thecapitol | The Crowning Of Clara Murphy

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The Crowning Of Clara Murphy

Who| Everyone.
What| The Crowning of Clara Murphy
Where| A refurbished former-medical building within Capitol.
When| Starting from late afternoon, going into the evening and late night.
Warnings/Notes| Don't forget, peacekeepers are on high alert and will notice any rebellious activity or odd behaviour.

The theme of the ceremony is corruption and dystopia, with a distinct nod to futuristic aspects and, of course, robots. The room is stark, clean, and foreboding, all done in metallics, crisp whites, and the occasional bit of robotics set up as art. It speaks as an unholy cross between a medical office, a military base, and an extremely well kept prison.

The ceremony is both a chance for Capitolites to have fun and be grateful for the grand and glorious Panem which in no way exemplifies any attributes of dystopia, while also working as a not so subtle reminder to the troublemakers out there of what can happen when things get out of line. Which they surely won't, with all the peacekeepers around.

Tributes are dressed in all manner of thing incorporating chains, rope, caution tape, muzzles, bars and cages, prison stripes, and uniform orange-- all things reminiscent of imprisonment and restriction. Some tributes may be made to look scuffed up, like cartoon-ish depictions of hardened thugs. There are a few references to robotics, and that of evil and corrupt military men and police officers, but all tributes will be marked by some manner of cuff or chain that clearly denotes them as “criminals”.

They’ll also be given a “prison number” that is actually indicative of their district association and an arbitrary letter next to it, for example, someone from district six will have 06 and the first letter of their name. It will be temporarily tattooed somewhere visible on their skin. It can be washed off but it will take more scrubbing than would be done in a single day, let alone a crowning.

The only exceptions to these rules, are those who have been brought to the winner’s table; all those who can be deemed as cyborgs, scientists, and of course, the victor herself. Her throne sits at the head of the table, a robotic contraption that appears almost as though it might encase her. For a crown, Clara has been given one that seems to bear resemblance to a white picket fence, which, when made into a crown, looks far sharper than the idyllic home setting it’s meant to represent.

Avoxes are all dressed as members of the corrupt Detroit military police. The uniforms are naturally given a more sinister edge. None of them are comfortable. All of them are serving “Detriotto” staple foods.

Around the crowning, flat hologram projections of hockey games can be seen. They show the games of a team called “The Rouge Wings” and alternate that with the less spectacular showings of what appears to be a young boy’s hockey team. Commercials fill the times between promoting the work of Capitol’s peacekeepers, showing appreciation for them on an individual level, encouraging obedience in citizens with pleasant clips of peacekeepers speaking to children, and suggesting recruitment in the truly good and noble of Panem. Capitolites may nod along to these as they giggle at the sight of decorative signs, that are most certainly from Clara’s lesser world, about obeying, consuming, and so on, to a less than favourable government. A few posters feature Clara Murphy’s face in four colour palettes, all humorous jabs at dystopia proclaiming; “MOTHER MURPHY IS WATCHING YOU”.

But hockey games are not the only things that can be seen on the projection screens; if tributes take the time to look, they may see their own face projected above in profile and facing forward views like that of mug shots. Though, how the capitol has managed to get these pictures may be entirely a mystery. Besides these mugshots, criminal records are displayed, listing crimes from “lied to their parents” to petty theft to murder. Whether these records are true or not may be up for much debate.

In the mean time, there are plenty of things for party go-ers to do, such as take part in the David For A Day egg and spoon race, in which tributes will all have a chance to dress up (with wigs and matching clothing of all sizes!) as the mysterious David, compete against others, and should they win, be dubbed David For A Day, winning themselves a banner they can wear and a spot at the victor table.

There is also an obstacle course available dubbed the "Clarence Boddicker Memorial Prison Funhouse" designed to look, you guessed it, like a prison. Fun for all ages and demeanours!

For those looking for retreat, there’s a small section cut away from it all, designed to be a pleasant backyard patio setting opened to a starry night sky and small surrounding garden, in stark contrast to the rest of the place. There’s a small area for dancing in, that can really only accommodate one couple at a time, but is nevertheless perfect for a romantic scene. Only two songs play over speakers here, one perfectly fitting, the other a little more jarring. It’s also here that party go-ers can get their picture taken with a life sized ED-209. Many more much smaller ED-209’s can be seen around and within the crowning party. As well as the occasional roomba, which fans of the last arena will surely get a chuckle out of.

