shenevermisses | 16th Throw - [ written / action ]

[Written:]

I want to work for the Malnosso. [It's written because she wants to say it, but she doesn't trust her voice.]

I want to be out of this enclosure, working for them. Especially on the battlefield. If they'd just let me, my knives are theirs.

I hate this waiting. Hate it. Sure, time to heal after the fight. Time to rest. But I know how this goes. How long it'll be before I have a knife in my hand for anything other than hunting. Before I get to really fight again.

I hate it.

Why can we just sign up? Go into battle and let that be that. Leave us there, provide supplies, die and come back again and again. I'm useful in a fight. Sitting around here? It's pointless.

[Action:

Clove hasn't spent much time at the apartment. She's been holed up at the camp she established when she first came.

Tonight, for the first time since she got back, there's a fire. Plenty of kindling and proper logs, but also... ball and oval-like bits of wood being thrown in.

All the carving she'd done when Cato had been worrying about her? It's all going into the fire now. Burning.

It was stupid to do it. To pretend she could have something other than battle. She knows now, better than she did before maybe-- that's all she's good for.]

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[Loki leans forward and stares into the fire, extending his hands briefly and humming softly when he feels warmth spreading out from the tips of his fingers to the rest of his hands.]

Allow me to keep your sculpture, yes? I will tell no one you ever had a hobby, my lips are sealed, my mouth stays shut and similar phrases like that.

[He shakes his head briefly.]

Fair enough. But you think secluding yourself is going to help?

Because I went to the Academy, where District Two trains its competitors for the Hunger Games.

[He'll call it barbaric. After he asks what that is. Once she tells him, he'll go on a moralistic tirade. He's the type. Just like the others who've been shocked and appalled. Who can't believe it happened in her world.

She hates all of them, especially right now, and this one... He's going to be one more like them. She knows it.]

Yes.

[It's a simple reply, but it's loaded. She has every reason to fear that someone -- anyone -- might try to kill her. Might want to kill her. Now that the secret's out -- to one person, but she isn't sure how many know it -- everyone is a potential enemy.]

Then it's not for you. That doesn't mean it's not for me.

What I need to.

I want it in the fire. [But she won't take it from him. She doesn't trust herself with that struggle, not to go too far, not to add another death of a resident to her record here.

So she sits, very still and very silent, glaring at the flames, fingers flexing and contracting as she reminds herself all the reasons she can't go for a knife.]

Yes. I think it will.

Anyone in particular?

[It's a mindset Konan understands all too well, which is why she won't tell Clove it's silly to think that way. Instead, she'll just encourage her to share what she's willing to share and leave it be when it's clear that Clove doesn't want to talk about it anymore.]

For what it's worth, there is only one person I want to kill and he is not here in Luceti.

[It's stated very matter of factly. She knows better than to tell someone who's developed that kind of paranoia to trust her, but there's no harm in assuring Clove that she doesn't intend to kill her.]

Yes. Possibly more than one person.

[But she'll leave it at that. It's better not to go into it.]

Maybe we'll train together. Later. [When she's better suited to handle this. All of it. Whatever it is.]

It just sounds like a pretty sad and lonely life to me. I can't imagine it would be easy to make friends while fighting all the time.

I like my life.

[He rolls his eyes, tired of the game.]

I'm gonna assume you're smarter than you're acting and don't need someone like me to spell out what it is they're looking for. But it all gets soulless after a while.

When you're working on skills to win them over, though, try to find something about it you can like as much as fighting before you tire of that too.

[Loki knows what loneliness and solitude can do and he does not wish such things to happen to her. Despite what academies and capitols might say.]

I will not do so.

[He nudges her briefly.]

Perhaps we can finish it together. I see a bird in this sculpture but it is not yet finished. Carving wood is a good way to pass time, you see?

[There's a small pause...]

It won't. Believe me. I do not lie.

They would hold back; you would not.

Do you have an escape plan worked out, if need be?

[She won't ask what it is - that is Clove's business. But perhaps it may help her nerves to come up with a plan. Better than to leave things up to chance and the unknown.]

Really? I'd hate being so alone all the time.

The...Hunger Games?

Errrr, mind if I ask what that even is?

[Was it some kind of competition to see who could go the longest without eating? Then again, why would she need to learn how to fight and kill for it?]

But it's never enough. [Not really a question, just a voiced concern.]

[He runs a hand through his hair and glances away.] When all you do is hunt, the lack of having something to hunt can be like not having oxygen.

You need to find why you hunt before you can figure out what to hunt in a place such as this, girl.

[Overstepping his bounds? Hugely. But that's Smoker for you. He doesn't even really care if she takes the advice or not. Given how no one in his world listens to him usually, he doesn't expect it to work, but he says it because he figures he should.]

[...] Right, okay. Makes sense.

I fight because that's how I stay alive.

[Not even physically. It's more than that, something else entirely. It's when she can think, when the rest of the world goes away and leaves her alone, when she can breathe and be herself.]

Twenty-four tributes -- one from each district, a boy and a girl ranging from twelve to eighteen -- go into an Arena. One comes out alive as Victor.

[Simple, straight-forward. It's her life. What she knows.]

Then we're different.

Fight like hell.

[What else can she do?]

That's their problem, not mine.

You can go now.

[It's that simple, to her. Dismissing him.

After all, there's no way she's carving again. And since he obviously won't do what she wants about the wood piece, she isn't going to bother arguing it further. It's a good reiteration of the lesson she's learning, here. How people think.

"What I want trumps what you want."]

Except there's more to it than that, isn't there? Otherwise, being alive now without fighting wouldn't bother you.

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