thecapitol | [open] and I know life is getting shorter, i can't bring myself to set the scene

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[open] and I know life is getting shorter, i can't bring myself to set the scene

Who| Clara Murphy and ~~Tom's Angels~~ D10 primarily, but totally down with interlopers popping in
What| Clara's open office hours!
Where| D10's common area
When| After the mini arena
Warnings/Notes| None yet, will add any that pop up!

While Clara would hardly say she's been complaining about having her hand and eye restored to her (because, really out of all the things that have happened to her while she's been in Panem, that's one of the few things she's completely okay with), it's still weird to have them back after almost a year. And knowing that her Tributes have never seen her with two flesh and blood hands and eyes is slightly boggling to think about.

Which is why whenever someone passes through, Clara can be seen holding something in her right hand, whether it's a cold drink, or a pen, or the tablet that she has her meticulously organized notes on D10's amazons and which companies are interested in having them represent their products. It's distracting to the point that, whenever she finally notices someone passing through, she can't help but be slightly taken aback.

"Oh, hi. I was just doing a little bit of work," she says, trying not to come off as too startled. "Do you want to take a seat? We should probably talk."

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"Me, you wanna talk to me?" maybe that wasn't the voice Clara was expecting and probably not just the fact that there is a giant bouquet of flowers in James's hands, covering his face, "Well I don't wanna intrude but after all, I-I figured you might like some flowers to cheer up your workspace."

Ever since their meeting in Tony Stark's Crowning, James had not stopped thinking about the mentor from District 10, and whatever cash he had left, he spent it on this. "The clerk said they won't wilt so you can have a little bit of the outside, inside." He wished he had this sort of flowers when Mary was sick but maybe it was time to let go.

Edited 2015-09-05 23:11 (UTC)

"Mmhmm. I've been wondering how you were doing now that you've been through your first Arena." He wasn't who she was expecting, but he's still a pleasant surprise, even if he reminds her of the dark place she was in following Alex's death. She can't help but feel bad for how rude she was towards him (in her opinion, at least) when he was only trying to be kind.

The moment he mentioned that the flowers were for her, it took everything in her power not to let tears prick at her eyes. She could remember when someone last brought her flowers like this, and not as a consolation offering or a gift basket, and it had been ages since the last time (three days before the carbomb, to be exact, as an apology from Alex for coming home so late and effectively ruining their at home date night plans). "That's..." Sweet? Far too kind? Clara wasn't sure what to say. "...very thoughtful of you. Thank you," she said, standing up to grab a vase for them.

"Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Tea?" Possibly something a little stronger, if she's completely honest.

"Coffee would be nice," James admitted with a slight shrug and a matching smile, "Black...haven't been sleeping well since the Arena, though it's not my first time dying anyways."

There's a story he wished he could tell Clara as easily as he did with Linden back at the District showcase a few months back but how could he tell a grieving widow what really happened to Mary?

"I-I've been better if that answers your question? It's like getting yanked out of a dreamless sleep."

He then realized, "Your eye, it's..." James don't be rude.

Edited 2015-09-27 19:44 (UTC)

Clara gave him a commiserate nod, tempted to pry. Once upon a time, the words 'not my first time dying' would've sent her into a mental tailspin, but now...well, she wantrf to know, but she also knew better than to ask. Instead she grabbed him a mug of steaming black coffee that had obvious been brewed recently. "I understand," she said as she placed the mug down. How many nightmares had she had following her first Arena? Or any of the Arenas she'd been through, really. They were too numerous to count at this point. "I wish I could say that you'll get used to it eventually, but..." She trailed off. It would be a lie to tell him that. Especially with the way everything seemed to reset after dying in the Arena. Which had especially boggled her slightly after waking up from her death in the past Mini Arena with both of her own eyes and hands and not the bionic components that had been grafted to her.

