thecapitol | I Swear I Could See Your Raring Fear [Closed]

Entry tags:

I Swear I Could See Your Raring Fear [Closed]

WHO| Venus and Dave
WHAT| Sorry about your bad life decisions, girl.
WHEN| Between Arenas.
WHERE| A café in the Capitol.
WARNINGS| Mentions of torture, mentions of mental illness.

Venus has made her peace with Clara.

She can tell Clara still resents her for losing her eye. It isn't because Clara really lets on, but Venus knows how to read a pregnant pause, a slight downtick in vocal inflections. More important, Venus would probably resent her in Clara's place. Projecting herself onto other people's inner worlds proves her right more often than not.

But, well-veiled bitterness or not, they've reached friendly terms. A week after the Arena, Venus slipped a thank-you card under Clara's door. They've passed each other in the hallway, ridden the same elevators together with an amiableness that extends to nearly chatty. And so when Venus sleeps at night, she is lighter half a sin - not a whole crime, but part of one.

She has not made her peace with Dave, and to be entirely honest she's been avoiding him (and Loki even more so). When they cross her mind when she rests, it isn't the weight of her crimes against them that hold her paralyzed in her sheets. Their little prank in the Arena sewed them into a seam of fear and foulness that runs through her. There's a ravine inside her, a canyon-shaped garbage dump filled with memories of the Panem jail, and its stink has contaminated them, too.

The few times they've passed in the hallways, Venus has made an excuse to quickly leave for elsewhere, or to ignore him in the least pointed way possible. It's not Dave's fault she can't take a joke. That's what she tells herself.

That doesn't stop her from flinching a bit when she sees it's him entering the same cafe as her, where she's bundled up in a stylish coat and nursing a hot apple cider.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a lot about that Arena that still doesn't sit well with Dave. A lot of strange things happened and a lot of those things were entirely his fault. It would be impossible to exist so long in this place and not change for the better or the worse, but it's hard to say which way he's leaning anymore. He has more friends than he's ever had before, he saves people, he works the media to keep people safe and then he beats people half to death and plays cruel pranks on traumitised victims of situations he'd been privy to himself. Guilt twists in his gut when he settles into bed at night, when there's nobody to distract him all he can do is lie back and think about how fucked up everything is.

So he's been avoiding Venus too, in a way. They'd never talked before, and he'd kept that trend going ever since he left her shamed and covered in glitter like the world's saddest pinata. He isn't sure if an apology will make up for what he did, hell, he's still not sure she deserves one. It's hard not to hear about Venus and then hear about her reputation for murder, but it's impossible to trick himself into thinking she deserved any amount of trauma. Nobody does, but they're all here and they all have to cope. Maybe he'll sleep better if he apologises, even if she rejects it, because the closure might stop him hearing her voice pleading him to back off and leave her alone.

When he makes his way into the cafe he doesn't see her immediately. His face is nestled into the warmth of a red scarf around his neck and his chilled fingers are tucked deep into the front pocket of his hoodie. He makes his way to the counter, orders his own apple cider and turns when it's presented to him to scan the cafe for an empty booth to slouch in. His eyes land on Venus and widen just a little behind his shades, as if seeing her is still a little like seeing a ghost. He pulls himself together, taking his apple cider and his guilt and stepping toward her to stand in front of the table.

"If I promise I'm not going to be an asshole will you tell me if this seat is free?" He'd rather not just invade her personal space again, after all.

"The only person you'd be disturbing is my imaginary friend," she says with a bit of a weak laugh. It's not true, but she's already unsettled, even knowing that Dave's really a nice kid who was just trying to take non-violent revenge for something brutal she did. She brings her cider closer to her, focusing on the warmth in her palm instead of the slight tremor in her wrist.

He's barely older than Kankri. It's only happenstance that she's protecting her troll roommate instead of Dave, only Venus' need to dedicate herself to someone younger than her attaching to Kankri first. She doesn't know when she elected herself to choose which kids should win, but she knows now that it's not authority she came by honestly.

Just a kid playing a prank. If there hadn't been ropes, maybe she'd have even found it funny.

