thecapitol | [OPEN] What a day, what a night.

Who| Peeta and OPEN (and two threads closed for things)
What| Group meetings for damage control, a little break, and some fun.
Where| District 12 suites, Training Center lobby, and the roof.
When| The day after the interviews aired.
Warnings/Notes| Language, some cuteness. One thread is for the District 12 mentor/escort/stylist team, one thread is for Peeta and Katniss, and the other is open for anyone!

[District 12 Team]
Oh man, the interviews last night. Everything had been clearly doctored, words taken out of context and some awful pictures thrown in to make it all look like the Tributes knew what they were talking about. But while the Capitol citizens must have had a field day with it, the District teams knew there was some damage control that needed to be done. Especially for District Twelve. There were a bunch of little supposed cannibals running around, and at least one of them was theirs. There were people shown in ways that they shouldn't be, some who might not be as bloodthirsty as they were shown, or maybe not as meek. Whatever it was, though, the team could fix it. They could do this. That's why they were all sitting around the table, after making sure the other Tributes weren't around.

"So, last night was... interesting," Peeta started them off.

[Peeta and Katniss]
Once upon a time... wasn't that how all good stories went? Well, once upon a time, these two knew the other existed, but had never talked. Then they were almost killed, but they survived. Then they had to do whatever they could to survive. It always came back to survival, didn't it? Having yourself survive, having the other survive, having your family and friends survive. They always had to look happy, deliriously happy, even, at parties and in large groups. But they were happy, in their own way. There wasn't the chill that had been there before the Victory Tour, because now they were friends. Good friends, even. Good friends who helped each other out at night, trying desperately to keep away the nightmares, and not even caring about how scandalous (and adorable) their prep teams thought about it.

But ever since his talk with R, Peeta had been thinking. What was romance? How did you do it? Did you sing to someone (Peeta couldn't sing). Did you get them flowers (Peeta thought it was weird, having to buy flowers). What did you do? He thought that being with her, sitting outside on the roof, and looking up at the night sky was... well... pretty relaxing, if not romantic.

"This is nice. We haven't gotten to sit and talk in awhile."

[Open to everyone! Roof, lobby, District 12 suites]
The light of day always brought new ideas to light. Night was scary. There were too many dreams, too many things to think about as you lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, looking at the window, or hiding your head under a pillow. The softest beds and the silkiest sheets couldn't help you fall asleep, sometimes, and with your mind running wild, who wanted to lie still? But day was nice. Even on a cloudy day, the light illuminated everything, and everyone. Sure, the Capitol citizens didn't really need any illumination, but it was better to see them then to see their faces creepily illuminated by shadows.

Peeta didn't want to think about the Capitol right now. No, he wanted to have a reasonably relaxing day. He wanted to talk to people, especially the new Tributes, if any of them were around the lobby. He wanted to sketch people; all of the people. He wanted a book filled with everyone's faces, in case some of them never came back. He wanted to talk to the people he had to mentor; he wanted to know their names, their hobbies, their ideas, their friends.

And he wanted to play catch with someone on the roof. Really, that force field and a couple of pieces of fruit was one of the more entertaining things this city had to offer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Eliot had to chuckle. He just couldn't help it. "Yeah, other countries have navies, too." He looked around the area for something to use as an illustration. He had a feeling Peeta would understand better if he could see it. Finally, he gestured to the roof. "Imagine this is North America. That buildin' over there is Europe." The names probably wouldn't mean anything to the boy but it would be less confusing than just saying two continents. "The street between is filled with water an' you're the size of one of those violets. How are ya gonna get across?"

It was a weird thing, for sure. But visuals always helped. He didn't really know some of the names, but he knew North America. That's where they were now, or so they were told.

"Okay, so this... and there... well, you're going to use a boat to get across! Or could you fly over it with a hovercraft?"

