[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

[gluteus]

"It was said I could crush a child's skull in one hand," Maximus said, though he was unable to conceal the slight smile as he teased Howard. "But our enemies say much about us. If you're asking if I would prioritize victory over the life of a child..." He trailed off thoughtfully, glancing as if into the distance.

"I doubt I would need to." He looked back at Howard. "There are always those like Wesker left to fight."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard doesn't even look like that bothers him. "People've said some weird shit about me, too."

He tilts his head to one side. "But that doesn't really answer the question. That's dodging it. I mean, no biggie, I'm just curious, since Wyatt's the upstanding type."

[gluteus]

'No biggie' meant absolutely nothing to him, but he gained the meaning anyway.

"I've granted men their deaths when the were unable to lift their swords," Maximus acknowledged, with a slight shrug. "Including ones as young as you. But there's no honour in fighting a man who does not wish to fight, and is forced to." He paused, and then offered Howard a conspiring grin.

"For Wyatt's sake? I'd find a way to fall on my sword. But if you mention that to him, I promise you, I'll kill you first."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard makes a gesture over his mouth and grins that excessively white Capitol-made grin. "My lips are sealed. Wyatt won't hear it from me."

He holds the knife out limply. "So. I know the basics are like, put the pointy end against the other person, but other than that no one ever taught me shit."

[gluteus]

Maximus reached out and took the blade, looking it over.

"Knives aren't weapons for war, they are weapons for assassination." He twisted the knife until the blade was running parallel to his arm, and hidden by it, the grip held in his palm.

"You're never going to face down a broad sword with a knife. You simply don't have enough reach. So if all you have is a knife, you must use what it here-" He reached out and touched Howard's forehead with a finger, "Before you use what is here. And if you mean to take a man down, you cannot hesitate."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Well, I don't get around to assassinating. I usually don't fight unless I'm cornered." Howard gives a meek little shrug, all his weight on one foot. "But I am smart."

Wyatt's told Max that, and it fills Howard with the energy that comes from pride and accomplishment.

He takes a knife from the rack and mimics Max fairly accurately, if clumsily.

[gluteus]

A smile flickers across Maximus's face, and he looks down at the knife in his hand. "You cannot only fight when cornered. A man is at his weakest, pushed into that position. It is pride that allows you to be cornered. You must either decide to fight, or flee, you cannot have both. If you flee, you use your knife as quickly and as fast as you can with a singular purpose - to get away. If you fight, then your purpose is death. If you are torn between these two things, you become instantly easier to kill."

He swung the blade around in a curving arc and suddenly threw it, lodging it hilt-deep in the neck of a dummy.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Hah, pride. That's a good one." Howard's smile always seems stamped on a bit to the side, as if being sardonic is written into his genetic code. "I'm a pretty big fan of fleeing. It just gets rough in the Arena. I keep getting stabbed in the leg."

Howard watches Maximus very closely, and though he startles at the sudden throw - and at the thunk the knife makes as it lodges into the dummy - he doesn't miss much.

"Remind me not to get on your bad side." He tries to imitate. The knife goes wide, clattering against a far wall. His cheeks flush.

[gluteus]

"Then you already have your answer," Maximus said, walking over to pull the knife out of the dummy and grab the other from the floor. He placed the training knife on the table and handed Howard's knife back to him, before walking up along side and taking his arm, raising it and holding onto Howard's elbow. "The weight comes from here. You need to focus all of that weight into your throw." He bent Howard's arm to show him, once, twice, then stepped back.

"If you cannot flee, then you must fight. But if you must fight, you fight before they can corner you, and you always pull your knife first." He frowned. "Death or victory are the only escapes, from the arena. They put no weight on mercy, here."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard tenses when Maximus touches him, suddenly feeling the difference in size, feeling how small he is in comparison to all the grown people who fight in this Arena. He takes a deep breath and worries his lower lip under his teeth, repeating the motions as if trying to lock them into his muscle memory.

"Yeah, I found that when Aunamee pinned me down and gutted me like a fish." He breathes through his nose and then throws the knife again. It leaves his hand in a clumsy fashion, the knife nicking his palm on the way and sowing a few drops of blood along the ground - but his aim is true enough, and while the knife hits the dummy handle-first, it does hit the dummy right in the head.

[gluteus]

"I met him." Maximus glanced at the knife, then back to Howard's hand, before walking over to the table. Surely they stocked bandages? It was only a moment before he found some, and brought them back, taking Howard's hand completely matter-of-factly and uncaring of his discomfort, and began to wind the bandage around it.

"Some men enjoy it. You should take heart in the fact that I've never seen a man like that live particularly long."