"Yeah," she said softly, turning bright red. It was the one good thing about being dragged back into the Arenas briefly, not that she'd admit it. "At least no one will be able to call me a pirate anymore." There was a laugh behind her voice along with an almost grateful tone.

Edited 2015-10-06 21:28 (UTC)

James sucked at flirting but the smile was comfortingly familiar as he began to relax a little more in her presence. "I wouldn't have called you a pirate if that's the case," he said as he took a sip and relished the caffeine in his system, "You look really pret-I mean, good, yes."

It was a start, an awkward start but why can't he flirt? Mary told him to live and do what's best for himself. At one time, it had been driving into Toluca Lake, but now? Now there's a chance to do something positive. He's already bonded with Vivi as he would with Laura, a stern caretaker.

She let out another laugh. "It wasn't the worst nickname, it just got kind of boring after a while." That's ignoring how much she resented it because of how deeply it was connected to her victory in the Arena.

She couldn't help but blush slightly at his quick word change. "You don't look too bad yourself." There was a rush of guilt in her gut that she tried to tamp down on. She was married for God's sake. Widowed, true, but she still considered herself married since there was the question mark hanging over her head of potentially finding a way back home. This wasn't like her relationship with Rose which Alex had given his okay on and had been purely for the cameras. This felt more like cheating than that had and she hadn't even acted on anything, despite the fact that she yearned to. That she missed romance and intimacy and all the things that came with it.

She shuffled slightly in her seat and picked up her own half drained mug, letting it warm her hands and trying to focus on that instead. "So what've you been up to?"

"I've..." I'm getting therapy to get over the trauma of killing my wife would be the correct answer but James can't outright say that lest he wants to ruin whatever this that's developing. It's definitely a friendship but the more time Sunderland spends with Clara, the happier he gets and the more he wants to stay. Would Mary...would she approve of this?

He doesn't know this but in his mind, he rereads her letter to reassure himself.

"I'm going to grief counseling. I decided I wanted to do something good for myself, you know? I know...it'll be a while but I got tired of being called crazy."

Something in Clara plummeted at the mention of grief counseling, as much as she tried to hide it. She had never bothered with the counseling she was offered after Alex died (though she had a hard time thinking of it as just him dying instead of him being killed because of something that wasn't even his fault), mostly out of the fear that it would only just be some Capitol psychiatrist telling her that Alex was a traitor and had brought his demise upon himself.

Instead of saying anything along those lines, she just gave James a warm, though shaky smile. "I never thought you were crazy, just hurting." Like she was. "Has it helped at all?"

"I think so," James sighed out and looked away for a second, "It feels like I don't want to let her go but I know she's gone and nothing I'll do will make her come back. If she's not here, then there's no point in holding onto a ghost."

It's what it felt like with the psychiatrist, as she offered the man her treatment. He wanted to get better but-

"I guess I sleep a little better knowing that I didn't want her to suffer."

"Sometimes ghosts are all we have." It was an uncomfortable thing to admit, knowing that she's clutching to the slimest of chances that she could have the chance to go home and everything would to go back to normal.

Clara reached out, across the table, and placed her hand over his as she tried to ignore the flash of warmth cutting through her (and the little voice in the back of her head calling her a traitor). "You're better than I am. I couldn't let him go at home or here." She had never really admitted that to anyone, not here or in Detroit, that she felt just as guilty for the state that Alex had been in since he couldn't make that choice and she had chosen letting OmniCorp do what they could to fix him over any of the other (far worse) possibilities.

Sunderland may have been a bit dopey in the past but he could empathize with the turmoil Clara was going through. He held onto Mary's letter and that enabled Silent Hill to create an entire world of punishment from it. He chased after Maria, a creation of the town itself just to hear Mary's voice.

"I'm not. I've...not been a good person, Miss Clara."

The message at Neely's Bar was perfect to sum up what he meant: If you ReaLly wAnt to sEE Mary, you shOUld just DiE. But You mIght be hEadiNg to A diffErent place than MARY, James.

