shenevermisses | 3rd Throw - [ action/written ]

[Residents who see her around will notice the change in Clove starting on May 26th. She walks with more certainty, lingers less in doorways before entering shops, and rarely checks the knife up her sleeve.

It's still there, but she relies on it less. She is calmer, still hesitant around non-humans, but she doesn't flinch when someone larger than her approaches from behind.

She also looks about two years older, closer to nineteen than seventeen.

It only takes her until May 27th before she has to write in the Journals.]

Malnosso:

I know of no other way to contact you, so I write this here in hopes that you will see it.

My name is Clove. I reside in Community House #2, room #3.

If you are able to bring us here, you are able to send us back. Perhaps it is difficult. Perhaps it is dangerous. Perhaps it is expensive.

I am willing to risk the dangers. I will also do anything you ask of me to pay the debt this will incur. Send me to your worst battlezone, ask me to retrieve information-- anything. Name your price, and I will pay it.

Just send me home.

I need to return to District Two.

Thank you for your time, if you will grant it to me,
Clove

[She will be around town in her altered state through May 29th.

...After June 5th?

She'll spend a few days half hiding at her lake-side camp, avoiding the town.]

(ooc: From 5/27-5/29, Clove has been AUed into a world in which she won the 74th Annual Hunger Games with Cato as her co-victor. Feel free to, if you'd like to reply, have your character either respond to her written entry or do an action post of running into her around town. Dated replies are wonderful!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have the picture, Sally.

I'm looking right at it.

It... it showed up today. I'm so glad it did.

I don't know what the Malnosso have done, but they haven't done anything to me.

I mean... I know I told you about Elpis. When I started crying about my Parade costume? Because that's what I'd worn in the chariot with Cato before the Games. And it's just... those were awful. But I got Elpis for it, so...

So it was worth it.

Did they... really make you forget about that?

I--

[Hope so? Hate the bastards who did this to everyone here, especially to the children?]

Is-- Are you-- ...Can I see the picture?

Of course!

[She brightens considerably at the idea.]

Want me to put it up to the journal and turn on the camera? Or want me to meet you somewhere and bring it?

[A chance to show off her husband and daughter? She can't pass it up.]

[Is this a conversation best had in person? Perhaps. Complicated, for sure, but Sally does face-to-face better than the separation of the journals.]

We should meet somewhere. [Sally has a horrible streak of luck going on, but some things are more important.]

By the fountain?

I'll be there in twenty.

[Ordinarily she'd give herself less time, but considering her streak of appalling luck made making coffee this morning a remarkably impressive production, twenty is just being safe.

But she's there by the fountain at the appointed time, although one of her shoes is untied. Even though she tied it carefully this morning.]

[Clove is waiting for her, all of eighteen going on nineteen, rather than sixteen going on seventeen.

She smiles when she sees Sally, rising from her seat on the fountain to greet her. Trying to pretend as if their previous conversation hadn't taken place, she offers the photograph forward.]

I just found it today. It's so good to have it at least.

[The picture is a simple family portrait, though the participants are fairly dressed up. Clove is in a gold dress, her baby girl (who looks about a month old) in white clothes, carefully held close to her mother's chest. Standing behind Clove is a boy just older than her. He's very tall and very broad, probably about three times Clove's size, really. He's dressed in a black suit. Both parents are smiling, and the blond male has his hand on Clove's shoulder. There's some tension to them both, the photograph has a very "official" feel, but the underlying happiness is genuine.]

It was taken for the Capitol. They wanted a little story about how Cato and I were, about the baby.

It... Seeing it here... It made me think about how much I need to get home.

[In person, it's easier to see how Clove looks different. More mature. Older. It's jarring at first, but there's a surprise every day in this damn place, isn't there?

Sally just smiles and takes the photo - and it almost ends up in the fountain, but, somehow, not quite. She clutches it in her somewhat untrustworthy fingers, and...

It's a nice photo. The parents are too young, in Sally's opinion, and they look staged, but also...happy. Really happy. And she feels more and more rotten with every passing instant for knowing it's all a lie.]

She's beautiful.

[In a perfect-- or even better-- world, Clove would have preferred to be a bit older before having children.

But "newlywed" would keep President Snow satisfied for only so long. If she and Cato really wanted to protect themselves as tributes? They had to keep pushing the "young, new family" angle. One child was enough. For right now. Maybe another later, as Elpis got older. Two children, maybe three. No more than that. But they'd needed Elpis, selfish as it was, to keep them safe. To protect one another.

Still, there's no disguising the truth in her voice when she says:]

They're my everything. It... doesn't do either of them justice at all. But it's... it's so good to have it here.

[Having no idea how to respond to all this, Sally just goes for something honest.]

...I had been wondering what Cato looked like.

[Clove's description had been pretty accurate. But it was interesting - if...strange - to see them together.]

You can see why he was the favorite to win.

[It's pride and respect and a little of the remembered fear.

She's had eighteen months to have to give interviews and make appearances and to mentor the last District Two tributes-- who, for the third Quarter Quell, were allowed to only have weapons they made inside the arena, to remind the districts of how vital the Capitol's support was to their survival as communities and celebrate the ingenuity of the districts. She can pretend to revel in the memories of her Game.

She gingerly takes back the photograph.]

Elpis is so small. We'll probably have to enroll her in the academic program at the Academy.

[To keep her safe.

To keep her away from the Hunger Games and President Snow.]

[Yeah, she sort of can. The kid is huge.

And a kid. They're both kids. And they have a kid. Good lord.]

...Academic program?

District Two has the Academy. She wouldn't go to a village school-- we have enough money to send her to the Academy. Several times over.

But they have two programs: the athletic program and the academic program. Cato and I were placed in the athletic program as kids. That's...

They train the tributes.

[Maybe they'll be seen as cowards, she and Cato.

That's why she knows they'll need another child. A boy, perhaps. A second child either way... a sacrifice to Panem's bloodlust and their brutal Hunger Games.]

Elpis will go into the academic program.

Good. [It's reflexive. But any child saved from these twisted tournaments...that is a good thing.

She just wishes it weren't too late for Clove. Even this version of her seems...well, she's clearly been through a lot.]

I'm, um. I'm sure that's the better place for her.

No. [It's... almost soft.] You were right.

Good.

That is precisely the word for it. For keeping her away from the Games: Good.

[Because having won. Having faced that torment and come out with Cato at her side...

She can confess to the horrors that haunt her much more readily than the girl who needs to cling to the propaganda she swallowed for years, just to believe her death wasn't pointless.]

[Clove keeps saying things that sort of make Sally want to hug her, or possibly punch something.]

I'm sorry, Clove.

We... have to try and keep her safe from him. We have to try.

[It's quiet, as if she doesn't dare to actually voice it but the thought refuses to stay in.]

Who's "him"?

President Snow.

[And Sally thought politicians on Earth could be bad.]

I'm glad she'll be safe from him. You take good care of her.

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