A Nightmare All the Same {Atticus & Victoria // Mattio}

His feet danced around puddles from the morning’s rainshower, dodging each stain of water on the floor and the tears from the autumnal trees along the sidewalk. While most people don’t care if their dress shoes get wet, Atticus Manor cares more and more by the day. It may just be paranoia, but anywhere he goes, the victor feels as if he is being watched, judged, and ridiculed for every little thing about him. That’s why he wore clothed shoes, well, slim fitting black pants, and a floral dress shirt, with all but the top button buttoned. Still, as he made his way to one of the pubs of Three that was described to him by Andromeda as more relaxed, not as haughty as some of the high class ones that reside in the richer areas of the district.

Avoiding the richer people was exactly what he set out to do. They were the worst in the district. Atticus could walk by them, minding his own business, but he could hear them whispering. The only conclusion he could come up with was that he was the one being gossiped about, and that scared him. Atticus was given a big, lonely house and a considerable paycheck, but it came to only confirm that money could not buy him what he has craved for eighteen years: happiness.

It’s wishful thinking for the man to assume that the middle-to-lower class of District Three would think any differently, if not more harshly. He walked anyways, however, letting the soles of his shoes crack into the dried-out leaves that made their way to the ground. The wind whispered out to him multiple times as he walked past buildings to the pub.

Atticus didn’t know what to expect other than the little Andy told him about the place. He could run out in one minute from anxiety, or maybe he would stay for a bit of the night. As he entered the building, it would be an understatement to say he felt overwhelmed by people, but he was relieved to see that nobody was glaring at him as if this place was not where he belonged. All of District Three was their home, and Atticus wanted to treat it as such. After all, his roots come from the half-assed tinkerings of his parents. Had the luck-of-the-draw not selected his name, it would be almost natural to sit in the stools of this pub.

The bartender looked at him as Atticus’s seat swerved to the right and then evened out back to the left. It took a minute for Atticus to realize the bartender was waiting for his order. “Uh.. Sangria. Best kind you’ve got,” he told the man, and then proceeded to look down at the well-polished tabletop. Ever ounce of his head told him that he didn’t belong here, but each of those same bits and bobs wished that he did. All the people here were outgoing, clever, fun, and all he could do was act as the lone boy at the bar, waiting for his first of many vodkas for the night.

He heard an elbow rest itself to seats next to him and looked over to see a girl with fiery red hair, a woman who clearly knew who Atticus was.

{“What’s a local celebrity doing in a lowlife pub like this? Shouldn’t you be at a high end club being worshipped after the nightmare the Capitol put you through?”}

As she spoke, Atticus let out a nice chuckle. The girl expects that because one has been given a luxurious life, it automatically means they must live a luxurious life. A statement Atticus knew to be far from true.

{“You should at least be drinking better shit then this stuff.”} She takes a sip of her drink. He doesn’t quite know what it is, but he tries to shoot her a smile. Atticus could barely tell rude remarks from sarcastical ones, but with her, it felt different.

“Not everyone is as high maintenance as you might think. Besides, uh, being worshipped, as you put it, isn’t really what I signed up for.”

He probably hadn’t spoken as many words to anyone as that in months, with the exception of Ester, Andromeda, and maybe Angel. He was in a new place, after all, and if Atticus has found anything out in his eight years since hell, it is that new people bring new outlooks, and that changes who you are.

Sol Shim, Astrid Shaw, Danny Brooker. Ester, Andy, and Angel. Deja, Bolts, Bruce, Alice, Adelaide, Akira, Florence. Tributes, Friends, Mentees. They have changed him forever.

A new friend could change him forever, too.

The girl he spoke to was clearly younger than him, but the manner in which she spoke reminded him only of the memories seven years old. Snarky comments, but ones that caught you, hook, line, and sinker. The words that come most to mind are those of Celia Mortuus.

{“Who killed Quadrys Lexig? It was me.”}

Atticus still hated that.. that monster for what she did, and despised her even more for lacking remorse. He heard Quadrys’s screams again, and felt the pain and regret sink in like knives and spears over and over again. He has never forgotten them, no matter how hard his brain tries to forget, memories are one of the few things that the victor didn’t know how to solve here.

