thecapitol | [open]

Entry tags:

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Who| Tiffany Doggett AND YOU
What| Fresh from the arena, Tiffany tries to make sense of things
Where| Various places; scenarios under cuts
When| Some vague nebulous time after she's killed in the arena; 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!

A: District 1 suite

After coming back to life (though it still feels weird to think of it that way), the absolute first thing Tiffany does is go to her room, collapse onto her bed, and sleep for twelve straight hours. Everything else can wait (including fixing up her teeth, which she's alarmed to discover are rotted and meth-y again). Eventually, though, she'll wander out - take a hot shower and a relaxing bath, grab some snacks from the fridge, and even flick on the TV. The Games are still playing, of course. She watches them impassively. Already, her own time in the arena is already starting to feel like an unpleasant dream - she knows it was real, and yet she's emotionally distanced herself from it. Whatever happened in there scarcely matters now. It's over, and now she can try to spin it - for sponsorships, for endorsement deals, for whatever else it is that Tributes do. All that matters is that the Capitol still likes her.

It'll be fine. She'll be fine.

B: Training Center rooftop

Except when she isn't fine. She's violent, but not this violent. She's killed before, but not like that. She's easily suggestible and manipulated, and she fully plans to keep being an obedient Capitol lapdog - but she hasn't yet reached a point where she doesn't feel at least a little conflicted about what she has to do to attain that goal. And that's not even touching on her feelings towards her own death, which are big and complicated and won't go away no matter how many times she tries to tell herself that the arena wasn't really real, and it didn't count.

So she sneaks up to the roof sometimes, wanting to be alone. Whether or not she actually is, however, is another matter entirely.

C: Training Center central commons

And yet there are still other times when she puts on her game face. Tiffany is well aware that she hadn't been the most memorable person in the arena, but she doesn't think she'd been the most forgettable, either - after all, people had to have noticed her to send her those parachute presents. So she'll hang around in the central commons for a while, chatting with sponsors and reporters. Sometimes she'll play it cool, and wait hopefully to be approached - but other times, she'll spot a Capitolite sitting on their own, and she'll go over to make her move.

"Hey. How you doing today?"

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

Now that she's back in the Capitol, Tiffany is eager to hit the town - she stops by all her favorite spots, and plans to spend a good deal of time dancing and drinking the night away. She gets a few people who recognize her from the Games - mostly people who knew her before, but occasionally a new fan approaches her. In a couple of the bars, she even gathers up a little crowd, eager to hear stories from the arena.

"Well, y'all saw it happen, right. But seeing it on the screen ain't the same as actually being in there. Man, it's like a rush, you know? All that killing, and knowing you could die at any moment. I wasn't scared. Nah. I didn't have time to be scared. All I had time for was fighting and surviving."

She may be glorifying things just a bit.

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Ransom has been waiting. Rather impatiently, though really she should be waiting for her Tributes to win, but she can tell right out of the gate that that isn't happening, so instead she waits for each of them to fuck up badly enough that they're sent back to the Capitol.

Luckily, in Tiffany's case, Ransom is feeling generous enough to let her have a good long sleep. She knows exactly how exhausting it is, coming out of an Arena, and she's willing to concede half a day's wasted training time because of that. But as soon as Doggett's awake, Ransom is waiting, leaning against the counter of District 1's kitchenette with a piece of multigrain toast half-eaten on a plate in front of her, reading the daily newspaper with a scowl on her face.

"About time you came out of that coma," she grumbles, not bothering to introduce herself. "I'm putting you on a high-protein diet and setting you a strict workout regimen. None of this lying about having spa treatments."

Tiffany blinks, automatically looking behind her to check out who this woman is talking to. Obviously she isn't talking to her. She doesn't even know her.

But then again, maybe she is, because other than the two of them, the suite is completely empty right now.

"... Who're you?"

Ransom rolls her eyes. Of course these people don't know who she is. Just another downside to bringing in offworlders. There's no respect. There's no accounting for history. The Mentor drops her paper like it's just bitten her.

"Ransom Averell. I'm your Mentor, and if you want to put on a better show next Arena, you'd better listen to me."

She crosses to the panel in the wall that brings up food from the kitchens proper and punches a few buttons, ignoring Tiffany for a moment. Not a minute later, a steaming plate piled with whole-grain waffles and lean sausage appears, and Ransom slides it across the kitchen island.

"Eat up. You're probably feeling disoriented and pretty well fucked, physically. You need to start eating square meals. Bulk up. You reset after every Arena so it's pretty much going to be never-ending."

It's clear that Ransom has little patience for nice words and explanations; she launches into all of this with no preamble.

The roof can actually get quite crowded, Kurt's found in his short time spent in the Capitol so far, especially at night, but in the small hours of the morning just at sunrise it's the least crowded. The fuzzy blue mutant finds himself perched on the back of a bench looking out at the sun just barely cresting the skyline as morning starts to break on this strange world and tries to quiet his mind, too many thoughts whirling around in his head and too many emotions squeezing his heart.

Most important seems the issue of escape, of finding some way back from this Panem to Bayville and the Institute. His friends will be looking for him, worried sick, and he can't imagine what Professor X told his parents. They were worried enough with all of the Apocalypse incident all over the news, Kurt having come home to piles of e-mail and phone messages. He'd assured them he was fine, but then how would it look to them, him disappearing less than a week later?

But can he really just leave if there are Districts depending on them for food and supplies? For survival? The system seems wrong to Kurt, but he's a stranger, what can he really say about it other than not wanting to be a part of it, which carries its own guilt in abandoning the role they want him to play. Being a celebrity is kind of nice, for once, just... why do they have to die over and over?

