(no subject)

[ka_sera_sera]

Who| Roland and Venus, Roland and you?
What| Roland delivers a message, then wanders around
Where| District 5 common room and the city in general
When| soon after the d13 post, although feel free to make a prompt at any point between that and the arena if later works better
Warnings/Notes| none yet

[closed to Venus]

It is easier to find a tribute's assigned district when you are comfortable asking around. Roland isn't. He has not spoken with Venus since arriving in this hideous gift of a place, for no reason other than that they have not spoken. There's never been a need. Perhaps he should have found one - she's certainly lasted longer than any of the other friends he might have found here. Longer, too, than a couple of the friends he did find.

Regardless, the two of them aren't known to speak. It means him seeking her out now might be seen for the oddity it is, so it's best no more people know about this than those who are going to see it. So it takes some time and some observation, but he does figure out where to look.

The main room of this floor is arranged identically to the other floors he's seen, barring the small, personal touches people don't even realize they're leaving when they spend enough time in a place. He pays very little attention to any of it. He only looks around, peering down the little hallway that, if the identical layout continues, leads to the block of tribute rooms. He isn't going to go down it, but if no one appears in a few minutes he is going to start searching through the kitchen for anything that could be used to make himself some tea.

He picks up a bag, interested. Opens it, and sniffs. Makes a face. Best leave that one be, probably.
 
[open]

Of course, that conversation leads him to thoughts of Susannah. Whether his message will get to her, wherever she is in district 13. Wherever she might be in district 13, because he knows as well as anyone here that there can be no guarantees. He tilts his head back to study the tops of the tall, beautiful buildings littering this place, and thinks of his first clear, safe memory of her. Remembers kneeling on the plush carpeting that covers a good deal of the tribute's tower. Remembers Susannah's arms tight around him, her voice warm and low in his ear.

He passes some distance in this way, only paying so much attention to the crowds as deeply ingrained training demands. Which means he will react to quick movement, grab the wrists of pickpockets and instinctively move to catch anything that might be thrown at or falling near him, but he will not quite realize where he is going, or pay attention to anyone's face.

Panem being itself, of course, there is only so long he will go without being jarred to wakefulness. This time, it's by a scream. It came from the building next to him, which he realizes is shaking with with a low, deep thumping that he supposes is probably music. The same voice screams again, and he pauses with the two metal fingers of his right hand hooked around the building's doorframe. There's a tone to that voice he hadn't picked up the first time - ecstasy, rather than pain. Nothing he hasn't heard before, walking the Capitol's streets. Clear as it is that nothing unusual is going on in there, he still hesitates, because going in there to check would at least give him something to think about for a few minutes.

Comments

[beckstitch]

Beck's actually coming out of that building when she sees him. It's not one of her old haunts, but it is somewhere she knows people, and she's been working like hell for the last few days, so she figures she's earned a break. She's leaving, heading back for the Tribute Center and the pile of work she still has to do, when she sees Roland.

It's hard not to. Even by the standards of Tributes, he's pretty difficult to miss. There's the height, and the fingers, but there's mostly the face, which sticks out like a sore thumb in among the perfect, surgically-flawless Capitolites. In a way, she kind of likes that. Approves of it, even. It's never a bad thing to stand out in a crowd.

"Hey." She stops in the doorway, cocking her hip and looking up at him. "Deschain, right? You're up in the suite on and off with the Signless?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Ah. The approval of a stylist. Too bad Roland doesn't know he's got it, his expression at the notion might be something to witness. As it is he only eyes her, his look sharp for half a second as he tries to tell as much about who she is and what she wants from him as he can with a single glance. But then he remembers - as a citizen, all this Capitolite has to do is decide to make it look like Roland's hurt her, and he would be at the mercy of the peacekeepers.

He drops his hand from the doorway, takes a step back. "Aye. May've seen you up there somewhere." There's a pause and then, figuring he may as well, Roland twitches his head toward the building she's just come from. "Everything alright in there?"