She tries not to think about the brand on her face or the smoothness of his own unmarred cheek. Everything about that prison feels too immediate, as if it's not in far in the past as the calendar puts it, and little reminders like that drag it into the present. She comes here because it's one of the few cafes where no one makes pointed comments about the scar while she orders her coffee.

"Just kidding," she clarifies, in case it isn't clear. "I don't have imaginary friends."

Edited 2014-12-08 01:44 (UTC)

People talk a lot about the feeling of a room thickening enough that you could slice it. Dave doesn't doubt it, it's happened to him before, just never so goddamn fast. It's as if the mood changes rapidly, like the air just got thicker. This is it, though. This is do or die or. Well. He's not going to die, but it'll be one foot into the trench of being an asshole. It's one thing to not care if people like you or not, it's another thing to have made someone suffer and act like you don't care.

The faint tremor of her hand, the way she looks at him and that vibe that he's making her uncomfortable is hard to miss. It's hard not to trace it back to her crying and pleading and that's the last thing he wants to think about vividly when he's facing her again.

"You're lucky. They're annoying." He forces himself to quip, pulling out the chair and setting down his cup in front of him. It feels like the past few months have been an impossible blur of crap on crap, so he needs a moment to really consider how he wants to approach this fun trip down memory lane. He doesn't know if he should make small talk, he almost feels like it would make this all the more uncomfortable.

Okay, he'll breath in and just. Say the first thing that comes to mind because it generally works. "I'm an asshole." Straight to the point. "And I fucked up. That was Rob Schneider levels of unfunny." He hunches his shoulders together and shrugs. "Not saying you're not an asshole too, but I took it too far."

Venus snorts a little. "I met Rob Schneider once. He tried to flirt with me. It was like watching a horse try to use chopsticks."

It would be easy to leave it there, to dart away from the subject at hand like some gazelle spooked from the watering hole. The watering hole might have crocodiles. She can drink later. There are plenty of ways to justify it to herself.

She really doesn't know who she is anymore, if she's someone brave or someone cowardly, if she's stubborn or if she's scared or if all of those things can fit into a single person. She tries to be better than she thinks herself as she raises her eyes and looks at Dave's face, at the specter of eyes behind his glasses.

"Thank you." Her voice is small. It's like a wisp of wind brushing against dried leaves. "I wouldn't- I wasn't afraid of you killing me. It wasn't personal between me and Clara, and she- she deserved to win."

Even if the path to victory was, as always, strewn with the corpses of equally-worthy competitors.

"I've never heard a more true to life description of that douche." The desire to focus entirely on that is present as well, he's apologised and that's all that matters. If she accepts he can move on and it'll all be.. peachy. Yeah. No. That's not going to fly. He knows he needs to scratch a little deeper to make this mean something, but it's like staring his emotional limitations in the face. The sad, burned face of someone he knows is a scarily competent killer. People are multifaceted and they always have been, but the Games have made tunnel vision an epidemic amongst tributes.

He wants to be objective about this shit. Molotov stabbed him to death and left him to bleed out in a fountain and then they had a lovely conversation at Clara's Crowning. He doesn't quite want to admit that it's easier to grudge against people who hurt his friends than it is to grudge against people who came for him. It's not personal, not until you involve someone else.

"Yeah, well. You'd have to scrape pretty hard to find reasons for a personal grudge against her, right?" He gives his shoulders a shrug. "I get it. Arenas aren't personal- or they shouldn't be. Even if they'll probably be promoing some grudge match between us for the next round. Figure they might be a little disappointed if we start holding hands soon, but I'm only a part-time a people pleaser." He hates the crap he's spewing right now, like he's skirting around a truth they both understand. They're puppets with a show to do and the price of trying to avoid it isn't worth paying.

If he gave voice to any of that, she'd understand - she might even thank him for letting her know that she isn't crazy, that she isn't the only one who thinks so little of herself that she can see why someone would hurt her but finds it so hard to see those same flaws in others, to justify the cruelty she welcome to herself on them.

It's not that she's mad at him and Loki. She's mad at herself for so quickly crumpling, for allowing those bad memories to knock her off her feet and drag her downriver. Dave and Loki are no more to blame that rocks in the water that she bashed herself against.

