thecapitol | The shocking and thrilling adventures!

The shocking and thrilling adventures!

Who| Everyone
What| The Capitols oh so exclusive interviews~!
Where| Primarily the common areas, but the interviews would be on every TV everywhere.
When| This evening, at 6 pm sharp
Notes| Use this post to ICly react to the interviews (if you don't make plans of your own!)

The advertisements hit hard today. Tune in at 6 o'clock, you won't want to miss this special! Everywhere a person could look, it was there, and the city was clearly excited for whatever this mystery event was.

As if that wasn't enough, escorts were encouraging Tributes to be in the commons, and a small feast of finger foods was laid out along one wall, extra avoxes available for drinks.

And, as promised, at 6 pm sharp, all the TVs flickered to the ever flashy Caesar, on an equally flashy tabloid-tastick reality style "interview" of the tributes. All the TVs in the common area light up with it, as well as the Districts suites, even if the TV had been off before.

Hope you all enjoy your dose of fame!

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Howard, for his part, just walks over to the couch next to Tim and slumps in it, all deflated like a dog that's been chased from the kitchen table for begging too much. He looks tired; he is tired. Dark circles have formed under his eyes, and his ring finger on his right hand twitches as nerves misfire from exhaustion. His lips are chapped and his eyes bloodshot. The only thing that looks healthier about him is that he put on ten pounds since the last time he saw Tim.

He watched that whole interview special without really absorbing any of it, although he figures some of it had to be edited, but since his own interview didn't make the cut he can't be sure yet. And great, he thinks. Now without Eponine there to provide a tragic love story, he's going to be boring to the audience and they'll let him die. And as miserable as he is on a fairly regular basis, he doesn't want to die when he's fifteen.

"Hey. You're going to give yourself an impacted tooth if you clench your jaw like that," he says to Tim, dispensing some unsolicited advice because that damn medical book he read is literally the only thing he retained from the last few hours. He runs a hand over his face and watches as the special reruns on the TV, finding it impossible to care.

It's not even fair to tease Tim about the whole 'Tiphanie' thing. Howard already can't remember the details, and besides, in a shooting match about relationships right now, Tim's going to win. So Howard doesn't. He lets Tim have that little bit of dignity not out of respect, but out of self-preservation.

Tim gives Howard a searching look when he arrives. He doesn't miss any of it, the weariness, the stress, the weight. The loss of swagger worries Tim more than the improvement in body size can alleviate. The Capitol is not treating the Tributes well. Everything about the kid says 'emotional backslide', and the only thing that keeps Tim from calling it a complete tailspin is the advice. The weight could be emotional eating, but Howard doesn't have his head up his ass at the moment.

If that's what it is. He might be walking around in some sort of distressed fugue. Maybe that's the best way to cope with this. Just don't let it touch you. Oh, Christ. They're showing it again.

Tim turns in the chair, facing Howard more fully. He's not listening to this a second time. "Not if I keep my tongue between my teeth, I won't."

"Probably smart. Some of the footage they got wasn't from the Arenas." That's one of the few things that stood out to him, that small clip of him and Eponine huddled in the basement. It brought up enough feelings that he couldn't sort through them all, couldn't figure out if he was supposed to be feeling longing or anger or sadness or worry, and so he didn't feel anything at all.

He faces Tim and rubs a hand over his upper arm. "Sorry, about, you know. All the stuff I said back at that party. You know."

Humility isn't a new thing for him, but apologizing is. Now that he's been taken down a few more pegs he might as well start trying to see which bridges he hasn't burned entirely, and the fact that he and Tim continued their conversation for a good five minutes after the shouting match is a promising indicator.

That's a more direct apology than he'd gotten before now, and Tim almost dismisses it. He has Howard in a personality box labelled survivor, and that show just made Tim out to be one of the heavy favorites among the fans and that meant sponsors. He'd also given one of the most direct, conceited answers to the next winner question, thanks to the editor's huge truncation.

They hadn't shown much of Howard. He's here because he's now back in let's-be-friends mode. Tim is fine with that; he respects it. He still wants the kid who's so creative with food-gathering on his side. There's nothing to gain from responding with nastiness, except letting off steam. He'll save that for the training room.