"Maybe holding onto the ghosts keeps us sane in this place," his voice became dreamlike for a second before he came back to reality. "But it wouldn't be honoring their memory. We'd be stuck, they wouldn't like that either."

She let her thumb run over the back of his hand, giving him a sympathetic look. "We've all done things we regret. That doesn't make you a monster." And she wasn't sure what it said about her that, even if she should, she couldn't regret letting OmniCorp save Alex, that she still stood by her choice.

"That's true." That didn't change the fact that she still felt like she was cheating on Alex by feeling this way. At least with Rose, she had Alex's permission (even if he was under the Capitol's control and wasn't exactly in his right mind at the time), but this? This was completely uncharted waters. "And none of that changes the fact that I really want to kiss you right now."

Which...could be a terrible thing to say in this moment, but the thought kept coming back to her sitting across from him.

James would have said something comforting but he was stunned by the confession. It's as if the fog in his mind, one that sometimes invaded his perceptions of reality, was cruelly lifted without warning. They were both metaphorically bare to each other and...he can't deny the fact that he feels the same way about her. The fact that they were vulnerable and seeking someone they could commiserate the loss of their spouses and their inability to move on.

"I..." I euthanized my wife, twice...I'm a bad man. I shouldn't be allowed to feel this. I shouldn't be allowed to be happy! Is this a punishment too? His breathing became slightly faster as the surreal horror of falling for someone else set in. For once, he doesn't care the cameras are rolling and capturing this: James took the leap.

"I want to kiss you too. But I don't deserve it, I know I don't." He answered truthfully.

Clara wasn't sure what to expect as a response. A 'me too?' An 'I can't, I have too much baggage and still consider myself married?' Something like that (if only because those were both things she was feeling as well).

She wasn't expecting an 'I don't deserve it.'

"You need to stop blaming yourself for whatever happened before you came here." Which was ironic coming from her since she still carried so much baggage from her life in Detroit. "What happened to your wife wasn't your fault." Oh Clara, if only you knew the truth.

"It was my fault," James clarified as much as he could without revealing the actual series of events, "She had a terminal disease and I neglected her, I wasn't all there by the end, and..." He wanted to confess, he felt that Clara deserved the truth from him rather than some gossip rag.

"I let her die."

CLOSE but no cigar. In reality, James did everything him and his father could before the events of Silent Hill happened. He researched the disease, called experts but they all gave them three years maximum.

"You didn't make her sick," Clara said sweetly, but with an edge of steel in her voice, as if she was trying to dissuade him of his guilt through her words alone. "You were scared and confused and trying to deal with something horrible and sometimes that makes people do things they regret." Like how she still felt guilty about not being there for David as much as she should have been because she was being so swallowed by her own grief at the beginning. "You can't blame yourself for not being superhuman."

What I did to her wasn't human.

It's those words that haunt the man to this day and he desperately wanted to let go. Because he wants to make Clara happy, but he fears that he will commit another atrocity to her. He placed his hand on her cheek and offered her a softer smile.

"I can try but in the end, what happened...happened. And you can't blame yourself for your own losses too."

Widowed spouses know each other when they see one, and their ever-present guilt is always there. Maybe they could've done more, or spent more time with their loved ones.

"I really wish I could kiss you."

Clara couldn't help but hold her guilt close. It made her feel as if she deserved not to have Alex anymore, as if that somehow made everything better. (It didn't.) At this point, she doesn't know what she blames herself for these days. Sitting in that room with Dr. Norton showing her the extent of the damage that had been done to Alex in the bombing and making a choice for him that she still stood by being the right one? Not playing the Capitol's game enough that they decided that turning Alex into their pawn was the right choice? Not helping Alex find a way to escape that day in Peacekeeper HQ and instead trying to talk him down in an attempt to help him find a way to get control over himself?

"I'm not so sure about that," she admitted quietly. "I have a lot to feel guilty about."

