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Who| Stephen and D6 | Stephen and anyone
What| Trying to convince his Tributes to go the fuck to sleep, and unwinding himself when the kids are in bed
Where| D6 rooms | the coffeeshop downstairs
When| Thursday morning
Warnings/Notes| First prompt closed to D6; the other's open!

A:

Stephen is usually around the D6 rooms. Generally, he's easygoing -- he was stricter for a while there, but after the last Arena, now that his traitor cuff's come off, he's started to let his Tributes get away with more. If you've come to him with a problem, he's done his best to help you, and he's also had a conversation with each of his Tributes about just how many public appearances they want to make. If a Tribute requests that their fancy-event invitations be kept to a minimum, he's done his best to facilitate that. If a Tribute wants to play the social game and network, Stephen's helped them with that, too.

Today, though, he's trying to get in touch with all of his Tributes, because he has something very important to ask them to do.

He has to ask them to sleep.

Stephen is generally sticking around the D6 rooms. When his Tributes wake up, they'll find him in the common area, playing on a tablet. He'll look up at them and grin.

"Morning."

B:

Leave it to Stephen not to take his own advice. Around 4pm, he can be found on the ground floor of the Tribute Center, sipping some kind of froofy coffee. There's probably like three kinds of chocolate in it. It smells divine. If anyone meets his eye, he'll flash them a smile, and wave if he knows them. He's got a tablet propped up in front of him, and it looks like he's flipping through an e-release of a vapid Capitol magazine.

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"That, or they don't want to admit it." It's not only simpler for them to see the Tributes as pawns in the Games, but it probably feels safer to the Capitolites, too.

"Entirely possible," Stephen admits freely, raising his eyebrows and closing his eyes. "It's incredible how far disbelief can be willfully suspended. People tie their heads into knots trying not to see what they don't want to."

His tone is mild, his body language casual; of course he's talking about manipulating the public's perception of Tributes. What else could he, in his glittery suit and glittery eyeliner and no less than five actual diamonds in his ears, be talking about?

"It's been a while since I've seen you around here, Emily."

"Or what others don't want them to see," Emily adds darkly, biting on her lip and looking away, knowing that it's far too dangerous and stupid of her to criticize the Capitol any more than that, especially to someone like Stephen, who glancing over him does look the very image of Capitol society.

"I went back to Seven for a while. Between Johanna and Blight, there wasn't much need for me here as well. Too many cooks, and all that." She knew she couldn't stay away indefinitely, though, as much as she'd have liked to. And with the number of tributes, the frequency of the Games and the need for a mentor now, she'd had no choice.

"Well, welcome back," he says breezily. "Have you gotten acquainted with your Tributes yet?"

This topic of conversation is safer, and to Stephen, just as interesting.

"I met them at breakfast earlier. I've seen some of their Games," though not as much as she ought to have, avoiding watching footage of the Arena whenever possible back in Seven, "but I'm still getting to know them, really."

Stephen pushes his chair back and standing up. He crosses the few feet over to Emily's table and indicates the seat across from her.

"Do you mind?" he asks. His aspect isn't heavy, not exactly, but it's more serious than it was before.

"Go ahead." She shifts her position a little, pushing out the chair with her foot, and leaning on the table with one elbow.

He takes the seat opposite, dropping easily and not ungracefully into the chair. His posture is relaxed and open -- one elbow is behind him, resting on the back of the chair. "It's a pretty steep learning curve," he says. "Handling that many Tributes at once isn't easy, and they're...not the same as the Tributes from the old Games." He tilts his head. "I know we're in different Districts, but I've been working with them for about a year, and I don't mind telling you what I know."

Emily can't help but be a little wary of why an Escort from another District would offer help so freely, but she'll readily accept any help she can get. "I do feel a little out of my depth," she admits. "Although it's nice to know they can hold their own." There had been years when both of her Tributes were slain at the Cornucopia, and those are the ones she feels she's failed most.

"Some of them can," Stephen says. "You can't generalize with the new Tributes. With the old ones, you knew something about them coming in -- you knew generally what skills they would and wouldn't have. But with these, they're all different. Some of them are trained killers already. Some of them haven't even been in a fistfight. And all of them," he says with particular emphasis, "are used to being treated like citizens."

