[open]

[tucky]

Who| Tiffany Doggett AND YOU
What| A smalltown jailbird arrives in the Capitol and immediately decides that it's the best place ever
Where| Various places; scenarios under cuts
When| Some vague nebulous time after the latest plot; can take place over a few days if needed
Warnings/Notes| If you haven't already, please take a look at her permissions post before tagging her so I know what you are and aren't comfortable with! Other than that, nothing (yet - it's always yet with her)

A: District 1 suite, Part I

If you're going to be unceremoniously pulled from your prison block with no warning and not much explanation, there are definitely worse places you could be landed. This place is insane - everything in it is more lavish and luxurious than anything she's seen in pictures or on TV, let alone in real life. It's at least a couple hours before she even considers leaving her suite - she's too busy trying everything out. She tests out her big, soft bed (which she can't resist bouncing on like a child for a minute or two), she takes a shower followed by a long, hot bath, she raids the fridge, she checks out the view from the deck. If something is available to be examined, turned on, or tried out, she does it.

Honestly, she had kind of glossed over the whole "battle to the death" thing. Forced death matches simply aren't a part of reality as she knows it, and until the idea is shoved in her face a little more, it's just not something she's going to think about at all. As far as she's concerned, this place is heaven. The Capitol has already begun to win her allegiance.

B: The streets of the Capitol

Tiffany finally leaves the Training Center, after being reassured (more than once) that this is her home now and she'll be able to come back whenever she wants. There's nowhere in particular that she's looking to go, but that's fine with her - she'll wander. She's bound to come across something or someone interesting eventually.

C: The Districts shopping center

Handed a credit card and set loose in a city, it's unsurprising that Tiffany finds her way to a mall. Not really one for thinking ahead that much, she immediately starts buying things - clothes mostly, but also earrings, bracelets, and makeup. It's only after an hour or two that she starts wondering if she's going to hit a credit limit, or be dealing with bills later. She looks around for people with similar-looking cards; when she finds someone, she stops them and holds up her own.

"Hey. How much is on this thing?"

D: Various clubs and bars (The Speakeasy, .infinity, Anomaly, The Cave, or Tesserae)

After gussying herself up at the shopping center, Tiffany eventually discovers the Capitol nightlife, and the rest is history. She bounces from place to place, skipping the sit-down restaurants but hitting all the clubs and bars, sometimes more than once. Affiliation means nothing to her at this point; any rebellion-minded talk at places like The Speakeasy mostly just goes over her head. She's shed her prison clothes and dressed herself to the nines (though she still looks pretty tame in comparison to most Capitol fashion), accessorizing with jewelry, shimmery makeup, and lightly-styled hair (nothing too fancy, but infinitely better than the untreated, unbrushed 'do she often sported in prison). She's a little underdressed for the fancier places and a little overdressed for the dive bars, but she doesn't seem to care. She'll have the time of her life - dancing, drinking, and occasionally chatting up men. She's not used to looking good, or feeling good about her appearance. The fact that she does now puts her in an amazing mood.

E: District 1 suite, Part II

Somewhere along the line, someone had slipped her some tapes of past Games - either out of a genuine desire to help, or because they'd pegged her as someone who'd be easily spooked and wanted to psych her out. She should familiarize herself with these, they'd said, because she'd be going into the arena herself soon enough. So later, tired out from her night on the town, she remembers the tapes and pulls them out, flopping down on the common room couch to watch.

And it's... terrifying. She watches intently, leaning forward, eyes wide. It's like a horror movie she can't look away from. She's killed before, and she's threatened, and she's gotten into her fair share of fights - but this is a whole new ball game. Can she really do this? Is she really going to be expected to do this? She doesn't want to die, but looking at the fighting skills of some of these people... there's no way, she thinks, that she would stand a chance.

She'll have to ask someone about it later; someone in charge. They've been helpful so far. Surely they'll continue to be.

Comments

[tucky]

An addict herself who ran with other addicts before (and while in) prison, Tiffany isn't at all unused to people who look like Linden. She is, however, surprised to see one here. The Capitol is glamorous and perfect - too perfect for someone like him, and maybe too perfect for her, too.

She really needs to get her hands on some better clothes. Some better everything.

"Um, the first one. District 1. I guess." She doesn't sound too sure of herself, but District 1 is what she had been told, so she goes with it. "I just got here."

[dead_black_eyes]

Tiffany's right. The Capitol is grand, opulent and majestic, and twiggy, frost-touched people don't look right against its ornate and gaudy backdrop.

"District 1?" he tries to keep any note of obvious relief out of his voice. He's still drinking, will probably still always drink; it's too much a part of Capitol culture to avoid with any real success. But his favorite vice, Morphling, a powerful narcotic... he has to wath out for enabling, anything that reminds him how much better it is to lose himself to a needle rather than face the music and feel the blows that leave bruises.

"It's very clear you just got here," he confesses, even though it's very likely kind of rude to say it so bluntly. "I take it you're looking for some more appropriate clothing and cosmetics?"

The latter is what he's here for, specifically some concealer that's a little closer to the unhealthy bone-white hue of his skin.

[tucky]

"Yeah. Yeah, I am." She crosses her arms self-consciously, even more aware that her sweatshirt, prison pants, and ratty hair look extremely out of place here. "I figured I should... I mean, I want to get some nicer stuff. And I got this card, so..."

[dead_black_eyes]

She's dressed worse than the Avoxes, and though Linden lacks a filter on the best of days, he knows not to comment on it.

