Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #16: Spot the Competition. So this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Private Sessions. Yes, as we've seen in my Hunger Games head-canon, all of the stuff is incorporated into the series from the get-go, and that starts today. Last chapter, #15: Whispers of Doom, with povs from Calen, Camilla, Dill, Kai'sa, Jasper, and Diana, focused on Training Night 2. We are officially in the end third of the Pre-Games, where each tribute gets one more pov for the arena bloodbath [Private Sessions, Score Reveals, Interviews, Night Before, Launching] and there's seven povs this chapter: two Capitol characters of Adriane and Cain to start and end the chapter, but do read them, as well as povs from Orion, Porscha, Magnus, Camilla, and Dill, which I am excited about having. Unlike in Slaughterverse where I gave each tribute a private session that was honestly too exhausting to make, only three of them are being directly shown: Magnus, Camilla, and Dill, but everyone - including Orion and Porscha - will have theirs detailed in the further povs to come. Please enjoy Chapter #16: Spot the Competition.
"No competition, no progress," ~ Bela Karolyi
Adriane Lantham: District 1 Escort P.O.V
Ah. The wonderful smell of lilac in the morning. Or at least, she thinks it is lilac, Adriane isn't all that sure truth be told. Maybe it is her perfume, or it might be Roxanne's or Clair's… she doesn't care. The escort for District 1 puts her hands on her hips and smiles intensely, lifting her head up to see the dial board light up in bright red letters, golden Panemian droplets sliding off of the text in the holographic cube that it is situated in, Adriane grinning so hard her facial muscles were beginning to stretch and protest at the sensation.
Up and early, well not too early given it is only around 10 AM or so, but she leaves early at the very least, to get away from the kids she's supposed to be helping. In fact… all the escorts are there, all the escorts with her doing their job instead of mentoring as that actually isn't her job; Adriane doesn't know anything about the Hunger Games, or survival… why is it her job to ensure somehow an eighteen-year-old who tried to kill her, and a thirteen-year-old who will not even look at her anymore, to have the common decency or the respect to look at her in the eyes when she's spoken at, the damned fucking brat. Adriane needs to try and keep her cool, as after all these are children, they're not Friedrich Calvary, all the help that he is, the damned idiot.
It doesn't matter. Today is her day, and this is all on her shoulders. Adriane claps her hands together excitedly, going through the turnstile to the twenty-four kiosks that are arranged in a circle. From what she has seen, the kiosks are not in numbered or district order of any kind, so Cecelia Blackstone, that little bitch, isn't 1st, and that Ramses Boskov, the scared chicken shit that Adriane thinks he is, isn't 24th. She looks at the name on the inscription she passes by, seeing it say Zachary Edison, District 5 Male… and there's a golden screen with his portrait plastered on the screen, rocking back and forth. Marlon in his blue hair is standing next to Merida, another idiot blue haired fool, Adriane pursing her lips at them, which snaps Marlon into position on pressing a the center monitor situated in the middle at the epicenter of the twenty-four kiosks. The four monitors flash to life, Adriane seeing the numbers come to the forefront of the screen with the twenty-four tributes and their pictures rocking back and forth, forever stuck in a stasis of movement.
Adriane spits on the ground at the sight of her kids. Ungrateful, ungrateful, ungrateful-
"You've done an amazing job with all of this, Adriane!" cheers Ginger Castle, the woman who is in charge of the District 5 children, Zachary and Kileigh, who Adriane sees their pictures swaying back and forth.
"Thank you," she bows her head at the other woman, though she takes a minor step back as she is not about to get too close to the woman and take up the energy in the square. "I think it looks great too. All on my shoulders," Adriane smirks. "All on me… as none of you damned chickens with your heads cut off would be able to pull this off," she thinks to herself before moving some frills and ribbons out of the way to give people a clear walking path.
The Sponsor and Odds Station. Erected just in front of the Training Center and closely off the beaten path to the presidential mansion, with the Head Gamemaker Center seen glowing in the sky elsewhere. A big day today, though Adriane exhausts herself with the weak verbiage use… she has an emporium in her head, and she settles for big. Perhaps it cannot be helped, and she's genuinely nervous for Catalus and Cecelia, even though it is silly to even be nervous. But… it's true. Private Sessions, the tributes performing their skills – or lack thereof, as Catalus jokes, bronzer hiding his mean shiner that Adriane wishes could've blinded him in the eye instead, for daring to reach for her throat – and then getting ranked on a score of 1-12…
"No zero?" Cecelia asks, rather off the cuff, speaking when not spoken to, Adriane's eyes flashing like lightning in a bottle as she sips her wine glass.
Murky red passing through porcelain eggplant lipstick lips, before smacking them together. "Well… I mean, you might get a zero with those muscles of you," and Adriane can only deepen her smirk at seeing how Cecelia grips her salad fork with a hand, the escort raising her head with a telling stare. Dare you, I dare you to hurt me. See what the Peacekeepers will do to you, and then watch what they shall do to your friend.
You're friends right?
Even though he abandoned you for a stronger alliance because you are indeed weak?
Ginger hums something sweetly, twirling a lock of sunbeam and orange – hideous, just hideous – hair around her finger. "How did you ever convince President Israel to let you run this by yourself? It's magnificent!"
"She probably slept with him," mutters Kenneth Nighton, the escort from Twelve, Adriane's nostrils flaring.
"You're next on the shit list," she tells herself in cold slowing tones, a crashing wave on a stony shore, or a winter chill clamming up a lamppost in the middle of a snowy landscape. "No, dickweed, it is not because I slept with the president," and then, as she cannot resist herself, "You're just jealous that you haven't gotten the chance to," and holds a hand up at the way Kenneth's face changes sixteen colors of autumn and summer red. "Just accept what you cannot have and move on."
"I see there's only eleven of us here, though," Merida comments, stepping away from Marlon who is going around the pedestals and checking out the portraits. Twenty-four doomed souls, and Adriane knows that only one of them will be living at the end of two weeks, most likely, and when that person does win, she knows it better be from One.
Appearances matter. Even if she hates the two kids who are 'under' her protection, one of them becoming the first ever victor of the Hunger Games? It'll push her into stardom, the woman who groomed a celebrity, the woman who makes stars and winners while the others simply grovel at her feet, covered in sheep shift.
"Yes," Adriane clucks her tongue in disgust, going to the pedestal of Diana Kratovska, the clear-cut winner for everyone, though she has no idea why… she sees the fire in the girl's eyes, just from the portrait, a girl with a vengeance, though she cannot assume what for. "Wyvern thinks it's necessary to lecture his blonde-haired beauties as if one more minute speech from his oatmeal soggy appearance is going to make them any more prepared," she sniffs the air disdainfully. "He didn't want to be here for my crowning moment."
"Eat a pipe, Lantham…" Damien Paladine mutters to himself, though Kenneth snickers at the statement though, Adriane's eyes flaring into volcanic supernovas. Catalus will eat those kids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, even if she doesn't-
Adriane takes a few deep breathes, eyes glazing over to the odds station. When it is fully running and operational, starting tonight after the scores are revealed and she's back in the District 1 apartment floor, Capitolites and other officials will be able to go up to the kiosk of choice and put in their slot for who they believe will be the victor of the Games. Each Capitolite is given a vote a day, and the odds will go on the board, to be calculated. They are in numerical district order, Adriane smirking to herself at seeing the numbers.
Cecelia Blackstone: 400-1
Catalus Drachma: 25-1
Portia Beninblade: 40-1
Magnus Winterthorn: 15-1
Vesuvia Vocanova: 10-1
Jasper Overheart: 25-1
Diana Kratovska: 5-1
Orion Maythorpe: 10-1
Kileigh Katsaras: 250-1
Zachary Edison: 200-1
Porscha Watanabe: 100-1
Pierce Alversway: 375-1
Nevaeh Davoli: 100-1
Sylvan Adello: 250-1
Poem Cavalli: 450-1
Niklaus Peverell: 300-1
Camilla Rodriguez: 100-1
Gemini Lennox: 300-1
Nokomis Yanaba: 95-1
Calen Kinegrove: 150-1
Cassiopeia Grey: 80-1
Dill Waylon: 250-1
Kai'sa Shadow: 300-1
Ramses Boskov: 105-1
Adriane looks over the numbers again, having yet to cast her vote. Sponsoring will also be able to be allocated at these kiosks too, though she isn't fully certain what that entails, anticipating that Nyria, the assistant to Cain Passionia on the Head Gamemaker team will give them a lecture on it, for that is where the escorts will be during the Games… at the kiosks, running in numbers and dealing with people, and Adriane does not have enough painkillers on board for any of this bullshit.
