(no subject)

[69problems]

WHO | Signless and YOU, with a special prompt for Bayard and Psii
WHAT | Dealing with the fallout of the Capitol revoking everyone's credit lines
WHERE | D12 suites/out and about in the Capitol
WHEN | Nowish
WARNINGS | Definitely discussion of slavery in the closed prompt

A. OPEN | D12

It doesn't take a genius to realize that tributes who suddenly have no source of income are going to find it far harder to get basic things like food. Signless, however, is no longer a tribute: he's a Mentor, and that affords him a decent (if not cushy) salary. Even if he can't help his tributes hone their combat skills, he can most certainly make sure they go into the arena healthy instead of starved.

To that end he's made it his mission to stock the District 12 kitchen. While he can guess at basics (tea, coffee, sugar, bread, fruit), he's well-aware that he doesn't know the tastes of his districtmates nearly so well as they do. Anyone who wanders into the kitchen can find him pinning a pad of paper onto the fridge with 'Grocery Requests' written at the top in careful print. His current plan is to restock things either every other week or as soon as the paper is reasonably full, but that's assuming the idea takes off in the first place.

B. OPEN | CAPITOL SHOPS

While he waits for someone to make use of his list, he decides to go on a preliminary run to at least stock up the kitchen a little. He wanders between shops: a few loaves of different kinds of bread here, a bag of apples and a bag of pears there. Soon he has a small but respectable collection of bags.

Particularly of interest to him is coffee. It took him quite a while to get started drinking it, but thanks to Bayard he's started having it more than once every few weeks. Tea was easy to buy -- tea he was familiar with. By contrast he knows next to nothing about coffee; he's just been making whatever was already available in the kitchen in Twelve and trusting it would be good.

"What is everyone most likely to like..." he murmurs to himself, inspecting bags of coffee beans with a furrowed brow. Dark? Medium? Medium, probably, but then there's so many flavors... he probably needs a second opinion.

"Do you know anything about coffee?" he asks the person nearest him. Chances are they know more than he does.

C. FOR BAYARD AND PSII | ICE CREAM SHOP

When Signless stepped out of the tribute tower today he'd assumed it would be a fairly uneventful outing. Now, sitting at a table in an ice cream parlor between a very annoyed Psiioniic and a bloody-lipped Bayard Sartoris, he's wondering where things went so very wrong. He picks at his rose-flavored ice cream and looks between them with a wary expression. There has to be a way to say 'why did I walk into this establishment to find you punching a small child in the face' that isn't quite so... accusatory. Even the Psiioniic is usually better with his temper than that, so Bayard must have said something that really hit a nerve.

"Is your lip feeling a little better, Bayard?" is what he finally asks. He doesn't want to prod Psii for information before he's absolutely sure it won't prompt another blowup. Much as he cares for the other troll, he's well-aware of how difficult he can be when he's angry.

Comments

[69problems]

"If you can do it in a level-headed manner," Signless adds. He knows the Psiioniic. He knows they're likely to get a pissy lisping diatribe rather than a calm explanation, and he wants the Psiioniic to know he knows that. It's a pointed reminder to act like an adult for once instead of a petulant grub.

"I'd very much like to know too."

[biiowiired]

It was the "sir" that burned the old wounds. Calling someone "sir" or "ma'am" was something he associated with his time in slavery. Since he arrived in Panem, he faced nothing but dismissal or exasperation at the marks it had left on him. The average Capitolite didn't care, and the Gamemakers sought to make it worse. It had swelled this morning as he perused a magazine--with a fan theory that his whip scars were simply the result of wild nights in bed--and it came to a head with Bayard in the ice cream shop.

He turned his head to stare at the human boy, mouth working furiously.

"Don't call me that." He surprised himself with how thick with emotion his voice sounded. In his head, he knew what Signless wanted him to say, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth, the words got jumbled up. Vantas isn't fucking helping either.

"You thee nothing wrong with owning other people, we might ath well dithpenthe with the nithetieth and call each other 'thlave' and 'mathter,'" he spat.

[yoknapatawpha]

"Sorry. I didn't mean any disrespect." Bayard looks (and is) genuinely surprised by the intensity of Psiioniic's discomfort, and so he makes a mental note to scrub that appellation from any future contributions to the conversation.

"I ain't your master and you ain't my slave." Bayard cocks his head to the side, looking between the two trolls. He isn't following. He's hardly the only person here who understands that some people were just meant to serve, that they do better with structure and a figurehead around which to coordinate their lives. "We've got the Avoxes for slaves here, and I reckon you're a master of them."

[69problems]

It takes a lot of self-restraint not to kick the Psiioniic in the ankle under the table. What stops him is a more rounded idea of what, exactly, the issue here is -- and he can't blame the Psiioniic for his anger, not when the Psiioniic is the only person at this table who has ever spent time in slavery.

