paint-by-number morning sky [semi-open!]

[69problems]

Who| Signless and Tony, Signless and the D12 tributes, Signless and YOU!
What| Taking care of business, then taking care of pets.
Where| D12, then the lobby.
When| Now (after the arena, before the crowning).
Warnings/Notes| Nothing I can think of, will add if something comes up.

A. For Tony

Remembering the whirlwind of interviews and speculation and internal conflict he had to deal with after winning, the Signless has left Tony more or less alone since the end of the arena. There's only so long he can put off talking to Twelve's new victor, however, and he feels it's reasonable to want to be on the same page since they're going to be working together. It won't do their tributes any good if they're working hard but working at cross purposes.

With that in mind he stands outside of Tony's door and gives a brief, polite knock.

"Tony? I'd like to speak with you, if you don't mind."

B. For All D12 Tributes

Just as important as keeping on the same page as his co-mentor is keeping up to date with his tributes. In his opinion he'll be best-equipped to help them if he hears from them what it is that they most need. On top of that he wants to get to know all of them better. Twelve is many things and especially right now it's a mixed bag of very different people with very different skills who need very different marketing to make sure they get as much help in the arenas as it's possible for him to secure. Perhaps it's not the most efficient way of doing things but he wants to be sure everyone is being presented to sponsors in a way that they're, if not happy with, at least not vehemently opposed to.

Each of them will receive a brief, friendly note on their door asking to meet in the suite common room at an appointed time for a brief check-in. He parks himself on the couch with a notebook, a pen, and a decidedly non-alcoholic drink, and waits.

C. Open!

It hadn't been as much of a surprise as it might have been when after his crowning he was presented with the small crablike creature the Capitol had billed as a 'mutantblood lusus'. He remembers very well Maximus and his pet tiger. No, the problem with his new pet isn't so much that he hadn't been expecting it and more that it has absolutely no manners. He's discovered that with the exception of himself and Karkat it's distrustful of people at best and attempts to eat their ankles at worst. 'Worst' happens to be its default.

Naturally the solution is taking it down into the lobby of the tower (on a short leash, of course) and attempting to get it used to people. It skitters around his legs, clacking its claws and blinking its four white eyes suspiciously at anyone who gets too close. When it's not making agitated chirping sounds or screeching in alarm at a Capitolite's oh-so-scary shiny accessories it's emitting a low, constant and very uneasy hiss.

"Sorry," he says, nudging it with his foot away from the person it's most recently decided is its mortal enemy. "I'm trying to teach him to be a little more personable and it's not going well."

Comments

[yoknapatawpha]

"If you don't mind jotting me down, sir. I have the afternoon myself." Bayard finally, having shed off the anxiety of the encounter and finding the accepted apology a burden removed, reaches for that cookie. "I'd be obliged for some coffee. Extra sugar and cream, please? Actually, if you could just let me have at the sugarcubes. I reckon they're becoming a bit of a problem for me."

But if he's going to go into the Arena, maybe he deserves some treats beforehand.

"Besides, it's impolite not to respond when someone sets time aside for you, and I hid from you during that too, so that's a second apology. But it don't seem you're holding it against me any."

[69problems]

"I don't see the point," he says, setting his tea down on the counter. Coffee, coffee... he hasn't had much since coming to Panem, not because he dislikes it but because tea is more familiar. Luckily there's already a pot made, sitting half-full and ready for pouring. He takes down one of the suite mugs, speaking as he works.

"You didn't do it to be difficult or as a purposeful insult, did you? So you haven't done any harm. Nothing worth holding against you, anyway." He's decided that, so far, he likes Bayard. He's got a strong sense of responsibility, he's polite, and he seems to be adapting to his new surroundings well enough. All of those things are going to make mentoring him a good deal easier.

"Here you are." He sets the coffee in front of Bayard. The cream is already in it, and as requested the sugarcubes are separate in their own little bowl. "Between you and I it's good that you're eating those; it means there are less for me. It was very hard to get sugar when I was growing up, so if I don't watch myself here I end up eating far too much of it."

[yoknapatawpha]

"Then I'm grateful it's settled. Thank you kindly," Bayard says, taking the coffee to his chest and trapping the heat between his fingers. "We had sugarcane on our plantation for a while, but it ain't a crop worth rearing these days. We can't even harvest the cotton these days what with the war at our doorsteps. Ain't nothing but tending the stock and gardens to survive these days."

Which has meant hard times for the town of Jefferson - proud people whose insufficiency is being thrown in their face by, it seems, the Yankees.

