thecapitol | [OPEN] The morning dove sings

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[OPEN] The morning dove sings

Who| Alain and YOU
What| Alain's not-so-triumphant return to the Capitol
Where| Central commons; D4 suite (specifically seeking Roland, but open); D7 suite; anywhere else you'd like!
When| End of week 6, early week 7
Warnings/Notes| Death things, I guess?

Death is, somehow, easier than Alain expected. Embarrassing - of all the ways he expected to die, he didn't expect it to be at the hands of a child, and a girl-child at that - but easy. It's waking from it that's hard, pulling himself out of the darkness and fully expecting agony in its wake. But of course, there is no agony. He's whole again, and when first he awakes, he looks with wonder at the fully-formed callouses on his palms, which were so recently reduced to raw new skin and blisters. Wonder, and a kind of creeping disgust and horror. This is wrong. Even knowing it was coming, it's wrong. He spends several moments just checking himself over, flexing his hands and testing his weight on his no-longer-broken leg. That creeping horror doesn't fade. At last, unwilling to be left alone with the evidence of his own unnatural recovery, he heads out of the room into the Center proper.

i. Central commons
He makes for the stairs first, not sure what he hopes for, just knowing he doesn't want to stay sitting around in the aftermath. It doesn't hurt that the bars are down there; after everything, he could use a stiff drink. The crowds are a relief, after the echoing silence in his own head, although the numb lack of the Touch is nagging at him again, dragging at his attention like a loose tooth. He keeps his head lowered, though, not making eye contact until he's at the bar. Company is well and good, but he isn't interested in replaying his embarrassment in the Arena for Capitolite ears.

He settles down in the corner of the bar with a double whiskey, scanning the crowds, looking for a friendly face. Or at least one that shows something more than vulturous curiosity.

ii. D4 suite
After a couple of drinks, the noise and press of the place starts to get to him, as does the aching emptiness that's all that answers his Touch. He no longer craves busyness so much, and he has his own concerns to attend to. Some people don't come back. Has he really gone so long without making sure Roland isn't one of them? Sluicing down the last of his whiskey, he gets to his feet and starts back towards the stairs (the elevators are something he doesn't think he'll ever be comfortable with, trapping yourself in a tiny prison in the hands of a machine), but not back to his own suite. He stops at the fourth floor, takes a deep breath, and heads inside, going to knock on Roland's door.

iii. D7 suite
He can only stay out so long. Eventually, he ends up back on his own floor, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he curls on an armchair, leafing through his well-thumbed copy of Homilies & Meditations without really reading. He's tried to shake the heavy thoughts that have weighed on him since his awakening, but they won't leave him.

Death is a heavy thing. It isn't that he wishes for it to last - not for himself, not for Roland, not for anyone who's fallen that way - but he's a man who believes in things in their place, and death is, above all else, meant to be an end. It isn't just that this feels like a mockery. It feels dangerous, coming back time and again from things that ought to send you to the end of the path. He can't help how it makes his skin crawl to think of it.

He'll sit there for a very long time, even sleep there a night or two. He has a lot to think on, but nothing that seems fair to say out loud.

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There's another of those long silences, long enough that Alain's cigarette is burnt down almost to his fingers when he stubs it out and says quietly, "I don't know. There's pieces I'm missing. I'd know more about Bert's sojourn here, and about... there are other things." He flicks the cigarette butt after Roland's, closing his eyes. "Done for now, I think, if you'd have it so. There's much I need to know, but I'm not so sure there's enough of me to know it right now."

Looking back over at Roland, he manages a little smile. He's tired as he's rarely been, bone-weary in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. That nagging absence of the Touch is itching at the inside of his skull, making him feel like a man among ghosts, and the smoke's done nothing to take the edge off his nervous tension (though seeing Roland has helped, a little). There's only so much heavy conversation he can take, at a time like this.

"Shall we go back in?"

"What's an Outer Barony? Is that a district thing?" Or something from his home, maybe. "What district are you from? I mean, what district did they give you?"

Again, a little shake of the head, and Alain takes a long huff of smoke. The Baronies wouldn't be too hard to explain, but they no longer exist in the same way even in his home world, and certainly bear no relevance here. Instead, he just answers her other question: "Seven. For what little difference it makes. And you?"

