There's a String That Runs Through All Our Bad Days [Closed]

[pimpcanes]

WHO| Cyrus and Black Tom
WHAT| Two douchebags being douchebags.
WHEN| After the reaping by a few days.
WHERE| A fancy wine-tasting place in the Capitol.
WARNINGS| None yet.

Tom's made it a point to use his curfew pass whenever possible and as conspicuously as he can. Typically, that means loudly closing the door behind him on the way out of District Ten and going to places he knows he'll be photographed, usually with Molotov, and tonight is no exception.

He has his pass pinned to the lapel of his fancy coat as he passes through the streets. The weather's gotten just cold enough to whisper over his skin and the wind tangles its fingers in his hair. The city opens up before him like a clam glutted with pearls. He's more than just an unbranded, uncuffed Tribute - he's favored, a gem among the pebbles of the other minor celebrities sharing his living space, and the citizens are eager to let him know as much with smiles, discounts, favors.

It's almost enough to make him forget that this is nothing more than a larger, plusher prison than the ones he's used to.

The winery he's visiting is boasting grapes from District Eleven, as if that means anything to him aside from a price tag several tens of assi higher than anything else in the Capitol. He may soon find himself a spokesperson for whiskey, which, he imagines, means that any public alcohol intake will have to be run past a board of marketing executives and handlers. Might as well enjoy some red while he can.

The set-up is something of a free wander, and it reminds him of chickens scratching at feed, honestly. Citizens, many of whom are wearing more feathers than the average bird, flit from table to table to try the finest the winery has to offer. Tom paces himself, making shallow conversation with the populace as he savors each mouthful. He bumps elbows with the elite. He smiles and makes the women and quite a few men feel seen, as if they are, for a few seconds, the only other person in the room.

He doubletakes when he sees Cyrus, not immediately placing the face he's only seen in papers. "Sorry, have we met?"

Comments

[currupted]

There's a smile growing on Cyrus' face that he can't suppress-- attentive, and a little incredulous. What audacity. As though he were some answer to the Capitol's prayers. As though they'd been combing through the dregs of inferior worlds just looking for someone like him to come and save them.

A bullshit proposition, but one that says more than it appears to, Cyrus thinks. An audacious suggestion that says that this man has spent time deciding how best to fit himself into the world into which he's been pulled. A niche to fill that he wrote for himself, where the Capitol wouldn't have thought to do it for him. Clever.

He'd be loath to admit it aloud, but it's not a thought he's had before, to use a Tribute in quite that way. The divide between Capitolites and Tributes is opaque in Cyrus' mind, a border not made to be crossed. Tributes have one purpose, and it is to fight and to die; to hold stable the world that people like Cyrus are tasked with protecting from rebels and all their ilk. When he's asked them before to conform, it's been a veiled way of saying Stay exactly where you are. The ones who have acted in defiance of that command have never done it in search of power.

"...A flattering theory," he says, with a quirk to his mouth that says You know it's not as neatly planned as that. He doesn't need to speak on behalf of the government at this moment - it's neither the time nor the place - but neither does he need to withhold an honest answer. "And a hell of a resume. Should I be thanking you for coming to me, instead of to the rebels?"

A sidelong way of getting at what he wants to know: Are you making an offer, or a threat?

[pimpcanes]

"Hardly. From what it seems, the rebels don't even have a fraction of what the Capitol could offer someone. I may be able to tolerate sleeping in the dirt and eating canned food from the Sponsors, but I prefer fine dining and high thread counts."

He waves a hand slightly, as if dismissing the clear angle at his loyalties. He won't make bones about it. He can be bought, and there's no use pretending otherwise. But he won't be.

"Besides, I prefer to align myself with winners."

That's a little bit of a lie, not because it's untrue, but because he knows the Capitol's in an epoch of decline. There's something desperate about the way the Capitol government continues to propel the Games to new heights, as if they are prostrating themselves, obsequious, to some bloc of audience that holds ultimate power and yet waning interest. He doesn't actually believe the Capitol will win in the long run, even though he doesn't believe the rebels will be the ones to topple them.

He smooths out the pant leg over his bad leg, resting his cane over his knee, and raises his wine glass to Cyrus.

"A toast to all the harmonious Tribute relations with politicians?" He grins, laughs, understands how anomalous this must be for Cyrus in the face of all these ungrateful foreigners, how routine it is for Tom, if in a different world.

[currupted]

If Cyrus' society is just passing the weightless peak of its arc, just beginning to tip nose-downwards, to feel the unstoppable weight of gravity pulling it toward a spectacular explosion on the rocks below, he knows nothing about it.

The Capitol will endure. The Capitol will always endure. He speaks words like Panem forever with an ironic twist to his mouth, a signal that he knows the propaganda for what it is - but the idea's ingrained core-deep in him, woven into the fabric of his upbringing. Panem's success is the Reagans' success, Cyrus, and Panem will never fail.

Tom speaks of the winners with such easy conviction, and Cyrus buys it. He wonders, even, if it might not be possible for a Tribute to understand in some distant tangential way that truth that is at the center of him; if there aren't some clever enough to accept the fact of Panem's immortality.

Cyrus takes a glass off a passing tray, and raises it. "I'll drink to that," he says. "...Even if this is, perhaps, the first I've enjoyed."

He drinks, and his every gesture is level, measured. Not a free granting of favor, not an enthusiastic endorsement. Just a simple acknowledgement: This doesn't have to be our last conversation.

[pimpcanes]

Tom takes a drink too, after clinking his glass delicately against Cyrus'.

"I'll take that as a compliment to myself, rather than as a condemnation of everyone else." Tom reads it for what it is, understands how delicately these matters must be handled. If a single winsome conversation could draw in real favor, then even the most thickheaded of Tributes would have worked on their sense of charisma.

"You must be busy, though, and I have Sponsors to court. Until next time, Minister Reagan." His tone is knowing, because there will be a next time. He's certain of it.

[currupted]

There will be. There's nothing like trust between them, of course - a single conversation that doesn't go terribly, a moment's thought that there might be a common purpose to exploit - that's not trust. But Tom knows that, and that knowledge, devoid of any inconvenient expectation, makes a second meeting not an unpleasant prospect.

He's a strange, ambitious Tribute, and Cyrus can't yet tell how laughable his goals might be; they've got Molotov, if not between them, then at least hanging at the fringes of whatever strange acquaintance they've begun; but he is more than interesting enough to warrant a second conversation.

"Of course. Best of luck." He considers, maybe, wishing a Sponsor or two good evening himself before he leaves - if he's going to be cultivating relationships with Tributes again, it might not be unwise to be prepared. "I wish you a successful evening."

A cordial smile, and he takes his leave - to go and do a final run through the wines on offer. That last one-- he thinks it might be the best he's had all evening. Most certainly worth trying again.