He's so lost in his own head, swinging his tail slowly behind him as he thinks and shifting so his two-fingered hands are crossed on his knees, that he doesn't hear anyone round the corner to the East end of the roof until they're quite close. He turns his head, a little startled but trying to be polite. He gives a closed-mouth smile to his company and speaks in a soft and German-accented voice.

"Oh, ah. Hallo."

When she's not harassing Sponsors or holing out in her library, China spends most of her time during the Arena viewing the Games in the common area. It's a way to maintain the image of doing her job and also to scout out more of the competition--after all, just because someone was knocked out of this round doesn't mean they won't be a competent challenger later on. She's seen in her many years as a dedicated viewer that luck, good and bad, plays a large role.

She smiles when Tiffany approaches. "Hello there. Tiffany, wasn't it? How was your first jaunt into the Arena?"

"My mentor?" She frowns, confused. "What happened to the other guy?" Tiffany has a vague awareness that sometimes old mentors leave and new ones arrive, but it's never happened to her, so she hasn't paid it much mind.

... She's absolutely not going to say no to that food, though. She digs in eagerly, only slightly minding the "whole grain" and "lean" thing. Capitol food, even healthier Capitol food, is still worlds better than prison food.

Tiffany glances up, then does a double-take. She's kind of gotten used to the non-humans around here, but not enough that it isn't a surprise at all anymore.

He could also, she supposes, be a human dressed up in a costume. Capitol fashion sure is crazy.

"What are you?"

"Yeah, Tiffany. And it was-- it was real good. I think I did good." She gives the TV behind them a quick glance before turning her attention back to China.

"I mean, I got sponsors. That's a good sign, right?"

"He left." Ransom rolls her eyes. "Vacated. I don't actually give a fuck what happened to him, clearly he was fucking incompetent."

She watches as Tiffany goes ahead and chows down on her breakfast, expression tinged with approval. At least she's not starving herself, like that ever changes anything. Ransom sizes her Tribute up skeptically. She's small--tiny, really. And she doubts there's much in the way of muscle. "I don't suppose you've ever worked out in your life," she comments, picking up her newspaper again.

"He was okay." But she'd barely known him, so she doesn't feel the urge to defend him too heavily. "And it depends on what you mean by working out, 'cause--"

Then something clicks - Ransom Averell - and she cuts herself off, looking up from her food.

"Hey. Are you RA? From the note?"

"Holy shit, you do have half a brain. Amazing. Yes, that was me, and you're welcome." Ransom shakes out her paper in minor disgust, rolling her eyes over a half-page spread about Princess Anna's 'sudden turnaround' in the Arena. She turns the photo around to show Tiffany.

"This. What was that? Making allies? Especially with someone so much weaker than you. None of that from now on. Unless it's some musclebound freak trying to make friends, if you can shank someone, you shank them. Clear?"

"I thought I was supposed to make allies. Lots of people said so." Admittedly, almost all of those people had been other tributes.

"Only if they have something to offer you. Did she have something to offer? Did she ever help you out? No." She snorts.

"You died, and she's still in there. This isn't President Snow's Best Friends Race, this is the Hunger Games. Your job is to kill."

"She ain't my friend." And she'd said she'd help, if Tiffany needed it. But looking at the story, she feels a sudden surge of anger. Ransom is right. Anna hadn't ever helped her out. Their paths had never crossed again, so it wasn't like she'd had the opportunity, but Tiffany isn't thinking about that.

"You saying she fucked me over?"

"Wonderful."

"It is, indeed. Perhaps you'll have some repeat sponsors next time, even. If you put on a good show for them. Did you?"

She asks eagerly, as if she hasn't been watching every televised moment.

"I-- yeah! Yeah, I did." Truthfully, she isn't completely sure of that, but she definitely hopes she did. "I mean, I attacked people and stuff, sometimes. That was good, right? I did good."

There's a flicker of a brighter smile. It really is nice how Tiffany seems willing to do her best. "Textbook. Attacking people is the name of the game."

She bows her head, apologetic. "Forgive me for not paying as much attention as I should have, but did you happen to kill someone?"

"... No," she admits, shamefaced. She'd tried, but she hadn't been very good at it. More than one person had talked her out of attacking by promising that they'd be her ally too, which is something her mentor is distinctly unhappy about.

"Are you disappointed in me?"

"That's exactly what the fuck she did. And she's a weakling. She's barely killed a man in a year's worth of Arenas, and the only one she did kill was by accident."

Ransom hitches her chin at Tiffany. "So the next time you see her, I expect that you won't hold back."

"... Okay. Okay." Ransom might not know it (or maybe she does), but she's just set up Tiffany to attack Anna outside the arena. "'Cause she's a manipulative bitch, right? She was using me."

"Yes, precisely." Fortunately, Ransom knows better than to be vague about things like this. "But you have to wait until the next Arena. You're forbidden from fighting each other here in the Capitol."

Whether or not Tiffany heeds her warnings, well...Ransom can't control that.

"Really?" Ruh-roh. "That's gonna be a long time from now, though. What if I stop being mad?"

"Unfortunately." Ransom shoves Tiffany's plate closer to her, reminding her to keep eating. "Don't worry. I'll give you a pep talk before you go back in."

She opens her mouth, looking shocked. "Disappointed? Of course not."

Every kill someone else doesn't get... Well, it's probably not one her Tributes are going to pick up instead. But it still means they're at least running about normal.

"I'm sure you tried your best, didn't you? And they brought you back still, so evidently someone's pleased."

Pep talks are good. Food is even better. She takes a big bite of one of the waffles, chewing thoughtfully.

"Okay. You gonna tell me the best way to do it, too? 'Cause there wasn't a lot of good weapons in this last arena. ... And, uh, hey. What are these waffles made of? They taste different."

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C (training center)

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