"Don't worry about it," Tim replied softly. He was talking as much about the footage as he was the argument. It hadn't surprised him to see footage from the Capitol - he was surprised that they hadn't used him and Steph hugging in her bedroom. He didn't think that there was a decency line with the Games in respect to nudity (changing and sex are the only reasons he'd have for not putting cameras in someone's bedrooms). More likely, they didn't want the Tributes to know that their bedrooms were bugged. He still wasn't going to trust it. "My emotions were running a little high at the party. You've seen why. I shouldn't have laid into you like that."

"I probably earned it." He doesn't know if he's being brushed aside, but he doesn't leave. Part of it's that he has nothing better to do than to sit on the couch in some kind of untouchable haze. Part of it is that he just wants company.

It's not as if he's looking to be friends with Tim, and that's a positive. That makes him feel safe, knowing there's nothing to lose, no trust to break, no expectations to fall short of. Howard can't help but want to be near people, as awful as they are in general; there's something in him that pulls towards others like the blood being pushed through the body. It's what keeps him on the fringes of society, but in shouting distance nonetheless.

And Tim's not happy right now. Howard doesn't want to be around happy folks, no matter how scarce they are around here. Frustrated, embarrassed, nervous - if Tim's any of those things, he can work with that.

After a long, long pause, he asks, "have you seen Eponine? Since twenty-three days ago?" He could add in hours, but even he's aware how pathetic that is.

Edited (had to fix the timeline, didn't realize how long Epo was gone.) 2013-06-15 07:44 (UTC)

He's all of those things and angry on top of it. It's the anxiousness that worries Tim. He doesn't want to screw this up further because he's worried and sloppy. Nerves are fine to give him an edge, keep him on his toes, but he's trying to loosen up and go with the flow for tonight. It's not the same as acting happy, but he's already blown the chance for that one. Use the embarrassment, it's real and easy to hide behind.

"Eponine?" Tim paused and gave it serious thought. All the people he's seen, in the Tribute center and out in the City, training and talking, caught up in the circles of fans flash through his head. Nowhere has he seen the little French girl. Howard hadn't mentioned her being missing at the party, and Tim is on alert that fast, sitting up with a spine as straight as a rod, one hand on the arm of his chair. He looks like he's ready to spring.

Tim shook his head. "I haven't seen her. When's the last time you did?"

She had given an interview with the rest of them. They could have taken it before the Arena, but Tim didn't know when they had started dating. They clearly had been when she was interviewed. Maybe she hadn't been one of the unlucky ones to not come back, but, surely, a missing Tribute in the Capitol would have been news. No Tribute could avoid everyone.

Howard squeezes his own skinny bicep in his arm and rocks slightly, sucking on the inside of his cheek. He jerks slightly when Tim straightens up, flinching as if Tim's about to strike him.

"Twenty-three days ago. She was spending the night over and when I woke up, she was gone. She took some of my stuff, too." Howard knows it doesn't sound good, but in a way he hopes that she was taken by something, that the Peacekeepers came while he was sleeping and moved her somewhere. And then he feels sick with himself for hoping that, for hoping she's scared and hurting somewhere rather than that she left him willingly.

"You're smart. I thought maybe you'd...have an idea, or something." Because even if the obvious is that Eponine left, it still doesn't explain how she's managed to hide so well for over three weeks.

That flinch almost makes Tim cringe, and he has to bite back the apology, which would mainly consist of words tumbling out of his mouth as he tried yet again to convince Howard that he's on the side of the angels. He contains himself. It hasn't worked this far, and nothing has changed.

It doesn't sound good at all, and Tim doesn't confirm that. He doesn't have to - Howard wouldn't be bringing it up if he could think of good explanations for the disappearing act. The only good explanation is that Eponine has successfully run away, and that is far-fetched indeed, if not completely impossible. The Tributes are too well known; there's too many babysitters and not nearly enough egresses.

