gentle repose ; blair&jovis blitz

j o v i s

Jovis wore a suit for the special occasion. Blair's "Victory Tour." It became a habit for the victors of the Hunger Games succeeding his to do so. His unfinished business combined the Capitol's retroactive parading of the past winners, Jovis starred the date on Craw's work calendar well in advance to request off.

Even in the years following his exile, he wasn't sure he committed any sort of egregious crime. Twenty-three tributes were to die, and twenty-three did. Those were the rules Jovis made an oath to follow. He waited until Mallory's hidden cameras showed only Blair left above water to pull him out. Blair Murdock was the victor, even if Jovis thought the districts deserved none. He hated the districts and the Capitol evenly now although his infatuation with the Hunger Games persisted.

"Thank you for having me, District Two." Jovis watched Blair's speech from the right end of the front row. And thank you, Jovis thought, his stoic expression looking on as the boy-turned-young-man spoke to the district's crowd. Thank you for not being an embarrassment of a victor.

He wondered if the victor caught him in the crowd, watching from the edge of the Town Square. Two forgot his face within a year of his residency, but could the boy have forgotten the first unhelmeted face he saw once he was rescued from the rubble? As Blair's speech concluded, Jovis slipped away from the crowd and toward the Justice Building.

Hands at rest behind his back, Jovis waited for a Peacekeeper at the back entrance to address him before speaking. "I presume the victor is in the building? Could you let him know he has a visitor? An old face who would love to say hello and catch up."

What Jovis had to share, he wasn't sure. Some mix of anger, malice, and a quest for closure, possibly.

j o v i s

Oh, how the child he rescued grew. What was it? Three, four years? More? Jovis's hands rested in the back pockets of his trousers as Blair Murdock greeted him. He could see how his participation in the Hunger Games taxed his body. Nervous habits wandered in his hands and his eyes. Jovis felt the same in some respects after he left the Capitol. Still during dinner, his hand reached out to grab onto his mother or his wife for a quick prayer. They never reached back.

"I thought they'd kill you, or do they think living like one of us is close enough?" Jovis nodded at Blair's observation imposing himself further into the back room. The drink he poured made it no more than halfway into the glass, but Jovis accepted it nonetheless. He reached out, holding it until Blair's fingers stopped shaking.

There was no need to be nervous. They were both grown-enough men now.

"We have a lot to catch up on. How've you been?"

Jovis sat in the chair, one leg resting over the other's thigh. The drink in his hand was just bitter enough to match his feelings on the matter. "This has been an uncomfortable change for me, Blair." He went from being a warden of the Capitol's best rebel prisons to being a prisoner himself, trapped in a place that brought nauseating memories of his childhood. "My superiors uprooted me and planted me here, without my wife and son, in a place where my family died fighting for this country's honor." Jovis felt more lonely than betrayed. Things got better in time in Two. People forgot his name, forgot his face. Outside of Craw, friends were far and few between without a bed and a price.

Blair was not a friend, but he was familiar. Jovis found stability in his presence.

He took a long swig from his glass. "And you? What has life been like for my victor?" The conditions of winning promised glory and prestige, but no longer was Jovis oblivious to the fact that the Capitol didn't always keep their word.