[open] making today a perfect day (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[rediscover]

Who| Anna and YOU!
What| General merrymaking, flower crown distribution, and probably skipping.
Where| All over the Tribute center!
When| Post-Arena, pre-Crowning
Warnings/Notes| Excessive...cheer???




It's been a few weeks since Anna came out of the Arena, and as such she's managed to dispel all of her gloom and moping by the time the finale comes around and the Victor is announced. She's overjoyed that one of her friends will be crowned this time, and for the princess, it's just plain been awhile since she's had a few nice things going on in her life, so she decides to give in to a little merrymaking.

The tension she still holds with a few of her friends aside, Anna's got a few good reasons to celebrate--even if she's had some awkward moments and slip-ups, and there are an uncomfortable amount of people wearing Commemorative T-Shirts featuring a very close-up rendering of her and Bro kissing--so she turns to one of her favorite hobbies: making flower crowns.

Normally, she does this kind of thing in her room, but this time, she decides to take it to a new level. For the first couple of days, you can find her spread out on her stomach on the floor of the District 4 commons, flowers of all sizes, shapes and colors blanketing the floor, making crown after crown. She spends quite a bit of the time she's working humming to herself, occasionally breaking out into song when she feels particularly happy, and she's happy to take requests. But by the third day, she decides that it's not enough to simply decorate her District-mates, and takes the whole operation down to the lobby, where she settles in on the rug by the hearth and sets to work, turning out lovely crowns of roses and daisies, daffodils and asters, and even some exotic flowers whose names she doesn't know, just that they're lovely and fragrant and people should have a chance to appreciate them.

And when she's exhausted her supply, she'll spend the next couple of days sashaying about and distributing them. Many of them go to her friends and loved ones, but she also takes care to hand them around to perfect strangers, too--who doesn't need a dose of good cheer, after all!

Comments

[rediscover]

Anna just grins, and she might be purposely trying to bug him, now. Just a little. Only because she likes to try and get grumpy butts like him to lighten up.

"You do," she insists. "I bet your Stylist loves having you! You're so cute, it's probably easy to make you look good."

[crabmunicator]

"And every argument over my clothes is a testament to our everlasting friendship," he snorts with a roll of his eyes. "I got stuck in a stupid cape and these ugly, sparkly tattoos for last Crowning. I hated every second of it and if not for the fact I had no choice I never would have worn it. It didn't make me look cute, good, or any other word; it made me look like a glittery tool." A good part of things is probably the trollish disdain for fashion, but he doesn't mention that.

"I'm not cute on my own, either. I am a squat, nub-horned mistake on the vision receptors, and my perpetual scowl only heightens the effect." Pulling his lips back, he displays his nubby fangs.

[rediscover]

Anna's pretty much bound and determined to change Karkat's mind about this. After all, she has a firm belief that anyone can be cute, or even beautiful, if they just look at themselves the right way.

"Nonsense," she replies, and in a bold move she reaches for his hand. "Don't be so hard on yourself! What's your name, anyway?"

[crabmunicator]

She has a tough battle ahead. He pulls his hand away from hers, leveling a narrow-eyed look. "I will be exactly as hard on myself as I like."

Names, though. That's probably fair, and his posture relaxes some.

"I'm Karkat Vantas," he says. "Descendant of the Signless, as I already implied. What's yours?"

[rediscover]

She's trying hard not to get discouraged; she's never met a curmudgeon of quite this caliber before. Normally her natural charm has won whoever it is over by now and she can handle the rest, but he seems strangely immune.

"Fair enough," she replies breezily, trying not to sound hurt. "Karkat? I like that name." It reminds her of the names of the rock trolls, funnily enough. "I'm Anna, descendant of...my sister Elsa!"

[crabmunicator]

His skepticism remains for her compliment, but it turns to something more open (if still pinched above the eyes) as she finishes out.

"Descended? Aren't earth sisters the product of the same concupiscent union?" he asks in the most alien way he can. He knows about Dave's Bro, but that's a special case, and also they're idiots. "Besides, I don't know Elsa. I only mentioned Signless because you apparently know him and I wanted to clarify my relation."

[rediscover]

Anna's cheeks turn a little pink. She hadn't been thinking, in her eagerness to say something that would sound clever and give them a common ground. "Oh, right--no you're definitely right. I was just trying to--"

She sighs. "Never mind. Anyway, it's nice to meet you." Chewing her lip, she averts her gaze. "Even if you don't think so, probably. But I promise you, the flower crown really does suit you."

