Victory Tour!

[etcircenses]

Most of you weren't around the last time District tours were allowed. The opulence of the train is just as great however. It is plush, full of the same comforts and pleasures as the Capitol. Dining, entertainment centers, and shared rooms for the Tributes, the bunk beds featuring the finest of fabrics. The wide windows all around the train give way to the stunning views of the District countrysides.

Before the quell, it used to be that only the Victors of the arena would behold such sights, but you Tributes, the survivors of the fifteenth arena of the seventy fifth quarter quell are very lucky indeed. It will be a greater pageant than ever before, with so many Tributes getting the chance to speak to the Districts their children were reaped from, where you stand and the children stand no longer. The honor, duty, and sacrifice a Tribute's life involves cannot be understated.

Staff and Mentors are, of course, brought along for the ride. You'll need them for when you are to give your speech to the Districts! There will be a lot of preparation work involved, but maybe, should you do well, you will be afforded some time to travel between the cars and visit those of other Districts.

As always, the tour will be starting in District twelve, which will take just over forty eight hours to reach. There's no need to feel unsafe. There's an overwhelming number of Peacekeepers on board, here to keep you all safe, as will there be in each of the Districts you visit.

Sleep tight.

Comments

[seestheman]

Clara gave him a sweet, sad, but sympathetic look. "You're not a nut job. You've been through some horrific things that would have an effect on anyone." And, if she was honest even if she won't say it out loud, she tried her best to avoid watching him in the Arena. Both from a thread of fear that she'd be forced to watch him die and that would be it, and to keep herself blinded to seeing his darker side. She knew that the versions of themselves on display in the Arena are rarely their best selves, and if she was going to lose him, she didn't want to remember him like that. (Even if one of the 24 hour Arena update shows sent someone to interview her immediately after his dismemberment and almost had a ladies room door slammed in their face.)

There's something about his words that hit her in a way she didn't expect. A conversation with Alex years ago sprang to mind, that their relationship was never going to be easy because he was a cop and Detroit wasn't exactly the safest city when it came to being part of the force. And that thread of guilt that she'd been so able to keep down lately struck again, though she refused to say anything aloud. "That makes two of us, don't worry," she said with a laugh that wasn't entire convincing to her own ears. "I've been fine. I keep getting questions about what they can expect from my girls for the next Arena and how I feel about if Tom stepped down from his position after the wedding to be a full time Peacekeeper. Other than work, there hasn't been much going on recently." She smiled at him, trying not to think about her job. "How about you? I'm sure the media was eager to follow up with you after the Arena. Have you been dragged to any parties recently?"

[inrestlessdreams]

"Not that many, but they're all asking about...well, us," Good job being subtle about it, James. But it was true, all the Capitolites wanted to talk about was about the Arena or the romance that he managed to bust the kneecaps.

It's also the reason he's here: to talk about what was really going on. Well...talking wasn't on the menu anyways, because James took a chance, cupped Clara's face in his hands and kissed her. Watching himself being torn apart put a lot of things in perspective, he had been punishing Clara for her feelings just as much as he was doing to himself.

He broke the gesture as he pulled back and swallowed down, "I want there to be an us. I know that I'm a broken, selfish man and there's something you need to know about me."

He had to tell her the truth about Mary.

[seestheman]

"Well, that's the Capitol for you," she said with a small laugh. Even back at home, she had never seen people so eager to ask so many invasive questions about relationships that they had nothing to do with.

For all the hesitation that sat in the pit of her stomach, the little whispering voice in the back of her head that told her that this relationship was betraying everything she stood for and everything she had built with Alex, she couldn't bring herself to care about that right now. All she could focus on was James' hands on her face, his lips against her own, as she sighed into the kiss slightly.. It had been more than a year since someone had last touched her like this, and even then, her relationship with Rose was purely physical and had very little emotion behind it other than to look good for the cameras. (And she still felt guilty that the last person who she'd been this intimate with on any level wasn't Alex, even if he wasn't exactly capable of it under the Capitol's thrall.)

There was something in his face that just screamed that she didn't want to know what he was going to tell her. And, as important as it may have been, right now she didn't care about any of that. "Whatever it is, it doesn't matter," she said, leaning up and catching his lips with her own again. "Maybe it's best if we just leave our pasts where they are." She hated saying that, the idea of leaving David and Alex in the rear view mirror of life, but right now it was the only way she could really cope now that she was really starting to understand that she might be here permanently. She reached up and cupped his cheeks back, gently trailing her thumbs over his cheekbones. "Right now I'd rather focus on our future."

[inrestlessdreams]

"It does matter." James had to make this work, and for that to happen, he had to come clean to the woman he's grown to love. "I killed Mary. I couldn't see her suffering so much pain, and she was already dying...the Capitol might spin the tale another way but..." If there is any doubt that James Sunderland ever loved someone as deeply as he did for Mary, then that one selfish act could be seen both ways.

"I can't focus on our future if I can't be honest with you." Because who would love a wife-murdering monster like him? James knew that even if Mary had progressed in her illness and stuck in a machine...even at her request, he'd still be seen like that: a murderer.

