Staffer's Retreat

[whatisay]

WHO| Every Escort, Stylist and Mentor. Any Capitolites or Peacekeepers who might have reason to oversee or visit.
WHAT| A professional retreat for the overworked, underpaid, and super underappreciated Tribute Care Teams.
WHERE| A chalet in District One, easily accessible by train.
WHEN| Before the next death roll.
WARNINGS| Typical Capitolites being entitled asshats.
NOTES| I've put up some subthreads for various activities, if you want to add more just do so under the appropriate day subheader!

Staffer's Retreat. Mandatory. The teams for each District are given a handful of days to prepare for the weekend, which, they're told, is going to be scheduled for a weekend with no big shake-ups in the Arena and perfect weather for outdoor activities. On Friday morning, they're taken by train to a small chalet tucked into a mountainside. A few inches of snow covers the ground but the sky is clear, reflected in the beautiful lake at the base of the mountain.

Until Sunday evening, their days will be packed with "professional development". The schedule looks something like this:

Friday:
Icebreakers
Trust Falls
Hypothetical Scenarios: How to Be the First Person Chosen for a Bomb Shelter
Three-Legged Race
Self-Care Hour: Mandatory Yoga
Dinner
Breaking Down Stereotypes Workshop

Saturday:
Mandatory Mentor Group Therapy: PTSD is Not An Excuse
Mandatory Escort/Stylist Workshop: Building Trust with Your Tributes
Mandatory Sexual Harassment Training: Focus on Tribute/Mentor and Tribute/Escort Relationships
Lunch
Capture-the-Flag
Group Lego-Building
Dinner
12am Karaoke

Sunday:
5:30am Continental Breakfast
Compliment Circle
Journal Hour
Farewells

Comments

Emily Finch

[conifer]

Emily had been pretty dubious about the whole idea of the retreat. Getting to know the other mentors was certainly a good idea, but she tended to be quite awkward with the sort of forced interaction that teambuilding exercises usually elicited. She feels very conspicuous, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing around, giving a smile that's friendly but guarded at her partner.

"I am Emily, daughter of Carla, daughter of Nerea, daughter of ... others." She falters a little at the 'others', her brow clouding over, thinking about who they might have been, her ancestors before the Dark Days.

[president_evil]

Emily might have had an easier time of it, had she been partnered with anyone other than who she was. Wesker was as pale and still as Death across from her, the dark lenses of his glasses as black and bottomless as the reaper's empty sockets.

He was straight and centered-square in his chair, but other than facing her, he gave nothing from the time she sat to the time she stopped speaking.

Only then did he move.

He lifted a hand to turn the face of his watch to him, doing quick math in his head.

"You still have - 25 seconds."

[conifer]

She smiles apologetically, beginning to count the seconds down in her head from the time he gives. "I'm afraid I don't know any further than that. I could do my paternal line back to the same generation, though I don't know if that's in the rules."

[president_evil]

"If they intend to hold us to the letter, I'm afraid they've wasted their time, I've seen the records here."

And unless it pertained to the Capitol's shining citizens, chances were they were lost, rat eaten, or stained - or all three, a few special cases.

"And that's before we've even started on mine."

Or the 'trolls.' He was looking forward to that one, personally.

[conifer]

"I get the feeling these tasks were designed more with the Capitol citizens in mind. They'll probably go the whole minute and then some," she replies a little cynically. But then, the organisers were surely Capitolites themselves, endowed with the same ignorance toward those from the Districts, not to mention other worlds.

[president_evil]

"Citizens with too much time on their hands," Wesker murmured dryly, his exhale like a gust over the Sahara. "That, or a significant lack of appreciation for those without said."

Granted, most of his tributes could undoubtedly last a weekend without his attention, and truthfully if they couldn't, they weren't likely anyone would have been minding in the first; but it was the principal of the thing.

Why bother with the farce if you couldn't even be bothered to pretend like it mattered?

[conifer]

"And this is just the beginning," Emily replies wryly, glad she's not the only one thinking this whole weekend was a waste of time. She had a feeling the activities would only go downhill from here.

[president_evil]

"Ah, yes," he nodded in sardonic agreement. "I wonder if perhaps someone gets dumped on their head turning the trust falls or breaks a leg during the three-legged race they might call it off."

He doubted it, but he could dream.

[conifer]

"I do have to wonder why they're bothering," she admits. Coherence between the Mentors, Escorts and Stylists within an individual team was a good thing to learn, but this sort of bonding... "It feels like they're trying to instil in us the very opposite of what we need to teach our Tributes."

[president_evil]

"What's the saying? 'If you can't beat them, join them.'"