"I've met your - your grandson, I reckon? Karkat, reading a book up on the roof. So you want to tell me about yourself any, how you won the Arena and how I ought to do it?"

[69problems]

'Grandson' is close enough that Signless doesn't bother going into the finer points of time paradox clones and the thousand sweeps that separate him and his descendant. The basics are enough. After being a troll in Panem for as long as he has he's learned that getting distracted by minutia usually isn't worth it.

"I'll be honest with you -- I won my arena mostly by luck and it took me eight deaths and almost two human years to do it. A lot of it came down to avoiding injury, being cautious, and having allies whose strengths made up for my shortcomings. I don't mean that to be discouraging, but it's important to know nothing is guaranteed in an arena. So much of it has to do with surviving long enough to be in the right place at the right time. Survival, I can teach you -- before I came here I lived in the wild and spent a good deal of my time avoiding people who wanted to kill me. That kind of skill is harder to practice but very good to know."

He takes a small sip of his tea. It's only now that he's saying it that he's realizing how very little he really is equipped to help this boy and all the other tributes in Twelve. What can he really teach that they can't just learn on their own in the training center?

"I'm a pacifist and so I can't teach you to fight, though I can teach you to handle a knife for hunting if that's something you'd like to learn. I'm also open just to talk should you ever need it. I'm here in Twelve usually, though sometimes I visit Four. My -- " Don't say quadrantmate, this child does not need a crash course in troll quadrants. "-- lover lives there, so if you need me and I'm not here that's a good bet."

[yoknapatawpha]

Bayard nods, taking a seat on one of the stools by the kitchen bar. He's small, even for his age due to the time period and malnourishment, and his feet don't anywhere near touch the floor.

"I know a bit about survival, or at least about living in the woods for a bit. Sometimes Father would take me and Ringo hunting for a few weeks, back before the war." He takes a sip more of coffee, feeling ashamed that he finds it easier to look at than the Signless himself, even knowing that he's a person. "I reckon I could use any help you'd want to give me with a knife, but Miss Tabris is already teaching me that, too. I only know the plants down in Mississippi, though. Maybe you could teach me some of that?"

Bayard sits forward, eyes wide and earnest and friendly. "Oh? Is she pretty?"

[69problems]

"Plants I can most definitely teach you," he says, glad that there's at least something he can offer beyond emotional support that Bayard likely isn't even comfortable enough around him to want to seek out. "Oftentimes the Gamemakers provide us with edible plants or plants that can be used as medicine, if you know how to identify them."

He still has the mark on his hand from his (somewhat foolish) Gamemaker demonstration where he thought the best way to show off his few skills was to dress a wound he made himself. He'd like to think it made a point, at least. He thinks of mentioning it, but--

Is she pretty.

An image of Roland's face, weathered and wrinkled and leathery, flashes in his mind's eye. He waits a moment until the urge to laugh passes.

"No, he isn't. But he's kind, and he's kept me sane here, and that's far more important to me."

[yoknapatawpha]

"We'll make plans for it, then." Bayard takes another sip of coffee, then swallows a sugarcube whole, letting it melt from the back of his mouth down until Signless uses a pronoun that jerks Bayard out of whatever reverie he's in.

"Oh." Bayard looks confused for a moment, then just inquisitive, a little unsettled but not judgmental. "I didn't realize that you could take a man as a lover. Is that common among you, ah, troll types?"

He's not trying to be rude, but he looks a bit like a deer in the headlights, or as if he's certain that there's no proper polite way to respond to this that isn't some sort of faux pas.

[69problems]

After so many humans have seemed not to care about (or even be fascinated by, in the case of the fans) same-sex relationships, it's a surprise to find one who seems to have not even considered the idea. Their expressions are mirrors of each other: not judgemental, but uncertain.

"It's very common, yes. Most trolls don't pay much attention to gender when it comes to love. Is it not that way where you come from? I'd been led to believe by most of the other humans here that it wasn't unusual for you either."

Then again, Panem's human tributes all come from radically different societies, whereas Panem's trolls all come from the same Alternia. It's not unreasonable that each human might have a completely different worldview.

[yoknapatawpha]

Bayard doesn't look like he follows at all. His eyes kind of get that glazed look of someone whose energy has left their face and retreated to sorting out too many things in his brain.

"Gender? Well, I don't reckon you would. A real lover would forgive his beau some misspeakings, especially if French ain't his native tongue." The word 'gender', in Bayard's time, refers to grammar almost exclusively, to the classification of nouns in foreign languages. He's heard his father speak of it before but has no idea what it means, except that it's something to do with the people from Louisiana.