[seestheman]

They both had their secrets, Clara knew that. What she didn't know, or expect, was for his secret to be that huge, that shattering. She's gobsmacked for a moment as she struggles to figure out what to say, how to react. James was a lot of things, but a murderer? That...was definitely one she struggled to think of in relation to him.

But at the same time, she understood on some level, she knew where he was coming from, and she's afraid of what that said about her. She knew what it was like to see the person she loved most suffering (even if Alex had been unconscious after the bombing, she could still see it), and she knew even more about making a terrible decision to keep them from suffering. True, the decision she made for Alex may not have ended his life, but she still understood. "Sometimes you have to make those choices so they don't suffer," she said softly, her voice barely more than a whisper. "It's never the ideal choice, but sometimes it's the necessary choice."

Which wasn't to say that she condoned his actions, but she knew where he had come from and that he had her sympathies.

"I guess I need to be honest with you about Alex, then," she said after a few moments of silence. "He didn't choose to be put in the armor, I chose it for him." She still carried the guilt, and the fear that he resented her without ever admitting it. "It's not the same, but...I guess I understand having to make the hard choices."

[inrestlessdreams]

There was a silent moment while James realized just how closely his story and Clara's paralleled each other. It could almost be a mirror in the branching consequences one decision could make. Except in one aspect.

"Were...were you pressured into the decision?" he asked, because he had his doubts that she would take such choices so lightly. She knew how much pain her husband was, and she made what, in Sunderland's eyes, the morally correct decision.

"It will be the same. When you leave this place, it'll be like you were never in the Games. Your hands will be clean."

His hands will still have Mary's unseen blood along with Eddie's and Angela's guilt.

[seestheman]

It was a hard question to answer, harder than she thought it would be at least. Was it an easy decision to make? No, not at all, even if she had to make it quickly. But would she make it again if it meant keeping her husband, if it meant her son wouldn't have to grow up without his father?

Every time, no matter how selfish it was of her.

"I..." She paused, unsure how to answer that, trailing off she she could gather her words, "I wish I'd had more time to think about what was going to happen to him. That I wouldn't have had to make the decision for him, or that they would've told me more about what they had in mind." That she could've tried to keep him from being some marketing strategy for a company that didn't know him as anything other than a service record and some vital signs.

Oh, how she wished that he was right. "What if I don't forget? What if I remember killing each person I had to kill so I could survive?" What if she remembers all of the people she had to leave behind so she could return to her family? Not to mention what Dr. Norton had told her in his short time in Panem. "Even if I forget, my hands won't be clean. There was a man from my world who was here for a little while who told me things. That Alex..." she took a breath to steady herself, "That he was going to kill someone because of us, isn't that blood on my hands as well?" If anything, knowing that made her fear going home somewhat. Being reunited with her family would be amazing, but having the death of Raymond Sellars at Alex's hands hanging over her head was intimidating, to say the very least.

[inrestlessdreams]

As much as James loathed himself for killing those people in his world, he couldn't bear seeing Clara go through it as well. "I can't...well, I've been on the other side, probably just once, or twice...how many times have I died, you've been through it too. You made a choice that you thought was the best for both you and your family."

He couldn't fault her for saving Alex and the events that probably came about from doing what she did. "If he killed someone because of you, it was his choice, not yours. You can't blame yourself for the decisions he made, just as much that-"

That you can blame yourself for my own choices. Because you love him.

"Clara, you were thinking of him, because you...love him don't you?" And with the confession, James knew that Clara will leave Panem if given the chance, let this flight of fancy with a half-insane widower fall fade with time. And he was okay with that. He moved on from Mary's death and Clara would have a chance to be happy.

[seestheman]

It wasn't that she hadn't made the best choice for her family, but there was something more to it, that it was as much a selfish choice so she wouldn't be alone as it was to preserve her family in whatever way possible. It was one of those dirty little secrets that she never told anyone. Hell, she had a hard time admitting it to herself.

She wasn't sure what that said about her.

The question made her brain ground to a halt. She could deny it, but...she didn't want to. "He's my....he was my husband," she said as if that explained everything. In her mind it did. And with that she fell silent for a few moments before adding "It's hard to move on when I know that there's always going to be a possibility that I might get them back." Because it's not just about Alex, it never will be. There's also David, and that's one of the things that she never lets herself forget. "If you had a chance to fix things, wouldn't you at least consider it?"

[inrestlessdreams]

"In a heartbeat."

James would sell his soul to Silent Hill's gods to bring Mary back from the dead, and he gave himself to the Hunger Games for the chance to have her spared from the horrors. Maybe here he could've started a new life with her, dying for her in every arena. But as the months progressed, he saw the truth: Silent Hill brought his idealized Mary in Maria to punish him while Panem used him as a plaything, down to his own feelings about Clara. Now he died for her and the thoughts plagued him.

"I would do anything to fix what was wrong, what I did wrong." Once Sunderland understood his responsibility, his mind had pieced itself together, and Clara helped in mending the psychotic break with reality he had long been afflicted with.