[open]

[gluteus]

Who| Maximus and OPEN
What| Maximus just wandering around, basically this is for new CR and ongoing CR and whatever else happens to fall in here. Not really plot specific, just a needed space for some threads.
Where| District 3 suites, Training Centre, the Park, or the Speakeasy
When| Post Wesker's win
Warnings/Notes| Nothing planned that way! Will edit if it comes up.


Maximus did not enjoy the downtime in the Capitol.

It wasn't that he particularly enjoyed the Arenas, either, but being in the Arena was at least vaguely familiar. Survival. Death. It was a cycle he knew and understood.

Unlike the politics. Unlike the gossip and the glamour and the giggling behind hands. Unlike the Avoxes that found their way into his rooms, unlike the women that threw themselves upon him in the street.

He spent almost all of his time either in his suites, training, meandering the park, or looking for Wyatt in the speakeasy. He actively wanted to learn more about his fellow tributes, but did that more by listening and observing than by approaching. He wanted to learn their strength of character. Wanted to know how, deep inside themselves, they felt about their adoptive city and the games that they were forced to compete in.

And the best way to learn that, however slowly it took, was to watch. And to wait.

Eventually everyone laid themselves open.

Comments

[splendid_roman]

He gave a relieved sigh. "Good." He came into the room properly, sat down and put his feet up. "What are you doing?" he asked conversationally.

[gluteus]

"Attempting to teach myself to write, again." He pushed the pages towards him. "I think in Latin, I speak in Latin, I hear Latin, but the rest of this place claims it is English. So, I must learn to write english as well."

[splendid_roman]

"I see." Ian admired him for that - he knew it wasn't easy to learn another language. "You seem to be getting on quite well." Despite being a teacher at home, it wasn't really one of the things Ian knew how to teach. "I learnt some Latin at school, but I was never very good at it. I never paid attention in lessons." He chuckled.

[gluteus]

Maximus glanced up at him. It was the first time he'd heard someone mention learning it at all, though he'd heard mention of Rome. Perhaps Ian was from a time closer to his own...?

"They taught it in your school? When are you from?"

[splendid_roman]

"The twentieth century," he replied, unsure how specific it was worth being. "1963. If your first language was Latin you're from earlier than that," he guessed. Although it didn't narrow things down that much.

[gluteus]

He'd heard the new calendar a few times, though it always required him to sit and count it out, and his starting point was a couple hundred years off. But either way, he knew it was over 1500 years between them.

"Much earlier. I was born under the emperors of Rome, though I've been told that they disappeared long before you would have known them." It still bothered him, how Rome could simply fizzle out and die. Though he had seen her twisted, rotting innards, so perhaps it was for the best.

[splendid_roman]

"You'd be surprised," he said, although he doubted that someone so far from the past would believe he was a time traveller. Ian would have believed it himself if he hadn't experienced it. "I once met Nero."

[gluteus]

"You met--" He cut himself off, the confused frown taking over his face. He knew who Nero was, of course, there was only one man that Ian could mean. The history of the emperors was ingrained in his education as a child, and even though Nero was well before his time, his reign had left a mark.

"Nero. The Emperor. How is that possible?"

[splendid_roman]

He shook his head. "You wouldn't believe me." Ian wouldn't believe it either, if he hadn't experienced it himself. "Although I only saw him from a distance, in the arena."