"Taking a man as a lover is right queer by my lot, but it seems many things are here."

[69problems]

"It seems so, yes," he says, his expression not quite worried but on the way to getting there. What in the world does language have to do with gender? Bayard must be from a human world where they call gender something entirely different, something that so far the Signless has only experienced when it's turned out a troll term means something entirely different to humans. 'Troll', to begin with. He's slept under a few bridges in his time but it's hardly a cornerstone of his species.

"What I meant is that, yes, we can fall in love with men and women. It's not uncommon for a man to love a man or a woman to love a woman where I'm from, and here in the Capitol it's much the same."

There. That's a little clunkier, perhaps, but it leaves a lot less room for misunderstandings.

"What else is different for you? If there's anything I can help you understand to make life here easier, I'd like to try. It was hard for me as well, but with time you can adjust to the smaller things."

[yoknapatawpha]

"That so?" Bayard doesn't sound judgmental, just surprised. It's downright unheard of where he's from, at least in any sort of official capacity. There are people who live together, of course, but Bayard doesn't really realize that they're lovers. "It's strange, but I ain't ever been in love so who'm I to say?"

Bayard looks overwhelmed by the question. "Just about everything, sir. We didn't have no automobiles or funny lights or elly-vators. We have to buy ourselves ice instead of it being made in a magic box. And I ain't ever seen food like this, all sorts of food. Even your bananas look different."

[69problems]

Signless probably should have expected that to be a hard question to answer. When just about everything is strange, how can one be expected to pick out where to start? Well. This is a learning experience for both of them, in that sense. Bayard is still trying to understand the alien landscape of Panem, Signless is still trying to get his bearings as a Mentor.

"Do they? I've only ever seen Panem bananas." There was a similar sort of fruit on Alternia -- similar, but not in any way the same.

"I'm sorry. I'm probably not going about this entirely right." He offers Bayard a slightly sheepish smile. He doesn't see any reason to pretend he's more confident than he is -- and in his experience most children are perceptive enough to know when adults are bullshitting them on that front.

[yoknapatawpha]

"Yessir. Ours are fatter, but I don't know if they taste the same. I ain't ever had one, just seem them when we go to Memphis."

He doesn't match Signless's smile with one of his own, which would be condescending, he thinks, but instead a completely blank look of consternation, as if Signless has done nothing whatsoever worth apologizing for. "Going about what right, sir?"

[69problems]

"The whole Mentor business," he says. He knows the end goal he wants to reach, but he still has to figure out the best method of getting there.

Maybe it's less important to help Bayard naturalize -- that will come with time, he knows. Maybe it's more important to focus on helping him keep that part of himself that is not at all of Panem and never will be.

"Here. Let me ask you this instead: how do you want the people of Panem to know you? That is, what impression do you want to give them? What about yourself do you want to be sure they have right? Part of my job is to communicate those things to people who can help you stay alive. I want to be sure you have a say in what I tell them."

[yoknapatawpha]

"It's alright. I reckon I ain't the shining example of a Tribute either." He shakes his head, then folds his hand and takes a drink.

"I reckon I'd like to be someone to Panem worth knowing, before they actually know me honestly." Bayard bites his lip and curls his hand around his chin, having not thought of this before and as such having no quick and easy answer to the question. "I'd like them to think of me a good man, but I'd also like to be a good man. Does that make sense, Mr. Signless."

[69problems]

Given that the shining example of a tribute includes indiscriminate and sensationalized murder, Signless isn't sure it's a bad thing if Bayard isn't one. He doesn't say this aloud.

"It does, yes."

Something about the way Bayard phrased that catches in his mind. He isn't sure if it's overstepping his bounds to ask, but...

"Do you think you aren't a good man now?"

[yoknapatawpha]

"No, that's not what I mean. But I reckon that you ain't good man just one. You've got to live it. It don't matter if I'm a good man now if I ain't tomorrow."

Bayard's face contorts a bit as he tries to put words to what feels like a concept a little difficult for him, a sort of abstract that's beyond what a twelve year-old can fit into their head. He drinks from his mug and watches Signless' face for some evidence that he's being clear.

aaaaand this seems almost like a decent place to end it unless you wanted more

[69problems]

Really, he's saying it better than a lot of grown adults could. Signless feels a sudden upwelling of pride.

"Well-put. I think so long as you keep what you just said in mind, you'll do fine."