[open] 'cause you and i, we were born to die

[saisamour]

Who| Marius Pontmercy and OPEN!
What| Marius in the Capitol being Marius. Everything happens so much.
Where| Training Center Central Commons and some random place in the Capitol
When| First couple of days after his arrival
Warnings/Notes| suicidal thoughts; far too much pining for Cosette

} Central Commons

It takes a couple of hours for Marius to push himself off his mattress, and several more to drag himself outside his lodgings. A dazed and befuddled look eclipses his face as he walks aimlessly throughout the Center, still reeling from the explanation provided to him about the Hunger Games, and the absurd notion that he has to participate in an event reminiscent of the ancient Gladiatorial matches.

Is this truly real? It seems far too impossible, to be pulled into this unknown space, this unfamiliar world that makes him feel all the more lost and abandoned, now that he has been forced further away from his Lark. Now that he may never be found again. Where is Cosette now, he wonders? Does she think of him, even for a moment, the way he thinks of her even when he's dream-lands away?

Perhaps this is what it is, though: A strange, bizarre dream. He must have fallen asleep while taking a rest at the barricades. When he opens his eyes, this scene will disappear, and he will be allowed to die fighting for the France that his father wielded his weapons for. To die so that he can be the gentle wind that caresses her face and teases out her kind, loving smile.

He soon enters the Common Room, wherein an offer of drink to him is only acknowledged with an absent-minded nod of thanks. He wanders the area, wine glass in hand, with a hazy and distant look in his eyes that hints at his inattentiveness to his surroundings.

It is this preoccupation that causes him to clumsily trip and spill his drink on you. It might have only dripped on your shoe and perhaps soaked your sock, if you're lucky; it stains your entire outfit in a splatter of red, if you are not.



} Somewhere in the Capitol

How strange, he thinks, that he has yet to awaken.

For he has come to the conclusion that this is simply a long, odd dream; it is folly to think otherwise. Or, at least, that is what he has decided at the moment. As he roams through the streets, before the entrances of shops and restaurants, and among the people that his imagination could not possibly conjure, his mind shifts continually between belief and disbelief, real and unreal, wakefulness and dreaming.

When he is caught staring a second too long at two ladies with powder-white faces and wigs that strangely resemble horns, his face turns red and he hurries his footsteps, overhearing their high-pitched giggling and assuming it is because they find him amusing, or funny, or too pitiful to be taken any seriously.

That is when he bumps into you and... Well, he simply stares, with a befuddled look on his face as if internally debating on whether or not you are actually real.

Comments

[saisamour]

Of course. Of course it makes sense that Enjolras would say that, and Marius had little complaints about dying. To resurrect again, however? To continue a cycle of living and dying, when even one life is pointless, unbearable, godforsaken enough without Cosette?

He barely even hears what Enjolras has to say next. His eyes sweep the streets and the buildings and the people of the Capitol but he stares right through them, his mind slowly consumed by darkness and confusion, and then suddenly he is desperate to believe that this is not his fate, that this is some elaborate nightmare conjured by a muddled and fevered mind.

This is not real. It is impossible. He doesn't know what he would do to himself if it were.

He glances back at Enjolras, looking a little bit lost. "I am sorry, but this seems all a dream to me."

And yet there's a hint of hopefulness in his voice—and he finds it strange that he's still capable of hoping, and that it is in the desire that he might still wake up in a world with a death that is permanent.

[orestes]

Marius' aloofness doesn't exactly come as a surprise. Enjolras remembered his propensity for falling into adle minded reveries quite well, which had in fact called all the more attention to his sudden sharpness and attention on the barricade.

"It is quite jarring," he agrees, passively. Even Enjolras isn't always up for a debate, and besides which, his allies here could be counted on one hand. Any relationship he has with Marius, however secondhand or tremulous would be better preserved if he could find it within himself to hold his tongue. He studies Marius, searching for the correct path to pursue; the proper way to snap him back into the man from before who had been so brave in the face of all their deaths.

[saisamour]

He had been quite ready, honestly, to throw his life for a cause—it is what Cosette wants, after all, for him to die. Perhaps Enjolras could have seen that man, the one who fights like it is his only purpose in life, if he found comfort in the knowledge that fighting would lead to his demise.

But there is no death, not here, and not for him. And now he cannot be with his beloved even as the whisper of wind in her ear.

The cruelty of the world he has been thrust into suddenly crashes against him, and the urge to close his mind off, to shut himself from the reality too heavy to bear consumes him once more. He takes a step back, averting his eyes to the ground, and says with shaky voice,

"I... I need to return. To my lodgings."

[orestes]

"Of course," Far be it for Enjolras to have kept Marius any longer than he would agree to. Slowly but surely, he's realizing that everyone dealt with Panem and its realities in their own way. And that's perfectly natural, even if it's not necessarily to Enjolras' own rather militaristic inclinations. Tolerance, after all, is far simpler when everyone is agreed.

With a reserved politeness for his friend (Though perhaps Marius fell more into the role of an acquaintance. There's a distinct false-closeness he feels, but that can probably be attributed to the assumption that they would die together.), Enjolras bows his head ever so slightly. It's a parting gesture, one which he hopes will ease Marius' mind and make him forget about niceties in light of his own emotional state. "Be well, Marius. Please let me know if you need anything at all."

[saisamour]

Marius looks rather relieved at that; aside from the need to block the terrible news away from his mind, there's still the faint hope in him that he would soon find himself back in Paris.

"Thank you." He remains still for a moment, a brief look of confusion crossing his face, and he appears as if he's about to utter something else, You know I will fight with you, but in the end it goes unsaid. Instead, he nods and turns and resumes his walk, debating on whether to return to his room in the tower or continue to lose himself in the streets.

Or perhaps he should search for a garden similar to the one in Rue Plumet, or a meadow like the one of the lark.