"Bayard," he says, and his tone is the same cautioning one a parent might direct at a child to warn them they're on their way to getting in serious trouble. He knows that Bayard means no harm; he's interacted with the boy enough to know that he simply comes from a very different world. This is simple benign ignorance, but that doesn't stop him wincing a little to hear it.

"Where we come from, slavery is an extremely widespread and harmful enterprise. Trolls spend their entire lives being shunted from camp to camp, forced to work until they die of exhaustion. That or they're used to provide energy for machines until they have none left to give and are traded out for a new power source, as though they're just interchangeable objects and not people. It isn't something to speak of lightly."

[biiowiired]

It didn't surprise Psii how much Signless could sound like his troll lusus sometimes. Dolorosa had the same tone when one of the others would get out of hand. But this was not some argument over whose turn it was to gather firewood.

"You left out the whipping and dithmembering, and other thtuff that'th not fit for wiggler auricular lobeth. Thome trollth were happy when I told them they were going to die."

Psii looked at Bayard as if he was studying something disgusting left on the bottom of his shoe and couldn't tell what it was.

"What maketh you think Avoxes fare any better? How can you thay taking thomeone'th free will ith ok? They never athked to be enthlaved!" This was bordering on seditious, but he'd already said this before where there were probably hidden mics. "They're only half people now, incapable of making informed dethithionth, and that doethn't do any good. For Panem," he managed to add.

[yoknapatawpha]

Bayard's trying very hard to stay levelheaded, and thankfully that famous even temperament does him well. A crinkle forms in his brow but he listens to Signless, then to Psiioniic.

Since he got here he's been chastised and hit for stating things that he assumed were common facts, that would even need to be spoken in Jefferson because they were so presumed. It's come to the point where he's starting to believe the clever thing would be not to say anything at all.

"Of course not. You don't ask to be enslaved. Some types of people are just born into it. But slavery ain't like that back home. Our slaves aren't dismembered and most of 'em are only whipped if they misbehave, just like I would be."

[69problems]

Signless is about to have some words about 'some types' of people just being enslaved because someone else says that's how it's supposed to be, but he thinks better of it when Bayard finishes.

"It shouldn't be right to whip anyone just for misbehaving, especially not a child. There are ways to chastise people that don't necessitate violence, just as there are ways to get work done without forcing someone else to do it." Realizing he's dangerously close to a tangent, he takes a moment to rein himself in.

"I know the way you were raised is all you've ever known. That doesn't make it bad, but you have to understand why others might be troubled by it."

[biiowiired]

It took him so long to figure out that yellowbloods did not inherently deserve to be oppressed. When he did, the knowledge that he'd been tricked only brought him sorrow, but he could never go back to his old life. Mituna the ignorant slave was dead, because he routinely killed that part of himself he hated. Even though Bayard had been born on the other side, he too had been duped. Psii saw him imself in him, and he hated it.

He stood out of his seat, fuming. He considered just storming off before he smacked Bayard again. He certainly had what looked like murder in his mismatched eyes. But instead, he surprised himself when what came out of his mouth was an incredulous,

"Humanth whip their young?" 

Psii associated wiggler beating only with particularly rough lusii, and any troll worth their salt was expected to fight back against their creature and win. Part of their job as a troll was reigning their monstrous guardian in. He didn't think this was a thing among humans with their soft skin, clawless hands, and family litters based on cooperation. What Bayard described sounded insidious, in line with the way the Games were run. He smacked his palms on the table and leaned forward out of earshot.

"And do you think you detherved to be kidnapped and forthed to work here? Or any of the District Tributes born into it in the patht? That'th thlavery. None of uth are overactive wigglerth who need punishment. We're grown-ath adultth capable of making dethithionth for ourthelveth. And even shithead wigglerth like you have the right to dethide what happenth to them, no matter where they happened to be hatched."

[yoknapatawpha]

"Sure, with a belt across our backsides."

Bayard takes the words almost as if they were a beating, gritting his teeth through it although he doesn't bare them. He doesn't even flinch when Psiioniic gets up in his space. He keeps his ground, not stubborn or even defiant but somehow composed, not disrespectful of the Psiioniic's fury and hurt but also not cowing to it.

"Where I'm from not all people can make decisions for themselves. That's why they need a master to care for them. I ain't saying that's like it is everywhere, or that that's how it is here." He exhales and folds his hands over his lap. "I want to understand so I can stop saying things that make people mad. I'm listening, I really am."

[69problems]

Signless puts a hand on the Psiioniic's shoulder and gently but firmly tugs him back out of Bayard's space. This, he thinks, is why he always did the talking on Alternia.

"You aren't helping," he says sternly. "Sit down and at least pretend to be a mature adult who can discuss things without being a complete asshole. He's being better about this than you are."

He squeezes the Psiioniic's shoulder once, hard, to punctuate his point. He knows why his friend is angry and he would never dream of telling him not to be, but there are more productive ways to deal with it than attacking a child.

[biiowiired]

"Having mannerth doethn't make him right."

He could feel Signless's claws digging at his shoulder.