[crabmunicator]

"You're repeating yourself, Anna." He sighs, reaches up, and draws the flower crown off his head. "And standing here debating floral accessories in a loop is not my idea of an engaging conversation. Here." And he holds the crown back out to her.

"If you have other people to deliver these two then feel free to skip along your cheer-drenched way, but if you want to have a proper conversation, then how about we find someplace to sit and you tell me about more than the sister you're not descended from," he offers. "What's your district? I know it's not six."

His past self probably would have sent her off with a rude word (or deluge of logorrhea), but here and now he has the perspective of friends grown distant on the meteor and the general strife of the arenas. She's trying, is the thing. It's obvious from her language down to the look on her face, to say nothing of her earnest repetition of compliments. And while she hasn't earned friendship yet, it couldn't hurt to have another ally.

[rediscover]

"Oops," Anna giggles, watching him pull the crown off and hand it back to her. Resigned to the fact that he's not going to put up with wearing it any longer, she takes it back, looping it back over her arm with the others.

"No, no, that's okay. I wanna talk to you," she insists. "Let's go sit down."

She lets him lead, since he seems to like leading the conversation, and maybe that means he just wants to be in charge. Anna's pretty okay with that. "I'm in Four," she replies. "My boyfriend's in six, though. Is that where you are? Do you know Bro?"

[crabmunicator]

"You're dating him?" he asks, raising her an eyebrow.

They're in the lobby, which is convenient enough, so as they talk he leads off to one of the sitting areas.

"I've met him, yeah. He's my best friend's brother and he's a complete weirdo who insists on backseat gaming, which is in fact how I met him. You remember the curfew? It was then." Here are some good chairs. He sits. "But yeah, I'm in six. I've been here since that mini-arena, the one with the ball pit and all that other crap."

[rediscover]

"Yup!" Anna seems totally unfazed by his apparent disdain. But when he mentions 'best friend's brother,' Anna brightens. "Dave? You're Dave's best friend? Wait, wow, I never knew Dave had a best friend." What can she say? They don't exactly talk about their thoughts and feelings a lot. In fact, they usually try to actively avoid that. "Anyway, I know he's a weirdo, but, well, I kinda like that about him."

The mention of the Kids' Arena has Anna wrinkling her nose. "Ugh. That one was awful. The costume they had me in--blech!" It had involved a thong. Not cute.

[crabmunicator]

The eyebrow stays raised. "He's the biggest, steaming pile of ass to ever disgrace my sniff node, but over the past three years I have acquired the requisite head injuries to mark him down as prime nookstain #1, if that's what you're asking. He's a moron, but we've been through a lot together."

A lot consisting mainly of a long, boring meteor trip while their friends steadily retreated into their own pits of drama and social problems. You know, the usual. And there was the whole dying terribly in a bad end to the timeline, but he doesn't mention that either.

"Bluh, tell me about it." He props his cheek in his hand. "I had this stupid wiggly thing on my face," he says, motioning with the other to his upper lip. "Like humans sometimes get, but uglier and pointier. And a stupid hat, and ugly pants, and basically everything was awful. At least those ugly space suits from the next arena were simple."

[rediscover]

Anna wrinkles her nose at the unnecessarily graphic metaphor, but makes no comment. She's coming to realize that Karkat, like Dave, has a very specific way of describing things that isn't quite what one would call tasteful.

His description of his costume, however, has Anna snorting. "Please. That sounds like a cakewalk compared to mine." She leans forward, cupping her mouth with one hand to continue in a lowered tone. "You could see my whole butt." It isn't her proudest moment.

[crabmunicator]

Karkat makes a funny squawk in his throat and turns his head aside. Is he turning red? Naw.

"Well good for you that your ass is covered, but I am not here to ponder the state of your human rear. Please tell me the rest of what you've dealt with here has been annoying in the conventional sense. Like--"

His hands set into motion, gesturing something round. "Signless's Crowning! I had this ugly golden bowl with a fake frog in it that I had to carry around everywhere because 'symbolism'."

[rediscover]

It's okay, Karkat, Anna's definitely turning red, too. What is her life? Terrible. That's what it is. "Sorry," she squeaks, burying her face in her hands for a second. "But yes, there have been many more annoying things." She picks her head back up.

"A frog? Really? That's a weird thing to make you carry around. What did it symbolize?"

[crabmunicator]

He rubs at his face to try to encourage the blushing to recede. It helps that she takes his bait for a changed topic.

"My all-encompassing failure and defeat," he spits out, ever the positive one. "I helped a friend breed some frogs once, the frog was the universe, I gave the universe cancer, and his resounding croak is testament to my eternal disgrace to the field of ectobiology."

