[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]

"That's a lot of fucking questions."

So she'll start with the easiest one. So much of her identity is based around what other people tell her to like and hate that questions like that can be deceptively difficult.

"I'm from Pennsylvania, but I was in New York before this."

[justoutrunyou]

"Yeah but they're easy questions." Sandy countered before listening to the start.

"Cool, I grew up in New York. Never got to leave it though. There were laws that kept us in the city."

That was a whole 'nother can of worms.

"Why'd you move to New York?" She asked optimistically hoping it didn't have to do with the aforementioned doctor killing.

[tucky]

"I didn't move, I got taken to prison there." Sorry Sandy, no dice. "Sometimes they transfer you out of state. Overcrowding, I guess."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy's face only falls a little. It's not like she's never been locked up before.

"Ah well...I guess you probably didn't enjoy New York much. What was the prison like? I've only ever been to prison here."

[tucky]

"You talking about juvie, or...?" At home, a kid had to do something really awful to get locked up in adult prison. But at home, they didn't have kids competing in death matches, so all bets are kind of off here.

"And it was okay, I guess, as far as prisons go. Minimum security. It still sucks, but we ain't locked in cells all day or nothing."

[justoutrunyou]

Another nod of understanding as she tried to imagine what minimum security looked like.

"I got thrown in grown up prison because someone killed the head of security last year." She explained. "So they grabbed a bunch of tributes randomly and locked us up in these cells with force field walls that zapped you if you touched them." She shuddered, "They tortured us too trying to get us to talk. I didn't know anything about the stupid lady who got killed or who did it but they didn't care."

It felt so surreal to be talking about it out loud. She felt the dagger like stare of a peacekeeper from the doorway and for a moment her heart dropped into her legs. Had she said too much? Was he being sent in to drag her away?

...no, he was moving over to the clerk to talk with her. It looked like he was flirting.

[tucky]

"You making a joke?" But Sandy doesn't sound like she's joking. The prison system Tiffany is used to is definitely a broken one, but she can't imagine it grabbing kids at random and torturing them. Note to self: make sure you never go to prison in the Capitol.

"That's messed up. I ain't against this place or nothing, but that's real fucking crazy."

[justoutrunyou]

"Yeah well, at least now you're starting to get the picture." Sandy mumbled deciding even if the guard wasn't here for him, it was probably best to move away from that topic of conversation.

"So what was your life like before you got locked up?"

[tucky]

"Not like here, that's for damn sure." Which is, naturally, part of the reason she's so in love with the Capitol. "I didn't live in the city, didn't have a lot of money - nothing like that."

[justoutrunyou]

"So like...did you live on a farm?"

Because sadly anything that was not city to Sandy then had to be a farm. What else was there really? She found herself imagining Tiffany from a run down shanty town like District 12.

[tucky]

"No, the woods. Kind of on the edge of town."

[justoutrunyou]

"OK so...you lived in the woods, you went to jail for killing a lady, what else? Do you have any hobbies?"

It wasn't as though Tiffany was the first tribute to have a hard time opening up to other tributes. Sandy was doing her best, but she was no Ceasar Flicerman.

[tucky]

"Not really." Being hooked on meth since she was a teenager had obliterated large chunks of her life that could have been spent on other things. "Well... I used to go hunting with my family. That was kind of a hobby, I guess."

[justoutrunyou]

"Well you'll get plenty of that in the arena...but maybe we oughta find you a hobby to pass the time in the Capitol. Music or painting or books or...something." The idea of someone not having any hobbies brought to mind only a few specific people, and the reason none of them had hobbies was because they were so obsessed with training or working too hard that they just didn't have time for hobbies. Tiffany did not come off as either of those types of people.

[tucky]

"Music or painting or books." She sounds so skeptical. "I like listening to music. But I never painted, and I don't like books much. But there's plenty of stuff to do in the Capitol. You seen the parties they throw? The clubs?" Maybe not, now that she thinks of it. This girl is pretty young.

"Or, like... shopping and stuff. Restaurants. All them parks. There's a lot to do."

[justoutrunyou]

"The parties get old pretty fast." Sandy remarked dryly, some people like Effie lived for parties but Sandy was not exactly a social butterfly. She only spoke to strangers if she needed to or if they were tributes.

"At least you seem to have the right idea about that. I mean obviously shopping and food costs money but you'll probably be OK if you don't go crazy."

[tucky]

Tiffany has no idea if what she's been doing so far counts as 'going crazy' - but she hasn't been cut off yet, so that's probably a good sign.

"The parties get old for you, maybe. You ain't even old enough to drink."

[justoutrunyou]

"See that's what I don't get." Sandy sparked up as Tiffany touched on a subject she had held some confusion over.

"If people drink alcohol to get drunk, why do they drink gross tasting alcohol that burns? Why not just drink the sweet fruity ones? Does anyone really like how the burning stuff tastes?"

Sandy had snuck her share of drinks at Capitol parties if only out of curiosity, and she'd even been drunk once or twice. She'd regretted that in the morning of course which just compounded as to her confusion to people drinking so much.

[tucky]

"Yeah, some people. I do. You just gotta get used to it. You probably ain't gonna start liking it until you're a teenager." Tiffany shrugs. "And I never drank much of the fruity ones, myself. They're usually more expensive."

[justoutrunyou]

She made a face of clear disbelief. "I just can't imagine something that smells like paint thinner can really taste good to anyone with a tongue that isn't broken."

But she was probably right. Maybe Sandy had to age into it.

"Sometimes they send things like whisky or vodka into the arena. I usually use it to trade for stuff with the other tributes or clean injuries." Which both hurt like hell and left her feeling sticky and gross if she didn't have any fresh water to clean up with. And fresh water was sometimes hard to come by in the arena.

[tucky]

She snorts. "Yeah, I ain't gonna be getting drunk in no arena. Parties are different. Dancing and guys and drinking - it's like I said. You ain't gonna find it interesting until you grow up."

[justoutrunyou]

"If I grow up." Sandy corrected her. "I'd have to win an arena for that to happen. Every time we die we get...reset sort of." Seemed like the best way to describe the unsettling sensation of waking up in a body that was completely different from the body she'd been living in for weeks if not months.

[tucky]

"That's... you know that's weird, right?" What an understatement. "Weird and wrong. Normal people ain't supposed to get resurrected. I think it's just fake deaths."

[justoutrunyou]

It took a surprising amount of effort for Sandy not to scream just then. Of COURSE she knew it was weird and wrong. Of course she knew that she should have died long ago and her body should be long since gone. But until she either broke the cycle herself of the Capitol grew bored with her, this was her fate.

Thankfully she did not cause a scene, nor did she raise her voice. She just fixed Tiffany with a very serious, and very un-childlike stare.

"The deaths are real. You feel them. Every second until it's over and you wake up exactly how you were the day you arrived. I've seen the bodies of other tributes before they get hauled away. I've been with people while they died. Don't lie to yourself." She warned and then in a low mumble added "The Capitol will do plenty of lying on their own."

[tucky]

"And then you come back to life," she retorts stubbornly. "It ain't true death. Maybe it... maybe it almost is, but when you die for real, you don't get to come hopping back up later - not unless you're the Lord Jesus Himself."