[beckstitch]

"Huh?" She looks back over her shoulder, then laughs. "Oh, right. Yeah, it's all good. Eudie's act gets a bit loud sometimes. Girl's a screamer." She says it with the sage attitude of someone who's seen the act in question multiple times. "You could always drop in and take a look. Matinees aren't her best, but you never know, it might actually make you crack a smile."

Laughing, she tosses her hair back and steps out of the doorway to let a short man with bright violet sideburns pass. She's still watching Roland, though, as shrewd and suspicious in her own way as he is. "Might not be your scene, though. Lots of crowd-chasers in there. Didn't expect to see a Tribute down this end of town?" It's a question that's not a question. Whether he answers it or not, well, that's up to him.

[ka_sera_sera]

"Suppose not," he says, glancing around and taking in the part of the Capitol he's wandered into. And will he elaborate? Tell some vague, safe version of his troubles in answer to a question not even directly asked?

Ha.

At some other point in Roland's life he might end the conversation here, and he's tempted to. But long imprisonment does things to a man, even imprisonment that looks at first glance like freedom. Things like leave someone so in search of distraction that they'll make smalltalk with fools, and do it willingly. "Anywhere I'd be less an oddity? Could use a place to pass the time for a while."

[beckstitch]

Beck considers for a moment. They're a fair way out from the fashionable parts of town here, and Roland's already getting plenty of curious looks. Of course he is. He's a Tribute, and the locals of this area usually aren't front-row for meeting Tributes. Still, it's not exactly great for someone who wants to keep his head down. She smiles at him almost apologetically, shrugging, and turns her mind to the problem in hand. It's been a few years since she lived here full-time, but she knows the area well enough.

"There's a cafe just up the street, if that'd do. Or there's a drug joint round the corner, morphling and stuff. Not a nice place, but everyone there'd be too stoned to know you from the President. If you head back towards the Center, five minutes or so up that way-" and she points down the street "-there's a shopping centre, very crowded, you can lose yourself there no problem. I mean, my old house is just round the corner, you can always kill time there for a bit if you want."

[ka_sera_sera]

"And if I did 'kill time' at your old house? What would I find there that I wouldn't in yon tower they keep us in?" He tilts his head in the direction of the tribute center, watching her curiously. Roland has never heard the phrase 'stranger danger'. If he had, he would probably decide it doesn't apply to him.

[beckstitch]

Beck looks around the street for a moment, rather furtively, then shrugs. "Well. No cameras, for a start. And fewer people." Another shrug, for good measure. "It was just an idea."

Probably a bad one, at that. But it wasn't as if she was using the place. The only people who ever spent much time there, any more, were the Avoxes responsible for keeping it clean. She kept some of her things back there, but that was all. If he was looking for somewhere to get his head in order, privately, he couldn't do much better.

[ka_sera_sera]

She doesn't seem sure, and that gets a look from Roland, not quite impatience. "If it's an idea you meant, lead the way and I'll take you up on it. But if you've other places to be..." He backs out of the way of someone else passing by and twirls his two metal fingers at her. Offer it or don't, but even bored and nearly-restless as Roland usually is in this place, he only has so much patience.

[beckstitch]

His confirmation is all she needs. His manners aren't the best, but hey, she's met worse. Anyway, so far as she knows, he isn't under suspicion or anything, so the worst rumours she's likely to set off by bringing him home are that they're fucking. A rumour she doesn't hugely mind, even with the rules about fraternisation, because nobody who knows her at all would believe it.

Her mind made up, she turns on her heel and beckons him with her, starting down the street. "Haven't lived here for a while," she supplies for him over her shoulder. "Might be in a bit of a state, is what I'm saying. That's what happens when you move up in the world. You leave shit behind." And she turns down a little alleyway lit as much by neon as sunlight, looking behind her to make sure he's following.

[foundafamily]

Firo's been trying to spend more and more time out of the Tribute quarters. While he's always grateful for those times when he has four walls and a ceiling around him, those elements are starting to feel oppressive in this place.

