thecapitol | Working for the church while your life falls apart

The clicking of her heels announced her. Which was the only thing that announced her, at first. Because as soon as she saw Signless sitting there, moping, she went still, crossing her arms over her chest and pursing her lips tightly. When standing there in silence, looking like she had just swallowed a lemon didn't get a satisfying response, she finally spoke in a high, tight voice.

"Do you care to explain yourself."

It wasn't really a question.

Edited 2013-11-24 07:22 (UTC)

"What's there to explain? You could just watch the recaps, they've been going over the whole thing from start to finish in loving detail since I got back."

It was a needlessly petulant response, and he knew it, but the last thing he wanted at the moment was to rehash the whole sorry affair. He knew it was her job to explain to sponsors and the press why he'd done what he did, but it was still too fresh for him to want to discuss publicity strategies.

"Oh, trust me, they were doing it before you got back." She bit out, as if that should some how make him feel worse for what he had done. Because to Effie, it should.

"I know what happened. I have seen it. Many times." Her voice was getting higher. "What I want to know is why."

He sat up properly to look her more firmly in the eye.

"Because I thought what I was doing was right. Because I thought that maybe killing to end someone else's suffering could be justified. What would you do, if you saw someone you cared about in pain, in a place where you knew that death almost definitely meant being able to come back to a place like this instead of staying in a place like that?"

"It doesn't matter what I would do, it matters what you did do. If we're trying to build you up as some innocent, as some....victim, you can't get blood on your hands."

It came from a good place, it did. Her tributes were her issues, and the other only mattered in how they could help hers live. If she hadn't been working herself into a tizzy over this exact issue, she might realize how narrow minded she sounded.

But she had been.

"But I have, and there is absolutely no way to undo it." Which was true, both in a sense that the entirety of Panem saw it live on television and because there was absolutely no way he was ever going to be able to forget about it.

"And it isn't as though I've ever been very popular. Now that trolls aren't in fashion," (and that sounded so completely ridiculous, still, but he knew by this point that speaking to her in her terms was probably the best way to go about things), "I don't have that to cushion me. I don't have anything. So you have a blank slate, almost. You could make me anything. At this point I'd rather be something else."

"So, what do you suggest, then?" She asked, crossing her arms, and pursing out her lips, looking everything like an angry mother. An angry mother wearing incredibly gaudy makeup.

"Because we had this whole thing set up for you and you just...just threw it out the window. Like it was nothing."

"I don't know!" he snapped, and then sighed. "People like Karkat. Play up our relationship. Make it about how far I'd go for him, I don't know. Or make it a love story. I died while my matesprit watched, that's tragic enough to be a starting point. There has to be something salvageable in all this."

If there's not, then he really was just nothing but his philosophy, which meant he was less than nothing now, and where was he supposed to go from there?

That stopped her up for a moment.

What if Katniss had to do that for Peeta. She swallowed, her mouth still tight, before shaking her head. Like a restless little mouse, she stood, pacing in front of the couch, mind racing.

"Possibly. Possibly. But you still...we'll have to play it very carefully, you know."

"I know. I know that distilling this down into something you can market isn't easy. How much time do you think you're going to need me to spend in public, to smooth it over?"

He didn't much like the prospect of having to deal with the Capitol, but there was no way he could get away with hiding forever. Maybe he could barter her down to the least amount of time possible instead.

Her feathers clearly ruffled at the work market, the tone of his voice, but she took a deep breath, trying to sooth herself.

"Well. I think, with a few well placed appearance...maybe something done with Karkat..." She sighed, pressing on her temple, feeling a headache starting there. "There is just so much going on right now."

"I could do that," he said. "He keeps me calm. With him is probably the best place for me to be right now."

There was an implicit 'if you want to be sure I behave' that he was fairly certain he didn't have to spell out, less of a threat and far more just a fact. Having Karkat around was the only surefire way to ensure that all the volatile negative emotions roiling around in his brain never made it out of his mouth as potentially stupid words. Even his relationship with the Disciple was too subject to change to be quite as steady, even if it had a lot more history and ran much deeper.

"So if that's the way you want to go, it won't require any acting at all."

Edited 2013-12-11 01:32 (UTC)

"Good. Good. His escort is already working with me, so we'll very much play you two up as an injured, damage pair putting each other back together."

It seemed a good angle. They could really play up the whole pair thing. Maybe even link them together some how. She'd have to talk to Cinna about it. He was much better at the visual impact of it all.

She let out a huffy sigh, before looking over at him.

"Thank you."

