conifer: (033)
Eмιly Fιɴcн ([personal profile] conifer) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2015-10-03 09:01 pm

[OPEN]

Who| Emily and YOU
What|
Where| Around the Training Centre
When| A couple of days before the start of the Arena
Warnings/Notes| None inherent, will update as necessary


a) District 7 suite
Emily's dressed in the sort of clothes she'd only reluctantly wear for a fancy party, her hair piled high on her head. She looks out of place in the suite, especially as she's tidying and cleaning - disassembling the garden she's kept in one corner of the common area ever since she came back to the Capitol, something that's been her pride and joy, and has been her main distraction and source of therapy in mentoring. Today though, the plants are dug up, the soil swept and the wire displays dismantled, and Emily insists on doing it all herself. A few moments later she disappears into her room and comes back with her arms full of the intricate wood carvings she's put so much care and attention into, and dumps them into the bags with the plants, nodding to the Avoxes to take them away and dispose of them.


b) Out and about in the Capitol
Emily isn't certain what makes a 'good Capitolite'. A shallowness and self-absorption seemed to have a lot to do with it. But she was quite certain that she'd been offered citizenship because of qualities that were the exact opposite to that, ones that she had to admit that she hadn't seen in that many Capitol natives. It bothered her that she needed to stay true to herself while fitting in as one of them. Perhaps she was being unfair, and she was viewing them from the point of view of a Victor and moreover a Districter.

She goes to one of the high end shopping districts, wandering through stores and parks and finally seating herself in a restaurant, people watching all the while. Out here, a little of their eccentric nature seems to disappear, and they're not obnoxious Capitolites but just people. It's a surreal thing for her to accept.


c) The roof
The media didn't seem to have picked up on her panic attack at the Tribute Parade, something for which Emily was more than grateful. She wondered if Cyrus had anything to do with it, after all his offer of citizenship had come quickly after, and she was sure he'd wanted to keep a positive, Capitol-friendly image of her circulating. But even now, she couldn't get the District Tributes out of her mind, the bewilderment and despair on their faces as they realised that they were being sent to die, contrasted with the cheers of the audience.

She grips tightly onto the railing of the balcony to stop her hands from shaking, taking several long, deep breaths. "Get it together, Finch," she mutters. "They're not your people any more. You can't do this to yourself."


d) Closed to Beck
She shows up in the District Twelve suite without warning, and just stands and waits until Beck comes walking through, her expression stern and only a little less pained than when she'd found her in the bar the other night. She has no idea where they stand, and as much as she wishes she could postpone this indefinitely, she knows that she can't avoid Beck forever.

"It's time we finished our conversation."
atouchofka: (Not sure how to feel about this)

[personal profile] atouchofka 2015-10-14 11:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Alain is silent for a long, pregnant moment, puffing away thoughtfully on his cigarette. At last, he says quietly, "I can't picture it. I've tried, truly I have, but... I'm not a leader, or a mentor. I'm a soldier. What's a soldier without a war, or a gunslinger without his d... d..." Something like pain crosses his expression, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before enunciating clearly: "...his commander? I can teach, and I will, but I can't pretend that I'm aught but what I am. And I can't watch Roland die, time and again, and be unable even to close his eyes and... Even with that gulf of time between us, I owe him more than that."
atouchofka: (Unbearable)

[personal profile] atouchofka 2015-10-15 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's crossed my mind," he confesses, and looks at the dimly glowing end of his cigarette, blowing off some of the ash and watching it float off on the breeze. "...Sometimes I wonder if that's not what I want, in the end. It feels wrong, to have died, and to get up afterwards and keep on going. Sometimes I wonder if I have it in me to care how they redress the balance. I don't want to think that way, you understand. I'm not suicidal, at least I don't think I am. But I watched a shell go through my own skull, in closer, finer view than any eyes would have seen. How do I hold that memory, and still find it in myself to care what happens after?"

He sighs heavily, taking a breath of smoke and biting his lip. "Say sorry, I ought not to talk like this. I came up here to see if I could ease your burden, not lay more on your shoulders."
atouchofka: (Looking up)

[personal profile] atouchofka 2015-10-22 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Alain looks at her hand on his shoulder, then up at her, and gives her a thin little smile. "Thank... you." As always, there's that slight hesitation, the Capitol's enforced language barrier still not coming entirely naturally to him. "But I doubt there's much you can take of it. I'll grow to live with it, in time. I've seen worse things than one man dying, even if that man was myself." He sounds as if he's trying to convince himself at least as much as her.
atouchofka: (Unbearable)

i did not expect this oops have a feelings explosion

[personal profile] atouchofka 2015-10-26 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm not adding to them," Alain says, sounding honestly surprised at the idea. "I'm carrying them how I know best. It's like this," he says, turning to look at her more fully as he drops his cigarette butt and grinds it under his heel. "In this world, with all that's happened and goes on happening, it's hard to catch my footing. Roland's changed. The world's changed. I've changed. And all those things go on changing, too fast for me to grasp. But one thing holds fast, and that's my father's face. The vows I took, the person I swore to be. I'm a gunslinger. That's what I have to hang onto, some days the only thing I can hang onto. That didn't end when I died. That didn't end when Gilead fell. I'm still what I was trained to be: a fighter, a soldier, the last line of defence. I kill, so others can live innocent of killing. I fight, so that others can live in peace. I live by the gun, under the gun, it's in my veins and it's what I'm for. If I leave the Arenas, if I win, if my fighting's done, what's left of me?"

He slams his fist down on the rail, his face suddenly taut, his voice sharp as a blow. Then he takes a deep breath, and seems to come back to himself. "Cry pardon," he says quietly, and goes red right to the ears. "I lost hold of myself."
atouchofka: (Awkward)

[personal profile] atouchofka 2015-10-29 12:44 am (UTC)(link)
Alain wets his lips, shaking his head. "If Vannay were here," he says at last, slowly, as if he's placing the words in his mind as he speaks them, "I think he'd say that's the wrong question to ask. Every choice we make kills off all the people we might have been, every step we take on the road makes us a different person to the step before. We're not the same people we were before we fought. But even if we'd never fought, we wouldn't be the same people then, either. As for better or worse..."

He frowns, sighs. "There's a word my people have. The bedamned world won't let me say it, but it sounds like what you call those vehicles you drive. It means... fate, but that doesn't cover it. The road you walk, the roads all of us walk, that great network that binds us one to the other and all to the world. We don't always choose the road we go down, but we have to walk it to the end, all the way to the Clearing at the end of the path. There's no better and no worse, not in that great ugly-beautiful web, there's only the way you go down, and the ways you don't." Another sigh, heavier, weary in a way that belies his youth. "There's no sense asking what might have been, if you'd turned left instead of right ten years ago, if a fallen tree hadn't blocked the path you wanted, if and if and if. You can't live your life looking back over your shoulder, and you can't live it on roads you're not walking. There's no sense wondering who else you might have been. Only who else you might become. I look down my path, and if I'm not a gunslinger, I don't see anything at all. You look down yours, could be different. I hope it is."