"I just wanted to get Kankri out. That's all I wanted." And she understands now that she paid for the hubris of believing herself fit to decide who should walk out of the Arena. She pulls the corners of her lips tight and looks up at Dave, her face between a shrug and tears. "If they're expecting a prank war, well, I'm not up to it. Not creative enough anyway."

Dave would run circles around her.

"This place really brings out the shithead in us, swear to God."

"Right, he's one of your people." It's not much of a response, but there's an agreeable tone to it. He knows Kankri from here and from personal experiences, he knows he's not cut out for the shit they have to endure here. Yet, it's harder for him to drum up sympathy for him. Not when they're from the same world, not when it feels like he's been excused from the carnage and risky business he's had to endure to stay alive there. He likes him, but it's hard not to see his own reflection. Like a goddamn wonky school projector.

"I was cheesed. Clara and Clemin- Clem. They won the Mini Arena and they got gift baskets. So it takes shitheads to make shitheads, I guess." He forces himself to shrug, bringing nonchalance to the table so it hides the part of him that still bristles thinking about the unfortunate circumstances there. When he sees her face, he feels like a normal person would reach out and pat her arm or her hand and comfort here, but he can't bring himself too. His hands feel like deadweights that stay idly by his drink.

He manages a chuckle at least when he talks about prank wars, moving his hands toward his mug finally. He drums his fingers against the mug for a moment before piping up again. "I dunno if you know, but Kankri and I are from the same universe, technically." He's very tired of explaining how things work there, but it's necessary. Like math. "So if it makes you feel better, I won't gun for him. Not that I would, but." He waves his hand as he searches for the words. "If I saw an anvil coming for him I'd probably pull him out of the way."

"It does make me feel better." She did know that about Kankri and Dave, which makes her dogged devotion to one kid over the other seem all the more arbitrary. Protecting one kid at the expense of others isn't honorable, it's selfish. That it makes her a better person than just another Arena killer is a lie she tells herself to sleep at night.

But it doesn't change that all she wants is Kankri's safety, and she bends towards that hope like a sunflower yearning for daylight.

"So does your apology." She brings her eyes back up to his sunglasses, doing him the courtesy of meeting his gaze, because she knows it must have been hard to approach her like this. "You weren't the one doing those things to me in prison. You couldn't have known. Even I couldn't have known I'd have freaked out like I did."

"Alright well, knight's honor or whatever." And yet he's thumping his fist over his heart in a manner that has nothing to do with knights whatsoever. It's simply meant to be symbolic of how damn serious he is about this. He would never gun for Kankri, but if reassuring her of that helps even a little then he will happily water that flower.

When she meets his gaze, his drops quickly. It's as if she pulled the old there's something on your shirt prank and he fell for it. Something about looking her in the eye brings him right back to the moment in question between them. It doesn't help that she's pretty, it doesn't help that she's the kind of girl he'd probably have a poster of, someone he'd imagine all the ways he'd impress her if he met her in person. It's safe to say he didn't carry himself with the smooth charm of a Tony Stark character that he models himself after, but there's something uplifting about this moment. Something that makes him remember that tributes could never hate each other as much as they hate the Capitol. They could never hold petty grudges for little scrapes when everything pales in comparison to what they're being put through.

And yet, he hasn't got everything off his chest. Not just yet. "I should have figured, though. They did the same things to my sister, she had the same." He gestures around his face, not sure what word he's searching for. "Look. Around her." And in gesturing, his cuff is more obvious. "But, y'know, logic goes out the window when you haven't slept for a month and you've forgotten what water tastes like."

She's glad, almost, that he doesn't try to contain what happened to her into a word like 'scar' or 'brand'. It's more than that, something that can fit in a handful of letters. It's black paint smeared over the calendar of her life, over a few months; it's a clump of hair and sweat and bile that bloats inside her when she's trying to sleep; it's the handcuffs no one even knows she's wearing. Her brand can't be defined in a single syllable. It stands for the wreckage of her life, both the ashes on the ground and the burned husks of buildings, cement and rebar reaching in futility for the sky.

"I didn't realize you had a sister here." What's she supposed to say to that? Apologize again? If they started apologizing for even the misfortunes they didn't cause, they'd be here all day. "But- yeah. Believe me, that was far from the kookiest shit that's gone down in an Arena after a few weeks."