Luckily linking them visually wouldn't be too hard, considering they were functionally clones of each other and the only difference was that Signless was a good deal older. Making that happen wouldn't add too much to her workload, hopefully.

At her thanks, he looked away with a properly awkward expression. "I feel... I'm just sorry for making things harder for you. I at least owe you help in fixing it, when none of it's your fault in the first place."

"Oh, things are...they are plenty stressful, you didn't really add that much." She said in a voice that was more then a touch conspiratorial. Now that the roughest part was over, she went to the bar, pouring a small class of a hot pink fluid into a tall crystal glass.

Coming over to sink into a chair, she leveled Signless with a steady look.

"Just be careful, all right?"

He offered her a weak smile.

"I'll try. That's as much as I can promise. I honestly don't care anymore about what happens to me. But I'll be careful for everyone else."

"Well, you can't just go in there and not care about yourself, you know. We're a team, all of us. We need to help each other out."

She gently tapped his knee with a manicured finger to make her point. Aggressively for Effie, really. But she wanted him to realize his worth in al of this.

"We need to take care of each other. And to take care of Twelve."

For a moment he pondered arguing that he wasn't worth that, really, but he decided against it. There wasn't much point.

"Of course. I'll do my very best to keep that in mind."

"Good!" She gave his leg another secure pat, feeling like the subject was more than settled now. "We'll get you right back in the good graces of the Capitol."

For what that's worth, a familiar, surly voice murmured in the back of her mind. She quickly hushed it.

It was almost kind of nice, knowing that in her own Effie Trinket way she really was just trying to help him. There was something very genuine about her that was so at odds with everything he'd come to expect from the Capitol. Thank goodness he'd been assigned to Twelve.

He patted her hand with his own, a little awkwardly. "Thank you."

((OOC-Good end?))

((I think so!))

Peeta had already said it, multiple times before, that dying, and then being brought back to life, that was a terrible thing to do. To have done to you. He had also said, with as much surety as he had, that it wouldn't work for them, the citizens of Panem, like it did for the people being brought in.

They didn't come back. They died and were gone forever.

And yet, here he was. And he was expected to... to what? To go back to normal? To go back to whatever? All he really wanted to do was go back home. But all of his tributes kept dying, too, and eventually he knew that he had to do something. Katniss was still in the arena, and Peeta would do whatever it took to keep her there, until she won.

As soon as he got back, though, he needed to watch things. And the worst was definitely... well. There wasn't really a word for how bad the whole thing was. Peeta didn't know if he had the strength to do anything with it. But he'd be damned if he didn't try.

So when he saw Signless curled up on the couch, he sat down on a love seat. And then proceeded to say nothing. At some point they would actually have to say things to each other, but for now, all he did was sit and look at him.

Signless looked over at him in silence for a long couple of minutes. It was hard to know where to start, or what to say, because he genuinely liked Peeta. It must have been terrible, having to go back into the arena when the whole point of these new Games was ostensibly to prevent the death of any more Panem natives.

"You aren't angry with me, are you?" he asked finally, because that was really what he was most worried about. He'd just made his entire team's job harder, and in Peeta's case he felt especially bad about it.

Was he angry at him? After everything that happened, there was a point where he could be angry at Signless for everything that happened. But it would just be petty, and stupid, and selfish.

How could you expect someone to keep up the image that you were trying to project to the rest of the world, when they were under attack by people who could possibly be their friends, or people they knew from home? Honestly, Peeta had no idea how Katniss had kept it up, and it wasn't something you just asked someone.

"Not angry at you." Peeta shook his head. "Angry at the situation, yeah. The arena wasn't really a--" He cut himself off.

"What was it that made you snap? What he said, what he did, what you did?"

"All of it. Mostly what I did. Every time I try to help, every time I try to live by what I think is right, it just hurts everyone around me and doesn't help anyone at all. I should have realized sooner. I should have just kept my fucking head down and not bothered with things that weren't my business to begin with." His voice is so tired and so, so bitter.

"You probably should be angry with me."

Peeta cleared his throat. The one big thing that he had going for him was the fact that he was really, really good at talking. But having your throat slashed up, even if it was fixed, still really, really fucked you up.

"I am a little angry." Peeta admitted. "But I figured you have enough people yelling at you already. And I'm not up for yelling." It probably was better to be honest right now. For some things.

"So, you're never going to help another person, ever again. And you'll keep your head down, and never speak up, and just go through life not saying a thing that people might take the wrong way." He started to laugh softly. "So, who do you want us to make you into? Clearly, you don't want to be yourself anymore." Did he realize how it sounded?