She rubs a line in her forehead, along the crease, seeing of the numbers and smirking at the impossibility of these few odds. She knows it is too early to assume any one person will win the Games, but she knows that there is as also a point to cross some names off the list without seeing their training score or their interview or… well, anything.
Adriane looks over at her dissenters, which would be every escort amassed with her today under the hot Capitol sun, no matter what any of them say, no matter what sweet words of poison spill out of their mouths. She grins to herself again.
Nothing will take this moment away from her; someone will have to pry it out of her cold, dead grip, a grip stone cold, the way Catalus Drachma's grip is when he lunges for her in that hearse, a scream getting stuck halfway through.
The Games are just getting started, and Adriane Lantham has a front row ticket.
Orion Maythorpe: District 4 Male P.O.V (18)
The taste of salt is in the back of his throat, a sea spray in liquidous white foam grinding into his gums and coating his teeth, chlorine in his ears and spilling out of his nose, coughing up half of the Atlantic Ocean while he hangs onto the sand of the beach, fingers curled into brown and black dirt like the beating heart of his inside a cage of ribs, sweaty hair plastered into his forehead. Exertions, exertions, exertions, and this is why he volunteers, to exert himself. To show he is capable, and maybe give a gigantic middle finger to his parents in the process, and Alistair will stop needing to feel so remorseful and mourning when locked behind the gates of Purgatory.
"I am doing it to honor you…" Orion whispers to himself, into the apple he is currently peeling, thinking of dropping the skin on Diana's head, who hasn't even looked at him since he comes back to the floor late last night, the collar of his dress shirt that he changes into a bit unfurled with her pointed stare. Orion blushes sixteen shades of fuchsia on his cheeks, though he swears nothing happened; he needed to change his clothes, so he didn't smell like the Capitol.
"You're honoring me?" Alistair's voice rides the wind again, Orion closing his eyes and pressing his thumbs against the side of his head, the agony of hearing his voice all the time starting to finally build like an invisible pressure on his eyes. "Orion, if you wanted to honor me, you- you wouldn't have-"
"Shut up… Orion hisses suddenly, setting the apple down, and the knife he is using to slice the fruit, that making Diana look at him from her breakfast back at the table, Wyvern reading yet again another Capitol newspaper, hardly bothered by the noise. "Shut up," the boy from Four tells himself. "You don't get to question me like that. I did it and I am here, and I have to commit."
"Like how you commit to that kid from Twelve? What's his name, Ryan?"
"Ramses…" Orion cannot stop the shame from creeping into his tone of voice, pulling at his sleeves of his training uniform. He literally does nothing except pull the kid out of the pool after seeing him fall in. Because he is a good person, someone who does not like seeing the smaller man get crushed beneath the leather heel. If that makes him weak, then so be it, right? He knows Diana certainly thinks it from the way Wyvern surprises him late last night as he's brushing his teeth.
It scares him half to death, seeing the escort just appear in the mirror reflection, almost as if it is Alistair coming back to kill him for cheating on the guy that he didn't even love, as there's never been anything there, nothing there, nothing there-
"She replaced you," Wyvern tells him, rather off the cuff, with Diana sound asleep across the hall.
Orion gags on the minty taste of the toothpaste and sets it down into the sink, some of it dribbling down his chin in another seafoam green tide. Home. Home. Home. The shores Orion tries drowning himself in, the shores he wants to show Ramses someday, a promise he makes, that the kid, if he were to win, which means Orion would die, could see potentially. Learn how to not be afraid of the water.
He isn't afraid of the water. He isn't afraid of Diana. He isn't afraid of judgement from the others, though it certainly gets annoying. Orion is terrified of the dogs that leave the marks on his legs, of all of this being for nothing, of Alistair-
"Pardon?" Orion catches his breath, wiping at the back of his mouth. "What do you mean?"
"She replaced you with Catalus Drachma and Magnus Winterthorn," the older man grimaces, though he swears there's a tinge of amusement in his words at this, Orion setting his arms down on the sink to balance himself from tipping over. Is it betrayal? They never shook on hands on officially being a team, but being sold up the river for being selfless, that is something he has never seen before, it hitting him like a punch to the gut.
How do you perform your best when the carpet has been ripped out from under you? Orion doesn't have an answer to it, and he'd ask Diana that if he were able to focus. He scoffs to himself, there behind the counter, while slicing the apple. Of course. That is why she gets upset when he asks her about spending time with the Winterthorn kid, or why he sees his district partner look at Catalus up and down like some prized horse… people she thinks she can ride to victory. Twist around a finger until she slices the femoral artery open.
"I'd like to see her try and slice me open," he thinks to himself somewhat confidently as he sits down with his glass of freshly squeezed apple juice. Apparently all the Avoxes on all the floors are needed in the basement in the training center to get the waiting room up to par, and some other business deals needed by the Head Gamemaker, but Orion doesn't care. He can make his own juice, despite his parents always pushing him away from the work.
Privilege, he supposes, is what he'd call it. Not just in being rich, but the privilege of even being considered strong enough to ally with in an arena or a deathmatch. The thought hits him with stunning clarity as he sits down and takes a sip of his apple juice, almost spitting onto Wyvern's chiffon suit at the realization… they do enter the arena tomorrow. It is the third day of "training" though Orion is confused on why it is called that as he won't be learning any new skills for sure. Tomorrow. In an arena. Killing others. Potentially dying.
He all of a sudden doesn't feel very hungry, Orion pushing his plate away from him despite it being stacked high with food. Diana looks over at him, this time a bit concernedly, though there is no emotion in her eyes. Stalwart and cold, the way he'd expect her to be, but it isn't impressing him, nor is it intimidating him anymore. It did, at one point, but instead all he feels is warmth at the broken boy from Twelve that he speaks to last night instead, wrapped up in that blue towel.
Ramses Boskov, a person he has never met before, and unlike anyone Orion knows he'll ever meet again. Caring, ambitious – Alistair is ambitious… was, Orion corrects himself – and one not afraid to say what they want. Someone who wanted him to be an ally, Orion choking on the word in surprise, the glass of water clenched between his fingers. He saved the guy's life, yes, but no one else would have and-
Diana clears her throat, pushing her orange slice to the side and taking a sip of her orange juice, Orion offering to make it himself for her, as there's no reason for him to be openly hostile to her, but she simply recoils away from the touch, eyes flickering barely over his chest, making him feel suddenly naked that he foregoes the offer altogether to do his apple juice.
"So… I heard through the grapevine that you had somewhere to be," she tells Wyvern rather pointedly. "Why aren't you there?"
"You wish I wasn't here, Diana?" Wyvern asks, pulling his spectacles – Orion is sick and tired of the man constantly, constantly correcting him on that. Just call them glasses and drop the quasi-pretentious bullshit – down his nose and setting the paper down. "I mean-"
"No, no, just curious," Diana is quick to override that, Orion raising an eyebrow and taking a nibble out of his toast. Ramses likes toast, he realizes, and Orion never really eats carbs… he looks down at the slice of bread and sets it down on the outer rim of his plate, frowning. What is happening to him? How is some guy from Twelve will sit in his thoughts like some ant crawling all over his brain.
Wyvern closes his paper and finishes buttering the side of his biscuit exposed in the sunlight, flaky crust, or dead skin, as that is what Orion's mind thinks of immediately when scrubbing the chlorine off of his body in the 12's showers, and- he stops the thought. Nothing happened. Nothing happened, even if Ramses's hands were on his shoulders and-
Nothing happened.
"President Israel wanted to get the Odds Station up and off the ground," he turns around to face the blinds. "You can see it out of the window since we're a bit high enough, and if we were to be on a different floor, say Twelve's," Wyvern winks at Orion, the kid's face blanching and Orion turns into his glass of apple juice, suddenly fascinated by the straw, "You'd get a great shot of it."