As the girl orders her drink in the seat next to him, Atticus takes a sip of his own drink to take a breather. He was never good at making conversation, especially with new acquaintances like her. “Half a dozen shots of bottom shelf whiskey please.” As she spoke, he immediately slammed down his drink out of disbelief. The people in the upper-towns of District Three would shudder in disbelief, most likely. He’d never seen someone order like that ever in the bars he’s been to before. But for some odd reason, he found it appealing and attracting. Within moments, she got her half dozen and continued to speak.

“Alright, mister low maintenance - this is what you call crap liquor.”

{Andy told Atticus that crap liquor was perhaps the best of all.}

“It’ll give you a wicked hangover tomorrow, but it’ll also get you shit-faced the fastest. A sloppy drunk, but drunk nonetheless.”

He laughed as she downed one before he even got a chance to ask how it tasted. It was alcohol, but the type he found to be so foreign. The Capitol would more likely than not have a field day if they heard he was a fan of whiskey over one of their masterful creations. However, he also remembered that any type of Capitol person wouldn’t dare step foot into this kind of pub.

Atticus smiled for a minute. This was what Andromeda wanted him to feel: freedom, risk, and a daring nature that sitting in his estate would never be able to offer him. So, shifting his drink to his left, he put the Sangria on pause, at least for the time being. A night on the wild side couldn’t hurt, could it? Besides, Atticus always wanted to know the difference between being tipsy, as he was told he always ended up, and shit-faced, the stories that he heard but could never imagine for himself. He reminded himself, however, as the girl was finishing her drink, that the whole idea of leaving the confined corners of the familiar District Three was the entire goal of the night.

He raised his hand for the bartender to walk over.

The bartender stared at him for a moment, waiting for Atticus to talk. The Sangria, one sip away from empty, was still there.

“Well,” he said, curling the glass bottle back to him, listening to the bottle skim over like a tin plate on a marble tabletop. The final sip was consumed, and he shook the now-empty bottle in his hand. “I guess the bottom-shelf whiskey for me, too, sir. Half dozen.”

He smiled at the girl for a second, before challenging her views of him.

“If you want to teach me how to be the best, shit-faced drunk you’ve ever seen, I’m open to some, advice.”

When his half-dozen came along, Atticus downed one, almost exactly has she did.

“All at once, or spread out, Miss..?”

He figured if he was about to get a wicked hangover, he might forget her name anyway, but what did it matter? Atticus wanted to remember now who taught him to come out of his shell, even for just a night. After all, it’s not every day he musters up the courage to leave his home and try something new.

Vic, she says, before proceeding to declare that she’ll call him Atty for shortening purposes. No one had called him that in years, nearly ten if he was recalling correctly. Nell Locke breathed back into his existence, and as Vic continued to talk about their drinking game, he only thought of her. Mud filled his socks in the arena, a quite uncomfortable feeling, but it was mortifying to fall straight into the dirt as if drowning. That was what happened when Nell’s near-white hair tickled his spine, forcing him back upright. She called him Atty at least five times in a single breath as Atticus Manor laid distraught in the arena, approaching death even on day one. No bone failed to ache as he thought of the memories that he had managed to escape for quite some time: the painful ones where Atticus was dragged along like fodder, only weighing the king and queens of the swamp down as they fought hideous monsters and formidable foes.

His focus finally perched itself back up on the girl when she spoke about a girl named Gloria, a fan of Atticus’s. Surely she missed the part when he pushed a dying Sol Shim out of a bird cage, who could be a fan of that.

“So I dare you to go dance with her for one song.”

On instinct, his cheeks turned blood red as his smile went from a sense of curiosity to embarrassment. He already triumphed in sitting in a bar with one person, but now, Vic wanted him to dance with another? The second shot of Sangria was enclosed by two nervous hands and downed within seconds. He had to keep up with the girl and prove he wasn’t a lightweight like Angel had suggested.