She listens carefully, nodding slowly as she realises that the task before her is a lot more tricky than she'd first envisioned it - and in parts very different to her previous experience as a Mentor. She remembered Jason's warning that most of their Tributes hated him, and reflected that it may be partly due to him trying to keep them in place as a Tribute rather than them assuming they had the freedoms of a Capitol Citizen.

"Is it best to try to help them all out equally, or just focus on one or two?"

"That's up to you," he says. "I can only think of two or three in my own district with a good chance of winning. But it's important to me at least to do what I can for the rest. Even if they lose, they're going back in the Arena. They survive everything that happens to them."

He shakes his head, trailing off. The glamour Stephen used to associate with the Arena is all but gone -- there are traces of it, of course, but for the most part, sending his Tributes into the arena is something that makes him feel both sad and guilty. In the new Games, there's no such thing as a quick death. Telling one of his Tributes that because they had no chance, he was going to focus on Bro or Molotov? No. He couldn't do that.

"In some ways that must be worse," she muses. Going through that many Arenas would mean they'd have many more scars, even if the Capitol fixed the ones that were visible. She'd still take dying over and over above her own survivor's guilt, though. Knowing those you killed would come right back took a lot of the gravity away from the act of killing them.

"It's harder on them than they like to let on," Stephen says, agreeing. "So I try to keep them as comfortable as possible -- you know, make sure everyone gets something to make the Arena easier on them. See, winning--" Stephen begins, then cuts himself off, glancing around. "Not to be insensitive, considering your history, but winning the Hunger Games isn't what it used to be. There's only a few months between Arenas instead of a year. The direct benefit to the District is short-lived, and the same people are going right back into the Games. Keeping their minds sound isn't just important for their sakes. The more Tributes from your District that go into the arena mentally stable, the higher your chances of winning."

"I'll keep that in mind." It seemed like a better measure to her of which tributes to concentrate on than their scores, too. She'd rather have weaker Tributes who were aware of their surroundings and how to play the game than stronger ones who were unhinged and unpredictable, and couldn't work with the hints she sent in with her parachutes. "Besides, the new format means the children of my District aren't going to be reaped any more." Including two of Emily's brothers. "That's a far greater benefit to Seven, and I intend to repay the new Tributes in any way I can for it."

He nods, understanding in theory if not experience. It had occurred to him that yes, this meant that Six's children weren't being reaped, but it means much less to him than it does to Emily.

When Stephen goes on, he drops his voice.

"Some Escorts," he says, and doesn't say Jason Compson, "are still treating the new Tributes like they're frightened children from the Districts. That's just not true anymore. Most of them aren't children, and a lot of them aren't frightened."

"They ought to be frightened," Emily says darkly, thinking of all the Capitol could do to them, but she takes his point. They couldn't just herd them through the Games like sheep, especially since they weren't exactly going to the slaughter any more.

"And because they're not," Stephen says, picking up where her statement left off, "they sometimes cause trouble. That's something you're going to have to handle, too -- did you hear about what happened to Hsiang Jiao?"

Hisang "Penny" Jiao was a high-ranking Peacekeeper who was a brilliant torturer, completely sadistic, half-insane, and didn't care to hide it. Just being in a room with her was terrifying, and she answered directly to Cruentus. Essentially, she could dole out any punishments she wanted on any grounds. She was murdered last year -- by, Emily may or may not already know, offworld Tributes.

"Only that she died in the line of duty. There was a memorial on TV, but..." She shakes her head, trying to remember if there'd been anything else. If there was anything else going on the Capitol had likely kept it covered up from the Districts, fearing riots there, but Emily had gone out of her way to stay in the forests and avoid any coverage of anything to do with the Capitol or the Games as much as possible, with how bad her nightmares had become at that point.

"Well, if you don't know, I probably shouldn't tell you any more," Stephen says, waving a hand, playing the good Citizen.

Hopefully, she's bright enough to pick up on the fact that the Tributes had something to do with it. He's told her enough to make it guessable that the Tributes were responsible.

"But I'll tell you that it was very frightening, and an enormous mess for us."

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