Test Drive Meme!

[hey35andholding]

HOW TO PLAY:

* Tag into this post with a pup you're thinking of apping to the bar with a brief EP set within Milliways and/or its universe. You can be new to the game, or simply want to test out a fresh pup.

* If you already play at Milliways, feel free to tag in with your own characters and interact with the new pups. You can also post your own EPs for these new characters to thread with.

* Mingle, post, and have fun!

Comments

[real_or_notreal]

"No," Peeta said again, as though that single word from the man might have been a question. Without a question, without a wonder. Just the same note. Not a hallucination. He was real. What was left of him, at least.


Peeta glanced down at the seat his hands rested on, and back over to him, at least asking. "Do you mind--?"

[pickledtribute]

"Help yourself." There's another step - the boy did not say he came here from the arena. Not from the arena, not from the Capitol.





He doesn't know how to accept this strange thing called hope.

[real_or_notreal]

It's the easiest thing to be trapped and gutted by, isn't it? Hope. It is soulless and almost undeniable, and it wounds irreparably, throbbing even once it has been shattered.


Peeta slid down into the chair, still the edge of childhood to it, but also with a strange attention to how he settled one of his legs. He'll start somewhere easier. He always does, if he can.

"This place is called Milliways."

[pickledtribute]

Injury - old injury, one he's used to. An injury you wouldn't get as a baker's son, not and retain that kind of mobility.

But he doesn't comment on it. If he brings it up, he has to ask the question that follows, and he's not quite ready for that jump.

"And it appears in peoples' hallways?"

[real_or_notreal]

Not as old as it could be, but he refuses. The cane. Any noticeable limp. They've changed what can't be undone, he refuses to give them any more inches than they've blooded him of already.



"Sometimes. Mine took me from the doorway of a .. bedroom."

The third upstairs, but who was counting, really. He lived alone, in suffocating opulence. He liked to just barely pretend it was an art room. If that was laughable too, when the art displayed was a gruesome horror show.

[pickledtribute]

".... a bedroom." It's not a question.

It isn't.

Except for the way that it really, really is.

[real_or_notreal]

There's a faintly pinched expression.
And so Peeta gives him a long look.



"The third one. On the second floor."
In his cookie-cutter Capitol house.

[pickledtribute]

He knows Twelve like the back of his hand (or, even better, like he knows his alcohol tolerance). He knows where the Mellark family lives.

There isn't a third bedroom on the second floor.

But he knows where one is.




"How did she die?" There is only ever one Victor of the Hunger Games. He's still approaching the idea that eventually, one of the tributes actually survives sidelong.

[real_or_notreal]

It's not a long decision. It's actually far too easy. "When are you from?"



Somewhere long enough ago not to understand he'd protect her still.
When it's absolutely nothing she'd ever deserve from him now.

But they're alive to split those hairs and hate each other.

[pickledtribute]

"Just ended the Seventy-Second Annual Hunger Games." Which explains why he had been, before being interrupted, attempting to drown himself in liquor. It was a pretty hard-core attempt, even for him.

"He didn't survive the Cornucopia. She made it to the feast. Damn food was poisoned."

It took her a full twenty-four hours to die, too well hidden for the remaining Careers to find her and give her an easier end.

[real_or_notreal]

There is the split of grimace, as he nods. Peeta remembered watching that game, with his older brother and parents. Old enough to be guilty-grateful it wasn't him, without giving up being horrified by all of it.

Young enough to not know that horror was a shadow of what it could be.
Young to not understand he had it better than he ever could have known.

[pickledtribute]

Haymitch sees it, and nods. He'd thought she'd be able to make it. She'd had that survival instinct, that knack for being able to take care of herself.

There hadn't even been a damn thing he could do to help her at that point - she'd been delirious within an hour. Even if he had found a rich enough sponsor, which was something of an impossibility for what he wanted, she wouldn't have known to use what he sent.

Effie hadn't even protested when he simply gathered up all the bottles and set them on the table as he watched, slowly knocking them off.

[real_or_notreal]

"The 73rd isn't much better." Peeta rubbed a line in the middle of his forehead with the tip of his fingers. "Not that any of them are, no matter who wins."

The way he turns that last sentence it's obvious. No one wins. Even the Victors lose. Maybe especially the Victor's, going on to new rounds of torture each year as the price of succeeding.

Peeta doesn't know yet. He can only supposed, watching Haymitch so close these last months. The Victory Tour is only two months away, and he doesn't want to know anymore than he does. But it's all going and time won't stop anymore now than it ever would before.

[pickledtribute]

That is obvious, and one other thing is obvious too.

The 72nd was hell, and he wasn't expecting any reprieve in the 73rd...

But he didn't mention the 74th.

Well. He can hold on that long. Surely he can. He'll be damned if he'll consign another District Twelve winner to the demoralizing experience of a Capitol mentor.

"You haven't toured yet, have you?" The boy is a looker, which is unfortunate, for him.

[real_or_notreal]

Peeta was staring at a careful spot on the table between himself and Haymitch's less than half-filled bottle. It's long weighted few seconds before his head tilts, and he lefts a breath out, blue eyes, still and cruelessly hard.

"The packets started arriving last month. Instructions, expectations, wardrobe sketches, speech topics to consider." One for each district, in the order they'd be visited.

[pickledtribute]

"The tour itself isn't... the Games are worse. The Capitol is the problem."

The Capitol, and its citizens, eager for a chance to meet the Victor they watched the year before.

Or do more than meet. Maybe they could arrange for Peeta to run afoul of an oven or something between now and then.

[real_or_notreal]

The Capitol isn't his problem. Alright, it's one of them. Katniss is still the bigger problem The Capitol presents. Because the Capitol will not give a damn about what the truth is. They will only want what they saw, what they believed. The Star Crossed Lovers of District 12.

Two children so desperately in love they'd rather die together, than live apart. Two children who could not manage three minutes in a room together now without piss and vinegar, guilt and rage blinding everything and everyone there.


"They just want their show," Peeta said, a little too sharp and trite, for his thoughts. For all her lies, again. All her lies, that were why he was breathing. "Their pound of flesh."

[pickledtribute]

Haymitch raises an eyebrow - and then frowns.

"Without sounding too ominous... your family?"

[real_or_notreal]

Oddly enough, this frown is far more distant, not quite surprised. Rather like he has to remember to think of them now. It's a divide that started long before he boarded the first train, but it was chasm by the time he returned.

One that couldn't be crossed. He had no want to. After his childhood. After his mother told him he would die, and his father never even came. "Still live above, and run, the bakery."

[pickledtribute]

And the boy doesn't seem worried about them in the slightest. So what's being held over his head, to already get that sort of bitterness?

A Games of unusual horribleness? Probably not - the boy's as sane as survivors come, and he knows what the ones who crack look like.

"Girlfriend?"

[real_or_notreal]

His own heart. Of course.



Peeta's jaw tighten, just enough. Blue eyes flicking upward and back to Haymitch. He really shouldn't mind. The man was far worse when drunk on the other side of the door. He could stand through all of that.

"Depends on who you ask."

Such as the every once in a while broadcasts, without district wide power outages, that liked to inform him he must have already gotten married in the most 'quaint' little 'backwoods' wedding imaginable. Not that it surprised him. Not really.

It had been a good story. Everyone had bought into believing. Especially him.