"But why aren't you there? You're here, instead," Diana continues speaking, Orion about to reach across the table and box her in the ear. Who cares why he is still with them? For all he knows, the elevators stopped working. Who cares.
"I don't want to be there," the older man sits up abruptly, the bit of warmth in his voice flickering out, a harsh storm swallowing a seafaring ship, a cold chill sliding over Orion's body, he seeing Diana tense and curl her hand around the knife used to cut through her hand steak. "They aren't my colleagues and all they are going to do is bitch and complain about the jobs they don't want to have and how they don't care about you guys," he rubs the bridge between his eyes. "But I do, and I am not going to let you two die because I didn't do my job of preparing you for what is to come," he pushes his spectacles back up, Orion seeing the grandfather feel slip back in, the tension lifting and sliding into the margarine. "I assume you know what today is, correct?"
"Private Sessions," Orion says, voice hardening. "Performing in front of Cain Passionia and his group of lab coat minions to determine if we're worthy or not."
"And tonight?"
"Interviews with Richmond Anvil," Diana runs a finger along the tablecloth. "I am not scared of the session today; I know I'll do great. I am nervous about the interviews though."
"You'll do fine," Orion waves away the concern dismissively. That is the one thing he can attribute to his family, being from the Maythorpe's, and having Alistair by his side, and having Ramses up there on the couch to hear his problems muttered into the shower granite, though nothing happened… he is comfortable speaking in front of a crowd.
Lie a bit. Pretend a bit. Tell zero pieces of the truth… Orion thinks he can do this.
"While all the escorts are down there," Wyvern turns his head and points down to the Capitol streets, sunlight flickering through the curtains on their breakfast, "Abandoning and making the other twenty-two of you kids feel even more nervous and hopeless, you're up here, getting coached… and I wouldn't have it any other way…"
Orion sees a rare, oh so rare smile seem to slip out of Diana's defenses, she smirking to herself as she finishes her glass of orange juice, Orion doing likewise to his own, though he keeps a glance at her while doing so. Let her think she will be safe with Catalus and Magnus, two who seem closer to each other than her if she is cognizant and smart enough to realize that.
Let her go about the arena, around the Games trying to win, while Orion watches from afar, with Ramses hand-in-hand – nothing is fucking happening, Orion pounds his fist into the nightstand at the jeering from the walls, Alistair's ghost perched at the foot of the bed, neck hanging out and spilling blood and taunting.
"You have a real chance," Wyvern says, and he's smiling, the old man is genuinely smiling. "And I'll be damned if I let that chance simmer to my own ego."
Orion grins back, and Diana smiles too, he focusing on his heartbeat.
He has a chance, he has a real good chance, and nothing, not even Ramses Boskov who invades his thoughts with showers and pieces of toast and supple fingers against his shoulder blades on cool porcelain, will get in the way of that.
Porscha Watanabe: District 6 Female P.O.V (16)
He's staring. Good. She likes when someone looks at her in that manner, a bit provocative, perplexed, completely upset, and most of all, at the bottom of the barrel, run out and dried with a napkin, is confused. Dampness sits on Pierce's forehead as he looks at Porscha with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, and he is not the only one, but she tells him early in the morning to go down to the Training Center before her as she has a surprise to show him. It isn't a cake or anything to spend money on, but it is still a surprise at its very essence, at the core of its nature.
She might as well go out with a bang, go all out, and see what people think, which currently is Pierce's eyebrows raised a few inches above his eye sockets. "You shaved your head?" he asks her with a frown, though there seems to be an added sense of being impressed behind it. "That was the loud noise I heard this morning?"
"Yeah," Porscha grins to herself from ear to ear, trying to look away from the shocked expressions on Cecelia Blackstone and Nevaeh Davoli's faces, though it might be due to them having long hair like hers that Porscha simply cuts away without a second thought. She sees the scissors, the electric razor, and goes ham to the side of her head. "Well, only have of it, but yes…"
"And the tattoos?" Pierce asks, pointing a finger and tracing over a single line of ink that extends from behind Porscha's earlobe and runs to the back of her skull, then straight down through her shirt. Porscha squirms away from the touch, knocking away the hand with a grimace. They are not tattoos, and she has an Avox do it, bent over the toilet to puke from the sharp stencil feeling in her neck – there may be a vodka stinger in her too, raiding 12's cabinet to dance with Kai'sa on the roof – but it will most likely run out the next time she takes a shower, which will be for tonight with interviews with Richmond Anvil. It is an ivy leaf, combining that with a dancer spinning back and forth, Porscha making sure the Avox, though she doesn't learn their name, gets the hair color of Kai'sa's. Just because. She wants to make a statement.
The daughter of a nation's traitor, as most of these people here feel about her from the stares she sees Jasper Overheart or Ramses Boskov give her as an indicator, coupled with an openly rebellious daughter who twirls in black robes and feathers and lace yanking her chin up to the heavens… Porscha wants to stand united with her.
"Just a random design."
"That- that looks like me…" comes Kai'sa's voice out of the bleak darkness, which has Porscha grin and turn around to face her dancing partner. Ethereal in her training uniform, brilliant and beautiful like a shining sun, and all Porscha can think about is the way their hands interline with each other, getting close to the forcefield and tipping over.
"That's because it is you."
"You- you tattooed me on the back of your head?" Kai'sa frowns, standing in front of her with her arms crossed, moving narrowly out of the way from a Portia Beninblade who pushes her into a bench to go take her seat at the head of the room, Magnus Winterthorn, and his shit eating grin not far behind, following her, as if he is teasing her about something.
Porscha can feel the tension bubbling in the room, like the band she tugs on to create definition and muscular resistance in her arms as she tugs, tugs, and tugs, feeling the tear on her soul while Datsun barks up the temperature of napalm, and that sienna door burns down to the ground and- she simply blinks into a smile at the girl's more confused look.
"Do you not like it?" Porscha asks, her tilting her head to the side. "After our conversation last night I figured I could give a big middle finger to my father, who I know he'll be watching," she shimmies her shoulders through the outfit, Pierce rolling his eyes and sitting down, returning to count something on his fingers. Zachary and Kileigh, the pair from Five, have moved to the opposite side of the room the moment she and Pierce entered, though at the very least, it is Zachary Edison who is able to maintain eye contact with her.
"I think it looks pretty terrible," comments Ramses Boskov, seemingly out of the blue, who is just behind his district partner, dark and wiry body swathed up in white gauze, a water bottle clenched in his hands. Again. Again. Again. Porscha can hear her dance instructor telling her that one word, thinking it is a magic word. She hears it and snaps into rhythm, finding a place in her heart to lock away those particular syllables, a combination of wizardry and voodoo. Again. Again. Again. He purses his lips, seeing the design. "Why… why is Kai'sa's name written-"
Porscha clamps her hand down on the back of her neck, turning so she's leaning against the wall. Kai'sa pushes her district partner over some, eyes flashing an apology that has the girl from 12's lips buckle some, as if she is rearing back to get smacked and is prepping the force, yet there's no breaking of the bow. Porscha combs a hand through the other side of her head, the non-shaved one. "It's good to see you too, Ramses," she smirks. "Surprised to see you're able to stand upright after Maythorpe gave you a good fuck."
"Porscha!" Kai'sa blurts out, face turning tomato red and putting her face in her hands. Pierce lets out a choke, turning away to stare at the girl and boy from Four talk in hushed voices on their pew, but Porscha is more focused on how Ramses's face darkens in fury, unavoidably evil, but Porscha knows she's right.
The first thing he did when entering the room is make eye-contact with Orion. If that does not spell the recipe for some sort of less wholesome interaction, then she doesn't know social cues anymore.
Social cues, Porsche.
"Like the ones that made you go and get inked up and-" a voice in her head tells her, but it sounds like Ramses's indignant tone as he takes a step closer to her, eyes narrowed in, and Kai'sa is about to step in between them and block them off, Porscha making the movement so she is nose to nose with Ramses. Handsome, but not her type. She doesn't like men whose egos are larger than their packages.