And again, trying to steer the conversation to a safe shore, she dregs up a memory. Something silly, some crazy thing from the Arena where no one got hurt and no one cried. Her nightmares crawl up her ankles and the back of her legs.

"God, I wish they'd aired that footage of me trying to shoot chocolates out of a shotgun a few Arenas back."

It definitely runs deeper than that for Dave. The brand on his sister's face was an artificial example of Capitol's influence, but it was only symbolic of everything they put her through. Her eyes looked more painful than the scar, she looked tired and scared. There was something past the brand that he'd never fully understand, he'd never be able to see through that mindset until it happened to him. He almost thinks of it as an inevitability rather than a possibility.

"Oh, yeah. She's a little older than I remember her being, though." He'd rather not explain that she's literally from another universe, presently. "I got a brother here too. They're embarrassments, you're better off not knowing them." He sounds as serious as he does insincere. There's almost affection in his voice, he chooses to act like having them here isn't a burden on his shoulders.

The fond flashback earns her a brow raise, it's something like a smile for him when he's particularly amused. "What? Don't tell me I missed a Charlie and the Choc-hurt factory theme." He actually sounds scandalized by this.

She nods, not sure what to tell Dave, how to engage with someone bitching even in the best spirits about their siblings. The last she saw of hers were scorchmarks into the walls of her grandmother's house.

She wonders, sometimes, who they would have grown into, and it hits her like a blow to the stomach when she realizes that Isaiah would have been Dave's age now. She blinks, thrown and unable to hide it, and tears rim the inside corners of her eyes for just a second before she gets everything under control. She drinks her cider and hopes he doesn't say anything as she drags them back onto happier paths, even as she knows that it's like guiding a tugboat in a hurricane.

"Oh man, you totally did. That was my first Arena, actually. Candyland." It's strange, as if she's talking about another human being during those times, as if it wasn't her even if she holds all the same memories. Some part of her - maybe a wishful, self-serving part - could believe that it's not actually the same person each Arena, as if the reset every time they die is selecting someone from an entirely separate universe. "But the chocolate shotgun was the haunted museum Arena. I'm just sad that I missed the Disneyland one."

As if Arenas are vacation destinations and not death matches that, until all too recently, she was happy to participate in, that she still doesn't dread walking into.

Though he doesn't quite notice the tears, there's something about the silence that weighs on him. He can't exactly claim a happy family, Bro was all he had growing up until he found out about Rose. Then Bro had to go die being a big damn hero, shit just got complicated from there. Multiple universes, alternate versions of yourself and your relatives, it's a lot to take. It's a lot to have Bro here at all, but the truth is that he could almost stay here if it meant he didn't have to go it alone without him again.

He should be grateful for that, but the idea of taking any pleasure in being here is hard.

"Man, I missed all of those. All I came in time for was the cruddy fog-city with the shitty monsters and heatwaves." He fans himself, as if vividly recalling how hot it was, then realises what he's doing and drops his hand down. "Do you think they've sustained Tim Burton all these years so he can do the brain work? Or do they pass around a joint and channel surf until they start feeling a vibe?" He presses his face to the palm of his hand, his elbow propped on the table like the no manners kid he is.

"If that's the case, I want my Survivor Arena. I want to vote people off the island if they smell bad." She laughs and wrinkles her nose, looking for a moment as innocent as if she were actually discussing a TV show and not their lives. And then her look settles again. "Seriously, though. Things have gotten a lot more...serious in the last few years. Less bloody hijincks and more torture porn."

And that word - torture - bounces around inside her head like the damn pixelated ball in Pond. Because that's what was done to her. That's what set her off. That's probably what the audience back home was laughing at when Dave and Loki covered her in feathers and googly eyes.

She can't look at household objects anymore without seeing the way they were used to hurt her, to hurt people in front of her. She sees plastic bags and imagines suffocating, stoves and remembers the smell of her own burning flesh. When she takes a shower she remembers the way they used a hose to wash the piss off her pants while she was still in them.

"Just...so you know. About this." She gesture at her face, then outwards at invisible Arenas. "I never blamed you."

"I've been saying the same thing, y'know? They want drama? Nothing brings drama like pitting a whole group against one person." It's funny until it's you, anyway. He doesn't like his chances of sticking around long, what with being a lazy chatterbox. It's still a fond thought to imagine voting off someone he doesn't like for the kicks, but the fun thought is jilted when a poor choice of words weighs down on them like a fat guy in the top bunk.