[rediscover]

Anna's eyes get sort of wide and concerned at that. It sounds...complicated. And scary. And she doesn't really have much to say to that.

"Wow. That's...I'm sorry?"

She's really good at friendship, it's her.

[crabmunicator]

"Life exists for my punishment," he says as simply and solidly as claiming water is wet, and he shrugs at her. "It was my own fault, like everything else." Even the things that aren't, because it always comes back to him in his mind.

He motions at her.

"You had to have worn something less awful then, right? Everyone was done up in some kind of troll theme, or what the stylists thought troll theme meant."

[rediscover]

Anna's expression crumples a little. "I'm sure that's not true. Maybe you're just being a little hard on yourself."

His question about her outfit from Signless's crowning has her wrinkling her nose, trying to remember. "Oh, right," she replies after a moment. "They painted me all grey and had me in something flowy and olive-green. It was sort of fun, actually!"

[crabmunicator]

They already had one back-and-forth argument of cheer vs pessimism, so to save them both the time, Karkat doesn't start. A look of skepticism is all she gets.

Turning focus to the other answer, his lip curls. "God, there were so many fake trolls. Even leading up to that party, I kept seeing them on the street with their fake horns and contacts and shit. I'm pretty sure some of them even had their teeth surgically altered. How fucked up is that?" He taps a finger by his mouth. "Nevermind ours are better, but for fuck's sake, we never asked for that. You don't see us painting ourselves human colors or sawing our horns off when a human wins."

He did get disguised as one a while back, but he carefully neglects to mention that. Circumstances were different; a break-in is not a Crowning party.

[rediscover]

Anna wrinkles her nose. "That sounds like it would be fairly disturbing," she agrees, "seeing people playing pretend as something they're not." She offers Karkat an apologetic look.

"Sorry. At least you can take comfort in the fact that none of us Tributes probably wanted to dress up like your kind."

[crabmunicator]

He nods to her in easy agreement. "Mostly it just felt fucking disrespectful. People here don't know half enough about trolls, you know? Or when they do have something a half-sneeze close to us they call us by that name instead of noting the differences and asking what we are. And it's the fans who do this on purpose that are the worst."

They have no excuse in the matter. They've done it by choice, painting themselves up like it's some fun costume and not a whole group of people with their own culture and lives.

"You don't have anything like us where you're from, do you?" He expects not, but it's more engaging to ask something that just sit here bitching endlessly.

[rediscover]

"I understand," Anna admits. Truth be told, she's noticed how the Capitol tends to do it with every Victor--and even some of the Tributes. The way she's spotted Capitol girls wearing braids like hers and Elsa's, even dying white streaks in their hair. Certainly on a much smaller scale, but still unnerving. It still feels sort of wrong.

"Uh--sort of? I mean, they're called trolls, too, but they're a lot different. Our trolls are made of rock, and they can disguise themselves as little boulders, and they have magic. They saved my life, actually."

[crabmunicator]

His eyebrows raise. "What, really?"

Here he'd intended to use an expected negative answer to jump off into what people have mistaken him for, but this answer takes up his interest.

"You're not trolling me either, are you? Magic rock people who saved your life?" he asks, head tipping to the side. "You have got to tell me the story behind that, because it has to be massively stupid and amazing, or else your lie is going to unravel at the poorly-sewn seams."

He could believe it, potentially. He's seen plenty of weird shit in life. It's just not his fault that they sound so completely opposite to what he is.

[rediscover]

"Really," Anna confirms, and although she should have expected Karkat to follow up with a demand for elaboration, she doesn't. Still, she doesn't seem ruffled by his request, merely shifting and tucking her legs up underneath her in her seat.

"It's true," she assures him, "and I'll tell you. So basically, my sister Elsa accidentally hit me in the head with her ice powers when I was young. Our parents rushed us to these trolls, who used their magic to turn all my memories of Elsa's magic into normal childhood memories. Basically, they made me forget that she even had them, which saved my brain from being damaged by Elsa's ice magic."

Anna takes a breath; it's a lot to explain. "Fast forward 13 years, and I find out accidentally that Elsa has magic. She runs into the mountains, I go and find her, and she accidentally hits me again--but this time, in the heart. Which is bad. Really bad. She froze it, basically, which can kill you in the course of a day if you don't fix it. So this friend of mine, Kristoff--he was here for awhile, actually, we dated--takes me to the trolls, who actually raised him when he was a kid. And the trolls explained that only an act of true love can cure a frozen heart. And it did!"

She isn't elaborating here on purpose--there are a lot of still-painful memories associated with that time in her life.