Nothing's Changed [Open]

[vissernone]

Who| Eva and open
What| Eva plays chess in the park.
Where| Park in the Capitol
When| Week 7
Warnings/Notes| Description of cuts.

The bruises have faded into the sick yellow of urine. The cuts haven't healed yet, and wearing the bandages and stitches - old-fashioned medicine, less than what a Panem Victor could usually expect - is something of a scarlet letter. No one's forgotten that she was cavorting with a would-be assassin, but the Capitol's seen fit to remind them anyway, and unless she spends the next few months indoors Eva's damned to carry the message on her face.

She somewhat appreciates that the hook-shaped slash on her upper lip has pulled her mouth into something of a perpetual sneer. It fits her mood, lately. The cuts along her arms and cheek are a little less thematically appropriate.

The sunlight wafts down to her like steam. Her palm rests on a book in the park, her eyes strolling lazily over the words of a poem she's read a hundred times before. The other hand rests in her lap, on the demure grey fabric of a dress that could blend into any background. Eva doesn't need to accessorize; here, the white bandage around her upper arms and the patch of gauze on her cheek are eye-catching enough.

A chess set sits on the small marble table in front of her. The pieces are arranged up perfectly, each slit in the bishop's hat forming a perfect line. She looks out at the park, relatively unoccupied for a Sunday afternoon what with people watching the final week of the Games, and waits for someone, anyone to come challenge her.

She loves chess. It's just yet another game where no one has to win.

Comments

[vissernone]

Her eyes glance up as she watches a familiar splash of blond hair approaching, an easily-recognizable swagger that she now believes to be at least partially a sham. She hurries her gaze back to her books, although the fact that she stops turning pages stands as an indication that she's watching his knees more than she's reading the words in front of her.

"Silence is a good look on you," she says, finally. She folds the book closed over a dog-eared page and runs her finger down the spine, just to feel it in her hands, something physical. Everything seems fleeting to her these days.

She reached forward and hovers her fingers over a pawn, then selects her knight instead and lead him out.

[akingalways]

"Hn."

He didn't respond with anything other than a grunt. It was quite obvious as he folded his arms - he wasn't sure what to say in response. It was almost surreal being right across from Eva, without it devolving into the usual blowhard vs. drunkard arguments.

And...well. No backing out of the game now that Eva had made her move. Not that Jack would have backed out of the chess game. It simply wasn't his style to back out of a challenge, regardless of how completely and utterly outmatched he might be. Except for one. Because look where it got Ariadne, this woman's son, who knew who else.

He selects a pawn out on the opposite side. He's not all that good at chess and its pretty obvious even just by the way he considered the pieces. Indeed, it had been awhile since he'd played any chess with anyone. Not even with the Director. No...the last time he'd played, it had been back where he used to be from, when he was left alone with a certain young man with a quiet demeanor and dark hair.

Jack always lost to him as well.

For just a moment - it passed quite quickly, thankfully. Jack had to wonder if he'd - if anyone he'd known - had been in that blast as well. But, no, he was probably fine. He was too much of a smartypants to get involved in something stupid like that.

And the other kid...well.

He better not have.

"Your move."

[vissernone]

"Yes, I have eyes and can count to two. I can tell when it's my move," she says, letting the words carry the sourness that her voice does not. She eats it in, the hesitation, the way he considers the pieces not as if they're soldiers under his command but insects that could possibly sting.

She feels like a cat clawing at prey beneath her paws, kneading. She knows that winning a chess match will be a minor victory, and more than that, she knows - knows from the incident with Ariadne - that to count a victory before it's secured is absolute folly.

She brings a pawn forward, freeing her bishop.

[akingalways]

The fact she'd likely win it against Jack might also account for that feeling of pointlessness. Jack wasn't exactly a chess expert, not by any means. While he certainly wasn't a fool, the finer points of abstract strategy tended to escape him. Overpowering his opponents was his general strategy in everything he did, be it by his own strength, his own force of personality, of with the materials at his disposal.

Which would likely account for his next move, which was to bring out his horse. At the least, he could try and capture that pawn of Eva's. He holds his tongue, meanwhile, at the sour response.