As the crowning nears it’s end, those at the victor’s table will be given paintball guns filled up with red paint. They will be ordered to bring the criminals to justice! The criminals being all the other tributes. Those hit with paint will be made to wait within the Memorial Prison Funhouse until all the criminals are apprehended and forced to do their time! No one will be allowed to go back to the tribute tower until all the criminals are caught.

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"I know that," she murmurs, still smiling, and pulls her hand away from his head, briefly looking at her fingers as if she expects some sort of residue to be there from the circlet. "I just don't want you to think I indulge in crimes of passion."

She knows she's the one that's abandoned their relationship, whatever it is -- an odd sort of just existing in each other's presence, comfortable and entertaining in the way she frustrates him. She thinks that he's fine with it, relieved only to be away from her domineering his space and forcing him into the limelight. She would feel worse if she knew he was miffed by it.

"For the most part." It's cheeky, a nod to what he'd surely heard from Stephen, the utter destruction of an entire Suite, not to mention to flurry of gossip surrounding the two of them, now that the press had decided she'd broken his heart. Molotov shimmers in the light as she turns toward him, her gold chains and bracelets and tattoo all catching the glare of the screens. "Not working too hard, are you?"

Edited 2014-11-02 02:43 (UTC)

At this point, there's only so much that her absence can really do to get him out of the limelight anymore. It's a problem. You tangled us up in this, he's thought moodily in the direction of her empty place, as the tabloids scroll through photo montages and flash the word HEARTBREAK! across his tablet screen. You don't get to back out now.

He's sure they're watching now. Of course they're watching now. All he has to be thankful for is that they won't be overheard.

But he smiles, and hopes from a distance that their relative positions say polite interest and not desperation. "For the most part," he parrots her. "Fewer Tributes in the Capitol means less work, as a rule. And less trouble." With a wry smile-- "Sponsorship used to feel like work, but-- turns out you're all rather easier to deal with at a distance."

But what was the other option? Had Tom not come along, would they have simply tolerated each other endlessly until they got married just to sell the pictures to the tabloids? Molotov's wondered about it before -- she might have tangled them up in it, but she'd never had the clearest of plans to untangle them.

She chuckles. "Well, you have to be a little forgiving. There's still a lot up in the air for Tributes, we don't have much reason to keep out of your hair. We'll be gone again before you know it, won't we?"

That's a problem with the Neverending Quell: Untangling oneself isn't as easy as it used to be. The Arena's just a chapter in the narrative now, rather than the inevitable conclusion.

"Of course," he says, with a brief smile and not much conviction. "Before we know it."

"--And, speaking of the Arena." They're at the Crowning; they have a business partnership, of a kind; he has to have had a reason to come over here. "You'll be happy to know your sponsors were more than pleased with your performance. Dramatic was the word, actually-- particularly for your last week." With a congratulatory lift of his eyebrows-- "I think you've found a following."

I think I've found you a following is nearer to the truth, in his estimation; but that would just be petty.

Molotov snorts, maybe at the implication that she didn't have any of her own following before she tapped Cyrus to broaden it, to truly bring her into the spotlight through deception and manipulation of the media.

"I'm so glad they enjoyed my death," she says dryly, still sore about the subject, and takes a drink from her glass. "I got enough consolation gifts to see how many of them there are, though. More even than I thought." More than I'm sure I care for, her tone says. She wanted it, of course, but it was foreign to her, having so many people genuinely caring about everything she did and every movement she made -- she hadn't known that the Capitolites were this extreme in their love for Tributes.

Cyrus's Sponsors are probably the better of the lot, invested more for political reasons than emotional ones.

Cyrus' Sponsors are malleable, but safe, in general - eager to toss their money around to impress him, eager to connect their names to a popular Tribute, unlikely to turn possessive or over-invested. Their interest is not always the easiest to keep, not being rooted in emotion, but it is reliable. It's the kind of Sponsor he used to be, back when he needed the political mileage a healthy investment in the Games brings with it. He knows the type well.

"Why not? It was a thrilling performance." With a brief-and-slightly-sardonic lift of his glass, aware that It was a good death is far from a compliment.

"What an interesting way to put it, though-- a consolation gift." Do they make greeting cards for that these days? Sorry for your grisly murder? It wouldn't surprise him. He shakes his head-- "We've been doing this for two years, and it's still too easy to forget that what happens in the Arena no longer stays there."

