::a war that never ends:: Katelyn/Teddy
Feb 13, 2019 2:31:04 GMT -5
Post by charade on Feb 13, 2019 2:31:04 GMT -5
KATELYN PERSIMMON
The training center.
Where dreams, or perhaps nightmares came to die.
Twenty-three more lives would soon be ending. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Was this to be the rest of her life? Ever a cog in the machine that was the Capitol, spinning a pair of tributes into their graves once a year until she too was dead and buried? There had to be more to life than just that. She knew there was, and yet it was always just out of reach. It was on the tip of her tongue, the back of her eyelids. It was the dream that faded from her mind upon waking up, the echo in an empty room. The reflection in a pane of opaque glass.
The only way out is six feet deep. She thought morbidly.
She brushed the thought away as Arianna and Rex took over her mind. She’d need to get the ball rolling for sponsors as soon as she could. Maybe she could play up her absence. Made the heart grow fonder and all that right? She could push Rex’s bravery for volunteering in such a low district. Some of sponsors might disagree with her if he held true to what he had said on the train and avoided fighting, but that was a bridge she’d cross when she came to it.
Arianna on the other hand…
Katelyn shook her head as she continued to roam the halls. The young, scared, blonde girl reminded her uncomfortably of herself. It would take some time to formulate a way to market her to the sponsors. Perhaps go the innocence is a virtue route? Katelyn frowned. She wished Opal was available to talk to, but she hadn’t seen a single sign of her yet; though she thought she had seen Justice making eyes at someone a few hours ago. She was sure she’d be able to find him at least. Then it’d be off to find Mace; it saddened her to think of all the birthday cakes she’d missed baking for her friends.
And then of course, she owed Arbor a bottle of whiskey for being right about damn near everything.
Walking into the dining hall, she made a beeline for the buffet line. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but she hadn’t eaten despite being up for several hours. That meant it was brunch time, and as everyone knew, brunch was the most important meal of the day. She grabbed a plate and a croissant breakfast sandwich; it was loaded with spinach, cucumber and avocado which covered the scrambled eggs and the smoked salmon that made the base. She chose shredded hash for the side; a little darker than it should have been, but nothing ketchup couldn’t fix. A French vanilla latte completed the meal and she added two sugars with shot of cream.
There wasn’t a whole lot of people about, but that was fine with her. She needed to think. Katelyn chose a table that faced the door and took a bite, savoring the explosion of flavors in the sandwich. There were a couple tributes that stood out to her already. First off, the pair from one looked deadly. The girl was a trained killer for certain, she radiated that sort of vibe.
The boy, Saturn was a mass of muscle that reminded her of the Hammerfells. They’d be ones to watch out for. District two she wasn’t so sure about; for being the other top career district, they’d had a habit of choking when it came down it, if not shitting the bed entirely. However, both tributes were volunteers, so that was worth a second look.
Four was a greater threat though, with a new victor under their belt, who knew what Anatalia would bring to the table? There were a couple other volunteers as well, but thus far the only other tributes that stood out to her were the girl from nine who walked around like she owned everything she saw and the poor fuck from district ten that couldn’t see anything. Granted, Arbor had won in spite of his handicap, but he was the exception, not the rule. Well, her tributes would make allies and enemies as the games dictated, she supposed. She wiped her face with a napkin and looked up, seeing someone passing by in her periphery.
Teddy Ursa. The sole victor from district six. Was it short for Theodore? Or had his parents really graced him with this? Three kills, if she remembered right, including a career. She’d watched re-runs of his his arena, the volcanic island with the waterfall and the rainforest and the lava. Couldn’t forget the lava. Nine days too; she didn’t think she could have survived one more day in the bitter cold of her arena. She took a sip of her latte and wondered about him.
He’d have to be what, twenty-three? Twenty-four?
She’d always had a special place in her heart for district six, after all, she’d bled and fought alongside Marc and Lexi for a near on a week. They and Velocity had been the first real friends she’d had, and though the three of them had been dead for over a decade, she still thought about them fondly from time to time, their decision to ally in the training center, their grief over losing City to a career at the start of the bloodbath, Lexi sitting on the throne in the ice castle like a queen, huddling for warmth and everything else they’d shared. She still had dreams about them from time to time.
That settled it for her. She sipped her latte some more and waved at him, waved him over. “It’s Teddy, right?” she asked him. “Hi, I’m Katelyn. Victor of the sixty-ninth.” Hell's bells, he would have been seven or eight when she won. When did she get so close to thirty? “I’ve been…occupied for a few years, but now I’m trying to get used to the new faces. You’re the first one I’ve seen. Got some free time? I thought it’d be nice to get to know the new generation of victors.”
table coding (c) ghosty
