thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Kieren Walker and open!
What| Returned to the Capitol after his death
Where| Around the tower
When| A couple days after his death in the arena
Warnings| Mentions of death

District 10

After his death, Kieren had been in shock. Not from the fact that someone had killed him, but from the way in those last moments, his humanity had slipped away from him. It wasn't when it would have happened naturally, either, he'd been prepared for that, but when he'd least expected it, and part of him knew that somehow the people running the games must have had their hands on the trigger the whole time. He knew they'd had that power over him, and that he could have eaten that woman if she wasn't so well prepared for the situation.

After a couple days of moping in his room, he emerged, walking down the hall numbly, looking even more like his undead self than usual. He supposed since he wasn't dead, at least no more so than usual, he should start acting like it. He didn't like this place, or this situation, but it wasn't doing much to help it if he just sat around like a corpse.

Around the tower

Of course, there wasn't much time spent where he looked so awful. He felt just as bad, of course, but when the stylist got a hold of him, he'd been quickly dressed up, and an ample amount of cover-up brought his skin to a much livelier looking shade. With a pair of contacts to bring his eyes to a nice shade of brown, he looked almost normal...almost. Like a corpse carefully dressed by a skilled mortician, there was still something dead and waxy about his appearance, and his skin was quite cold to the touch, but at least his looks didn't stand out quite so much as being clearly and completely dead now.

He had no interest in the food, of course, nor did he want to watch the games only to see more people die. He most certainly didn't want to think about going into that situation again, which eliminated any desire to train. Besides, he didn't see what he'd be training for. If he went back to the arena, he wouldn't be fighting, and he still didn't need food. He'd just be waiting until they did something that either resulted in his death or made him a killer, because while he'd be endangering someone either way, at least he could make the choice of not being an active and willing participant in it all.

Instead of doing any of that, Kieren asked about getting some pencils and a sketch pad, which he was able to get fairly easily, and settled down wherever he could find that seemed calm and quiet and began sketching. After a while, he paused, looking at the picture. It was Simon's face he was drawing, he supposed he missed him more than he realized. Selecting another shade of gray, Kieren began shading in the portrait, the colors he was selecting possibly hinting to anyone who saw what he was drawing that the subject was not intended to be alive...at least, not completely alive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arya was in the common area of the suite, sat cross legged on a sofa, watching the footage of the Arena. A big pile of cakes and cookies is stacked up in front of her - the one thing she'd found about the Capitol that she'd liked was the unlimited food, even though she'd really prefer to get it herself than have to order the Avox to do so. When Kieren emerges she looks surprised at his condition, as he still looked the worse for wear to her.

"Are you sick?"

She pushes a cookie in his general direction, as though that will solve everything.

Kieren shook his head. "Not sick. Just...dead." He looked at the cookie. "And I don't eat anymore. Thanks, though."

It was nice of the kid to offer it. For a second, he wondered why she was here, thinking for a moment that surely no one would put a kid that age in a death arena...until he thought back to Firo's comment, that there were children in the arena and that if Kieren went rabid and ate one of those...well, that wasn't a line of thought he wanted to dwell on any longer.

"I died too," she replies immediately, as though it's a competition. "In there." She nods toward the screen, currently showing recap footage of the fighting in the caves. "But it looks like they fixed me up a bit better than you." She's still a little sad that her scars hadn't stayed.

"I'm...sorry to hear that." Sure, he'd died in there, too, but it seemed even worse coming from a kid. "I didn't mean in there, though, although I did die there, too. I meant before I came here. I'm actually how I was when I came here in the first place."

Though now that he thought about it, he wondered if they could bring her back from the dead so fully why they had only brought him back to his undead state.

Arya regards him closely on hearing that, her interest fully piqued. "I saw a man come back from the dead once before. He didn't look pale like you, but he had scars all over him, from where he'd died before."

Kieren nodded. "I guess how dead you look depends on why you come back, and how completely you come back."

Because technically, Kieren was still dead, he was just...walking around despite that. Kieren, of course, still had the scars from his death, and from any injury his body took after. Not that they were visible when he was fully dressed.

"Does everyone come back from the dead where you're from?" She sounds half curious, half hopeful.

"Not everyone," he said, "Only people who died in a particular year, for some reason."

Why it worked that way, he didn't know. Of course, hearing the hopeful tone he feels the need to let her know that it wasn't as good of a thing as it might appear.

"Although, we weren't quite like I am now when we first came back. It didn't really start out as a good thing."

"It wasn't good for the man I saw either, but..." she trails off, leaving her wish that it could happen more often where she came from unvoiced, knowing she would probably sound uncaring for his own situation.

"...but it's better than staying dead?" he ventured a guess. "It's not all bad, either. At first it was, because when I came back, I didn't start out...right. Or safe. I was rabid. Now, though, I might be a rotting corpse, but it's still a second chance at life."

A second chance to not make a foolish mistake like the one that ended with him being like he was now, a second chance to make things right with his family after hurting them without thinking of what he was doing. A chance to live and love, and a chance he'd been doing fairly well with despite some obstacles until he'd been snatched away to this place.

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District 10

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