"There wath a blueblood with perfect mannerth who thorted new arrivalth. One line wath for workerth, and the other wath for culling. He waved each troll in with a thmile."

Sitting back down felt disappointing, but also comforting to return towards Signless's good graces. Sometimes Psii did things not because he wanted to, but because he cared about the preachy nooksniffer next to him. Psii squared his shoulders and tried not to sit too stiffly or look like he was going to incinerate Bayard with his eyes. He failed spectacularly at both, but he managed to keep the profanity back behind his gritted teeth.

"What'th tho thpethial about your thlaveth? What maketh them tho incapable of having feelingth and making dethithionth? Aren't they human like you?"

[yoknapatawpha]

"Having manners makes me able to listen so I can be right later," Bayard says. "That's what my Granny raised me to believe. That you can't know something for right if you ain't been listening for it. And I wouldn't ever cull nobody, smile or no smile."

He tries to take in Psiioniic's anger without being defensive or fighting against it, letting that blade of a glare slip in without catching its teeth on sensitive skin.

"Of course they're humans. But they're- they're colored folk. They got their ways and advantages about them just like we white folks have about us. And ours is that we make better decisions and know business and letters and things like that, so we can take care of them."

[69problems]

Signless sits down as Psii does, not taking his hand off the other troll's shoulder. Psii isn't back in his good graces just yet by a long shot. He can feel this entire thing slipping away from him despite his best efforts to mediate (the ice cream, forgotten, is melting) and he knows Psii isn't the type to agree to disagree.

"He doesn't want to fight you. He wants to learn," he hisses, squeezing again because apparently his point didn't get across entirely the first time. "Stop being nasty."

He turns back to Bayard, considers what he's saying. It's a line he's heard several times before, though usually with different colors. It's well-meant Highblood bigotry the same as the Capitolite line about protecting the naturally-inferior Districters.

"And what do they think about that arrangement? Is it something that's just been decided for them?"

[biiowiired]

Same shit, different planet. There was a distinct lack of knowledge—on both sides, rich and poor. Psii was painfully reminded of how highbloods could trick themselves as well as their slaves. But his patience meter was already tipped heavily to the side of Can't Fucking Deal.

"They don't know 'letterth' becauthe they're not allowed! I had to thteal all my education! If thomeone ith thtuck underground their whole life, of courthe they aren't going to know what the moonth look like!"

This whole mess was starting to look like the melted wreck of his ice cream. Psii was finding it impossible not to be nasty, and the more he tried to explain himself, the more upset he became. In desperation, he turned to Signless.

"I can't do thith." He meant to sound frustrated and angry, but hopelessness tugged open his narrowed eyes and knit brows into something more bleak.

[yoknapatawpha]

"If he needs to take a moment I won't hold it against him any," Bayard says, looking at Signless with a bit of alarm. "Father says-"

Father says, because that's what Bayard knows how to do, that's what children do, parrot their authority figures with blind faith. And that's what Bayard realizes is what he's doing here, just reciting where he ought to be engaging. He's getting older, emerging from the mold, the details not carved out but the basic shape of a thinking adult starting to become obvious.

"I say I wouldn't hold it against someone to get their bearings when they're upset. No one talks well upset, especially when it sounds like Mr. Psiioniic's got right reason to be. I would be too, if I was kept underground my whole life."

[69problems]

Signless nods. Thank goodness Bayard is mature beyond his years -- even more than Signless had first suspected, it seems -- because he's suggesting the most reasonable course of action it really is possible to take at this point.

"I think that may be best. We won't get any further with this, not now." He turns to look at the Psiioniic. I can't do this. It had been a thinly-veiled cry for an out as much as it was a general statement of fact.

"I won't make you do anything. If you need time, a few minutes, a few days, a few weeks, just let him be in the meantime?"

[biiowiired]

"I wathn't literally underground," Psii mumbled through his teeth. Details, details, but he was feeling petulant.

Psii stood stiffly, as if a boulder was strapped to his back. He wanted nothing more than to escape this conversation, so why did he feel like the opportunity to do so was some sort of defeat?

"All I wanted wath to get away and not have anything to do with thith in the firtht plathe, but I gueth I'm a fucking mathochitht." Yes, he'd leave Bayard alone; his intention had always been to leave him alone, but things never went according to plan. That was how much of a fuck-up he was.

[yoknapatawpha]

Bayard makes no motion to get up after the Psiioniic. He stays seated, knowing that not to rise is rude but hoping that the intent, to let Psii just walk away and to not follow begging to be taught or corrected or even forgiven, comes across more clearly.

"I'll let him be too. I won't say a word around him if it'll upset him."

my lord i think this is just about done, WE DID IT FRIENDS

[69problems]

"That might be best for both of you," says Signless, and there's a tired heaviness to his voice. He had really hoped he'd be able to mediate some sort of truce, and in a way he has, but just avoiding each other won't do much to actually resolve the issue. Oh well. It's better than risking Bayard getting hit again.