"A boat, yeah." He nodded. "When they formed the first navies, they didn't have hovercrafts. In my time, we've only had airplanes for a little over a hundred years. And even with that, it usually takes too much fuel to be worth flying fighters that kind of distance. So if you want to move large armies across, you get a navy, a large group of ships designed for sea battles."

Hovercrafts seemed to be a new invention, compared to the past. Or, it has been for at least a hundred years, maybe, because they had them during the Dark Days. He thought. Peeta wasn't sure, those kinds of things were always glossed over. It was weird, but... that's what they did, and for fairly obvious reasons.

"And so they transport armies to the places where you're fighting." Peeta mused. "What if there are places that don't have any water around them, but they're still far away?"

He knew these sounded like pretty foolish questions to Eliot, but it was like discovering a whole new world. Which is what it was.

"You mean in my time or before?" he asked. He wasn't surprised the boy didn't know this era of history. One of the easiest ways to control a nation was to take their past, their heritage, and leave them thinking things had always been this way. He'd seen this sort of thing before.

"...Your time? Before must have been... not as advanced as you guys are? It's like hearing a story." Because that's what it could only be, in words. This was important history, but if he said so... well. You couldn't say so.

Eliot could recognize Peeta's cover. It came with his work. "We have planes that can do it now, plus trains and trucks if planes can't get through for some reason."

It wasn't a great cover, really. Peeta just hoped it was good enough for the Capitol. There was so much here that could be really useful to know, and it was great. But not all the questions he'd like to ask could get out there.

"How fast are your trains? The ones here are amazing, you can get to one district from another in just one day." Were they that fast, then? He'd like to ask how big they were to fit so many people and supplies in, but couldn't go with that one.

That really caught Eliot's attention. If the trains here were that fast... "Ours are nowhere near that fast. Most districts would take about two to three days, especially if they had a lot of stops. But they can be faster than driving sometimes."

"Driving in cars?" Peeta hadn't thought to ask that. He was still amazed that there were so many cars here, and people could use them whenever they wanted to.

"I've only been in a car once. Well, I've been in different ones, now, but the first time I'd ever been in one was when they were driving us to the station, after the reaping." Cars were a rarity in twelve. You walked everywhere. That's just how it was done.

"But with the trains, we did stop for fuel, when we were on the victory tour. The order for how you go to the districts is always the same each time, since they go from twelve to one, with the Capitol being before your own district, usually. The victor's district is the last one on the stop, so for ours, we started in eleven, went down, came back up to the Capitol, and then came back to twelve." These trains were fast, okay.

So the districts were in third world conditions. Or some of them, anyway. Useful to know. And it explained a bit. "Just about everyone uses cars in my time. Not always in the cities but everywhere else.

"It's too bad we don't have victory tours. I'd like to see the rest of the country."

"Traveling around the country, and other countries, right?" Because that was the only way it made sense. This was a really good talk, because Peeta thought he'd given out a lot of information, as well as gathering some about what Panem might have been before nuclear war destroyed the world. Or, he assumed destroyed the world, since that was what they were told.

"I really hope they find the time to think about having them start up again. I know how busy they are, but it'd be nice to show everyone the people they're helping out, doing all this."

"Not just for that. Boston's too big to walk across unless ya have a lotta time." Peeta had been very helpful. What he'd been able to say told Eliot a lot more than he'd known yesterday.

"It would mean a lot. I know they send us into the Arena instead of the district kids but... It doesn't really seem real when ya never see them."

Really helpful is all that he asks for. If he even asks for anything. Peeta nods again.

"And it would be nice to go home, for a little bit. There's not a lot to see in Twelve, but... anywhere else, it's really nice. And different. I wish we could have spent more time in some districts, on our tour." The watch on his wrist beeped, and he looked down. "I'm still not used to these kind of things." He held up his arm sheepishly.

"I think it's saying that I need to get going. I don't want to send Effie into a state by being late for some dinner."

"It's still home," Eliot pointed out.

He smiled. "That wouldn't be a good thing."

[OPEN] What a day, what a night.

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start winding down the thread?

Re: start winding down the thread?