[vissernone]

With Jack not filling the air as he usually does, Eva uses this as an opportunity to vent her own thoughts.

"I've noticed that you haven't associated much with Calico recently. Now, I know you're both stubborn types, but I can't imagine that either of you care that much about your Tributes sticking to a strategy to burn your bridges over it."

She'll let him take the pawn. She frees a rook, anticipating that he'll try to take as many of her pieces as he can. She's fine with that - it's not how many pieces that matter to her, it's which ones she has left. She only needs a few.

[akingalways]

"Hn." That did hit a nerve, and it showed in the darkening in the King's face as he looked away. "If strategy were the only reason for my displeasure towards Calico, I'd have stopped speaking to her a long time ago."

And take the pawn he does.

[vissernone]

"Well. She is the one who decided to win the Hunger Games by hunting a bear. She's a strange one, that one." Eva raises an eyebrow and opens another pawn up for the taking. Baiting.

[akingalways]

He doesn't take it. Not this round, at least. He brings out a horse, clearly lost in thought.

"I don't know what that woman's thinking anymore."

[vissernone]

"Did you ever?" She leaves her pawn, and her own knight, open for the taking, watching his eyes rather than his hands.

[akingalways]

"Of course I did." And take the knight he did. "But...she's changed."

[vissernone]

She begins divining an overarching strategy from what Jack's shown her so far.

"You mean she's gotten louder? She's giving you competition, dear."

[akingalways]

"Ha ha." At this, Jack crossed his arms. "If that were the problem I wouldn't care."

[vissernone]

Eva crosses her arms back, cocking her head to the side like a cat in the window examining a buyer. "So tell me where your massive miscommunication is coming from?"

[akingalways]

"It...involves some District business." At this, Jack looked to the side. "People she knew, and I thought she perhaps cared to check up on."

A long, rather awkward pause, though his tone darkened.

"It was hardly miscommunication. She was just too busy drinking to give a damn. She admitted it herself to me."

[vissernone]

"You were the one who broke the news about her family?" Eva asks quietly, upper lip twitching a little. She knows that people know about her and alcohol, and the idea that Cal's going down the same road upsets her on some deep level.

"How much has she been drinking?"

[akingalways]

"...She had already known about what happened even before I even confronted her about it."

There was a sudden, real darkness in Jack's voice as he looked down at the chess pieces. For all of his bravado, for all of his swagger, there was that damnable part of him that had to care. He often wondered why he bothered caring about anyone else other than himself in any way whatsoever. It would certainly make things much easier if he didn't.

Yet, he still did. Why was why he had been so angry. Still was.

"She's drunken herself to sickness the several times I've seen it. The time on the communicator hadn't been the only time. She'd been drinking at the Director's party as well, and after that, she went off to drink more. I don't know where she went, but wherever it was, it certainly wasn't the Training Center."

Which was where he'd directed the man taking her to go. What was wrong with him? Couldn't he tell she was in no condition to do further damage to herself?

"The next time I saw her, it was after I had returned from 8. She was making those cuff doily things for some of the Tributes, and acted as if nothing was wrong."

[vissernone]

"Good. Let her. Let her kill the pain a little longer. There's no benefit to be had from rushing her into it." Eva knows drinking yourself silly isn't a joke, and yet what awaits Cal when she sobers up? Nothing but grief, nothing but guilt, nothing but hating herself, and Eva's spent enough time in those dark corners to ever wish them on one of her closest friends.

"Checkmate," she says to Jack, folding her hands. "Maybe that's a signal to you not to question my judgment."

The bruises on her face say otherwise.

[akingalways]

There is a long, long, long moment where Jack is staring at the checkmate...ok, he wasn't the best chess player. He was not stupid. But how did she beat him that fast? It was almost like she was psychic or something.

Finally, though, he looked up at Eva, his eyes narrowed as her words sunk in.

"Are you sure about that?"

[vissernone]

"Positive." She gestures with one hand, as if encouraging him to try moving his pieces around to undo her the spiderweb she's knit around his king.

"Don't worry, Jack. It's not that embarrassing to lose to a drunken old lady."