"You better watch your tongue, Watanabe," he hisses. "You think you might be safe because of your father and that you're in the Capitol and-"
"I hate my father, you idiot, if you were to ever pay attention to any of the conversations Kai'sa and I have, but go off, fine by me," she tells him, placing a foot of hers on his. While she gets indignant every time Pierce brings up the moment in the market, something she wants to move past, she decides to unbury the past. The past of a week. "I killed someone the day before I was reaped."
"Bluffing," Ramses says, eyes narrowed.
No.
No she is not.
While stunned and shocked out of her mind, Porscha will not forget the way the man's face is cratered in, a hole that could be turned into a water fountain, one where Avoxes can stick their fingers in the blood to draw flower designs on the chalkboards in her father's study… the way the buddies of the attacker run away and into the arms of a Peacekeeper's touch. That is not to say she isn't shaking and dropping the piece of spoiled meat onto the ground as fast as she can, seeing it roll away from her, a sheen of ice turned into cherry slush, marring dark bits of bone and flesh and copper droplets onto the sidewalk.
It might have rained that night, but all Porscha can remember is the vacant stare in the man's eyes, thinking he has targeted weak prey and got someone to devour in his spider's web. She should've just kneed him hard in the crotch with a pointed foot, prompting it up his ass as an added note of sweetness, but what done is done.
"Not bluffing…" Kai'sa mutters, Ramses looking over at his district partner with parted lips. Porscha turns likewise, the girl's face devoid of color, eyes pale spheres floating around in the darkness as the last few pairs of tributes enter the holding room from the elevators, Catalus Drachma going to stand right next to Magnus and Diana, or how Cassiopeia Grey looks partially flustered, hair blown back, face red. No one is as pale as Kai'sa is in this moment, she wanting to reach out and place a hand on her shoulder. "She's not bluffing, Ramses. Leg of lamb caved the guy's head in…"
Ramses looks back, this time eyebrows piqued, but Porscha is already elbowing him in the ribs, gripping his left hand and tugging it close to her. "I didn't ask for your opinion, you know," she tells him. "My father thought he could give me his opinion when I didn't ask him for it, and it led to me second-guessing every decision I ever made, as I couldn't get his tone out of my head. Now do me a favor," she presses her nails into his palm. "Go fuck off and talk to your husband, Drowning,"
It is a nickname she comes up with on the rooftop, Kai'sa playing and braiding her hair with a gentle hand on the side of her face after they have danced themselves into exhaustion, Porscha's chest rising and falling with the blowing of the breeze, smiling lightly. Her words pass her lips, Ramses's face falling soft, she realizing with sharp clarity that he has fingers missing on a hand, slipping out of his grasp, she now making the same expression he does.
"Sorry…" he mutters, retracting himself from her presence, going to slink onto the District 12 bench, as Porscha hears a woman's voice speaking over the speakers embedded into the ceiling, the room going quiet while she sees Ramses walk away, Kai'sa shaking her head with lips pressed firmly into each other while she goes after her district partner.
Porscha cannot lie and say she doesn't feel betrayed, by seeing Kai'sa walk away, but there is no longer any time left to sit there and dwell. She listens to the recording again, it clearly being one by the crispness of the audio and the way there are no stuttering or pauses taking place. She sits down on the bench next to Pierce, who is looking at a corner on the wall, she matching his gaze there.
"Nice job handling that one," he tells her.
She elbows him in the ribs again. "Oh, shut it Alversway," rolling her eyes. "At least I didn't try to strangle someone after losing a game." He can say sorry all he wants about it, but it is still stupid. The odd numbered districts have their black benches aligned on the right side of the room, the even numbered districts on the left side, Porscha looking down at Kai'sa, who is not looking back at her, but instead crouched against Ramses, arm around his shoulder.
She hates to say it, but she thought, if their conversation is anything to go by, that Kai'sa Shadow is the weak one… yet she's the pillar of support?
The sessions are starting now, each tribute will get three to five minutes to show off their skills, having to at the very least take up three of those minutes. Boys then girls… marking Catalus Drachma first in district order, Kai'sa last… Porscha licking her lips with a frown.
She is in the middle, and she has to impress, for she doesn't want to die.
Dying will ruin everything, for she'll never get to spit on her father's grave if she goes before him, as she watches the cinders burn down that sienna colored door one more time in her awoken dreams.
Magnus Winterthorn: District 2 Male P.O.V (18)
While he has never shown an aptitude for nervousness, Magnus admits that this is a different sort of nervousness. It doesn't build in his stomach, like that would of having to prepare for a test – but this is a test, so his mind is just rambling at this point, but Magnus isn't focused, biting away the cuticles and going down to the nub, to the point where Portia is looking at him with concern, but she then remembers she is supposed to be hating him and looks away – but it starts in his ankles. He feels it flowing through him like rising lava, a volcano threatening to erupt.
Staying on Diana's floor passing the bottle around – he wonders how many of them, the tributes, all drink now that they're away from their parents. Do they have something to prove? – is good fun, seeing Diana's more tense shoulders fall lax into the leather of the couch, Catalus laughing and looking for a deck of cards, that getting Magnus to join him on the carpeted floors. Two's is tile, he notices the detail while having his lips engorge around the skinny entrance of the whiskey bottle, he coughing away baubles in his chest while settling it down.
Allies. These are his allies, now. New soldiers to look after and protect, for a good soldier follows orders and keeps his unit all lined up like ducks in a row. He sees, however, that Diana just assumes she'll be running the show. Something about having the highest odds, she mentioning that to them when they're amassed in the front of the waiting room just a few moments ago before Catalus is called into the Center to do his performance for the Head Gamemaker.
Magnus hates the title. Why do the have to erase the history? Everyone knows it is the Vice President monitoring these sessions, a man he wouldn't mind firing an arrow or two at, just to show why someone does not willingly invite the lion into the lamb's den, but Magnus knows it is just pretentious of him to view himself in that manner. He might not be a roaring lion with a golden mane of fire – neither is Diana or Catalus for that matter, or any of the other hotshots he sees, for no matter how humble Jasper or Orion or Vesuvia might claim themselves to be, they're just as cocky and confident in themselves as he'd believe them to be – but he is no lamb who will lie down in a puddle of his making while Vice President Cain Passionia approaches with the tranquilizer gun in his hand.
Five-minute sessions to prove your mettle and worth and why you do not deserve to die. Magnus hits the thought going full speed into a wall as he looks at Diana and Catalus's faces, cheeks flushed from the alcohol, that they will be dead indeed. He has to look at it in a battleground perspective to be able to wrap himself around the thought. He is no self-sacrificing man, not someone to go down with his ship, as there are other idiotic, bleeding hearts like that in the world. A man of morals and to his honor and his word, but Magnus prefers his beating bloodstream over a stranger's. He needs their aim to be good, that they have his back, and then he will shake the deal.
He knows Catalus will, seeing the man for what he is, earnest and honest, but Diana? He's not sure yet, ball is in her court. Magnus is confident they will all do a decent job in their scores, and he knows he is going to aim high, as Merida tells them to make an impression, Portia snorting into her coffee.
"They aren't going to give you a high score just because you say you love the Capitol," he tells her, tone full of snark and he smiles back at her full of teeth, waiting to bite her exposed neck.
"Says who?" she tells him, smirking smugly into her mug. What a waste of coffee it would be if it were to spill all over her jumper and athletic wear.
Cecelia has just been called in, having sat by herself, Magnus wondering why until Catalus mentions that he just hasn't gotten around to telling her that he won't be allies with her in the arena. It shocks him, Magnus, to say the least. Not that he thinks Cecelia needs to be a part of their alliance, for every platoon has their weak members and their weak footers who'll only slow them down as they slug through the marshes, but someone needs to be told to their face that they're a detrimental addition to the effort instead of being cut at the last second. Magnus would place a hand on her shoulder and tell her already if she had been his district partner, but Portia can see it on his face at breakfast when he joins them.
"I hope Diana cuts off your dick," Portia tells him, and while it is a joke that has him laugh, cause Magnus just wants to see that blonde haired archer even attempt to do something of that caliber, he can see the crackling electricity behind his district partner's stare, even with Merida choking on her cup of water that has a few Avoxes save their escort from an early grave.