He didn't just wrap the cut, but the entirely of Howard's palm, as if gearing him up for a fistfight.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Not much comfort here, honestly. I can do that myself, I can..." But he doesn't retract his hand. It does scare him, that his circle of people he allows to get close to him is widening, not out of his own experiences but by hearsay. He isn't terrified of Maximus, despite the size and skill and the fact that Max is clearly a fighter, because Wyatt told him not to be afraid.

It's unsettling to trust the experiences of others over your own.

"You getting me ready for a boxing match, Caesar?"

[gluteus]

There was a slight pause, before he tore the bandage and tied it off.

"... I'm no Caesar," He said, his voice strangely quiet.

He put the rest of the bandage back on the table and then walked over to pick up the knife and hand it to Howard. "And I am teaching you a lesson. If you have a weakness, you must overcome it. If you cut yourself when you throw, then you must become impossible to cut. Your aim is fine but your weight it off - don't just toss it, throw it. Your arm must have purpose. You don't want the blade to spin, you only want it to arc."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Sorry," Howard says quietly, shrinking back into himself, not sure how he's transgressed but afraid of consequence if he presses it further. "It was just a...whatever."

He takes the knife again and sucks the inside of his cheek. With the way the joke fell flat, it feels more important now to impress. He squeezes the grip of the knife despite the way it makes a pang shoot up from the cut to his wrist. And he throws again.

It's stronger this time, an arc and not a spin, and it strikes the dummy in the lower area of the chest. It doesn't stick, though - the angle's a bit wrong, and it leaves a cut only a centimeter deep.

[gluteus]

"Good," Maximus said immediately, noting the progress. He stepped over to the dummy and picked up the knife once more.

"I know words mean less, here. Now. That the men I remember have been ghosts two thousand years or more." He held the knife back out to Howard, motioning for him to throw it again. "But I called a man Caesar, once. I would not tarnish his memory by pretending I could live to his example."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It just a name to us. I guess it's a book or something." Howard talks more to his shoes than to Max as he takes the knife back. His breath takes a whistling tone as he works up the nerve to try again, and his hands start to shake. "Dead names don't mean anything to us."

They mean nothing to boy whose hometown has a grave full of unidentified children in the square.

He throws it again. His shaking messes up the throw, and the knife spins again striking low on the target, on the leg, and falling uselessly to the ground. He takes a step away from Maximus, eyes low.

[gluteus]

Maximus frowned as he watched the knife, then glanced back at Howard. He'd seen demoralized men before, but this was stranger.

"You do not honour your dead?" Maximus asked, curious, though there was a slight sadness to his voice. He walked back across to pick up the knife, turning it over thoughtfully before walking back to hand it to Howard.

"Are you afraid?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Too many dead to honor. Most of 'em we don't even got names or faces for." Howard shrugs and takes another slight step back, taking the knife and watching Maximus. Usually, when people ask if he's afraid, it's followed up with a reason to make him more scared. His eyes search Maximus' face and while they find no malice, they also don't find reassurance.

The knife handle sits in a clammy hand. What if Maximus goes back to Wyatt and says Wyatt's little pet project is hopeless? What if Maximus feels territorial over Wyatt's friendship and decides to eliminate the competition and make it look like a training accident? Howard's mind fills up with awful hypotheticals.

"I'm always afraid." He looks up, but his grasp on the gaze is tenuous, as if he's only just managing not to slip from it.

[gluteus]

"No man can remember all of the dead," Maximus said in a thoughtful rumble. He gave Howard a little more space and leaned against the table, looking over at the dummies. "But we each must honour our dead. Even nameless. Even faceless." 

He lapsed into silence then, a frown on his face as he watched Howard. It wasn't Commodus' cowardice that he read from the boy - he wasn't terrified of pain he'd never known. No, it was a soldier's shaking fear that he read, one battle too many fought. One too many lost. Maximus could not help a coward, but he could help a soldier, especially one that had already proven himself to Wyatt.

Eventually, he spoke again.

"Every man feels afraid. But you do not need it, here. I offer no threat, only advice. Training. But the mind needs training as much as the muscle. If you allow your fear to overwhelm you, if you allow it to become a weakness, and project it to your enemies, then your mind will kill you long before your untrained arm ever could."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Well, that's cheerful news. Howard can't help but feel as if Maximus is telling him he's fucked. It's his mind that he can't wrangle in; it's one thing to be reset physically every time he dies, to lose all the weight and gain back the rotting teeth and the sinus infections. It's another to feel as if his mind's resetting constantly, as if every time he musters the will to press on it's ripped from his hands.

He opens his mouth to say something, but the weight of shame and frustration smother his sentence partway through. "I don't know how to not..."

Be scared? Shake when frightened? Not project fear, which he knows is blood in the water to people like Aunamee and Alpha? Fix his head so he doesn't startle when people move too fast? All of the above?

He stands at the ready to throw the knife, but keeps it in his hands.