She wans't sure how to react to his own confession. This was something they both wanted, it was a good thing. So why did it make her feel so terrible? So much more guilty?

As if she was a woman possessed, she stood up from her seat at the table and crossed over to him, placing her own hand on his cheek before leaning down to kiss him softly.

James allowed the kiss to happen and for a second, it was as if those horrible deaths in the Arena, the events of Silent Hill, Mary's death never happened. The sheer affection and spontaneity of it all, it felt like they were home in South Ashfield, him coming from a day at the store and helping his father Frank with the apartment building...he could hear Mary practicing her piano playing.

It was overwhelming enough that Sunderland broke the kiss with "I-I want t believe this is real. This is one of the few times it feels like it's not a dream." He rambled before he puled away. The illusion disappeared as soon as he opened his eyes. This wasn't Mary this was someone else's wife...

Unlike James, Clara had no delusions about who she was kissing. The way their faces lined up when they kissed was a world away from her and Alex, his lips weren't right, there was no hand going right to the small of her back (though that last one may have changed now, but she wasn't sure she'd ever get to know now). That didn't mean that the kiss was bad by any means, just that this man was not her (late, the thing she had to keep reminding herself every time she felt the guilt creep in) husband.

She did her best to mask the look of hurt that crossed her face when she realized where his mind had gone. "No, it's not," she said quietly, pulling away from him. "I...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have...I should go."

James sighed as he realized that his madness, his lack of resolution just stunted, possibly killed any real chance of happiness he could ever have with Clara. Or maybe his only chance at her seeing him a somewhat broken man and not the murderer that he was. She knows who is still in his mind but not for the reasons that she thinks.

"Please don't be sorry for w-what happened here," he said, as the first real thing he's ever said, a low-key rebellion on his part. He once had a dream while he recovered from his first Arena death that he showed a different path in his life. That he had the chance to leave Silent Hill with Laura in tow, and into a bright new day.

"If it helps, I want to see you again, Clara." he said as he stood up, his mind finally choosing that bright day over the murky depths of Toluca Lake.

She couldn't help but be sorry, not just for causing him distress and feeling like she took advantage of him in a bad moment, but for betraying Alex like this. Dead or not, he was still her husband and she was still clinging to the desperate hope that they'd be reunited one day.

She couldn't help but be a little surprised, having been so certain that she had just ruined any potential relationship. "I'd like that," she said softly. "I promise, next time I won't...." Try to kiss him out of the blue? Attempt to use him to fill the hole in her soul that Alex had left behind. "...try to take you by surprise like that."

"Why? Have I done something wrong?" Arya's taken 'we need to talk' to mean 'you're in trouble' for quite a while now, especially when it came to the people directly in charge of her.

There's something about Arya's question that makes Clara angry. Not at Arya, of course, but that she even feels like she has to ask that. "No, of course not. I just wanted to check up on you as your Mentor."

Which is mostly true and gleefully dances around the fact that she had a hand in killing Tom in the mini-arena or that there are a number of companies that would love to have Arya in whatever ad campaign they were considering. They're both things that need to be discussed at some point, but they can wait until later.

She shrugs, stuffing one of the donuts she'd ventured out from her room to get into her mouth, still looking uncertain as to whether she's in trouble or not. "I'm fine." As fine as she feels she can be here, anyway.

"Good," she says with a nod before gesturing to the seat across from her. "If you aren't busy, I thought we could talk. There are some companies who are interested in sponsoring you, and I'd like to run them past you." She makes sure to phrase it so that Arya can feel like she's in control of something here.

"I don't need a sponsor," she replies somewhat wearily - she'd spent long enough telling Sansa the exact same thing. "I have loads of money from my Arena kills, and Tom and Molotov buy me everything anyway."