That means that Eponine is somehow avoiding Howard, who has presumably been looking for her and knows where her room is. If they were on good terms, it's worrying. That she took some of his possessions implies that they were not. If she'd taken them as supplies for an escape, why didn't she bring her boyfriend with her? If Tim had an opportunity to run, it would be all or nothing. Everyone he knew would be offered the chance to flee with him. There's no way he would just run and leave the others behind. None.

She could be selfish enough to do it - there are plenty of people who value their own skin more than anything. Howard, from what Tim knew of him, certainly wouldn't hold that against her. It doesn't quite gel, however. Nobody really did that one last night together, not outside of movies. Saying goodby was far too difficult to prolong it like that.

They were on good terms, and she was now gone. Unexpectedly. She either had a chance to run and seized it, or something was preventing her from making an appearance. What, then? The Capitol regime could, but what difference would it make to them? They clearly liked the relationship that was blossoming; why interfere with it?

But who else would hide a Tribute?

"I... don't know," he said, answering his own mental question. "I could theorize, but everything is conjecture. If I'm way off the mark, you could blame me when the truth comes out. Say that I made you worry on purpose before the Arena, or that I got your hopes up."

"Yeah, well, it's before the Arena and I'm already worrying." Howard sighs and lets his neck sink down to his shoulders, clenches his hands over the edge of the couch cushion, stares at his feet, bites his chapped, sore-covered bottom lip. "We had a fight before we went to sleep, and I told her I loved her..."

He stops there. He realizes he's getting way too personal, certainly more personal than he wants to be with a guy who manages to almost perpetually rub him the wrong way. Tim Drake isn't his friend, and if they have an alliance it's only one of business, as far as Howard's concerned. You don't stab my friends and I won't stab yours.

In a world besides the Arena, in a world before the FAYZ and whatever heroing it was that made Tim so uptight, he and Tim would have never even noticed each other, each keeping to their own spheres and their own interests. They could have walked right past each other and not taken note. In some ways, Howard wants to return to that world.

But as he can't, he finds that he's let too much spill from his head. His cheeks flush a little and he realizes he probably cuts a pathetic profile right now. He tries to lift his chin and stare straight ahead, where the ad for stuffed trolls is playing again.

"If they took her, they wouldn't have taken my clothes and the jewelry I gave her. If she up and left, we'd have seen her by now. My working theory is that she's dead." His voice is dull and flat. "For good. So I can't get much more worried than that."

"Loving people doesn't mean that you don't fight with them," Tim admits quietly. He doesn't want to go here, doesn't like sharing parts of himself, but he doesn't want Howard going into the Arena with guilt on top of worry. He can't fix the worrying, but he can offer experience. "Take me and Steph. You know, the first night that we met, she hit me in the face with a brick. A few months back, we got into a physical fight, and I told her off. I fight with my family all the time."

And sometimes, the fights were badly timed, and he never got to take things back and say that he was sorry. Tim looks away and shakes his head.

"If someone took her, they wouldn't have taken your stuff. You're right," Tim says confidently, although he's not. If they took her, they'd cover it up by making it look like she'd run away. They're smart, and they know how to spin. However, this isn't about destroying Howard's mental state. "If she left, I don't know if we'd have seen her. Getting out of here would be difficult, if not impossible. It'd take luck. Getting back in, when I'm sure they're looking for her? It's not going to happen."

Howard opens his mouth to say something, and then stops. The image in his mind is not of Eponine, or not of Eponine exclusively. He winces from some phantom pain and runs his hand down the length of his nose - the nose that the Gamemakers rebroke and set again because his Stylists requested not to have a Tribute so hard to work with.

He knows Tim's trying to spare his feelings, but it does actually help. Howard has a nagging suspicion that Eponine did run, and that she was caught, which would explain both problems - but he doesn't know what there could be to do about it. He's asked District 3's Escorts, he's asked civilians, he's gone looking for the person in charge of supervision, and he's come up with nothing. And the Capitol is so big they could hide someone anywhere.

It's pointless, but he doesn't imagine Tim takes well to the utterly defeated. Howard's not up for being given up on or given a pep talk, either.

