salvage a smile [AV:LNC]

The food in the District Four lounge looks familiar enough that every time Wander bites down ve expects a comforting sliver of home, only to end up with a mouthful of disquiet. Not that it's bad, exactly, which is the confusing thing that keeps ver coming back to try again. If anything, it's too good, the cream sauces too rich and the meat so universally tender that ve half wonders whether rich people don't know that you can eat the meat from a lobster's body, too. Some of it is raw, because they can do that, here—leave a dish on a table and know they'll always have enough to replace it if it sits out too long. All of it tastes the way seeing ver face in the mirror after Jizav finishes with the morning's makeup feels.

All of it tastes like the Capitol.

Washing everything down with black coffee helps a bit, if only because it's revolting enough to meet vis expectations perfectly. Wander and the kids aren't—weren't—aren't allowed coffee at home, so ve's only had it at work, swilled en masse to stay awake on early mornings cleaning catches and through the last few long nights at sea when no one had time or energy to bother sprucing up their drinks. That's more or less how Wander's drinking it now, knocking back enough to get ver moving in the morning and enough to drown out the taste of everything else any time ve ends up eating in the lounge instead of the dining hall.

Hopefully the others are having better luck. Wander never really thought about being from District Four before this; it was backdrop, as certain and unremarkable as the constant smell of brine. Now, surrounded by the unknown and by Capitolites who look at ver like something halfway between a bag of money and an unfamiliar bug, ve finds verself keenly, almost furiously proud of everything ve used to take for granted. If this, gussied up and filtered as it is, is the only piece of home that ve can share with the near-strangers joining ver today, then ve hopes it's a good impression.

None of them are friends, yet, but Wander thinks they can get there. Wants to get there. Temple seems tough and kind in equal measure, the sort of person who might not have been out of place on Linares' crew; Bette is harder to read, enough so that Wander thought the invitation might be a long shot, but ve was glad when she took it. And Eve—Ripred, Wander wishes ve'd never met Eve, because she might belong in the Games the least of anyone in this building. Still, if she had to be here, ve's glad they ran into each other. She doesn't remind ver of the kids, exactly—none of them are that timid, and even Cadenza might take up more space—but there's a glimmer of something bright in her that Wander wants to see shining.

"So," Wander says as ve joins them, setting vis latest mug on the coffee table and settling on the couch with a bowl of lobster bisque on vis crossed legs. Without thinking about it ve drums the fingers of one hand against the side of the bowl for a second, then catches verself and sets both hands to tearing apart a piece of bread instead. On reflection, all that coffee might not be doing ver any favors. "Everyone's holding up?"



Title, if not necessarily theme, song is "Salvage a Smile" by Laura Veirs.