That isn't the response she was expecting. She wants to point out that Tom and Molotov aren't the best people to rely upon, but she's pretty sure that will just make things worse. What she has to do is spin this in a way that will make it seem like it'll benefit everyone involved. "Think of it this way, if you agree to have one strong sponsor, they can help you in and out of the Arena. They could supply you with better food and weapons as well as help you appeal to the public." She smiles, making sure not to appear as sickening sweet at she does when she's in meetings with sponsors to appeal to them. "And I think you'd like this one."

Arya wants to respond that Tom and Molotov would be far better than a sponsor for that sort of help, as they know her fighting style well and have first hand Arena experience themselves, so are far more likely to send her things that will be of use. But she knows that Clara has a point - and really she knows better than to say no to free stuff, when it comes down to it.

"Why, what do they want me to do?"

Clara can't help but hold back a small laugh. "Nothing too crazy, I promise. They just want to take some pictures of you wearing a couple different outfits and holding a fake sword," she says, pulling up the artistic renderings that were sent to her of Arya in various warrior inspired children's clothing holding a sword to show to the girl. "If you don't want to, it's fine, but I thought that this might be a good opportunity for you. Plus, they'd let you keep the clothes afterwards if you say yes."

"That doesn't sound too bad," she admits a little reluctantly, hating the idea of having to dress up and pose even if they put her in a full suit of armour to do so. "Can I keep the sword too?" she asks hopefully, knowing she's probably pushing her luck a little there.

A small laugh bubbles out of Clara's mouth. It's not that she ever really forgets that Arya's just a child, but there's an air about her that sometimes makes her feel older than she is, or at least like she's trying to be. But there's something about her question that just seems so damn young, though she can't quite put her finger on it. "They might. I'm sure they'd be willing to consider it if that's what could make or break having you as their model." Clara shoots the girl a small smirk. "Any other requests?"

"Only that..." Arya hesitates, knowing that she would most certainly get a negative response here. "...That if there are any more sponsor offers, Sansa can get the first go at them. She needs them more than me."

It's a sweet request, one that Clara isn't quite sure that she can control, but sweet nonetheless. "I'll see what I can do," she says, giving Arya a reassuring smile. "If nothing else, I can try to have a meeting with her Mentor and the sponsors and see if they'd be interested." Though there's one little hiccup with that idea. "I'm not sure that the sponsors that want you to be their postergirl would be that interested in Sansa."

"She's my sister." She doesn't feel she needs to explain further than that - how she's almost the only family Arya has left, how she knows that Sansa would never be able to survive in the Arena the way she can, the conflict she felt between desperately wanting to win herself and wanting her sister to survive. She just says it as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, and how anyone who didn't accept that would have to deal with her.

"I understand that." And really, she does. She also understands how fickle the people of the Capitol can be about who they sponsor, even if it's for the most arbitrary reasons. "The problem is that you and your sister are opposites in a lot of ways, the things that sponsors want from you aren't the same things that they're going to want from her. But if I do see any sponsor offers that seem like they'd suit her, I'll make sure to talk to her Mentor to see if he'll chase after them for her."

Which is when something hits her. "Or if anyone would be interested in doing something inspired by the fact that you're both so different from each other. If I found something like that, would you be willing to do it?"

Arya nods eagerly. While she'd prefer the offer to go to Sansa outright rather than both of them, it's about as good as she's going to get. "I'd like that."

"Alright," she offers Arya a warm smile. She knows that it isn't what she was hoping for, but that it might bring Sansa more attention in the long run to start off being so linked to her sister in the Capitol's minds. At least that way she'd have a good chance of being recognized by sponsors.

After all, the Capitol seems to love family acts.

"I'll talk to her mentor and see if we can try to find something together that plays to both of your strengths." Clara lets out a small, soft, almost chuckle-like laugh. "I'll try to make sure that, whatever we find, it doesn't have to involve a dress."

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[open] and I know life is getting shorter, i can't bring myself to set the scene

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Shit! I deleted this one! Sorry!

It happens!

cw: self harm idealization

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hisss i lost this one i'm sorry!

Psh, it happens!

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