He's fairly certain he's still just talking about her death. He's not going to examine the pointedness in that statement too closely.

"Well, I don't what else you would call endless boxes of chocolates and bottles of wine to say sorry you lost miserably." It's more bitter now, and she drains what's left of her cocktail, turning her gaze back to the screens. "Consolation gifts."

She can't help but glance at him from the corner of her eye when he says that, chooses that exact phrasing, but she goes back to examining Tony Stark's list of crimes quickly enough. "Well," she answers, words slow and careful, "some things are impossible to keep in the Arena. It can't be helped."

"Can't it?" Still mild, still pleasant enough, but a little quicker. A little colder. He steps up a little closer, making more certain that they won't be overheard. (Though from a distance it look almost intimate-- the way he ducks his softly blinking head to speak to her, the pointed way he fills her space.)

"You told me you'd warn me before you involved me in any storytelling, Molotov."

There's the briefest of pauses, and Molotov looks both taken aback and perhaps slightly angry. The stories started before she could possibly have done anything, what did he expect?

"The Arena is sorely lacking in phones, or I would have rung you up," she says, now cold, and steps away from him. "Maybe that's something you should take into account, Minister. It's terrible that you've been drug through the mud by the press, but I had nothing to do with that story. I never got the chance to speak my piece about it -- because your people trapped me in a death arena -- but you'll just have to deal with it now. Tom matters more than you do."

The last statement is so matter-of-fact, so hard, and yet she just takes a sip from her drink, like she didn't say it at all.

Cyrus feels a cold, sudden spike of anger. It flashes across his face, swift and ugly.

But his voice is still quiet, still cold. "You had everything to do with that story." He's not going to let his mind rest on that last statement, on Tom matters more than you do, because there is no way to refute it, no way to spit Tom is a Tribute, that will not make him look like the one too invested. "You're smart enough to think that far ahead. You must have known what it would look like."

He drinks, and the pause calms him a little. He can continue with the viciousness in his voice only an undertone, only grating at the edges of his words. "You said yourself that this was about publicity, Molotov. That's what I agreed to. This is not the publicity I wanted."

And there is, of course, nothing more important than what Cyrus Reagan wanted.

"You were about publicity, but Tom isn't." It's snapped, angry and spiteful that someone dares to try and chide her for finding something real in this nasty world of lies and being as fake as possible. "I wasn't thinking about you, Cyrus."

Beneath the spite, there's a hint of hurt, a wounded animal striking out over the fact that Cyrus dares to be so upset over such a shallow thing, and yet when Molotov was hurt, he was nowhere to be found. She knows it's stupid to feel that way -- in fact, she hasn't felt that way until now -- but the fact that he expects her to care about this makes it sting, that he thinks his loss is so much more important than hers when it isn't.

"Deal with it. I don't care how you look in the media. I've been absolutely generous when asked about you. I tell them that it was nothing serious, that we're friends now. What more do you want? You want me to leave Tom for you, for the story? Never. I would never." She's glaring, doesn't give herself any time to calm back down to simple iciness. "You don't own me."

"We had an agreement." Cyrus' voice is icy. Unfeeling. This might be a business deal gone wrong, an order that some subordinate failed to carry out. "You think it matters what you do now? There's no story you can tell to undo this."

He's back in her space again. Closing in. Not touching her, not yet, but more than close enough to, if he wanted to. "I should have had a say in this. I put my reputation on the line for your story, and I'll be damned before I'm made a fool of by a--"

--by a Tribute.

He bites it back. Barely.

"...by you."

Molotov stands tall when he crowds her, doesn't cringe or cower or recoil. In fact, she leans a little forward, subconsciously, challengingly. "Well, it's too late, isn't it?" she shoots back, expression glacier cold. "You've already been made a fool. The story is out, it is what it is. I'm with Tom, everyone knows it, and there's nothing you can do to change it. What are you going to do about it?"

Her stare is so hard that it hurts her eye a little. "You're just making it worse for yourself."

He doesn't like that. Doesn't like that he can't cow her. Physical intimidation is not a weapon he's accustomed to using, not so long as he's been able to use the power he wears and has always worn as a substitute (draped over him like a cloak, strapped to him like armor, woven into his own skin); but it only angers him more, that it's failing him now.