"You got the card," he concurs, "and to answer the very first question you asked me..."

...the first words you spoke to me...

"...you absolutely can get pretty much anything you want with that. Think of it as a blank check, within reason."

And he guesses that this girl is used to going without and having little, much like he was before winning his Games. That District 6 factory rat still lives behind his sunken eyes, one of which is blackened and bruised and swollen due to a recent and vicious punch. He is still overwhelmed by the Capitol's richness and excess after over a decade, and struggles to understand how some people can spend money on certain highly unnecessary luxuries.

"If you want some advice... because Tony Stark won the last Arena, for District 12, fiber optics are on trend at the moment. You can't go wrong with them."

[tucky]

His guess would be right, and it shows; her eyes go wide and her fingers tighten around the card, like she's worried that any moment somebody is going to realize that they made a mistake and come snatch it back from her.

"Fiber optics? I don't... what kind of fiber optics?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"The kind you wear," he says, watching her clutch at her card as if worried that someone is going to take it from her. That's not going to happen; as long as she's here, her status as a Tribute and all the perks and curses that come with it are an albatross around the insubstantial-looking young woman's neck.

"They're on a lot of clothes right now, but ultimately, if it lights up, it'll probably pass muster just fine."

He says that, wearing simple, matte black himself. He looks like he's dressed for a funeral, alone among all the Capitolites surrounding them.

[tucky]

She eyes his outfit, and those of everyone else around them, but she doesn't comment.

"They got anything more normal?"

[dead_black_eyes]

He notices her gaze on him, waiting it out patiently. He's aware that he stands out and actually finds her lack of manners a little bit refreshing, perhaps.

"Define 'normal', and consider where you are," he says pointedly. "I'm telling you that right now, fiber optics are pretty normal. Fashion here changes quickly and extremely, which you might not..."

He trails off. How do you tell someone that not only do they seem ostentatiously like a Districter, they seem pretty backwoods as Districters go?

[tucky]

She shrugs. "I don't know much about where I am, is what I'm saying. But I don't need anything too fancy."

That's what she says now, anyway. It probably wouldn't take much for her to get caught up in Capitol fashion; she is a follower to the extreme.

[dead_black_eyes]

This poor girl. Linden can already tell that even if she gives it her best effort, she won't ever seem like she fits in with District 1, much less the Capitol. Maybe if she lets her stylists take full creative control and mold her a new image, but she's right. It's becoming clearer by the second that she really has no idea where she is.

"Yes, that's true, on both counts. I'd get something you like for now and let your stylists take it from there; the bottom line is that money won't be a problem and you can always learn how to keep up with the fashions, if that's what you really want."

He says it like this doesn't interest him, and anyone can tell by looking at Linden's stark, angular appearance in a sea of feathers and flashy jewelry that he has always pretty much been the type to march to the beat of his own drum.

[tucky]

"Maybe it is what I want." She's not a fashionista - she never really has been. Sometimes she'd coveted nice clothes that she could never have afforded, but that was about the extent of it. Here, though, she's a celebrity - or, at least, she's going to be one. And celebrities are very into their images, so if she's asked to be like that too, she'll give it a try.

"Will they want me more if I dress weird like them?"

[dead_black_eyes]

Well, that's new. Linden raises an eyebrow, considering why any offworlder would actually be drawn to what so many are repelled from. Because it's obvious she's not a fashionista, and maybe, just a little bit, that the entire idea of celebrity is very far from what she's accustomed to.

"You're an offworlder and a Tribute. They'll want you regardless," he says hollowly, brushing his dark, shaggy hair away from his blackened and bruised eye. "Is that a concern of yours? Being 'wanted?'"

[tucky]

"It's a concern of everybody's." But the way she smiles, relieved, when he says she'll be wanted regardless is telling.

[dead_black_eyes]

"Everybody's?"

He smiles too, but there's something broken behind it.

"What do you know about the Hunger Games?"

[tucky]

"That's what I'm a Tribute for, right?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"Yes. But that's not what I asked. How much do you know about the Games, themselves? What they're for, how they're played?"

[tucky]

"Um..." She shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable. "A little bit. Not too much."

[dead_black_eyes]

"What little do you know?" he asks, trying to maintain some patience with what's starting to feel like intentionally dodging the question.

[tucky]

"Well, like... they said battle to the death." She answers slowly; reluctantly. "But that's..." Unbelievable, especially in the face of everything she's seeing here.

[dead_black_eyes]

"True," Linden says, finishing her sentence, every line in his expression leaving no room to infer any playfulness or joke. "It is a battle to the death, and as a Tribute, you're expected to participate."

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

[tucky]

"And then come back from the dead?" She raises an eyebrow. "That just don't sound right to me."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Usually," Linden confirms. "It used to be never, so it's strange to us, too. But by all accounts, most people feel all the pain and fear that comes with dying, and then they're resurrected as they were when they arrived. Same age, minus any scars or evidence that they were hurt at all."

[tucky]

"I think that sounds like some kind of trick. They ain't even dying at all, probably." The use of 'they' instead of 'we' is an unconscious choice, but an important one. She doesn't fully see herself as a Tribute yet.

[dead_black_eyes]

"You're right," he says earnestly. "It absolutely sounds like a trick. Unbelievable. Certainly upsetting. There are a lot of people who don't understand why they couldn't have done this with the old Tributes, the ones that didn't come back. The first time you experience it, you'll understand, perhaps..."

[tucky]

"Maybe I'll win." The chance of that happening is slim to none, but she doesn't fully realize that, either.