A few more minutes pass by when the female announcer on the overhead speaker intones, Magnus Winterthorn, he leaping to his feet, eager to get ready. A few of the other tributes down the line look up at him, expectancy written on their faces, but Magnus keeps his stare hard and only focused on the doorway. He goes to take a step forward when Portia reaches out and touches him on the wrist.
He turns around, first instinct to leap away from her and hiss like some trapped snake, but there's… warmth on her face, even something akin to a smile. Huh, who would've guessed that statues can smile.
"Good luck," she says, redrawing her arm. "Don't do to well of course, cause then that means the hype train can only trash and burn faster and faster, but don't do so bad you sully the District 2 name cause it drags me down too."
"Fat chance, Beninblade," he snarks back at her, she frowning, but doesn't say anything as Magnus walks into the Training Center, the doorway shutting behind him, the golden elevator stuck silent in the corner.
The center is empty save for three or four head trainers at the weapons racks, a lot of the tools pulled closer to the center save for a few things that cannot be moved, like the rope course. Magnus remembers the ache he felt in his muscles, the way he tugs on the rope wall and nearly falls when his foot slips, but he continues and makes it over and shimmies down the other side. He doesn't do some special flip like Cassiopeia or anything, for he isn't flexible enough or tiny like that, but regardless…
Magnus steps into the center of the room, the door slamming shut behind him, he looking back at the noise and flinching when it echoes around the room. There is Cain and a woman he does not recognize sitting up at the top of the partition floor, he seeing that the president is absent among them, and there are Avoxes and other Capitol officials he can assume, from the way they dress. He stands there, arms behind his back, hands gripping his wrists and pushing down on pressure points.
"Magnus Winterthorn, District 2," he says aloud, as per the instructions of the woman's voice. Walk in, announce yourself, the countdown will initiate, and then five minutes to prove yourself.
Cain takes a sip of water from the glass resting next to him, a clipboard in his hand, while the beautiful Mediterranean woman has a laptop nestled on a desk, she typing away with glasses perched on top of her head, Magnus all of a sudden feeling very noticed, as every pair of eyes is on him in the room.
Getting laughed at, out of the registering office for the war, shame burning on his cheeks as his face flushes red, stomach acid churning in angry waves when he thinks about the moment, and how today, they will not turn him away. They will see him as the first victor, to let them all see that they have viewed the Winterthorn specialty all wrong. He doesn't prepare what he says to Merida when she calls him up on stage after he volunteers, Magnus wiping away the lines of worry on his brow as he steps over to the archery station.
It is a gun he feels most comfortable with, but as when Gemini Lennox asks President Israel about the absence of automatic rifles and other guns, he knows that this will not be a display where he can show his shooting accuracy… bows being the next best thing. Diana has talked about archery too, Catalus's cheeks shining with fervor as he has no idea what he wants to do, but if they all do archery, well…
Magnus plucks the bow off of the stand, swinging an arrow back and forth in between his fingers. The dummies are blue this time, which should resonate with the blue sort of blood spilling all over the linoleum floor. He draws the bowstring back, keeping it away from his nose before he slices it off, lining up at the target. Diana gives him a few tips, such as relaxing his bow arm, to stop distending his neck…
He takes a deep breath, imagining what Portia is going to think when he scores so high it leaves her eating dust, a smile on his face when he releases. The arrow slices through the left arm of the dummy, it clunking off while the arrow flies into the wall, cerulean colored blood spilling out into a pool. He switches angles and gets a shot in the leg, that has the dummy tipping over. As it falls over, slowly, Magnus gets a third arrow, it taking the dummy's head clean off.
Being a sharpshooter has its perks, Magnus supposes, he lowering the bow with a smirk, before setting it back down on the rack. Two minutes have passed, from what the countdown clock shows him, but as he makes his way to go over to the next station, that being the rope wall he'll climb over, Cain's voice echoes against the blue matted walls.
"Mr. Winterthorn, if you may indulge me, what is it you used to do before this?" the vice president asks him, Magnus pausing in his stop, muscles tensing up, jaw locking. Did… did that sewer rat just speak to him? He looks back in confusion, Cain setting down his notepad. "Did you have a job?"
He can lie, as he knows Portia is rather good at lying and staying buddy, buddy with Merida at dinner. He can lie, save his ass… or… Magnus only knows how to tell the truth, honest to a fault.
"I fought," he says, hoping it is cryptic enough. "Don't ask me more… you won't like the answers…"
"Fought, Mr. Winterthorn?" Cain continues pressuring him, gentle, voice gentle but there is a solidified presence in his eyes that has Magnus pulling at his collar. "How so?"
"I-" he hears the sounds of battle echo around the chamber, bullets whizzing by, the din of napalm strikers and the Watanabe hovercraft force, or the buzzing of a golden tracker jacker that lands on his gloved hand, Magnus trying to shoo it away without alerting the entire battalion into a panic and- "For the rebel army, from Two, sir," he says, minding his manners. "I fought you. And evidently, lost…"
Cain narrows his eyes at him, but Magnus doesn't flinch or move from his spot. "So you lose the war, Mr. Winterthorn, and you think you can win the Hunger Games? Why did you volunteer?"
Magnus has been waiting for someone to ask him this question from the moment he does it, his answer off his tongue in a heartbeat.
"I love battle, and this looks like it'll just be another fucked up battle, Vice President Sir," he tells him, and then, with a smile on his face, as he goes back to grab the bow and notch an arrow into place. "I saved someone's life, and I was the most capable one to do it..."
To make his point proven, Magnus takes another shot.
Bulls-eye.
A Winterthorn doesn't miss his mark.
Camilla Rodriguez: District 9 Female P.O.V (17)
The waiting is killing her, positively. She feels it building on her sternum, this pressure that won't go away as it curves into her ribcage, seeing person after person get called into the room, under the electronic voice coming out of the loudspeaker, never to return. It is as almost as if they are getting whisked away into the world of linoleum and killed, which is why they do not come back. Camilla's heartbeat roars in her chest at the pretense, just for a second, as she is getting up and pressing an ear to the wall, trying to see if she hears the screams of Sylvan Adello or not riding the wind, but there's just the din of the air conditioning, the sound of Dill Waylon coughing, and the fact that she feels nine pairs of eyes on her as she turns back around. Gemini is looking away, but Nokomis is frowning while Calen has an eyebrow raised.
Camilla looks over at the pair from Eight, Niklaus seemingly on the brink of exhaustion as he leans forward and back on his stoop, Poem having to push him back against the wall, so he doesn't fall onto the floor, her nose buried in some book with a pencil in her hands as she sketches, sketches, sketches away. Camilla smiles sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears as a blush rises to her face. All these eyes… all this attention. It makes her swallow a globule of fear back into her stomach as she takes her seat, Gemini simply looking at her before returning to sitting with his eyes closed.
Once the chatty Cathy's of Districts 1-4 left the room, leaving the 'outer district' kids as Camilla hears them referenced by a few of the escorts in the morning when she arrives, the collected gaggle of hens and peacocks and other barnyard animals scurrying away to the outside, the room has gone quiet. Save for Porscha and Kai'sa talking to one another, or the occasional sweet comment Nokomis makes on Calen's… strokes – Camilla is not engaging with that in the slightest – it is complete silence. She longs for the outside, feeling the choking air of the Capitol suffocate her into silence, wanting to taste the hint of whiskey that seems to permeate the amber lit skies of District 9. Camilla frowns to herself while sitting down, about the smell of whiskey and alcohol in the morning. What an odd memory to have, as she sits in a silent room that smells of formaldehyde and cheap plastic.
Camilla runs a hand over her right shoulder, it also being extremely cold, her body shivering. It did not feel cold when she steps into the room with Gemini shortly behind her, he needing to raid the liquor cabinet before Clair finds out. She is raising an eyebrow and frowning, Camilla about to chide him that being completely intoxicated and wasted in the presence of the very men and women who decide their fates doesn't sound like a smart idea, but he snaps his head at her and glares… it is enough for her to go early.
"Why are you getting wasted now?" she asks him, frowning, arms crossed over each other, almost as if she is scolding Millet for sneaking into the cookie jar after dinner when Mom and Dad swore 'no sweets.'
"If I can't use my morphine, then we gotta use something else," he replies back, cheekily grinning to himself, taking out a bottle of chilled liquor, though Camilla doesn't get a good look at it, "And besides, there's no way I'm going to the session sober if I can help it."