"You've enjoyed a great deal of freedom here, Molotov." His voice has dropped, turned low and almost soft and no less dangerous. "And I think you forget, sometimes, why that is." Freedom is the visits to his office; the dates, such as they were; the use of his suite, even, all the places Molotov came that no other Tribute had, or could. "It's because I allowed you that freedom. Because it was one of our terms."

He retreats, a little. Half a step, no more. "It's a mistake I won't make a second time."

She scoffs.

"So you're punishing me. What do you want, Cyrus? For me to leave Tom and marry you so that you can save a little face? Would that make you feel better?" She's absolutely venomous. "You may think you allowed me something, but the truth is that I took what's mine. Don't think you can make me pay by trying to take anything away from me, because I still control what everyone thinks about you. What sounds better, my insistence that it was mutual and we remain friends, or my tears to Caesar Flickerman about you stalking me and threatening me? Crying about being afraid of your retribution because I dared to fall in love with someone else?"

Molotov finishes her drink, then lets the glass fall and smash at Cyrus's feet. "Don't fuck with me, Reagan. I don't need you happy to get what I want."

Cyrus takes another step back as the glass shatters, and it's involuntary. A concession. His expression goes blank and startled for a second, and his eyes narrow in a flinch.

He looks down at the glass - at the shards around his feet, and the glass powder dusting his shoes - and then up at Molotov, and the look on his face is, for a second, utterly disbelieving. When it settles, it is into something flat and blank; the only movement is in the shadows thrown over his forehead by the softly blinking lights in his hair.

"You misunderstand me, Molotov," he says, and takes another step forward. Glass shards crunch under his feet. "It doesn't matter to me on whom you decide to fling your affections. I don't care what you do after hours, or who you tangle up in your clumsy machinations, or whether you think at all about my happiness. But it is not given to you to decide when you're finished with me."

He doesn't touch her. He can feel the stem of her glass under his heel, and he isn't prepared to push his luck so far. But he is close. "I could call a Peacekeeper," he says. "I could call several. I could make you vanish, Molotov, and Caesar Flickerman wouldn't have a word to say about it."

The laugh she huffs out is indicative of how little she truly thinks of this, how absolutely diminished her opinion has become of him. Many things could be said of what weird, strained relationship was between them, but before, it couldn't be even thought that she considered him as unworthy of her attention as everyone else.

It took this single conversation to change everything.

"Do it," she dares, teeth bared, leaning in just incrementally. "If you're stupid enough to think it won't just make you look worse, or that anything you could threaten is enough to scare me, then do it, Cyrus. Right now. Give away the very last shreds of your dignity and make it obvious to everyone how hung up you are on me. No one will believe it wasn't you -- I'm a model fucking Tribute with no Capitolite ties except you. You'll be marked for life. Everyone in your repulsive, shallow little life will believe you to forever be the man who fell in love with a Tribute and couldn't handle not being loved back. And you'll have to live knowing that you couldn't actually win, that your only option was to make me disappear because that's how much power I have over you. We both know that isn't what you want."

She takes a step back, makes it clear that she's finished here.

"Have fun at the party, Minister Reagan. I think we both have other people to see now."

For a long second, Cyrus looks at her, and then he says, slowly:

"...I think you're right. We have nothing more to discuss." Nothing means not only tonight, he feels even as he says it, but any night to come. Whatever strange, confusing, nebulous thing they had-- it is ended.

He finds himself calming, a little, as he comes to that decision. Or, something akin to calm, anyway-- something that burns low and hot in his gut instead of flashing electric in his hands, in his tongue, in his desire to hurt her, to act, to command someone else to come and deal with her. He feels that hot flash of anger fading, to be replaced by the comfort of a bigger picture. One in which he is himself-- powerful, well-connected, well-protected, untouchable-- and Molotov Cocktease is no one.

He turns that picture over in his head a few times, and knows it, in his own heart, for reality. And it brings him back to himself, and to a less steely calm; he sees where he and Molotov stand in relation to each other, and can comfort himself that, whatever she may say or threaten, whatever blow she might strike to his reputation-- he is above her.

He cannot quite conceal the tension in his jaw, nor disguise the twitch of his lip as he forces it not to curl. But he takes a step back, and another, and gives her a small, polite bow.

If you think that I don't have the power to find out what matters to you, then you don't know what power is.

"Have a lovely evening, Miss Cocktease," Cyrus says; and he will remove himself. In the interest of finding other people to see.

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The Crowning Of Clara Murphy

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