He turned his face away, looking up at the ceiling instead.

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Like doing the only thing I know won't directly result in everyone around me suffering is the wrong choice."

Really, he didn't know what he wanted. Being himself hadn't worked very well for him, both when he thought he was different but justified and now that he had finally decided to accept that he was just a worthless piece of hoofbeastshit that meant nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. On the other hand, he'd spent an entire lifetime trying not to be himself and had wound up being himself so hard it had taken him that entire lifetime up to the present to realize the full extent of it. Either way he was fucked.

"Effie and I talked and thought it might work to make it about my relationship with Karkat. To play up how far I would go to keep him safe and how he's helping me stay together. Or it could be about me and Meulin, like it was about you and Katniss. If I'm defined by who I am to others, I don't have to be anyone myself. That might be best."

It was a bad thing. Peeta wanted to say that yes, it was a bad thing. But doing what you might normally do, that would hurt people. But everything, no matter what, was going to hurt people. Everyone Signless knew, they were going to go in the arena, die, and do it all again, until at some point they won.

But saying that it didn't matter what you did? Was not the right thing to ever say to someone. Especially now. Peeta couldn't tell if he was supposed to cheer him up, or snap him out of it. But he knew that it wouldn't be both at the same time.

"Don't do that." It came out as a command, and it surprised even himself, as he looked at him steadily. "Don't... don't pin your life to someone for the sake of a story. You're worth more then being someone's other."

"I'm not worth anything," he said fiercely. "I shouldn't even exist. If someone else hadn't taken pity on me as a grub I would have been culled then and the whole mess I made of my life wouldn't have happened. A whole lot of people would be better off for it."

He closed his eyes, breathed out hard through his nose. None of this was Peeta's fault. Peeta didn't deserve to have to deal with him acting like a petulant wiggler just because he was trying to help.

"No, I'm sorry. That's not helpful. I just don't want to be anything right now, and I know that's not an option, and it's frustrating."

This was indeed a tough one. Peeta had no idea how you get someone to like themselves again. He was very out of his depth, and he knew it, and knowing that didn't give him any sense of relief.

"I don't know what it's like to not want to be anything." Peeta admitted. "Maybe not be yourself, I can understand that, but making any comparisons would just be worse." He didn't know what Signless really wanted. You don't just not be anything.

"You're not just a tribute to me, you know. You're my friend. You're worth something, at least to me." He sighed. "So I do care about your well being, and not just how you look to sponsors. I just don't..."

I just don't know what to do. "I hate this." Peeta got up, walking around the couch. Unable to sit down now, he looked away from Signless, a hand to his throat. Signless had done what he thought was right. He helped a friend, but got shit for it.

He stopped walking. "You did what you thought was right. It didn't work out for you in the end, but you still did it." He looked at Signless. "Sure, we can play up the relationship a little more, but it's not what defines you. What you did does. And what you did was help someone who asked for your help, and made the decision to do what needed to be done, even if it was terrible."

Didn't he see that? It was a simple concept, one anyone could easily understand. The right thing to do is never an easy one.

For a few long moments Signless didn't say anything. There were a lot of things he wanted to say, about how if he'd had a choice he would have just not come back from the arena at all, how the Psiioniic hadn't asked for his help so much as accepted it when he offered and therefore the murder was squarely on his shoulders, how Karkat had begged him not to because he knew it meant giving in. It wasn't as simple as Peeta wanted to make it, but still, it meant a lot that Peeta was on his side. That Peeta thought what he'd done didn't make him evil.

That Peeta thought of him as a friend.

"Thank you. I'm sorry that I'm making things so difficult for you. And you could always make the argument that what I did, I did out of compassion and that makes it right, but it doesn't change that all my life I spoke against violence and now I've culled two people. I don't want my actions to define me when my actions are those of a person I don't want to be, but I can't go back to what I was before, either, and keep saying violence is wrong when I've committed violent acts."

He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I consider you a friend too, you know. One of the best I have here."

"Then don't do that anymore. You can't be what you were before, so there is no point in anyone thinking that, let alone doing something with that." Peeta stopped walking, coming back to the chair and taking a seat.

"It's what I tell everyone. What you do in the arena? Is what you do in the arena. Back when you guys weren't here, people died in the games, and never came back. So what we did in there, it was to help each of us live. So we did things, to live. Not good things." They did stories in there. Ways to live, because they were fighting for their lives.

Yes, the new tributes were also fighting for their lives. But not to the extent the old games was about.