She doesn't ask how many drinks he's had, as Gemini only arrives maybe two or three minutes right after she does, being one of the first ones, she then getting pushed aside by Poem, she hitting her head on the wall. She nearly growls out after the girl from Eight, who is actually getting called into the Training Room now, for Nevaeh has just gone, and Niklaus enters just a few minutes into where his session is actually supposed to start. Camilla tastes copper in the backsplash of her mouth, saliva and spit and blood mingling together as she swallows and wipes at the back of her mouth.
The feel of plastic in her mouth, a mouth guard as Millet charges at her, all the furniture moved back while her father eggs them on. He doesn't want weak children; children aren't meant to be weak and certainly not a Rodriguez. Camilla can still feel her father's hand on her shoulder, or how her mother squawks in the kitchen about how horrible of a life lesson that is, but she smiles back, puts on the boxing glove, and makes sure to smash her fist into Millet's face a little bit harder when the encouragement is behind it.
Immediately, however, Camilla regrets the action from the way Millet bursts into tears as blood flows free, as if someone had cut their hand on a scythe and mishandled it, seeing streams of vermillion bleed into the spilled milk carton that her mother drops at the sight of an injured Rodriguez child. Camilla apologizes, apologizes, and apologizes but Millet doesn't look at her for another three weeks after that.
Three weeks later their father is killed, from what she can recall in the timeline in her head, if that is even true. Millet speaks to her again, but not before punching her back in the nose. The feeling of being pressed into the wall, or the tight plastic keeping her teeth yoked in a ringlet of sky blue from getting punched in the face… on and on she fights with her brother, smirking at the boys from school in the wrestling club if they wish to let Camilla take a try.
"You're too girly for us," one of the guys says.
She knees him so hard in the crotch that it might be in his best interest to volunteer for the Games when they happen again next year. Camilla squeezes her eyes shut at the memory, as Millet doesn't smile when she tells him the news, but instead frowns.
"Dad didn't tell us that our strengths also hurt people too, Cammie," she's corrected, by someone all the wiser than her, so much wiser in his years of youth while she sits down with the pail of grain, her heart falling and shattering in the abyss of wrong and recognition. "He called you girly, so you punch him in the dick?"
It isn't funny when he says it, but it is. Camilla strikes a smile to herself when the announcer calls Gemini's name, his eyes shooting open and he standing up immediately.
"Good luck," she tells him, mind immediately going to last night. She will have to kill him if she wants to escape the arena. Someone will have to kill Nokomis if she wants to escape the arena. She has someone who needs her back home, working in the harsh sun and the violent skies torn asunder by scarlet bombs and smoke filled with sulfur. What does Gemini have? She is certain it amounts of mostly nothing, though she'll never tell him that.
"Yeah, you too," he mumbles back at her, she frowning immediately, wanting to reach out and touch his hand, yet she doesn't. That connection, that warm connection she feels to him on the train and in the chariot… where has it gone? Has it vanished into the blue of her bloodstream, never to appear again no matter how hard she begs? It's what Gemini tells her last night, after Nokomis returns to her own floor above them, the golden spotlights washing his face in a halcyon bath… "I saw you as the colors of the night sky," he whispers to her, a hand on her shoulder. "You're just smoldering gray now, Camilla Rodriguez…" and he leaves to go to bed, Camilla watching him leave, as she does right now seeing his frail body walk into the training center.
Nokomis smiles at her, scooting over off of her bench to squeeze her hand, Camilla's heart beating in her chest to the tempo of a snare drum, the snare drum scream of Millet's nightmares as a woman on fire charging into his bedroom… she sits there with her newfound ally, unable to believe she managed to acquire someone just by asking her, though she'll get the chance to see why sometime later she figures.
She sits there in silence, as now Poem is gone without her muttering, and Cassiopeia standing up in a corner, making punching motions to an invisible target. Camilla's head perks up when her name echoes around the chamber, she getting to her feet, taking a few deep breathes, feeling Nokomis's fingers on her hand, in her wrist, thumbs digging into her pressure point and feeling her pulse. A tether. Keeping her connected, keeping her here.
Camilla walks through the gilded gate of heaven to see Cain, the Head Gamemaker, sitting there, smiling faintly with his clipboard, she wondering what Gemini must've done to make him smile, as she's always found him to be a prude sort of man.
She looks around the center, raising an eyebrow. What is there to do? What- what can she do?
Camilla finds her answer in the curved blade of a scythe, the dark leather digging into her palm as she faces a dummy. Think of the dummy like a blade of wheat, think of it as a job, think of it as killing the inanimate object that does not have sentience or life and does not speak. Cut. It. Down. She raises her hand and slices the scythe across the dummy's neck, grinning as congealed blood, fake and blue, spills out and the decapitated head slinks to the floor. She swings the scythe around a few more times, getting the use of it until she spots a trainer.
"You're on. Just think it's Millet," she coaches herself, heart still roaring in her chest. Camilla points at him, beckoning a finger, seeing the way the Head Gamemaker sits up silently, eyebrows risen. Oh, it's on.
The trainer is dressed in some sort of padded gear, Camilla figuring it being in case someone wishes to come at him swinging. Someone blows a whistle, she cracking her knuckles and her neck as she does it. She is no damsel in distress needing a hero to be saved, and if this is why she sees Gemini treating her demurely and full of distaste all of a sudden, she is going to put a stop to that if she has to.
Camilla yells excitedly at the trainer, which throws him off guard as she rushes at him. She figures that the plating is for him, not her, a hindrance to her she supposes, but she still manages to kick him in the chest, sending him back a few inches while he rushes at her and throws a punch. She dodges it, hooking her arm under his elbow and pushing back, causing him to slip.
He throws her a glare as Camilla drops to the floor with him, she kicking his legs out from underneath as she falls on top, trying to keep him pinned to the floor. Millet would spit in her face if she were to win quickly, but he didn't go out and try to beat up random boys like she would just to be noticed. A pretty face who punches back.
The man tries wiggling underneath her, but she places one hand on the pressure point just at his neck, smirking when his eyes go wide.
"Yield," she tells him. "Just yield and let me score well… please," Camilla feels herself begging, hoping to god she doesn't have to beg with some man who doesn't understand her or her station… she can feel this attention soaking into her shoulder blades, her heartbeat roaring in her eyes, a hint of panic and whiskey on her tongue.
He yields, thankfully, with a swallow and a fearful nod, Camilla letting him go and getting to her feet.
Take that, bullies and boys who believe Camilla Rodriguez can't stick to her own. She isn't sure if she should bow, but as she does, a loud buzzer sounds off from up on the Gamemaker stage, Cain checking some sort of watch on his arm, making a hurried motion with his hands.
Her session is over.
Camilla's fate is in his hands now.
Dill Waylon: District 11 Male P.O.V (16)
He does not know what is worse, the waiting or the fact that he is waiting in the coldest circle of Hell that the Capitol can find. Dill holds his knees to his chest, waiting, waiting, waiting, and wondering how it is going inside the room of doom. Well, that's what Cassiopeia claims it to be, a phrase he'll steal out of her vernacular if she doesn't mind, as it might as well be that, the Room of Doom. The lights swing back and forth above his head, as that is what he has been paying attention to when he sees Calen get called in for his private session after Camilla, his lips dry as he sees Calen look at the girl from Nine, a look of displeasure on his face.
It is strange being this close to this many people, awkward and terrifying at the same time, seeing their faces up close and personal, as Dill has been trying to stay away from everyone. Despite their stilled interactions at first, like wine gone bad and it bleeding into his gums with a sour taste on his tongue, Cassiopeia has rather leeched herself to him, not leaving him alone in the training center unless she wishes to try a new weapon she overhears Magnus Winterthorn talking about, but instead of tagging along to the District 2 soldier, Dill watches her struggle around a dummy.
She has an idea of what she wants to do, but he has no idea. No idea at all. Marlon suggests maybe throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks, but Dill doesn't find that very funny, personally. It is a matter of life and death, on how well this session goes, and as Calen leaves and vanishes behind the dark black gates that swing open via motion sensor, he wonders how everyone else has survived. He looks back at Cassiopeia, who is over in the corner, stretching. She has been moving around, unable to sit still as the minutes have gone by. They've been sitting in there for over an hour and a half now, it being a full two hours when they finally will get to see Kai'sa Shadow, said girl leaning on her district partner's shoulder, eyes closed and snoring lightly.