"It doesn't matter what they get, it won't ever be enough." He says, just to permeate the silence as she dwells on things he can't properly comprehend. It's then he realises that an apology isn't ever going to wash the glitter off his hands, no matter how completely he understands that it was unfortunate miscommunications and misunderstandings that got them this entrenched in the first place.

"You're a bigger person than I am." He admits, voice quiet enough that it could almost be a murmur in the crowd behind them. His eyes aren't on hers right now, his hands are fiddling with a napkin. "I blamed you. That's why I did it." He drops the napkin, finally, trying to put his hands where they can be seen and not fiddling. "We're all looking for a reason to feel a certain way, and we're all looking for a scapegoat." He says carefully and slowly, these are words that have been weighing on him for a while. "Like bank account for guilt investments, but the interest rate is a killer." That was a sloppy metaphor and he knows it, and he sweeps his hand to the side as if the flourish sells his point better. "I'm gonna make it up to you. I don't care if you blame me or not."

She doesn't sound angry, but her brow does crinkle into a skeptical look. "Look, kiddo, I don't need you to act out some kind of guilt theater on me."

She doesn't know why she resents that, but she does. Maybe it's because people doing things for her (to her) was such a part of her stay in prison. Maybe it's because he's a kid, barely older than Kankri. Maybe it's just because even though she doesn't blame him, every time she sees him her mind flashes back to that humiliating moment, tied to a chair, covered in glitter and junk. After he and Loki left, while she strained and struggled with her bloody feet and wrists against the chair until she finally got herself released, released but never free.

She takes a sip of her cider as she sorts through those answers, tries to separate the shams from the truths deep at the root of the way the cider tastes like ash and her stomach tightens.

"But maybe we could be - I don't know, I guess friends is a little presumptuous, but all of us could always use more people in our corner, right?"

He probably should have expected that reaction, but that doesn't stop him from pursing his lips in indignation. He absolutely got caught wrist deep in ham-fisted drama with his fingers wrapped around a validation cookie.

"If this was theater, you'd know. My drama teacher liked me so much, he always saved a spot for me on the stage." He flares his fingers out to the side in the sassiest gesture he can manage. Venus doesn't need to know that the part he was playing was a tree and he doesn't need to linger on the fact that he got called out.

"I wouldn't say it's presumptuous, but it'd probably be weird considering all I know about you is the fact that you're named after a sculpture and you're in the same district as his Royal Juggaboo and Crab: The Talky One." He takes a pointed sip of his cider, letting his fingers slip tighter around it as a source of discreet comfort. "Any assurance that one less person is looking to run me through with a knife is one I'll gladly take, though."

"Yeah? I'm a TV star, buddy. Don't get started on me and theater." She flares her fingers back out at him, jazz hands on one side and the other wrapped around her cider. "My voice was too thin for Broadway, though, so reality TV it was. Which is basically improv theater with a camera crew."

She nods. "Okay, so let's do twenty questions, because all I know about you is that you wear the same pair of sunglasses every day and you come from the same world as my talky little moi...maur...whatever the troll word is for superfriend."

She takes a sip of her drink, as if starting off an initiation. "My name is Venus, I'm twenty years old, and I get really bored during long walks on the beach."

"Trust me, I am well aware of the talent pool that is reality TV." It sounds a little sarcastic but mostly amused, but even he knows that reality TV attracts gems, milks them for what they're worth and then everyone forgets them when it's all said and done.

He nods along at her summary, pausing to add: "Mwah rail. I didn't know it was that serious." It's not the right word for that and he should know. There's nothing else that he can object to with it, so he listens and snorts at her own self introduction. Like something you'd see on a very self-aware dating profile.

"Dave, sixteen. Getting caught in the rain is romanticized and vastly overrated. I'll ask you a question, then you can ask me one and we can dance around and squirm about answers." It's bound to happen. "What's home like for you? Much different from here?"

"Hey, we're not all like Paris Hilton. In fact, I've met her a few times, and I was not impressed." She looks dim for a second, thinking of Kankri, thinking of him sleeping in her bed so someone was there to wake him up from nightmares. His mind is one of the too-many places she can't protect him. She can only steady him during aftershocks. "Moirail. That's the word he used, anyway."