"I can't imagine Steph hitting someone with a brick," he finally says. "Especially in the face. I bet she hit you with a brick by accident and then spent twenty minutes telling you not to strain yourself and helping you wait for an ambulance."

Noting the hesitation, Tim decided to continue part of the topic (the story about him and Steph), because it floated around the subject of girlfriends without touching Eponine directly.

"I won't take that bet. It's not fair to you." As the memory came back to him, Tim rubbed at his jaw as his eyes searched the crowd for Stephanie. She had to be here still, somewhere. She could corroborate his story and expound it a little. He went home with a mild concussion that night. "Because she really did pick up a brick and clock me with it. I might have deserved it in hindsight. Might. I still say she shouldn't have been getting into shenanigans, and then it wouldn't have happened."

He finally spots her, and a wide, fond grin just lights his face up. They had been so young, tiny vigilantes chasing each other across the rooftops. He'd been shocked to pull off her hood and discover that he had pinned a girl to the ground. And was still on top of her.

Then, she whacked him, and that was the last time Steph got a break for being female. "What ambulance? She ran off into the night. She's lucky I was seeing stars, or I would've ran her down again. I caught up with her eventually."

Howard looks between Stephanie and Tim, taking in all that expression in Tim's face. It's one of the more genuine things he's seen Tim do, and it makes Howard wonder how much, if any, of Tim's fine self-control is an act. He doesn't see the same thing when he sees Stephanie, but he's sure Tim isn't looking at a pretty blond girl watching the TV so much as a woman standing at the end of a carpet of memories and shared experiences.

For a moment, he's envious. He chews the corner of his tongue and hide a hand inside his sleeve.

"You have weird relationships, Tim." Says the patron saint of strange relationships. How would he ever explain that his best friends are a rock monster and a zombie and an old Wild West sheriff? How is he ever going to untangle the ball of regret and need and control that makes up his sense of worth to others?

"I'd ask you dating advice, but, you know." His affect goes flat again. "I have no idea how I'm going to get through the next Arena. I don't think emo poetry will play well with the Sponsors."

"I do." His mind wanders from Steph, even though his eyes Stay with her as he takes stock of the rest of his social life. There's not a relationship left that resembles normal. Tim has torpedoed every one involving anyone unconnected with his night life. There's only a handful of people left who don't have an alterego - Alfred, Lucius, Tam who isn't speaking to him, and a handful of officially retired former capes. Once someone is in on the secret, it's no longer a normal friendship. He's not sure exactly how the change happens, but it does. There's an understanding and concern that go hand-in-hand with it. Someday, it will be his death getting called in, spreading like wildfire through the Teen Titans and outwards to all their connections. Red Robin's down. It will happen, and, if he doesn't know anyone else well, there's nothing to keep Tim Wayne from dropping off the face of the Earth, no one to lie to.

Fewer late-night, sucker-punch phone calls. It's better that way. His happiness is tempered by the willing acceptance of this, but it doesn't depress him the way it once would have. He can have everything, if in careful moderation.

Perhaps, Howard can too, if he learns how to control his presentation. "I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss emo poetry. Timaues Nadir is supposedly a very big sponsor, and he was seeking out the artistic creations of Victors and Tributes not long ago. You could win the favor of a sponsor and earn money simultaneously."

"I stole a boat from Timaeus Nadir. Pretty sure he's not going to get wooed by emo poetry." Howard raises an eyebrow. "I don't even write emo poetry. I'm doing this breakup thing all wrong. I should get myself a tub of ice cream and some chick flicks."

He makes the decision right then to think of it like this. A breakup. A part of a normal teenage experience, like a billion other fifteen year-olds out there, like the ones who aren't him and who aren't half-starved and who aren't fighting to death on the television. Like the ones they base The Breakfast Club on, and the ones they marketed it too.

Good old-fashioned heartbreak. It's easy enough to wrap your head around. There's a script for it, and it's every shitty teen movie he's ever seen, it's every cheesy love song on the radio, every romantic plot tumor in his favorite TV shows. You live, you learn. Or you luh-hearn, in the case of Alanis Morrisette.

"Thanks for letting me talk, man."