Roland makes a wordless noise of agreement, but studies Alain a moment before actually straightening up. Alain looks tired. Roland's own first arena hadn't felt like it'd taken much of a toll on him, and he does not think for very long on whether that is the case for Alain now. But Panem in general - that can take a toll, he knows. A heavy one. He does straighten then, and sets a hand on Alain's back as he walks inside. "Aye, let's go in. I'll make you some tea."

"1. Why doesn't it make any difference? Ain't you proud to be from District 7?" She sure is proud of hers. It's given her something to cling to and ally herself with - almost as much as she's allied herself with the Capitol. And allying with the Capitol has been even easier. It gives her praise, positive feedback, and attention - all things that she desperately craves.

"How can I be?" Alain's tone is serious. He isn't unaware of the need to curry favour with the rulers of this place, but this isn't sedition, only fact. "I don't know the place, nor its people. I will fight for them, if that's what I'm here to do, but how can I be proud of a place that is only a number to me?" He takes a deep breath of smoke, and another swig of whiskey, before continuing. "I'm proud to be from Gilead, from New Canaan, from the places I grew up and that shaped me. I'm proud to be my father's son, Roland's brother-in-arms, Cort and Vannay's student. I'm proud to be fighting for the cause of peace here, where before I was fighting a losing war. I have pride in a lot of things. But no matter how grateful I may be to this place, which has brought me back from the edge, given me time I would not have, let me see that my friend will go on living... No matter. I am still a gunslinger of Gilead, not a Districter of the woodlands. Pride is a queer thing, and not so easily shifted."

That's quite a speech for him, and unusually personal for someone generally so self-contained. But he's in a thinking mood, and this isn't his first whiskey. He falls silent when he's done, settling back in his seat and giving her a rather apologetic smile. If they wanted him to be proud of his District, he thinks, perhaps they ought not to have set it against his dinh.

"Quite the opposite, actually." She wishes she could be disappointed with him, it would be so much easier and would fit with the line of the stern, pro-Capitol Mentor that she knows she needs to be taking to keep herself and her family safe. "You survived for a long time in there. And there's always next time, unfortunately."

"Not long enough." Alain's frown deepens a little. "Still, as you say, there's always next time. And perhaps, between now and then, I can find the stomach for it." Because he doesn't have it, and he knows that. He has the stomach for killing, no question; his body count is higher than anyone in the Capitol probably imagines. But fighting women and children, and for no reason but that he has been ordered to? No. He cannot find that in him.

He's quiet for a long moment, smoking and glancing down at his book. At last, looking up at Emily again, he says quietly, "Will you tell me a little of what I fight for? I am willing to fight for the District, for your people. But I know nothing of them, and that makes it hard to draw them to mind, when it comes to blood and battle."

"... I know. You're right. You got a point. I guess I'm proud to be from Waynesboro--" But not completely, because her feelings towards her heritage are mixed and complicated. "-- And I'm proud to be in the Capitol now." And she definitely notices that he's listed far more things, places, and people than she has. It makes her feel inadequate, and she shifts uncomfortably on her bar stool.

Alain frowns at her clear discomfort, then touches her arm very lightly, giving her a little smile and sipping his whiskey. "I cry pardon if something I said upset you. It wasn't my intent." He has a suspicion of what her discomfort might be over - which, as it happens, sits pretty close to the mark; he's guessing that two places must seem a short list - but he won't assume.

"Nah, I'm okay. I ain't upset." She looks down at his hand on her arm. "Why are you so nice to me?" It was surprising in the arena (after all, they hadn't been allies) and it's still a little surprising here (where he doesn't have to worry about talking her out of trying to kill him).

He frowns a little, tapping ash off his cigarette, and runs his hand over his mouth. "You're not my enemy," he said, as if it should be obvious. "I wouldn't say we're friends yet, either, but you've done me no real wrong." The attempt on his life notwithstanding, but he held no ill-will for that. It had been something she had been forced into, and that made a big difference. "No sense in making enemies here if I don't have to. But I'd gladly make a friend."

"I'm not supposed to make more friends," Tiffany replies - though maybe Ransom had only meant she should stop making friends in the Arena? Maybe being friendly with the other tributes is okay when they're in the Capitol.

She'll have to ask, later.

"In my youth, we were counselled to the opposite." It's more thinking out loud than anything else, but it's true. Cort and Vannay didn't believe in blind trust - nobody could afford to, when they were training gunslingers - but they knew, and taught their charges, the truth that men who stand alone usually die quickly. Raised in such a martial society, it's no surprise that Alain holds high value on the bonds of friendship. Raised in that setting with the kind of sensitivity he ordinarily has, it would be a miracle if he were otherwise.

