[OPEN] The morning dove sings

[atouchofka]

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.

Comments

[atouchofka]

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.

[whatisay]

"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."

[atouchofka]

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.

[whatisay]

"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."

[atouchofka]

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."

[whatisay]

"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."

[atouchofka]

That bluntness might sting, especially coming from someone who already grates on his nerves so much, but a lifetime training under Cort has left Alain a hell of a lot thicker-skinned than that. He just closes his eyes for a moment, pushing back the headache that's starting to throb at his temples, and nods.

"Can't guarantee big and surprising," he says aloud, after a little while. He's decided to treat this as a test, some kind of exam in strategy. If he forgets who he's talking to, pictures Cort or Vannay in Jason's place, it might be less aggravating and a good deal less embarrassing. So he stares up at the ceiling, mulling it over. "Can't guarantee anything, if this last was anything to judge by. Can't believe anyone but a bedamned fool would look at me and think of lovers, either. When you say media circuit, what is it you're thinking?"

[whatisay]

"You're a young man with a symmetrical face. Anyone who isn't looking at you and thinking of selling you as a lover is blind or stupid or both."

Jason waves his hand. "I mean talkshows, interviews, maybe the odd magazine special. Now, all the spotlight in the world isn't going to do a damn thing for you if you don't have a story you're planning to tell with it, so, let me get your input on this or I'll make up something about how you're fucking Roland up the ass. What sort of story do you think you could act out that would keep people interested?"

[atouchofka]

Alain has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something he'll regret. Like, perhaps, how childish it would be to care if he was fucking Roland, up the ass or otherwise, and how anyone with half a brain can see he's not the type for a love triangle. If that means what he thinks it does.

But he swallows that back, his shock and frustration shown only by the minute clenching of his jaw. A test. Take it as a test. One Bert would be able to pass with flying colours, come up easily with an insouciant, colourful lie so unbelievable that people couldn't help but be sucked in by it. Alain, though, has made a life in fading into the background, being the silent presence at Roland's side, often underestimated and overlooked. Holding people's interest has never been a priority to him; only holding their common sense.

"Why not my own?" he says at last, his voice low and the hardness behind it well-hidden. "You have troubles with rebellion here. I've lost friends and kin to rebels in my own world, not least the men I spoke of when we first met. I've a good deal to atone for. There's your story. Atonement and revenge. Serves well enough for most novels." His weariness with this whole conversation is starting to tell in his voice.

[whatisay]

The thing is, Jason's worked these circuits (and is a competent Escort) enough that he knows what the audience likes. Limp, titillating scandal? Exactly what the audience laps up, believing all the stretches not even because they're easily led but because they want so badly to believe in something more exciting than what they have.

Jason pulls out his pen and taps it against him temple.

"What are you redeeming yourself from? Sympathizing with rebels? Because that's the only way I can spin it that won't get me hauled in for questioning. And believe me, I've been way too close to being interrogated to fostering rebels for my liking."

Seven years ago, when one of his Tributes went rogue. That's why he won't humor any sedition now.

[atouchofka]

"I've never sympathised with them," Alain says flatly. It isn't entirely true - he has quite a lot of sympathy for the rebels here - but he chooses to take the question to refer to the rebels in his own world, to Farson's men. "I'm redeeming myself from not killing enough of the motherfuckers to save my people." His face is hard, uncharacteristically so, and remains so for a moment before he pulls himself back under control.

"Your people like to talk of these Games as a deterrent to war. I don't know the politics of it, but that's something I can fight for. I didn't protect my people, so I'm driven to protect yours. We lost our war, so I don't want the same for others. It might not be much, but it's more believable than some half-baked romance with my d... Roland." Pinching the bridge of his nose, he straightens up. "Are we done?"

[whatisay]

"No." There's some kind of glint in Jason's eyes, something that in an animal would be predatory but in a man just looks calculating, that betrays a bit of the reason Jason's as successful as he is as an Escort. He can find the words that will resonate in the heads of the people whose wallets he's angling at. "Say that again. About what you're redeeming yourself from. Not the rest of...whatever that was."

He holds out his phone, opening a function that will record what Alain says.

[atouchofka]

Alain looks, thoroughly mistrustfully, at the machine in Jason's hand. Then, just as mistrustfully, at the man himself. It's a moment more before he speaks, time enough to settle in his mind that it's the right thing, time enough to quash down the bitterness and anger that will otherwise seep into his tone.

"I never sympathised with the rebels," he says, flat and level. "I didn't kill enough of the fatherless bastards to save my people. I'd have redemption for that." And he would; the truth of what he's saying is in every line of him, even if he doesn't mean it in precisely the way it sounds.

/wrap

[whatisay]

Jason nods and hits another button on his phone, saving the file. "Good, I can probably shop that around a bit. Someone will want to make a sound bite of it."

He slaps his hands on his knees and gets back up. "Alright, Alain. I'd say it's good to have you back but honestly, it's just business as usual for me. Now let's go down to the gym."