It is Ramses who is snoring loudly, Dill smirking at seeing the boy from Twelve all done up and bundled into himself. He's handsome, very, but not Dill's type he's afraid. They need about fifteen to thirty years on them, as there is something freeing, something releasing when he is lying next to an old crone with beads hanging off of sagging hands, or when there's the evident smell of rum on someone's breath when the man drags him in for a languid kiss. There are tears sometimes, as Dill crouches at the foot of their beds and cries, cries for hours on seeing the world tear his parents apart, but a Waylon in that household is not supposed to share their secrets. Share their feelings.
"Secrets?" Dill frowns to himself, looking at his father who has a wrench in his hand, tightening one of the bolts on their front door so a summer storm doesn't knock it in. "My feelings of emotion are a secret?"
"You already look like a girl, son," his father tells him, Dill's heart beating to the puncture of a needle sliding through cloth whilst knitting, oozing out copper onto his hands, and the feeling of tears on his cheeks. "I don't need you acting like one…"
Dill looks back over at Cassiopeia, smiling to himself faintly. Would his family like her? His family most likely would, bottled up anger and only expressing fury and disinterest at the things around her. His father would like her, he knows that for sure. She wouldn't be wasting away food, so they could know that they care. Dill hasn't had a full meal before arriving in the Capitol, not even with all of his suitors that see him. One of them is a Capitolite staying in a very nice home on the outer edge of the district, a neighborhood for the wealthy in Eleven, but Dill hears rumors that this place on the edge will be torn down and rebuilt for something called the Hunger Games. This is before the summers turn hot and the winters turn freezing, it is before he sees Emrick Israel with his gray wingtips on the side of his face speak in front of the nation about a lost war and an arena and dead children… sure enough, the home is torn down, the Capitolite he has grown so fond of is made to move back… there's a silk scarf thrown around his neck, the color of fresh youngblood orange, dripping off of his fingers and into the sand.
There may have been a chaste kiss pressed to his lips too, but Dill doesn't feel it when he rubs a finger over his face now. It is cold, cold due to the air conditioning of the room. Nokomis is called too, he looking at her and smiling softly, but she does not return the same gesture. Everyone is prickly, prickly to the touch, when he sees them, spiked rims of static causing him to take a step back.
"Why can't I eat this?" he asks one of them, a man who lasts at the speed of a hummingbird's wings when he puts out, the man making eggs and piling them onto a plate. When Dill reaches for the plate, the man takes it away faster than a strike of lightning, a telling expression on his face, Dill swallowing the displeasure that jostles his organs around, stomach acid splashing against stony cliffsides.
"You didn't say my name enough last night," the man tells him, swirling a glass of wine despite it literally being six in the morning by the evidence of the very few sparse lines of sunshine spilling into the bedroom, which bleeds out into the makeshift kitchen. "And besides, what will my friends think when they see my food all taken from the fridge? That I've grown fat? No… oh no…"
Dill leaves that room without a second thought. No goodbye kiss, no desire to see him again, and then there is the woman with violets in her hair and a stunning shade of green for her fingernails, Dill crumbling like a sandcastle into her open arms and her massage. He flinches as Cassiopeia sits back down, having stretched herself out enough, limber and about to kick ass he assumes, all the while he counts the seconds in his head when Nokomis will be finished with her session. He cannot sit here any longer, the anticipation killing him, threatening to claw out.
It is the only time he feels violent, when the man he had slept with the night before tells him he cannot eat with him. That there is a reputation to consider. Spoiled goods, he's told, with a hand curled around his waist. You are no longer ripe. You smell of acid and rot. Flesh and maggots, insects in the pulp, tainting you and your scent. You are disgusting and not worthy of my touch. I hear that there is a woman and a man, a couple, who deals with the undesirables like you, Dill Waylon. They grind them into a meat grinder and watch the mush spill out onto the sidewalk for kids to step in and slip on.
He nearly breaks the guy's nose, and when his mother and father ask him where he had been that night, since he didn't come home, and the little ones were worried, he feels rage bubble against his throat, a volcanic tide of fury as he turns around in the crook of the front door. "Out fucking living!" and it is the only time he raises his voice.
Dill jolts in place as he hears his name get called out by the automated vocal system. It chimes and echoes around the room, Cassiopeia looking at him with a soft smile, the noise awakening Kai'sa and Ramses out of their slumber, for they're to be soon after. His district partner doesn't say anything – frankly, he might piss his pants if someone were to say anything – and Dill gets to his feet. He debates on taking his shoes, as he's always found it a lot easier to run without his shoes on, to try and escape the mobs of people who want to know why he's the King… why is he so famous and popular when he does nothing?
The doors open for him and shut the second he passes the threshold, Dill taking his shoes off immediately. It is freeing, getting to see the open expanse of the center without the tributes cluttering it. Dill walks to the center of the room, surveying what there is to possibly do. Cain, the vice president, simply doesn't say anything, keeping an eye on him and a raised eyebrow, pen in hand, before nodding. The clock begins ticking, Dill in place… and he has no idea what to do.
He sees one of the trainers, someone he gets a bit close with over the last two days when Cassiopeia is off getting distracted by the next new shiny thing. The man has a cudgel in his hands, and a baton strapped to his waist. Dill grabs a pair of shoulder pads and takes his own club off the rack that an Avox hands him, their head down.
The two of them get onto the wrestling mat, it bouncy and light on his feet, Dill realizing that the tread of his shoes would more than likely debilitate him if anything. The woman, gorgeous – Dill wants to sleep with her, he doesn't care how shameless that sounds, as she is the most beautiful person he's ever seen – and next to Mr. Passionia, claps her hands. The trainer rushes at Dill without warning, catching him off guard with the lashing out.
Dill yelps and leaps back away from the strike, dodging to the side, his foot falling tilted over, he stumbling and falling down. He tucks his body into a roll, face flushing as he regains his footing, blowing a tuff of hair out of his eyes when the trainer swivels on him, bringing the club down again, Dill just barely blocking it and parrying with another strike. His voice catches him off guard again as he lifts his club to dodge another strike, the angle being off and he getting hit in the shoulder.
Dill grits his teeth as he's pushed back again some on the mat, bouncing in place to take his next strike. He's always been told how fast he is, slippery as an eel, when getting chased around a paramour's bed, away from their tickling hands, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead as his club hits the trainer's arm, a bit of brute force behind the swing. The trainer laughs out sweetly, the noise confusing to Dill as he has to be on the defense again.
He holds the club up as the trainer drops it and unlatches the baton from his side. It extends out from either end, silver in color, glowing a faint azure blue under the spotlights as he swings it back and forth. Dill's eyes widen out of shock, seeing the swirling staff get closer and closer to him. Dill clutches the club close to his chest, vaulting himself forward to strike at the trainer's neck, which would be exposed at a certain angle of the moving baton. He makes contact, grinning happily, but it is as if he were the hummingbird smacking into the wall.
"You were supposed to let me win…" Dill pleads with his eyes, hoping… but instead he is gripping fool's gold in his palm.
The trainer swings the baton back, it catching him in the face with one of the ends, Dill howling in pain, a hand going for his nose, he swearing something broke or that it is blood on the ground and not a droplet of urine… Cain or that beautiful woman have not intervened, Dill looking up and locking eyes with the trainer and his devious smile.
The next baton strike hits him squarely in the chest, making Dill fall back.
He falls.
And he falls.
And he falls until he feels like he is flying, unable to land, unable to crash into himself, seeing the smirk on the trainer's face, and the feeling of failure slide in and out of his veins.
Cain Passionia: Vice President of Panem P.O.V
How can someone feel disappointed and thrilled with an outcome at the same time? Cain isn't quite sure how to articulate it, but he for sure feels it in his stomach, swirling about and smashing into the sides of his chest like a building pressure, an ever-expanding balloon. Cain rubs sleepily at his eyes with the back of his hand, walking up the grand and elaborate staircase to Emrick's office, Nyria hot on his heels with his clipboard and tablet clenched in her hands.