It was a sentiment even he had had to agree with in his time, as much as it had pained him to sink to Project Alice's level. (Particularly when the fiasco was in large part her fault.)

"When they're bringing friends and whole families across the veil, no amount of carrot or stick is going to convince some tributes."

[conifer]

"Then thank goodness for the Gamemakers," she replies, a little bitterly. "If we can't get them to kill each other, they'll drop a meteor on them all instead." Or an earthquake, in her year in the Arena.

[president_evil]

"And yet, there they stand."

Plus or minus a few, granted, but on the whole, even the worst of the holdouts, carried on. Whether their popularity provided them some measure of safety, or there was something grander afoot, only those above Wesker's current pay-grade could say.

"Perhaps there will be trust exercises for all once the arena's done."

[conifer]

"So they do." For the moment, at least. But Emily didn't like to think what might befall her charges while she was stuck on retreat instead of out there making phone calls and attending meetings with potential sponsors.

"Maybe. Jason would just love that." She can't imagine anything he'd hate more, and she's amused at the prospect.

[president_evil]

Wesker's mouth curled, a sharp pull at one corner.

Misery loved company - even his.

"He does seem to be enjoying himself, doesn't he?" And it was, thus far, a highlight of Wesker's weekend. Knowing there was at least one other who was more miserable than he.

[conifer]

She glances across the room to see him reluctantly listening to another family history, and can't resist a small smirk. "What isn't there to enjoy?"

[president_evil]

Wesker followed her eyes, a pale eyebrow twitching at the little curl of her mouth. Interesting.

"No love lost even among the staff, Mrs. Finch?"

[conifer]

"It's 'Miss'," she corrects quickly. The idea of her marrying at all is a little surreal to her; she couldn't give that much of herself to another person after the Arena and Snow's prostitution of her in the Capitol that had followed - she couldn't burden another person with all of that, she'd feel that it would cheapen them.

"Oh, he's not too bad." Not nearly so bad as some of their Tributes made him out to be, Emily thought. "It's just refreshing to see some of these Capitol folk out of their comfort zone."

[president_evil]

His other eyebrow joined the first.

"Miss, then," he echoed, making a mental note of both the preference and her reaction. (One never knew what be useful later.) "Still, some applause is warranted. I merely work in the same vicinity, you have to live with him."

[conifer]

"I suppose so. I think I may be biased just because my own Escort couldn't care less. At least Jason's doing his job, even if he makes all the Tributes hate him for it."

[president_evil]

"Perhaps he hopes to band them together through a common goal," Wesker allowed, tipping his head in Jason's direction.

He might have said they already had one, but some tributes were more short-sighted than others.

"And hopefully it works better for him than it did our dear Penny."

[conifer]

"Maybe," she smiles. It was far safer to resent him than the Capitol after all. Perhaps he wasn't as ornery as he made out to be then, but was playing a very clever game. Emily knew that it was really too much to hope.

Her brow furrows over as she tries to recall the name, but she'd deliberately distanced herself from the Games during her time in Seven, preferring to be alone in the forests than watching the bloodshed on TV that invariably gave her the flashbacks to her own Games, and the nightmares. "Penny?"

[president_evil]

His attention refocused on Emily, lights playing off the dark lenses of his glasses as his head turned back toward her.

"Hsiang Jiao," he clarified, giving her a beat to see if she recognized the woman by her given name. Then he went on, passing over the moment as if it hadn't happened. "She was a Peacekeeper, in much the same sense that one might call I one."

A broad name, for their specific purpose.

"She too had a way with the tributes, and eventually one of them killed her for it."

That much, he was certain Emily had heard about, even out in the Districts. The subsequent arrests of a dozen tributes, the failed escape attempts, the brandings.

"If they got to her, one shudders to think what they could do to an Escort."

[conifer]

Emily blanched a little as she recalled the bits and pieces that had filtered through to the Districts. He was right: if they could do that to a Peacekeeper, the Escorts stood no chance. She reflected how stupid it was of the Capitol to train the people who surely hated it most of all in deadly armed combat.

"Well, that's part of why I'm here. To balance him out somewhat, so the Tributes don't hate him too much."

[president_evil]

Wesker considered for a moment, recalling his single conversation with the man, his senses burning again with the memory.

"I'd ask for a raise, Miss Finch."

[conifer]

Emily chuckles a little at that. She would, if they thought she'd actually get one. As it is, she's happy just to keep her family in the far nicer house in Victor's Village, and ensure that her brothers never have to go into the reaping with the new format of the Games.

"What about you? Anyone you find difficult to work with?"

That seemed a far better question to ask this weekend rather than all of the pointless exercises to get them to work better.