She nods, smiling a bit at the terms of the game, saying without words deal.

"Home for me is- well, in some ways it was so like this that I didn't even realize Panem was weird. In fact, I thought everyone else was being crazy or whiny for having the issues they did with the place." It took her nearly a year of learning, like warped metal being hammered back into the shape of an actual human being. "It's 2006 in the United States of America, George W. Bush is president, we got superheroes and villains and little girls put posters of me on their wall and hope that one day they, too, can be sexy while they kill people for money."

She doesn't even know what to follow that up with, honestly. "In ten years, where do you see yourself? You're not allowed to say 'dead' or any variations."

Dave seems impressed that she's met Paris of all people, god he remembers when she was sincerely important. Hearing names like that reminds him of how far he's come from home and how entrenched he is in things that used to matter then. He doesn't so much as acknowledge that he used the wrong word, so the intent of it being sincere or a joke is known only to him.

"2006? Sheesh. No wonder Paris was a big deal." It all makes sense now, considering he's from 2009. Everything else he listens to carefully and curiously. It doesn't strike him as too strange to hear she's from a world with superheroes, considering he's come face to face with Iron Man and Captain America. It's like an Alternate Reality with a single difference that makes all the difference, it's not a concept he's new to.

"If I say being sexy and killing people for money do I get a poster?" He quirks a brow, but he shuts up to mull it over. "To be honest, I had no idea what I wanted to be until I had no way to be what I wanted to be." He shrugs his shoulders, because being nonchalant makes it easier to admit. "Guess the end goal is going home, winning against the big bad and trying to piece shit together. Maybe after that I'll get my paleontology degree. If I'm sticking around here, I'm cashing in on the movie business." He punctuates the answer with a sip of cider, and he's slowly running out of drink to act flippant with.

Mulling over questions is, surprisingly, difficult. Easy ones seem a little dull and not engaging and hard ones seem presumptuous and like they're none of his business. He guesses that's the point, so he moves on. "If you could go home, would you?"

"That sucks, man." She doesn't know what else to say to that, the idea that at his age so many futures are closed off to him. She could say she understands, that at his age she was dropping out of school and had decided to go for fame or bust, that one way or another she was going to wind up dead, another piece of the world's refuse, so that she might as well do it glamorously when she did. "Why not both, though? Get your paleontology degree and use it to be a consultant on Jurassic Park Two: Triassic Boogaloo."

She's sure that to someone else, it would be a difficult question. Most people have something to return to, loved ones or careers or purposes, but her life always had a proximal expiration date. If she goes home, it's a few more years at best in a career she's already decided inappropriate. Immoral.

"Nah. There's nothing for me there." She sits back, tilting her now empty paper cup in her hand, wondering if she should get up and get another one. She takes one of the little plastic-wrapped biscottis on the table and starts freeing it from the confines. "But I don't think anyone's surprised to learn that I never planned on getting out of here alive."

She racks her brain for a question, too. "Does it scare you, making friends and allies here?"

"Yeah, but what are you gonna do, right? I could have an existential crisis, but it's probably about as, if not less, satisfying than letting that symbolic balloon fuck off into the breeze." He reclines in his chair, acting ambivalent to her pity until she brings a joke into it. That one earns a sincere laugh out of him, it's abrupt and a little harsh, but it's a real laugh. "I think you might be onto something, actually. If you haven't soured on the whole acting thing, I think I could come up with a lead role for you." He raises his cup at her and points, mimicking most Hollywood sleazeballs he's seen on television.

Dave could question whether there's anything for her here, especially when she adds that dark thought there, but he doesn't. If there's anything he's figured out, it's that they've amassed some pretty amazing people. He's never had so many friends, he's never felt this important even when he was one of the last few humans roaming the universe. But there's shit back home that needs handling, whether he likes it or not.

"Guess it's a little more like Summer Camp than I first thought. Bunking together and killing each other is weirdly effective for bonding." Nobody wants to go home, sure. But not leaving alive? A little different.