"Never mind on that. What I'm trying to say is that it's okay. It's like wearing a shirt. You have on a nice, beautiful, comfortable white shirt. Then you went outside to play, and it got dirty. Dirt and mud all over it. But now, when some people see that, the dirty smudges on the white? They think it's beautiful, and they love it." He was touching his chest, showing off his shirt, and using it to gesture to. "But inside, it's still you. But now you need to become a person who's comfortable in the shirt, while also keeping a part of yourself still intact."

It's complicated. But this is complicating material, and he's doing the best. He smiles as Signless.

"Good. Because I'm glad to have a friend like you, here." He pauses, and decides that he can say this, without the Capitol doing anything to it. "All of my friends and family, they're back home. Same for Katniss. But I'm glad that I have these friends, here. I don't know if you'd actually fit in well in Twelve, but." That went into a joking quality. He didn't want to get mushy.

"I think I see what you mean." He doesn't, entirely, but he's got enough of an idea: what he is on the inside and what he presents on the outside may be different, but he needs to be comfortable with both parts of himself. He doesn't really think Peeta is getting exactly how difficult that's going to be when one is anathema to the other, but he means well, and the advice is sound even if it'll be difficult to follow.

At least Peeta knows he'll be able to see his family again, maybe, in the future. Signless is almost certain he'll never see his mother again unless she's brought here to die, and however much he misses her he doesn't want that.

"That's what's made it the most bearable, being able to form friendships here even in the face of..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Everything. I'd like to visit Twelve, sometime. See what Panem is like outside of the Capitol."

It's good that Signless is getting it, because even Peeta is a little confused by what he was saying. That you can be both, is what the gist of it was, and he hopes that got across. Change is the one thing you can't forget in this place. You will be changed from your experiences here. They won't be good.

He slept with a knife under his pillow now. "Yeah, I know. It's one of the things I'm glad about. I'm glad I met you all. Maybe not how, but I am glad to know you." He smiled. "I'd like that. I'd really like you to see Twelve. It's not like here, not even close. But we're surrounded by forest... you cant really get to it, but it's better then the Capitol."

He laughed softly. "It's really not much, district-wise. But it's home."

"Home doesn't have to be much to be home," he says, his tone a little subdued. 'Home' for him was wherever his family was, after all. Home was deserts and caves and the ship, for a while. Maybe that's why he feels so lost here sometimes, because only half of them are here and his relationship with half of that half is just a burned bridge now.

"I'm of the opinion that our homes can be as grand or as humble as we want them to be, so long as they're full of good memories."

Is home filled with good memories? Peeta would have to say about 80 percent of them were good. Growing up with the threat of death over every kid's head until they were safe at 18, only to then be sent to work in the mines, was a tough thing to deal with. Watching the games every year, because you were forced to? Seeing your friends die, if they were chosen?

Peeta never had a friend who went in, so he was lucky. His family life wasn't exactly the best, but it was better then a lot of others. And home was with Katniss, now, except not.

"Yeah, I agree with that. And good memories can be hard to come by, sometimes. But that's what just makes them more special, right?"

It was sad, that growing up with the threat of death hanging over your head was an almost universal troll experience. Just for some that threat was more salient than others. But there were always good things -- his mother trying to teach him to sew (and thus the creation of the prototype Righteous Leggings), painting on cave walls with the Disciple. The Psiioniic, but that's painful to think about now.

"I think so. When you have little, it means more to have anything at all."

And that's true here, isn't it? He's in flux and he's unsure of himself or what he wants and believes, but he has people that care about him regardless. That's worth something. The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile.

"Thank you, Peeta. This has actually made me feel a little better."

Giving him a smile in response, he moves as if to put a hand on his shoulder, and then stops. He's the guy who does want to give hugs, to put a hand on someone's shoulder in a reassuring manner. He wants to hold hands, and that's something not a lot of people, especially here, want to do themselves.

"So long as it's something in the right direction, good. You know you can come to me with anything. Just not in the middle of the night, please, that's... just wait till the morning, if you can." Nights are reserved for trying not to have nightmares, for both him and Katniss. And for not slashing at anyone with a knife, when you jolt awake.

"Of course. With how hard you work, you deserve time set aside for yourself." The way Peeta says it sort of implies there's more to it than just that, but it isn't really the Signless's place to pry. He does reach out and take Peeta's hovering hand, though, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Of all the Twelve tributes, he's certainly one of the ones most likely to be okay with hugs.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Working for the church while your life falls apart

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OKAY I THINK IT'S OVER I THINK WE DID IT [MUFFLED WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS]