XLV: The Capitol - Rose Point Estate.

Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10

He falls asleep face-down on Emmi's bedroom floor.

Surprisingly, it's not the worst sleep of his life. It's far from the best, though. His arms are both pillowed underneath his arm and completely numb from the elbow down. One of his legs is a little fuzzy too, but it's thankfully not the one that had a knife in it long ago, so it can't be the end of the world.

He wakes up a few times here and there to readjust but can't be bothered to move, and Emmi would probably have a fit if he tried to sleep in her bed no matter how close to the edge he stayed. Even the thought of that is enough to keep him on the floor. He's sore beyond belief when he finally wakes, for good this time. The room is a dim, foggy gray, and he stays face-down in the carpet where it's even darker while Emmi steps over him half a dozen times.

"What are you doing?" he mumbles into his arms, and for a second it feels way too reminiscent of yesterday. He shuts his mouth.

"Wondering why you're still on the floor," she responds. "Also trying to shower, but I keep forgetting shit and I don't exactly feel like parading around with you in here."

He wouldn't appreciate it either, so he comments no further. He didn't really have the energy to get up. He also didn't want to cry, and it felt like that was what he was going to do if someone left him alone too long.

That would be what, the second time Soran has indirectly or not put him in tears? He's not in the mood for that.

She stops busting about, eventually, and he hears the shower start two minutes later. He rolls over onto his back and hits the lamp closest to him, fumbling up for the cord, but gets nowhere close to it.

They didn't even really do anything last night besides talk in circles and get nowhere deep into the mystery of things. To be honest he didn't even think Emmi was going to talk as much as she did - he thought that was his thing, really. But she could talk. It didn't seem like she minded it.

And like he said, he really needed the distraction. There was also a chance that if he left last night he was running into Soran again, or that Soran was sleeping in what was rightfully Icarus' bed. He wasn't about to risk that.

He's a coward, alright? It's not a fucking crime.

Icarus nearly falls asleep waiting for her to get out of the bathroom, but is nudged awake however many minutes later. There's steam seeping out from under the door, and she kicks him none too gently in the leg.

"Is that my cue to leave?" he asks blearily. He hasn't really worked on being properly awake, and can hardly see her.

"Don't care. I was just checking that you were still alive."

"Unfortunately."

She hums. He blinks a few times to rid the crust from his eyes. "What's the plan for today?"

"I don't know. Are you going to follow me around all day or going to try and fix your weird ass relationship?"

"Hey," he huffed. "I'll do what I want."

"So that's a no, then."

"Shut up. You had a weird ass relationship too, you don't get to make fun of me for mine."

He waits for a response to that but doesn't get one. He rolls to the right but can't make her out entirely; she's blocked partially by the bed, and the rest of the way by the shit angle he has. It hurts his neck to keep it that way for very long.

Probably not the right thing to say. That's the problem with him, he says a lot but almost none of it was ever worth anything. He said dumb shit, or just caused it, and there was never any telling which one was worse. It was just all bad and there was no fixing it.

"Were you, you know," he starts. "Were you with her, when she—"

"Yeah."

That explains a lot, then. It explains the silence now, and why Emmi never, ever brings her up. He doesn't even know exactly who she killed if he's being honest - if she told them back in Witsonee he was too fogged over with pain to remember the information. The only thing he knew about her, really, because he never bothered talking to her before, was that her and Arwen were stuck closer together than most people.

And Emmi was there, when she died.

It doesn't matter what's going on in the here and now, because back then if Soran had died right in front of him he's not sure what he would have done. Let someone kill him, probably, or finish the job himself.

He definitely wouldn't have wanted to be alive.

"I'm sorry," he says eventually. That's not enough, but it's never going to be. She nods, tersely - he sees the sharp little head bob up and down but nothing else. She's stronger than she has any right to be. Certainly stronger than him.

"You know," he says immediately after, trying to push the train back onto the tracks. "You know, I could totally be a matchmaker. I'd be the best dressed wing-man in Panem history."

"If you could find one person in a thousand mile radius that wanted to date me right now, I'd fall over dead."

She actually sounds amused, now, which is better. It's not like he ever would, but the idea is sort of funny. Twisted and fucked up, but funny.

"I'm sure there's someone," he insists. "I could find one."

"Spoiled for choice, I see."

"You said it, not me."

"Apparently," she says. "Are you coming, or not? I'm going to get breakfast."

"Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute," he says, but doesn't move an inch. The floor really isn't so bad. He did sleep in the desert for over a week and nearly die, after all. "You know, I'm pretty sure the Mervaine's brought their kids here with them - isn't their son our age? You could date him."

Emmi's sigh is so loud and exaggerated that it could've woken him up from a dead sleep. Someone out in the hall could've heard a noise like that.

"What?" he asks. "Not your type?"

"I don't even know him."

"So you can't say he's not your type."

"Oh my god," she moans. "Can we go? I'm going to leave you here."

She gets up with enough intent that he actually believes her, so Icarus springs to his feet, sways nearly across the entire room, and follows her out into the hall. It's sort of a ridiculous sight - she's freshly showered and in clean clothes and he just spent the night on her floor because he was too scared to go back into his own room and deal with his problems. It's only been a day, so he'll give himself that, but he's not sure he'll ever have or want the fortitude to deal with it. Not after what was said. He still feels the simmering anger at it all, too, and that's not going to help any.

He's not sure when it will get fixed, or if it ever will. All he knows is that it's definitely not happening today, so he's not going to push it.

"I'll make you a deal," she offers. "If you're going to give me unsolicited wing-man help for my non-existent relationship, then I get to be your relationship counselor."

"No?" he tries. She nudges him again, this time in the ribs, and stares at him.

He sighs. "Fine."

It's going to be one hell of a long day, or days, now that he's agreed to that. It'll probably come back to bite him in the ass, too. But what can he say, really, or even argue? He's the one that wanted a distraction.

At least he's getting one.

Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17

There's someone knocking insistently at the door.

Even when she's not sleeping it still sort of feels like she is, oddly enough. It's always a thick fog, a stupor that she can't shake herself out of. It's like being lost in a mist, unable to see anything around her. It feels safer that way, not knowing what's going on around her.

Not sensible, not at all, but safer. She'll take safer over most other things.

She can't even think of anyone who would be knocking that could be enough to get her out of bed. Tarquin might, but he'd also come in eventually if he thought something was wrong. The other three wouldn't even bother. Pandora, Evander, Crynn... it could be one of them, maybe.

It pauses, finally, and she rolls over to stare at the door. Have they left, then? It took long enough.

Ria rolls out of bed and creeps silently to the door, accidentally dragging one of the blankets off with her. It's still tangled around her ankles when she opens the door and, oh—

Someone is definitely still standing there.

She only opened the door a sliver but it's enough to tell, and it's enough for the man to see her back. He offers her a pleasant smile. She nearly slams the door shut.

"Hello," he says. He doesn't sound inherently creepy, so that's good. "My name is Dr. Arranmore. I'm here to check up on you."

So this is the doctor they're keeping on sight. Ria hasn't seen hide nor hair of him since they got here, and she doesn't think anyone else has either. If he was really, truly concerned it feels like he should've been around more. Maybe she wouldn't be so inclined to shut the door in his face now.

"I'm good," she says. He doesn't really even look like a doctor, but that's probably the point. Someone saw how they reacted at the hospital, to the doctor at Witsonee. It felt like they were aliens being examined by humans who didn't know what the hell to do now that they had finally found them.

"I wish it was that simple," he replies. "I'm under contract, and I have to ensure that you've all gained or or at least close to gaining a clean bill of health."

"Under contract with who?"

"Well, it was the Vice President who got in contact with me - I went to school with her, you see, when we were younger. Clearly she went the political route, but I went to med school. I'm glad she got into contact with me."

"And what do you do now?"

"I own a clinic down in the Lower Capitol. Family-based. I'm on-call at the local hospital, as well."

He looks about the appropriate age to be doing that, perhaps just shy of fifty or so. It could be deceiving for all she knows - she looks about twelve, on a good day. Anyone could be anything they want to be here and she wouldn't know the difference because no one would bother to be truthful about it.

He doesn't appear as if he's judging her for the full two minutes she's spent staring at him through the inch and a half crack in the door, though. Is it going to get any better than that?

Probably not.

Ria finally allows herself to open the door. He looks quite pleased with himself, maybe for the fortitude of it all. Several people have tried with her and given up long before two or three minutes have passed. She'll be honest; that's probably the smart thing to do.

"It won't take longer than a few minutes," he assures her. "If you'd just sit down..."

He trails off and goes rooting around in the bag dangling from his left hand before he drops it on the dresser by the door. She sits back down at the end of the bed while he continues rooting around in the bag, eventually pulling on a pair of latex gloves. Ria detaches the blanket from around her ankles and it's that action the doctor lasers in on.

"Besides the snake-bite, most of your other wounds were superficial, correct?"

"I guess so?"

Superficial seems like an odd word for riddled like a pincushion with glass, but that's apparently the word they're using. It's not like she got stabbed or skewered, she didn't get burnt. She definitely didn't die for a few long, worrying minutes.

Superficial it is.

"Have you noticed any long-lasting effects?"

"Like what?"

"Headache and migraine, tenderness, swelling, any sort of pain from the source of the wound?"

"It doesn't hurt, no." A lie, but not really. She gets the occasional twinge of pain, as if someone's poked her just this shy of too hard, but it doesn't really hurt. It's manageable.

And it's definitely not a big deal.

"Anything else, then? Or any other areas giving you trouble?"

"Not really. I guess I sort of have had a headache, once in a while, but I didn't think it was from that."

"What did you think it was from, then?"

"Not sleeping?" she guesses. "Or crying?

He hums. He's got her by the ankle now, too, and is examining the nearly identical holes in her skin like they're extremely fascinating. She'd kick him if it wasn't defined as rude.

"That could be it," he agrees. "But there can be long-term effects to envenoming. The studies didn't get particularly in-depth until the last fifty years or so. People often experience some of the symptoms I mentioned long after the initial incident. Some experience none. Usually the length of time between the incident and the first injection can tell a lot about that, but you seem to have recovered just fine."

"Is that weird?"

"Weird, no. Lots of people do, as I said. It's just better to be safe than sorry."

She nods. He's got a point, and she's not about to argue that. If any of them were really good at the whole safety thing she'd say he was right no doubt about it, but they still survived, safety be damned. If they had been safe they probably wouldn't have gotten as far as they did.

He lets her go, the chilliness of his fingers through the gloves beginning to dissipate.

"About the sleeping - is there anything I can do for that?"

She blinks a few times. Is there? He's not sure. She's never been a good sleeper, always up until some random time in the morning and running on a few hours sleep the next day. That's just how things were.

She's sleeping even less now, she feels. It's not by choice.

"I can prescribe something, if you feel it's necessary," he continues. "A small dosage that helps with relaxation and anxiety that you could take before you—"

"I'm good," she breaks in. "It's not necessary."

Is it bad that the idea of it even scares her? First just trusting him to give her something that will help instead of harm - she has no idea who he is, no idea if he has ulterior motives. And what if it doesn't work, or what if it cripples her? That's just what she needs added to all of this mess, a drug that she can't let go of when she one day needs to.

No one else is being offered this, she's certain. She's not about to be the only one.

"Well, if you change your mind, don't hesitate to ask," he offers. "Besides that, though, you check out fine to me. But if there's anything else I can do at a later date, I'll be here for a while yet."

It just feels like there's someone else here keeping tabs on them, making sure they don't run. Sure, she might have been the most intact in the days following, but she can guarantee that no one else wants a doctor watching their every move, deciding what they are and aren't capable of in their current states.

Not one of them.

He stares for a moment longer. She stares at the two circular scars at her ankle instead, but doesn't miss the awkward little wave he offers as he packs the bag up and departs.

Almost, anyway.

"Isperia?" he asks, pausing by the door. "Would you happen to know where any of your friends are? Tracking you down in a place this big isn't exactly an easy task."

She could find them all easily, in just a few minutes, with no pre-disposed knowledge of where they are, if they're awake, if they ever went to sleep in the first place. That's something Dr. Arranmore will never be able to know, medical knowledge or not.

She could find them, but she won't.

She smiles. "No, sorry."

Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4

"He's not so inclined to people," Tycho offers. Tarquin barely hears him.

Tarquin barely hears him because he's half-under the couch in the main sitting area, his breakfast abandoned on the table behind him. He hadn't even begun to sat down when he had heard the plaintive little noise, and Tycho had bent down to peer under the couch, seemingly not surprised at all.

Tycho who apparently feels inclined to follow them when they're wandering about alone, even if it is the ten to fifteen feet from the back kitchen door to the lounge room.

There's a little creature crouched in the darkest shadows underneath the couch. It's so fluffy it looks like a dust-bunny, and if it wasn't blinking at him every few seconds he'd think it was. He stretches his arm out even further and the probable-cat shrinks into an even smaller ball, every single gray-black hair bristling at the proximity.

"Stubborn bastard, he is," Tycho comments.

"Who's is he?"

"He belongs to the family, technically, but he usually stays put in the back cottage with Pandora and Crynn. Sometimes he goes roaming, though. He doesn't usually come this far in."

Tarquin would say he's cute, but he can't really tell. His eyes are huge and yellow, owlish in their intensity, pupils constricted all the way in.

"I'd get him out, but he hates me."

"Why?"

"Because I won't let him in the kitchen."

He smiles at the image of this fluffy behemoth running through all of Tycho's meal prep. It's easier to smile when no one can see him.

"I'm sure he doesn't hate you," he says, scooting back for a moment to break off a piece of bacon before he dives back under the couch. This time he at least gets some interest, and a nose stretched forward to sniff at his hands.

"You're supposed to be eating that."

"I'll eat the rest," he promises. The cat stretches forward, nose bumping against his fingers, and then he snatches the bacon from between Tarquin's fingers and gobbles the whole thing down without even stopping to breathe. Yeah, all his bacon is probably going to this cause this instead. His mom always insisted that they didn't really have time for pets, and that much was true. They were always out, always working, he was always at school or practicing.

He wonders if she'd be happy that he had this now, at least. The cat isn't his but it's as close as he'll probably ever get.

"What the hell are you doing?" Emmi interrupts, and he bangs his head off the underside of the couch. Even the cat jolts.

"Not eating his bacon," Tycho says. "And trying to make friends with Nyx."

"What the—"

It's not Emmi that appears on the floor next to him, but Icarus, flattening himself down to the ground to peer beneath the couch as well. The dust bunny known as Nyx is still bumping up against his hand, searching for more food, but looks less than pleased at Icarus' sudden arrival.

He grabs another piece of bacon and Nyx creeps just slightly closer, until he can stretch both hands out around him. He's smaller than Tarquin would have expected beneath all the fluff, and he pulls him forward until he can back up from beneath the couch, clutching the cat to his chest. In fact, now that he's holding him, he's tiny, and curls back up into a disgruntled little ball in the crook of Tarquin's elbow.

Tycho's gone when he looks around, and Emmi is drinking his orange juice. Icarus stretches a lone hand out and Nyx bats it away just as quick. He can't help but snort.

"Good luck, I spent fifteen minutes down there to get to this point."

He has a very grumpy little face - Tarquin sort of gets Tycho's point, at that. He's still cute, though, and isn't struggling away. It's a win in his book.

"You guys might— oh," Ria says, stepping around the corner. "Where did you get that?"

"Under the couch."

There's not a shred of hesitance in her when she steps forward and offers a hand forward, and then a single finger, waggling it back and forth. Nyx stretches forward over his arm to sniff at it and then retreats back into the safety of his arms, but at least he doesn't looks disgruntled about it, and concedes to Ria scratching between his ears for a few seconds.

"That's bullshit," Icarus decides. "I'm going to get food."

"Get me some!" Emmi yells after him, as if she hasn't already started on Tarquin's plate. It's a good thing he wasn't very hungry to begin with. Eating just sort of feels like it's required now. If he doesn't do it, people will look at him funny.

And they already are.

Ria stretches her arms out, expectantly, until he deposits Nyx into them. Instead of curling right back up the cat climbs halfway onto her shoulder and then rests there. It feels a lot like his watchful eyes are on Emmi shoving another piece of bacon in her mouth.

"You guys might want to hide," Ria says. "There's a doctor looking for you."

"I'm not sure how you managed to make that sound ominous, but you did," Emmi says. She chews all but a sliver of bacon and offers it to the cat, who just about bites her fingers off to get at it.

"Why?" he asks. His hands feel oddly empty now that he has nothing to do with them, so he steals his glass of juice back from Emmi, who gives him a dirty look.

"To make sure we're good, I guess? Physically, anyway."

"That's fine. I really don't want or need a shrink talking to me right now," Emmi says, and he's inclined to agree. He really doesn't want someone looking at him that closely, trying to pick him apart. There's enough ticking going on his brain, too many to pinpoint which one is going to make him go off.

Everyone save for Tycho, in fact, and the other four, are watching him with a rather peculiar look in their eyes. He can only imagine what's going through their heads, or what they're waiting for. Who knows what he'll say next, right? Who knows when he'll decide he's done crying and start talking, instead?

Even he doesn't have an answer for that. His brain can't decide on one direction anymore; sometimes it wants to break him down and tear him apart from the inside out, and sometimes it wants to fight.

It's fucked, as all. He doesn't need a professional, doctor or shrink or not, to tell him that.

If a doctor wants to look at him right now, then so be it.

They can't tell him anything he doesn't already know.

Crynn Sylvaine, 27
Former Servicing Avox; District Eleven

The funny this is, he had a brother like Soran, once.

It feels like a very long time ago because it was, eleven years and counting since he last his brother and the rest of his family. He had known all along that his father was in shady dealings - there was no way the family would have lasted as long as they did otherwise.

His father wasn't there when the Peacekeepers came along, though. It was just him and Eider, his mother, his three younger sisters. Eider who had cracked one of their skulls open with the spade they kept outside the back door.

It was over pathetically quick, really. They shot him in the head, took Crynn and his mother. She died three years after they cut her tongue out, but he never found out why. He never found any records of what happened to his sisters, either, or if his father got somewhere worth living.

Don't get him wrong - he had looked. He had a year and a half looking and there was just... nothing.

That was part of the reason he went into law. That, and he just didn't know what the hell else to do, now that he wasn't the Capitol's prisoner. He had access to everything and nothing all at the same time.

He didn't like when bad things just happened, when people went missing, when the whole world was spiraling out of control.

It made it all the more infuriating that all of that was happening right now, before him.

Not one of the five was taking it well, and it was obvious. They were putting on brave faces. If he hadn't spent several long years doing the same thing he wouldn't be able to see it now.

Soran and Eider had similar brave faces, which was to say they just sort of always looked that way. You knew it wasn't that way underneath, but it was difficult to tell otherwise.

It made it easier to deny it, too.

Crynn can tell at a quick glance that he barely slept, if he did at all. He's not one to judge in that department; it took him years to sleep through the night in any sort of peaceful way. He looks harried in a mad scientist sort of way except he's not doing anything except walking around with the list and a pen stuck in his mouth, muttering to himself and occasionally stopping at the computer to look something up.

So it's not very mad science at all, really.

He was talking to Pandora occasionally before she went to go get breakfast, but for the most part they've been sticking to the individual approach in their research.

That's probably how it's going to go for the most part.

He's walking around so much that it's making Crynn tired, though, and he has no voice to tell him to stop, so he just allows it. It's not like Soran would respond well to him writing it down.

It's Soran that stops in front of him however many minutes later, waving the list in front of him. He stares at it.

"How many of these people do you actually know?" he asks, drawing a line from the first name, Pandora's, and then twelve down. The New Haven Federation.

He shrugs. Most of them not very well. He's spoken to Kestrel, Jordan and Waylon the most. Solidarity in their twenties, he thinks. Kestrel is nice. Waylon's nice in a weird way. Jordan sort of scares him, if he's being honest. Besides that he's only ever spoken to Eriska, who treats him well enough, and Wendell, who tells him stories he suspects because he can't tell him to stop.

So none of them, really. He doesn't know anything personal. Nothing that matters.

"Who voted yes, besides Pandora?"

He takes the paper and pen from him and ticks off the six other names. Soran takes it back and examines it; it doesn't look like it helps any.

"Do you think it's too ridiculous to cross off the names of the people who voted no? I mean, if they voted no and it had went through that way, that sort of would have defeated their purpose, right? Or is that just me not accounting for someone being an asshole and doing that on purpose?"

Again, he shrugs. He's the type to believe the best in people, so he'd like to think it was none of them. The thought that someone directly organized this from the very beginning makes him ill.

Besides, all of them but Ophira and Eriska have children, excluding the younger ones. Wendell has approximately seventy-five grand-children, judging by the stories he's heard. Would someone like that willingly send more kids to their deaths, so long after they stopped the Games?

Maybe.

He tugs the paper back and taps a finger against Leopold's name, raising an eyebrow. Soran sighs.

"What, you think cause his kid died in the Games he'd send twenty-four of us to our deaths for kicks? You could say the same thing about the President and his brother, then."

He shrugs, again, and then tells himself to stop for good. Beyond Leopold he can't see someone with a good enough reason for it.

"Fuck," Soran emphasizes. "This is going to take fucking forever."

He hums in agreement. Soran returns to the corner but not before putting a half-assed star to the right of Leopold's name. He sits down so hard in the chair he skids five feet away from the desk before he manages to pull himself back.

Crynn's not even sure at this point what he's looking up. If he's finding something, that's good, but Crynn's not sure he is.

"Here," Pandora offers, dangling a coffee over his shoulder. She puts something else on his lap, a wrapped plate, and then drops a similarly wrapped sandwich right in the middle of Soran's papers. "Eat."

"I'll consider it."

He looks at her. "He's going to burn out eventually. You need to make him sleep," he signs.

"What do you want me to do?" she signs back. "I can't make him."

"Put something in his sandwich next time?"

Her lips quirk up, which means it won't happen, but at least it made her smile. She hasn't been doing much of that lately.

Soran looks between them, rolling his eyes. "You know, the next time I'm alone I'm going to start teaching myself sign language so you two and Evander can't talk about me while I'm sitting right in front of you."

He's not so sure how that would end either, but it might be sort of amusing to see. Besides, Crynn feels like he has some sort of obligation to watch him and make sure he doesn't drop dead - signing pretty much is his only way of communicating without Soran knowing.

In fact, it's the only way.

"Please eat," Pandora begs, plastering a smile on her face, and he finally obliges. He doesn't quit whatever it is he's doing, but Crynn can live with him multi-tasking.

Apparently that's the best they're going to get, for now. His obligation can accept that.

In my update delay I also conveniently forgot I had to edit this bad boy as well, so apologies for the further delay slash likely piss poor editing job.

Until next time.