He feels like his response might be unsatisfying, but he also owes her an answer. "A little bit, yeah. There aren't many people left back home, and variety is the spice of life and all." He drums his fingers on the cup. "You spend all this time with people, kind of makes it hard thinking about going back somewhere they don't exist, right?" Shit, this is getting heavy. Maybe he can try lighten the mood a little. "If you could meet anyone from any work of fiction, who would it be?"

She makes a gesture back, equally caricatured, her hands with her thumbs at perpendicular angles as if she's framing her face then his. "Hey, we're in a post-racial society here. I might even be able to get a love interest role that isn't on BET."

She's relieved for the break from the dark moods, from the existential questions, but her mind latches on it anyway even when Dave tries to draw them into talking about pop culture.

"Oh shit-" she says, smiling as she leans back in her seat, plucking innocently at her lower lip. "I don't know that much fiction. I didn't read much and I- I didn't finish high school, so we never got to that Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies kind of stuff. Um. I guess- Virgil, from Dante's Inferno?"

She'd read it last year, during her crash course in philosophy and theory, her desperate attempt to keep up with the erudite company she kept. "I mean, I know he was a real person too, I know that, but the fictionalized version of him. I think- I mean, he was something of a guide to the Pilgrim, leading him through all the trials of Hell, and for better or worse I can kind of relate? Like he's untouchable because he's already resigned himself to staying in Purgatory."

"Thank God for a world where we aren't relying on the same tired tropes." He scoffs, he's seen enough movies to know that the Capitol could almost be considered more progressive in some ways. Y'know, barring the whole oppression of the Districts and horrible murder games. That just makes it sad, so he's glad when she moves on to answer him.

He watches with a faint smile when she speaks, nodding along when she talks and brings up those little tidbits. "Don't worry, I didn't either." He assures, and that much is probably obvious given his age. "That's interesting, though. Personal relation aside, seeing someone for the sake of taking them out of their element?" He cocks his head to the side in consideration. "Makes me think that Shakespeare characters would be right at home here. But what if we got really meta and brought in someone like Mr.Darcy or. I dunno. James Bond and Ferris Bueller." He smiles a little wider, but he can't help but think about how much Rose would love a conversation like this. Any chance to talk about H. P. Lovecraft and she'd be on it.

"Nah, now we just got new shitty tropes. God, can you imagine if someone was writing this shitshow? They'd get totally called out for cheapening death with all the resurrections." She's fine with shit getting meta. It's a language she speaks, has spoken ever since she wormed her way into Hollywood by dint and grit. "More just like...ferrying people through the worst of it, I think."

Which is ironic, given that they're hear because she smashed his surrogate mom's eye out.

"I would fucking kill for like, Captain Underpants or something super ridiculous like that." She grins, trying to place if Mr. Darcy is a Bronte character or an Austen character and unable to remember any of that. Regardless, Victorian romance literature, right? She thinks. "Johnny Bravo. My kingdom for the Gamemakers to send me a Johnny Bravo."

"True, too true. Not to mention the fact that half of the tropes we get assigned are baseless as hell. People are still acting like I'm little orphan Annie even though my legal guardian is here and spoken for." He shrugs his shoulders and scoffs. "It's like Fox got a free reign on the world. No consistency, no legitimacy and all shock value." He twirls his hands thoughtfully before folding them in front of him on the table. He's already figured out that she's particular with who she puts in that ferry of hers and that on occasion she fends off just about anyone to protect the people in her boat. It's admirable, even if there will always be that part of him that objects.

"He'd be a hit with the Sponsors. They'd probably buy every damn thing he said." He knows that for a fact, what with being a shade-wearing, blond bro with a desperate need to be cool. "They might start claiming he's my real dad, though." He points out with a small but insincere scowl. "What about sitcom characters? This would be an episode formula like nothing they've ever seen before. Imagine them trying to fit their whack catch phrases into everything? Like, what's the deal with sponsor gifts." His Seinfeld impression could use some work, but it's recognisable.

"Seriously? You don't even have red curls. It must be the big doe eyes that I'm presuming you got hidden behind those glasses." She raises her eyebrows and cranes her neck at the barista behind the counter, wondering if she'll take table orders, but it seems Tribute celebrity doesn't extend that far, especially to a girl with a brand. "Don't be dissing Fox. Fox bought me a yacht just to show up at a few of their awards shows."

It's that awareness of where everything comes from that makes Venus an easy Tribute to Escort. If Porrim were to ask, Venus could list which company sponsored every single outfit she'd been given, every accessory. She could name the photographer for every shoot and the coffee bitch. She knows who works for whom and what subsidiaries they have, and before she leaves the house every day she makes sure she isn't wearing anything from rival brands - unless she wants to milk one for a better deal.

With so many people teaching each other combat, she wonders if maybe she should start teaching people media savvy. Maybe she could find a use in that, where she can't find it anywhere else. Now that she's got a traitor mark, all that skill doesn't get her much.

She laughs. "Eight Simple Rules for Killing My Teenage Tributes. All in the District. Murder Days. We could totally do a sitcom."

And with that she leans in a bit. "I'm actually not kidding. You ever considered petitioning out? I know one kid got out on petitioning to be a stand-up comedian back in the day."

Dave doesn't offer much more than a hopeless shrug to begin with, because that's how little he comprehends the logic of Capitol gossip. He has even less to say about Fox, but he smirks anyway. Venus has, in many ways, proven herself to be someone who knows the game well and Dave can respect that. It's just that some networks are shit and the fact that they deal in yachts and lies is symbolic of that.

"We have a whole range of diverse and interesting potential cast members. Acting skills need not apply." Most of them could get away with playing themselves. Like some awkward and desperate spin off show desperately piggy backing off the success of something that has been running for far too long. Here's looking at you, Joey.

A brow raises as Venus leans in and he feels compelled to lean in, remaining curious when she speaks. He seems to turn the thought around like he's swilling a drink in his mind, but he pulls the plug on it with a single word. "Nah." He pulls back, shaking his head. "If someone gets out, it's not going to be me. I don't think I could. Actually. It's like watching everyone run track while you're kicking back watching, I guess." Even if he's exactly the kind of kid who would revel in that sort of thing at school, it's a little different here.

Suddenly, with that thought, a kind of self awareness dawns on him and he realises how long they've been sitting here talking. "I'm not holding you up or anything, am I? Man. I was just in here for a drink." A drink that is long gone by now, obviously.

"Acting skills better not apply. Half our competitors here are hopeless." She chooses the word 'competitors' carefully, because they may well be monitored and she's gotten in trouble enough for sedition. 'Comrades' or even 'peers' holds a lilt of community, and the torture that wrecked so much hell across her mind lingers in her language too.

She nods in a strange sort of sad understanding to Dave's answer - the same answer she has for herself, almost, except for her it's less that she doesn't want to so much as that she can't envision herself anywhere but the Arena. If there's a life where she isn't in it, it's behind something opaque, in some future she can't see. It only breaks her heart to see it in a kid she isn't even sure could qualify for a driver's license.

"I was too. You're not holding me up, but I should probably get going if I want to run a few laps before it gets too cold tonight. It was too cold this morning." She's dedicated to a run at least once a day, not just because endurance is possibly the most valuable asset in the Arena but because it clears her head. Her brain falls out through her slapping heels and her skull gets filled with the music from her headphones and the cold air in her sinuses as she breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth.

She gets up, pausing for a moment, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, before she just smiles and takes her empty cup. "Thanks. For coming over."

There's a lack of finesse and discipline in Dave's fighting and in his approach to life that probably leads a lot of people to believe he's pretty normal. The fact is he's been training to fight since he was old enough to hold a sword, he's been on his toes since then and he's been going through worse than sparring since he was thirteen. Normal is challenging, normal means you need goals and need to do shit like laundry and visiting the doctor. More importantly, he could never do it while he's still looking in from the outside, watching his friends die and suffer with no power to do anything but laundry.

"Here's hoping the next Arena is a tropical paradise." He retorts, unaware of the irony that would slap him in the face for that suggestion in the coming months. He's glad, even if this has been pleasant, that she has somewhere to be. It gives him time to step back and think as well as a friendly escape from the strain it can take to be sociable when you're as awkward as he is.

"Thanks for listening." His tone is earnest and he follows it with a nod, giving her time to properly leave before he makes his way out himself. All things considered, it's a weight off his chest. There'll be an elephant there forever so long as he's stuck here, but at least it's losing some pounds.

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