"You stole a boat?" It was all he could do to not groan. Howard, you are so much smarter than that. Survival doesn't end in the Arena. There are people here that you have to kill yourself to be nice to, and that means not pilfering their toys.

Directly angering the sponsors is a major strike against Howard, and Tim hates himself for even realizing it. He can't willingly seek out a team-up in the Arena, now. If it happens, fine, he can play it as an any-means-necessary alliance, but Tim has made it a point to be nice to Nadir - to all Capitol citizens. He can't afford to be seen as close with someone they dislike, someone who acts out against them.

That's for the future. He's in this conversation now and won't cause an argument again if he can help it.

"Heh, it's no problem. I don't mind listening. Anyway, that might work. The way to win a public break-up is all in how you sell it," Tim explains. "Go to a few parties, if you haven't stolen everyone's boats, have a good time. Every so often, watch a couple for a few minutes and look wistful. I wouldn't get caught flirting with anyone else, though. They still seem to like the two of you together."

"I was trying to show off for Eps- for Eponine." Probably best not to use cutesy names for her, not anymore. No more Epsy-Daisy, no more Pony Girl. She's Eponine now, nothing more. "I don't think Timaeus held it against me because he's way into the young love thing and seemed to think it was cute, but I'm just saying. I probably shouldn't try my luck with him."

He's certainly not about to tell Tim that he and Eponine were trying to get some alone time so they could develop a coded language to escape the Capitol. That's probably the part that hurts most of all about this entire thing, which is saying quite a lot - he was willing to go with her, if it was true that she left. He was willing to give up being fed and pampered and cared for to accompany her to District 3. None of that meant anything in the end.

"Not the worst idea I've heard. I think I'll manage to keep my Casanova instinct under wraps. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to flirt with anyone ever again." He sighs. A bit melodramatic, sure, but he's a teenager. He doesn't even have to try to hit that bar.

Showing off was boasting or trying to whip a table cloth out from under a fully set table. Maybe it was taking down an entire gang in front of the girl. Whatever your deal was. It wasn't hijacking a yacht in a lake, with no actual escape route, but there really was no talking to people when they were young and in love. "Yeah, he is. I'd let a few more weeks go by before you deal with him again. It's just like you said: play up the foolishness of it. Joke that you should've stolen a plane, and maybe she wouldn't have broken up with you."

It was harsh, but Tim had no malice in the advice: it was genuine and meant to be useful. Howard was trying to work out a personal strategy, a means to cope in the absence of his ex-girlfriend. Given how they'd presented Tim's relationship, dating her had probably been one of the only things in the kid's favor, as far as sponsors were concerned. He was tense and sometimes rude - Tim couldn't remember him smiling, aside from when he talked of Eponine. Howard was terribly under-sized. He had his wits left. That was it. They were all working with what they had.

"I wish I had more of a Casanova instinct, to be honest," Tim said, running a hand through his hair. He sounded frazzled. "I can be a little closed off, and, after that, I'm not sure how long that's going to work for me."

"I think I'll steal that one." Tetchy and sensitive as Howard is, he knows a good idea when he hears it (not that that's always an indicator that he'll accept it). Putting this all in terms of a plan makes it easier to swallow. Maybe in the long run he can convince himself it was all intentional. No harm, no foul. He was just using her, and not to plug the holes in his ever-sinking emotional ship. "No pun intended."

He rubs a hand over his chin. "Not that you should take my advice or anything, but they seem to like the pre-Capitol sweethearts thing. I think. I wasn't paying attention to the whole thing."

He really should have, if only to have a better idea of what plays well with these crowds (asides from the obvious death, death, murder, and more death with a side of killsauce). It's just hard to bring himself to feel too emotionally invested in anything right now. It's like there's a layer that he can see through but can't get past to the rest of the world, something choking off the emotion like a protective shell from himself.

Howard Bassem, the laminated human being. He appreciates that Tim's trying. He can still tell kindness too, in a way, even if it's hard to trust it. "Like. Tell them about the first time you met her. Leave out the brick."

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The shocking and thrilling adventures!

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