Howard Bassem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2013-11-29 12:57 am
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in thecapitol2013-11-29 12:57 am
Entry tags:
I Have Been Known to Surrender to Anything That Stands [Open]
WHO| Howard and open
WHAT| Howard returns to Capitol life. He's not very good at it.
WHERE| A small cafe in the Capitol.
WHEN| End of Week 6
WARNINGS| Mentions of starvation and a stress disorder.
He has to win next time. He's never known this before, not like he does now. If he doesn't win this next time, he's sure he'll either die for good or lose himself completely. There is a point when forging the iron where blows stop forming it and start to distend it, and he's crossed over into the second half of the process.
He returns to Panem the same way he has every time. He returns to schedule, to letting his Escort point him politely in the right direction so she can get him out of her hair and focus on her more promising Tributes. For the most part, she's fond of him, but not about to invest too much energy. Even if he wins one of these days, he'll hardly make a useful Mentor - she predicts he's the type to self-medicate - and so she generally gives him a free reign these days. "Don't do anything gauche, dear." "Make sure your clothes are clean before you step out". "Curfew's at eight p.m., remember that. I want you sleeping in your bed tonight and not in some alleyway again, dear."
He hates that she calls him 'dear'. He hates that she reminds him of a mother - not his mother, but one nonetheless. But he doesn't have the will to hate her, so instead he just hates pieces of her personality as some proxy for the whole. To tell the truth, he doesn't even remember her name beyond 'the Escort'.
Back to scale, he thinks as he weighs himself in the morning, and he laughs at himself without humor or regard for anyone who might hear him. Seventy-two pounds again. Like always, after he dies. Seventy-two pounds and jaw sore from where they ripped his rotting teeth out and replaced them with shiny white straight ones between him dying and him waking back up in Panem. He's back to padded clothing to hide the way the bones jut from under his skin like fingers through latex. Once again he has to sit patiently before he goes anywhere 'people might see him' while his Escort pats makeup on his cheeks to hide their gauntness and pallor, and to distract from the dark circles under his eyes.
He makes sure all his allies are still alive, and he makes sure to set money aside for Wyatt, which comes in handy soon enough. And then he slips back into the life outside the Arena that he's arranged for himself as delicately as dominoes. Get food, get coffee, training center, lunch, training center, dinner, find a quiet spot in town and sleep for a few hours, wake up and read a survival guide or a first aid manual or watch Games footage on his device, sneak back into the Tribute Center before dawn and hope his Escort doesn't give him too much shit in the morning.
Being a creature of habit, he's soon found himself a favorite tiny cafe. Capitol citizens with their inquisitive stares and loud outfits that jab at his eyes and grating, hiccuping voices tend to ignore it, preferring more bombastic locales than a little hole in the wall. Tributes occasionally come in, and Mentors. No one stupid enough to poke and prod about how exciting the Games are and how did it feel to die, how did it feel to choke on your own blood? Isn't it so much nicer, now that you're back?
Well, isn't it?
From a cozy armchair, he can read his book on field-dressing different wild animals while watching the sun go down over the tips of Capitol skyscrapers. He parks his feet up under his butt and shakes the hood from his jacket off his head, not willing to let go of his large mug of hot, creamy coffee even long enough to leave it on the table next to him. He cradles it to his chest like a nursing infant. The warmth from it radiates even through the cotton padding over his concave gut and makes him feel, for a moment, like he's holding a small star inside his core.
He still startles as if he's about to leap out of his own flesh whenever the bell on the door announces visitors and catches him off-guard. Sometimes when someone walks in, he spills his drink on himself and dissolves into frustrated swearing right in front of them.
WHAT| Howard returns to Capitol life. He's not very good at it.
WHERE| A small cafe in the Capitol.
WHEN| End of Week 6
WARNINGS| Mentions of starvation and a stress disorder.
He has to win next time. He's never known this before, not like he does now. If he doesn't win this next time, he's sure he'll either die for good or lose himself completely. There is a point when forging the iron where blows stop forming it and start to distend it, and he's crossed over into the second half of the process.
He returns to Panem the same way he has every time. He returns to schedule, to letting his Escort point him politely in the right direction so she can get him out of her hair and focus on her more promising Tributes. For the most part, she's fond of him, but not about to invest too much energy. Even if he wins one of these days, he'll hardly make a useful Mentor - she predicts he's the type to self-medicate - and so she generally gives him a free reign these days. "Don't do anything gauche, dear." "Make sure your clothes are clean before you step out". "Curfew's at eight p.m., remember that. I want you sleeping in your bed tonight and not in some alleyway again, dear."
He hates that she calls him 'dear'. He hates that she reminds him of a mother - not his mother, but one nonetheless. But he doesn't have the will to hate her, so instead he just hates pieces of her personality as some proxy for the whole. To tell the truth, he doesn't even remember her name beyond 'the Escort'.
Back to scale, he thinks as he weighs himself in the morning, and he laughs at himself without humor or regard for anyone who might hear him. Seventy-two pounds again. Like always, after he dies. Seventy-two pounds and jaw sore from where they ripped his rotting teeth out and replaced them with shiny white straight ones between him dying and him waking back up in Panem. He's back to padded clothing to hide the way the bones jut from under his skin like fingers through latex. Once again he has to sit patiently before he goes anywhere 'people might see him' while his Escort pats makeup on his cheeks to hide their gauntness and pallor, and to distract from the dark circles under his eyes.
He makes sure all his allies are still alive, and he makes sure to set money aside for Wyatt, which comes in handy soon enough. And then he slips back into the life outside the Arena that he's arranged for himself as delicately as dominoes. Get food, get coffee, training center, lunch, training center, dinner, find a quiet spot in town and sleep for a few hours, wake up and read a survival guide or a first aid manual or watch Games footage on his device, sneak back into the Tribute Center before dawn and hope his Escort doesn't give him too much shit in the morning.
Being a creature of habit, he's soon found himself a favorite tiny cafe. Capitol citizens with their inquisitive stares and loud outfits that jab at his eyes and grating, hiccuping voices tend to ignore it, preferring more bombastic locales than a little hole in the wall. Tributes occasionally come in, and Mentors. No one stupid enough to poke and prod about how exciting the Games are and how did it feel to die, how did it feel to choke on your own blood? Isn't it so much nicer, now that you're back?
Well, isn't it?
From a cozy armchair, he can read his book on field-dressing different wild animals while watching the sun go down over the tips of Capitol skyscrapers. He parks his feet up under his butt and shakes the hood from his jacket off his head, not willing to let go of his large mug of hot, creamy coffee even long enough to leave it on the table next to him. He cradles it to his chest like a nursing infant. The warmth from it radiates even through the cotton padding over his concave gut and makes him feel, for a moment, like he's holding a small star inside his core.
He still startles as if he's about to leap out of his own flesh whenever the bell on the door announces visitors and catches him off-guard. Sometimes when someone walks in, he spills his drink on himself and dissolves into frustrated swearing right in front of them.
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"So I guess this is supposed to just go on and on. A lot of talk on the good we're supposed to be doing for fucking Districts we've never even seen yet. That about the jist of it?"
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"And all we had to do was give up going wherever we wanted and never seeing home again," she said. "Oh, and the government can totally spy on us whenever they want. To the capitol!"
She lifted her own cup, staring at it a moment.
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"Not really. I got the vengeance, but lost out my mentor in the end. Technically, I was supposed to have an ordinary life after that. Guess the people here thought I had a better use for them."
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Truth, of course, was that she had WANTED to do it personally.