He's walking back from the other direction when he spots Roland. Being a busybody in the purest sense of the word--and because, hey, he knows the guy--he stops by to peek at him while he peeks into the building.

"Somethin' interesting goin' on in there?"

He frowns as he looks around, wanting to wince at the throbbing sound of the music. "...Just seems like a racket to me."

And not in the fun, criminal sense of the word.

[ka_sera_sera]

He grunts, eying the building. "Nothing I want to know about, I expect. Ought to know better than want a look at every odd noise I hear in this city." Roland frowns a moment more, obviously thinking about doing it anyway, before looking back at the other tribute's familiar face.

"Care to come along? Unless you've some other way I could pass the time, instead." The words themselves could maybe be taken sarcastically, but Roland's expression is honestly curious, his tone likewise. He isn't too fussed about what exactly he does next, so long as it keeps introspection at a minimum. Had enough of that for one day.

[foundafamily]

He laughs. "'Cause everything's odd?"

Firo came from a bustling metropolis, but even he has to admit there's just something too loud about this city. The lights and sounds bursting from every corner of New York were just different. Better.

"Sorry, pal, but I don't even have anything better for myself to do." He shrugs. "So I guess I will come along. Wanna lead the way?"

How bad could it be, really?

[ka_sera_sera]

"Mm." He nods, turning more toward the doorway. "Because everything's odd in fairly predictable ways."

The city of Roland's youth may not have been a bustling metropolis - especially by the standards of this place - but it'd been busy enough, and his travels after that city fell had seen him things both wild and strange. He won't be deeply disturbed by the shadowy corners of Panem city life, he's confident of that. But he isn't expecting it to be nice.

The inside of the building is dark, the little room and hallway beyond it lit by brief, distant lights that flash in time with the music's low pounding. A figure hulking beside the doorway looks up as they enter, starts to step forward, but there isn't a citizen in the Capitol who can't recognize a couple of tributes and the figure quickly steps back.

There's a board on the wall ahead, a sign whose large, pale letters seem, in the brief moments it's bright enough to read them, to advertise 'the ecstatic Eudie and her amazing-'

Before Roland can try and make out more, someone rises from one of the room's dark corners and heads toward them. Whether they want to sell something, or lead them somewhere, or simply to ask an autograph, he supposes they'll find out in a second.

[foundafamily]

For all his curiosity, Firo's soon apprehensive when they enter. "Is this the kinda place we're supposed to be..?"

He can't help but think of how it reminds him of some of the less classy speakeasies back home. While those places don't exactly bother him, he knows the Capitol tends to be a bit... wilder with their entertainment.

In the dimness, it's still difficult to make out much about the figure when they stop before the tributes. To top it all off, their voice is low, as if they're worried about somehow disrupting the music. One thing that can probably be made out, though, is the request for tickets, followed by the figure leaning in and possibly squinting at their faces.

The next movement is totally unexpected--to Firo, at least. The figure moves to sweep their arms around the two of them, as if about to herd them into the main area instead of keeping them out. They've been recognized again, it seems.

"Hey, back off!"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland's frown toward Firo is brief, but sharp. Normally, an argument with people like these would be no great worry. A potential fight with them, not too much of one. But here? Where a tribute has only to be accused of threatening a citizen to be taken away and disciplined?

"Cry pardon for my friend," Roland says to the Capitolite, keeping his voice fair and pleasant. Friendly. "Last arena was a little hard on him, you understand." Roland has no idea, of course, whether it was or wasn't. He's exposed to as many 'recaps' of the arenas as the rest of them, but only because they are impossible to avoid. Firo could have spent the whole time skipping happily through the field of flowers, for all Roland knows. What he's counting on is that the mere mention of the arena, so casually including this Capitolite as someone who'll understand, will be flattery enough to get them by.

"Ah," Roland adds, because if the Capitolite isn't placated another request won't make things worse, and if they are then having this will be worth it. "Would you mind setting us a little apart from everything in there? I'm asking for no special treatment, of course, just wanting to set my friend at his ease."

[foundafamily]

Firo's slower to realize he's made a mistake--the protest is just instinct--but that glance makes it plain. He makes a mental note to offer a very good apology later.

Much as it pains him, he manages to force a grin and an awkward laugh. "Oh, yeah. Just. You know, kinda hard to get your head out of a place like that. Need to un-focus or whatever."

He's suddenly filled with respect for those survivors from the days when Arenas involved real, permanent death. How the hell did they keep this up? It's worse than having to talk politely to an unruly patron.

But Roland's apology seems to have saved them and their quiet host is all too happy to oblige, head bobbing wildly in response to the request. They resume guiding the Tributes through a doorway into the room where the music's at its loudest.

[ka_sera_sera]

It had been loud when muffled by walls - without those walls the noise is a physical thing, beating in pulses against every part of him. He'd steeled himself for it as they got near, though, and once they step inside does not react. Tables, smoke, hard to see individual faces - this place isn't unlike the saloons he's used to, in some ways. More electric lights, all marble instead of wood, and of course the noise, but the general feeling's not too far off.

There is one significant difference: the sound that'd drawn him in in the first place. It comes again, a delighted scream from the center of the room, but before Roland can try and see if he can get a better view of the stage the Capitolite who ushered them in waves a hand at someone and they're offered a tray. Powder of some kind, maybe other things, but Roland barely glances at it before shaking his head. The tray's offered to Firo and their host gestures toward a table, out of the way as suggested - a bad place to get a view of the stage but probably a good place to get a feeling for the area. Decisions, decisions.

Sorry I missed this when it went up! <3

[celebrityskinned]

Venus has a regimen that, since her injury from the mission, is much shorter on exercise than it used to be and thus much heavier on lounging around her District Suite. It's started to feel something like a cage, having to stay in here because she's worried that her healthy facade will get chipped back to reveal her internal bleeding. She does fewer photoshoots, fewer interviews, takes painkillers that Porrim provides that make her feel slow, and yet because the Suite is bugged she still has to worry herself with hiding all her wounds.

As such, despite the fact that pain makes her throat tight, when she leaves her bedroom to get another yogurt she's sauntering and dressed with a fashionable-casual outfit that people would expect from her, expression breezy and pleasant and hair in a tower of braids upon her head.

"You get lost on your way downstairs?" She smiles at Roland, passing him to open the fridge. "Or you up here to see someone? I'm the only one home right now, I think."

no problem <3

[ka_sera_sera]

Now here is the trickiest bit, and Roland thinks on it briefly as he fastens the bag he'd been inspecting and puts it away, turns to meet her. There is no real reason for him to ask this that truly sounds casual, and even less reason for her to agree. But even so, there's no reason to overthink it, either.

So he does not overthink it. Only glances over her as he turns her way, and even as well trained as Roland's eyes have been there is nothing odd here for them to notice. Venus' true condition stays a secret a while longer. "I'm glad, for it's you I'm here to see."

"I've been thinking lately," he continues, leaning back casually against the counter. "On my past, and on my first day here. And I remembered you. You may not recall. It wasn't quite as big a day for you, I think, as it was for me." The corners of Roland's lips turn up faintly, both because that is quite an understatement he just made and because he is trying - in some small and believable way - to look friendly.

Best not get to the point just yet. That would sound far too hurried. He's here to reminisce, isn't he? Supposedly? Best not rush into that. And best to wait, too, judge her reaction. Back off if he needs to, leave some open invitation for her to join him another day.

[celebrityskinned]

"Oh?" She takes a spoon from a drawer and walks over to the counter, delicately sitting on a stool because she keeps feeling her feet and ankles going numb. She peels back the top and digs around to stir up the fruit at the bottom of her yogurt, although she looks at it as if it's a bit unappetizing.

Then she looks back up at Roland with a smile that seems much more at ease than his. "Yeah, I remember. I'd be an awful welcoming committee if I didn't remember the first time I met new people. But you've done pretty well for yourself."

She shrugs a shoulder, taking a bite of her yogurt. "Sweet of you to remember me."

[ka_sera_sera]

'Sweet' isn't a quality of which Roland has often been accused, and being so now when the term's obviously just a polite nothing puts a little grimace on his face, a pull of distaste to his mouth. From newsmen and fans Roland's used to that sort of thing, but from another tribute his distaste at it shows a little more readily. "I've a lot of time to think, and there's only so much knitting a body can take."

Which is to say, anyone who doesn't dip many toes into the wide and wonderful world of Panem's nightlife has to be creative in the ways they spend their time, and creativity is another one of those qualities which Roland has only occasionally seen. No matter how much time can be taken up by knitting badly - because the more mistakes you make, the longer they take to correct - Roland does not want to spend all of his time that way. This is an excuse to make his visit here seem more likely, but it is also true.

"But I hadn't thought much on you until recently. I'd like to correct that. Take a walk, let us get to know one another as we should've."

[celebrityskinned]

"I feel you. I'm pretty sure I've read every fashion magazine on this floor at least eight times." She takes another large spoonful of the yogurt and then tosses the cup with expert grace and ease into the trash can. The spoon undertakes a similar precise arc to clatter into the sink. In the Arena, they don't waste food, but in the Capitol there's no reason not to.

"I think I'd like to get to know you better anyway. Not many of us make it past all that many Arenas, you know? You don't get to know me now and when Arena Fourteen rolls around you may not get a chance."

She gets up, still putting all that surfaceless effort into seeming to float through life with that brazen confidence that hides her failing body. She struts past him and hits the elevator buttons so he can come with her - she doesn't know how well she can fake the stairs.

[ka_sera_sera]

"Do you say so?" Roland follows her there, thinking nothing of using the elevator. Even now there's awe in him, a little, for all the wonders in this place, but in large part Roland has adopted the view he'd condemned the people of New York for once, in one long ago visit. He's gotten used to it. To the elevators and showers and refrigerators in every kitchen, the glass in every window and paper on every shelf. He's had to. There is only so long one can live in a place thinking that deeply on everything they see. Getting used to this place has made Roland into a bit of a hypocrite, although he has not thought on it long enough to notice.

He is not thinking on it now either, even as he watches her call the moving room up the distance of this tower with nothing more than a brief movement of her hand. "That's truly why you want to know people here, because they may die fairly soon? Not in spite of it?"

Roland isn't trying to make a point here, and his tone says as much. He's only curious, a little surprised. It's not a thing he was expecting to learn, certainly not one he was expecting to speak on, for all he's doing this in the first place because of messages to gone friends.

[celebrityskinned]

Venus looks at Roland, suddenly somber, as if the weight of all the people she's lost not here but in her life has suddenly flooded past her defenses, reaching not her entire face but at least her eyes which age far beyond her twenty-two years, as if they're not iris and pupil and white but time capsules in which images don't pass through but are preserves and hoarded away.

"Someone has to remember them, right? Celebrity's fleeting, believe me, I know. The audience isn't going to remember most of us a year from now, except maybe the trivia buffs and the diehards, and they're not getting the full picture." She nods and takes a step into the elevator with him, unsure now that she's spoken it aloud of how she feels designating herself as a human tombstone, an epitaph.

"Don't you think?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland doesn't know what he thinks, not without putting some thought to it. So he does, turning the idea over in his mind as the elevator falls. "I don't think you or I are going to see the full picture either," he decides finally, as the elevator doors open again and he steps out of them. "But it's a noble goal."

The statement isn't condescending, isn't sarcastic. He means it. Even admires it, almost, and that much may show through in his tone. "The stylist Makara, of district four, said much the same. Suppose there're more than I expected trying to see that memories of us don't fall into the dark. What would you know of me then? Or of any of us? What sort of knowledge is it you mean to take with you?"