"But then," he says, taking another drag of smoke, "I guess I was raised for battles between armies, not battles where only one man can stand alive and victorious. Perhaps whoever told you that was right." Then, with a little half-smile, "Though it seems a lonely way to live your life, say true."

Jason doesn't give Alain long to sit and meditate on the nature of death. Despite the fact that most of Jason's Tributes are back and cluttering his schedule, as soon as he gets a notification that Alain's returned he clears up a slot and makes his way back to the Suites. He enters from the elevator, preceded as usual by his trademark puff of herbal vapor cigarettes.

Unlike when Alain last left, Jason looks as if something's off, some strange shadow clinging to the insides of his irises. He looks jumpy, unstable, and there's a mark on his lower lip where he's been biting it for the last few weeks. If he weren't wearing the usual Capitol makeup, dark circles would be showing under his eyes.

It's weakness, but he doesn't recognize it as he instead starts making coffee and tries to zero in on Alain's.

"Congratulations on getting killed by a little girl. That was impressive."

Alain sees that tiredness and instability, and were it anyone else, he might feel sympathy. But because it is Compson, who most of all the Capitolites he's learnt to loathe, and because of that targeted jab, he's as coldly empty of it as Roland at his worst. Tapping ash off his cigarette, he turns a page and continues to look down at the words without reading them.

He's silent for a long moment, closed-off and still-faced, and when he does speak around his cigarette, it's without looking up at his Escort. "I am not proud of it. But nor will I cry your pardon for my failings." Raising his head a little, he huffs a smoke ring up towards the ceiling, and closes his eyes. The Capitol cigarette tastes dry and flavourless as dust, but it's something to steady him. "I fought as best I could, I fell as all men must, and I died as fate willed. It's your people who chose to lessen that by returning me. If you seek to dig barbs into me over it, you may go on seeking; I am at peace with it."

That's a lie. He's hardly felt less at peace since that first panic at his arrival passed. But it's a lie he feels no twinge of conscience over, honest though he usually is. He's embarrassed, yes, and thoroughly unsettled by the whole thing, but he isn't weak enough to give Jason such an obvious purchase on his emotions. Better to push down that germ of anger, let it grow into something hard and strong as steel, something he can use when the time comes.

If he was another man, he might comment on Jason's own unstable appearance, riposte against the Capitolite's attack with one of his own. But he isn't, and to do so seems petty. No sense making a fight here, not if he can help it. Instead, he taps his cigarette against the empty mug's edge again, catching the ash, and looks back down at his book.

"I got the Capitol," she points out. "They'll help me not feel lonely. And there's some people here that already like me. If I do even better in the next arena... then they'll like me more." And that, right now, is her primary motivator.

"Jesus Christ." Jason jams his cigarette between his teeth so it doesn't move when he talks, giving him a certain lock-jawed grit to his voice. "See, you keep saying these things about how little you respect me, how you're not going to cry pardon or whatever it is, as if I give a damn about whether or not you like or respect me."

He leans against the counter and folds his arms, waiting as the coffee maker percolates, and glares at Alain's cigarette. "Put that out. Vapors only in here, I won't be having you costing the Tribute budget for repairs to the ceiling for cigarette ash."

Plus, Jason's allergic to the smell of traditional cigarettes, as he is to plenty of things that seem to wreak havoc on a bodily system that's too fragile for the way he treats it.

"I didn't realize you could read."

Alain takes another long drag of smoke, then, hiding his resentment remarkably well, stubs the cigarette out in the bottom of the cup. He may loathe Jason and all he stands for, but he's emotionally exhausted as it is; he isn't going to start a fight over something as trivial as a flavourless half-smoked cigarette. He doesn't even point out that it's smoke, not ash, that damages the ceilings, and that he can't imagine Jason's ridiculous flavoured cigarettes are all that much better for it.

Instead, holding the smoke in his mouth for several seconds before exhaling it slowly, he looks back down at his book. That book means a great deal to him, and not only because in his land - where paper is rare - such a thing is worth no small sum. Homilies and Meditations has travelled with him to Mejis, to the wastelands, to the foot of Jericho Hill. It was with him when he first killed a man, when he saw Gilead fall, and unless he misses his guess, it was with him when he died. His parents, who gave it to him; Bert and their ka-tel, who so often teased him for carrying it; Vannay, who taught him its meaning - all that is bound up in its tattered pages, and even if he couldn't read, it would be precious to him.