He simply does not have time to wait for her, for the days of tomorrow will rush in and sweep people off of their feet when they are not prepared or careful, Cain having half the mind to turn around and punt his assistant in the chest and watch her fall down the staircase. Maybe she'll crack her head open and bleed out to death. It'd give the porcelain floor a bit of color, he supposes, with a smirk as he reaches the top of the stairs, slightly out of breath from his rushing. It might be a gruesome thought, a dark and morbid one that has been festering inside his skull, but it means one thing: he can kill.
"I can kill," Cain tells himself, grinning and brushing a strand of sweaty hair behind his ears. "I can kill, and I am good at it too," as no one recognizes the slit throat work to be of his, when he cries as the coffin is buried beneath all that dirt in Kingsmark Cemetery, or even as Nathaniel Coin babbles on and on about sanctity and purity and that he'd never harm a child… it doesn't matter, Cain enjoys the feeling of being the one holding the blade as he slices through the pink flesh. The leader of the rebellion, of District 13, screams and tries falling to the floor, but Lydia holds him back with a hand around his throat, the tongue wiggling around on the same porcelain stairs Nyria climbs up… it is parasitic and alien-like in its movements, like it has come alive, squirming about.
The man is dead, his son is dead, an innocent boy who died for the bigger picture is dead, and Cain is riding high. He claps his hands together excitedly, trying to hide the frown on his face when he enters Emrick's office, Nyria panting as well as she emerges from behind the closed doors, Cain almost shutting them in on her.
Emrick is sitting at his desk, face raised above the glimmering surface with a quill pen in his hand. Cain notices that Lydia is not standing in the office like she is supposed to, his eyebrows rising at the sight. He'll remind her what makes a good bitch, he supposes. Ida knows, knows how to be patient, and take every hit as a blessing in disguise. Not that Cain would ever hit a woman, but…
The president looks up, eyebrows heightened to his brow, setting the pen down as Nyria takes a seat in the chair in front of his desk. Cain's eyes twitch at the sight, for he had marked it… everyone should know that the seat in front of the president's desk is his spot.
"You're finished," Emrick says, rather lamely, rather bluntly, Cain rolling his eyes. This is the man, the man who is supposed to bring Panem out of its dark hole from the bombs and bullets that tore it asunder… what a joke.
"Yes, finished, and thank God," Cain accentuates, running soothing circles on his brow.
"Why the discontent?" comes the statement like he expects, Emrick leaning forward, his sleeves slightly damp from something, Cain frowning at the sight. It is Nyria who sighs and pinches her nose bridge, leaning back in the chair, dark hair hanging over the leather like the tassels of a whip that Cain holds in his hand.
He is the executioner. He shall watch those tributes die one by one, with welts on their back, his mark of Passion, of a Passionia who demands complete and total love fall to their knees. His son is not here to witness it, so it only compels him to strike harder and harder.
"Cain is-" the mutts designer begins to speak, but he is not about to have this foreigner woman he knows nothing about override him.
"Disappointed, to say the least," Cain clasps his hands together, frowning, a shudder rippling through his body. He can kill, he can slice a throat open and watch the life force of said person spill out onto his shoed feet, Cain can plunge the knife in and out, in and out of the body, absorb the squelching sounds that coagulate into one continuous noise in his ears but these… tributes… "Many of them will score decently well," he says, nodding at the clipboard which has the finalized scores for the evening, "But despite that, I don't think a single one of them… well, that's not true," he corrects, wrinkling his nose. Cain never thought he'd be able to kill till the opportunity arises itself, and the coffin is out there for him to stake his mark in the Earth that he has killed. "Most of them won't put on the show that we're going to want them to."
Emrick swivels back and forth in his chair, frowning likewise, hands together. Cain wonders now, thinking about it, if he should've let the president kill them all. It would make the Capitol the sole and lone inhabitant of Panem, which is not terrible given that the districts sully their image, they make the picture awash and splintered off into fragments of ruined color and dried out pigments… would it have been better to let the orange-red tides of napalm swallow up every district citizen until no one remained?
"We anticipated this, I thought," Emrick says, delegating, Cain wanting to push Nyria out of his chair so he could pick it up and smash it against the man's head. "That not every tribute would necessarily be ready to just kill because we said they would. It'll be a process."
"You did not just say that…" Cain groans, kneeling down on the floor and trying to soothe the headache that dares to break out from within. "The whole purpose of the Games is to be a spectacle for us, and a horrible talent show for the districts that they cannot tear their eyes away from it. How do we make a bloody spectacle when no one will be able to shed blood?"
There are ways of persuasion that Cain knows about, locked away in a series of books placed on a single shelf in his home library, some of them going into the design of the arena when he thinks about it, but it still does not account for the free will of the tributes… all disappointments, even those that'll score high enough.
"Are you really complaining that sweet little Cecelia Blackstone from One is not going to be slitting Catalus Drachma's throat with the knife she picks up during the first day of the Games?" Nyria chides him, her voice and tone mocking, he turning around her on an instant, eyes blazing with passion as he places his hands on both of her shoulders, gripping tightly.
Emrick does not move from his spot, though Cain catches bristling out of the corner of his eye. This is not going the way he's planned it, to see cascading showers of vermillion spill from the heavens and down into the grass. "I want villains!" he yells out loud, pointing a finger up at the ceiling, not even daring to look at the president who would be mocking him as well. "I want heroes! Tragedy, sadness, pain… the same pain we, and this city felt when those heathens felt it would be possible to separate themselves from us. I want them to feel what it is like to loose blood slowly, as we cut off their oxygen and their life support," spit flies from his mouth at his rage, Cain turning his hands into claws, talons that'll slice the very fabric of air in half, teeth gritted together. "I want blood, dammit! I want crying and anguish and people being terrified for their lives. I want desperate measures being brought out… and yes, I want that fucking sweet little girl from One to slice her district partner's throat open because it'll make for a bloody good show!"
He does not wait to hear what Emrick or Nyria will protest back at him. Things require patience. Things require due diligence and time. There is no time. The Capitol did not have time, when the rebels snuck in and blew up the center fountain in the downtown sector. Cain does not have time to mourn the loss of his child, his only child as he watches the silver blade go from one ear to the other, a dripping cascade onto his hands that leaves Cain screaming into the palm of the hand that holds him tight.
Cain slams the door to the president's office open, storming down the gilded steps that he will one day push fucking Nyria Kirchner and her entire posh and snarky attitude down… just to see what it like to kill again, just to feel it once more radiate through his fingertips.
Those tributes better spot who the competition is and be prepared for them to take each other out… or he will. Cain Passionia does not know mercy, he only lives by one rule, a mantra taped to his front door.
Vengeance.
Vengeance and blood.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was Chapter #16: Spot the Competition, of Liberty, focusing loosely on the Private Sessions, with povs from Orion, Porscha, Magnus, Camilla, and Dill, with Capitol points of view from Adriane and Cain, both who I am happy to be back inside their heads for. I know that I only focused and wrote out three of the private sessions - better than writing all 24 in one sitting like I've done once before, in my opinion, just ask Thorne how Bombs and Bullets' private sessions went - but regardless, each tribute will have theirs covered in some way, shape, or form, similarly to how I cover everyone's interviews without actually writing them all out.
The odds board is up, and it may be referenced or updated as I go on, but it is something I seldom see touched upon so I felt the need to do so. This means we are almost done with the pre-Games, just four chapters left before the bloodbath, so start counting your blessings. Next chapter is #17: And the Winner Is, focused on the revealing of the training scores, with six povs, five of them tributes, the other going to a Capitol character. The five tributes will be Kileigh, Calen, Diana, Gemini, and Cecelia, while Lydia will close out the chapter with more subplot shenanigans (there are two Capitol subplots running alongside each other, Lydia's mystery, and Cain/Nyria's project, but more on that later)
As always, reviews will be greatly appreciated as I have missed ya'lls commentary and support, and the last few chapters have had their numbers dropping which I must admit can be a little disheartening or upsetting at times but I love this story too much for that, and this amazing cast of tributes. Don't forget to cast your vote for the Bloodbath poll if you haven't already! I love you all so much! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm