than inflicting pain. It's a deep sort of fear, the kind that lies underneath conscious decision, buried deep in the lizard brain, the part that says I must breathe even when the mind is at peace with death.

She and the boys have even been issued jail uniforms, fresh-pressed grey outfits with a low thread count and most importantly, no blood stains. Her brain isn't what it was, but she's fairly sure it has to do with the new guy Wyatt talked to earlier while she was staring into space. There's been an attempt - not much of one, mind you - to make the jail look standardized ever since he came around the first time.

For the first time since her and Wyatt's capture, she's pacing. She stops when she hears footsteps down the hallway. She limps up to the forcefield and peers out.

"Are you an auditor?"

"Not exactly," he replies in a tone that's quiet even if the voice using it seems like it would carry well under different circumstances. The grey flannel of his suit clings in the dank air of the cell, and the light, though much improved from his first several walk abouts, still filters poorly through the thick lenses on his glasses. There are many places Buddy Glass would rather be, to put it very simply. For reasons entirely unrelated to the sorry-looking Tributes and their scratchy prison pajamas.

His armored escort eyes her with a carefully guarded level of wariness and scorn as he settles a respectful but nonetheless present distance behind Buddy. For his part, Buddy doesn't miss it the unreciprocated and professionally muted burst of feeling flitting about the room. It's distasteful to him, but important all the same. He vaguely wonders what this girl did to deserve it, but then again, that isn't strictly his concern. She looks well enough for someone in prison on suspicion of murder, sedition, abetting the aforementioned, (and implied treason,) so his work is more or less done. The lack of bloodstains is appreciated though, it'll make all of this easier to write about.

"Is that what they've been saying about me here? We're not stupid, you know. There are ways to communicate even in this kind of isolation and I full well expect you've used them. Let's have the news, Miss Dee Milo."

Milo. My last name is just Milo, she wants to say, but somehow, it seems necessary right now that she keep clutching tight to that superhero facade. That means not bothering to correct the name and not staking any claim on the girl named Delilah. She exists somewhere outside these jail walls, where they can't use their buckets of ice water and electrical shocks and pliers on her.

She tries to raise her eyebrows and then just winces as the gesture rips open the skein of coagulated plasma over part of her burn. It weeps into the bandage, hidden from Buddy's view.

"No one's been saying anything about you. Jane Shepard gave me the stink-eye when she got hauled past me in the hallway, is that the kind of communication you're talking about?" She shifts her weight so she isn't putting it on the leg with the worst bruising, all hidden by the stupid pajamas. "I made the auditor hypothesis all by my lonesome."

"Then I'll go ahead and disprove it for you now. I'm not an auditor, I'm a writer." Though functionally, the two vocations served more or less the same purpose in this case, and Buddy was almost entirely certain that there were other factors at work regardless. "And I'm surprised, shocked actually. Of anyone here, I expected you might be in on an information network if there was one. Which isn't to say that there has to be one, actually. Or that you couldn't, I suppose, just be getting the cold shoulder."

He pauses there to remove his glasses and wipe an awkward film that seemed have formed on the lenses on the corner of his flannel suit jacket. It's a purposed pause, the type more friendly to someone with a greater talent for theatricality, but nevertheless, Buddy makes his attempt with a technical facility that implies it's not first rodeo. "That does seem to be a problem for you lately. There's my hypothesis."

"For one of the papers?" That would explain why shit gets cleaned up before he arrives.

His next words strike like a blow to her bruised and tender gut. It's true, about her being locked out, about the human fortune, the treasure trove of love and goodwill she amassed from friends and makeshift family here, being plundered and pillaged by her bad luck and worse decisions as of late. That she doesn't cringe doesn't mean that she doesn't show pain. Her chin lifts slightly from stubbornness; her eyes unfocus a little.

It's not that he hit a nerve, it's that the protective skin around her heart has been burned away. She is nothing but nerves.

Buddy's demeanor doesn't scream benevolence, just detachment, feigned interest, and the casings of professional dedication with none of the contents.

"I'm a good interview. If you need one." Something about the way she says that makes me feel dirty, and she casts a glance over to the sleeping forms of Wyatt and Maximus nearby, hoping they can't hear her, wondering if they'd feel disdain if they did.

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some fool tries to challenge the throne (semi-open)

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throws up very foul language warning

Re: throws up very foul language warning

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