“Uh, I don’t dance,” his words, although intended to be a serious decline, only gave off the sense that he was afraid. And he was. Atticus didn’t dance, he didn’t sing, he didn’t play by the same rules as a rowdy teenager would.

“To be honest with you, Vic, I don’t usually socialize with people, especially at a pub or bar. So, uh, if we could keep this thing just between us, I would appreciate it.”

His fingers traced for the third shot, and he poured it down his throat as soon as he finished talking. Confrontation was not Atticus’s strong suit, any person with sense could tell that from a mile away. Charisma found itself etched into a victor’s lifestyle but Atticus viewed his style as anything but. With a timid heart, he played the game of being seen rarely and letting the new, more flashy, victors take the spotlight. There was, to his knowledge, victor children who he’d rather let take the spotlight. If they were willing, why not let them?

Atticus had declined her dare, but acknowledged his interest in Vic. With a smile, he shoved half of the half dozen of shots to the side before asking her to complete a dare of her own.

“I dare you to..” he paused, “well, it’s not going to be a dare if you don’t want it, but tell me your life problems.”

He was curious as to what she would say. While Atticus worried about diverting attention, he acknowledged that some were neglected, like Deja and her puppet friends who were left forgotten under their captor’s grasp. His reasons for sadness were silly and impractical, and there were certainly bigger things to worry about than an owl’s eyes dilating to watch your moves.

Vic had the tone of confidence, but Atticus learned to read people. Her strong attitude hid something dark, and the victor remained sincerely interested in learning what it was.

Atticus continued to match every shot she took, their half dozen each quickly draining down their throats. Andy always told him he drank too fast for his health, refusing to space them out so things didn’t happen too fast. But Atticus did like the rapid changes in how he felt, even if it meant a worse hangover in the morning. Most days, he had nothing to do other than laze around in his house, empty hallways that he refused to fill echoing back. He spent over ninety percent of his time in his bedroom with his books, pen, and paper. The other ten? Desperate attempts from what few friends he had left to drag him out.

For some reason, Atticus felt best leaving his home on his own free will. It left things to chance, and for once in his life, what he decided to do was up to him, not Andy or Esther, the people of the Capitol or the nightmares of those he’s lost along the way.

Vic let him choose the direction of the evening. She agreed to his singular condition of the game to ensure that he was not overwhelmed. The amount of shit these people are willing to put on a victor’s plate is incredible, but every once in a while, it’s possible to come across someone willing to take part of the burden.

She adds one condition of her own, which Atticus is quick to agree with, “Okay, so you made the rule of no involving other people into our drinking game. My rule is no depressing questions.” It was in his nature to drag a conversation to pessimism, especially after ten years of mentoring with a false hope. He’d learned quick not to sugar coat it, and he let all the tributes drive the dialogue as well.

“Now I dare you to finish the rest of these shots with me, and take me somewhere that we can come up with better dares,” she said, taking another shot. Atticus smiled, gulping one down moments after.

Once again, she tossed the ball into his court. It’s totally out of Atticus’s character to the lead the way. She gave him power and she gave no sense of being malicious.

His pulled his hand up to his mouth thinking of where they could go when he felt his elbow push up against a cold glass. It was her last shot. Crashing onto the floor and smashing into tons of pieces, his face immediately turned red. The people in the bar turned their heads and Atticus couldn’t have felt more embarrassed.

“There goes keeping this between us,” he said, quickly trying to pile up the shattered glass with his shoes.

He took to his wallet, digging through to find a few bucks.

“I’m sorry, I can pay for that,” he said, taking out a couple bills to hand to Vic to make up for whatever he wasted for her. “and for the glass,” he said, randomly picking some of the bills to put on the table for the bartender to collect. It was surely much more than what a single shot or a single glass cost, but Atticus didn’t want to cause any chaos or seem selfish and destructive.

It wasn’t in his nature.

“We can go to my place, if you’d like, Vic,” he said, squishing his wallet back into his pocket. It wasn’t often he invited people to his home, but the quicker he got out of the bar, he thought, the better. “It’s a bit empty up there, and it’d be nice to fill a void for once.”

Atticus swallowed his final shot of the night, offering his hand to his new friend.