It's that thought which helps him keep his temper, which is no small feat, because Jason's offhand comment makes his hackles rise all over again. It isn't his own pride that's wounded - he's actually pretty used to being taken for a fool, and is confident enough in his self-contained way not to let it bother him much. What cuts is that casual disregard, once again, for the culture and the people who raised him - as if his parents would let their son go untaught, as if Vannay would fail in such a task.

"Where I am from," he says at last, his words slow and deliberate, "every gunslinger-in-training is taught from infancy. Reading and writing, arithmetic and astrology, history, geography, and philosophy, poetry and riddling... such things, we are taught, are every bit as important as how to fire a gun or fly a hawk or read a spoor. So, yes," he adds, a little bitterly despite himself, "I can read."

Getting to his feet, he closes the book and tucks it into the top pocket of his vest, then goes to dump the cigarette ash in the bin.

Alain considers this for a moment, nodding, tapping ash off his cigarette again. At last, he says quietly, "Then I wish you well of it. People ought to have people by their side. Being alone too long, being closed-off... it does strange things to a person. Leaves scars."

She may be able to pick up on the fact that he's not entirely talking about her any more. Roland has been on his mind a lot lately, and his worry over how his old friend has changed might be spilling out, lubricated by whiskey and melancholy.

Tiffany looks down at the table, falling silent. She doesn't want scars - any kind of scars. And that's why she needs the Capitol. The Capitol people are nicer than the tributes.

Most of the tributes. This guy isn't so bad.

"Are you sad you didn't win?" she asks suddenly.

"Congratulations?" Jason raises one hand in a dismissive shrug. "I'm sure they taught you to tie your shoes and play the harmonica, too, but that doesn't exactly impress me. I just said I was surprised you knew how, since I've had so many Tributes not know how to spell 'cat' in my years that as soon as they started being literate I had to start writing my notes in code."

Jason's developed a sort of shorthand for his notepad just so he can continue to not have to worry about his charges stealing it and using the unflattering things he's said about them against him.

"Alright, get up. Enough lounging around." Jason pours himself the coffee and dumps the rest out with no regard for the cost. If any Tribute wants it they'll have to make a pot of their own. "We're going over your new strategy, since getting anyone to like you on the Sponsor side was like trying to draw blood out of a stone. And then you're going down to the gym to practice hand to hand with a trainer."

Alain is quiet a moment before answering, his brow furrowed. "Sad? No. Angry. Embarrassed. Guilty. But not sad, not truly." It's true. He was sad when Roland died, sad for the girl Arya when she killed him, but his own death brings him no sadness. Why would it? He didn't want to win, particularly, so the loss of it hardly stings.

"Confused," he adds, after a moment. "I do not understand how I can be dead - twice, by my accounting, including how I died before coming here - and still awake. It feels..." Wrong, he thinks. Sick, he thinks. "Strange," he says, and leaves it at that.

Alain notes that, and files it away. Codes and riddles are his forte, after all. If he can find a way to Jason's notes - and he's sure, given time, that he can - might they hold some new information? He will have to think it over, perhaps discuss it with Roland if they can find the space and secrecy. He doubts Jason Compson, relatively low as he is in the tower's apparent management, will hold the key to its destruction, but it is as well to know as much of one's enemy as you can.

For now, though, he just shrugs and rinses out the cup he's been using as an ashtray. Anger is still burning low and hot at the back of his mind, but he damps it down. He's too guilty, too confused, and too bone-deep weary for that argument. "As you will." Turning, he leans against the counter, looking at Jason flatly. "You want to speak strategy, then speak. I'm listening."

"Alright. You're not good-looking enough to be a heartthrob, you're not mysterious enough to be alluring, and you're not clever enough to be a real competitor." Jason sits down on the couch and puts his feet up on the coffee table. "Not that that's all your fault, mind - you've got plenty of competition in at least two of those fields."

He takes a sip of coffee too fast and cringes as it burns his tongue. It'll be stinging and painful all day. Then he continues. "Trying to get Sponsor gifts for you was like trying to pull teeth out with chopsticks because no one was remembering who the hell you were. Half the people I talked to thought your name was John Alan. So what I say, we should focus on finding a way to make you stick in people's memory, and either you've got to do something big and surprising in the next Arena, start hitting the media circuit hard, or play on your relationships and make a love triangle narrative."

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[OPEN] The morning dove sings

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D7

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