Open RP post

[queller]

OPEN RP POST



1) Leave a prompt or picture.
2) Mark if NSFW.
3) Wait for your character to be totally fucked with.

Comments

8D

[queller]

[Johanna's eyes nearly roll straight back into her head as she turns to face the intruder fully. She's all bluster, looking bothered as it gets by someone barging in on her, but like all the others she has a grim expression and an almost sickly look.]

Way to make an entrance. I'm so impressed.

[Her voice rings hollow, not half the jauntiness one might expect from this firecracker of a woman. It's instead tinged with that resignation to the horror they always witness, always contribute to. She's already lost one of hers; he never had a chance.]

And he's always doing that. He couldn't handle a crowd even with some kind of extreme Capitol-coached etiquette lessons.

[Looking Cashmere over, Johanna lets her shoulders droop ever so slightly before scoffing and taking her seat again, half-dead eyes staring almost through the replay of her charge's death.]

[64th]

[ Cashmere looks cross, like it's her privacy that's been disturbed instead of the other way around. ] Sorry, no autographs.

[ For a moment she considers storming back out, but instead Cashmere flops onto the couch. She's exhausted - aren't they all? She can't bring herself to eat at the parties, so by the end of the night that will hit her too. Starving, she's heard the Capitolites describe it, evidence that they've never had real hunger - and by comparison to the poorer districts, neither has Cashmere. ]

Well good luck. You'll need it. [ Actually, she likes Blight quite a bit but it doesn't do well for her imagine to get buddy-buddy with him. Her eyes drift to the TV and no matter how much she wants to look away, she can't. Her tone softens. ] Your kid - did you know him before?

[queller]

I don't want an autograph. And thankfully nobody wants mine. [Her voice drips with a forced poison. There's more she has to add to that, but at the end she honestly just trails off and tries not to be sick. This pomp and circumstance is annoying. It will always be annoying, always has been. She'll never stop hating the fact that once a year they parade around the fact that she was---is--a successful murderer. How delightful, to be a Victor.

There's a bottle of something nearby, forgotten, now warm, and an uneaten plate of pastries on the table in front of the couch. When Cashmere settles in, Johanna almost seems to retreat back into the couch, slouching slightly and putting her feet up on the table with such swiftness and carelessness that it almost upends the plate. She cuts her eyes toward Cashmere, holding back a scoff that she knows can't even hide the disgust, the pain.]

Did I know him before the reaping? [There's a pause as another death flashes on screen before them in the highest definition.] I try not to know any of them. Easier that way. Not like you and yours.

[64th]

[ Autographs are, honestly, near the top of her list of things she hates. Smiling and signing photos of herself from a time she would honestly rather forget. And the shit people say, how she was their favorite, how the loved when she killed the crocodile, and they cried when she cried about her partner.

Like you and yours. She rolls her eyes at that, but it's true. One is small, the tribute academy even smaller. Being a Victor there is an honor and though they don't work they are expected to contribute to the training process. She always knows them. ] Amethyst's parents live next door to mine. [ Not that Johanna asked, but she offers anyway. Yeah, it's hard to watch kids she used to babysit die but they still think they want this and Cashmere lets them want it. Encourages it. She doesn't think they'd believe her if she told them the truth about winning. So why bother? ] She's always been pretty. [ Cashmere hopes she dies. ]

[queller]

[Johanna agrees wholeheartedly on the autographs business. Screw that kind of fame. She'd prefer to be left alone, to be so universally feared for what she did than admired for it. But that isn't and never will be how it works. And there will always be the careers, and there will always be the underdogs. Johanna went into this one knowing she had two hopeless cases, and it turned her stomach. She was more than thankful that Blight took one on, but the boy had been so hopeless. She tried. She honestly tried.

What can you do, though?]

That sounds completely bizarre coming from you.

[Maybe a corner of Johanna's lips twitches up for a moment, amused. She bets anything Cashmere doesn't want the competition.]

[64th]

[ That makes her laugh sharply. Cashmere's praise is rare, even for her tributes (perhaps, especially for her tributes). It's less of a compliment this time, an observation and a warning. If Amethyst wins she'll wind up just like the rest of them. Beauty is power in the Capitol, unless you are a victor. Then it's a canyon of vulnerability, hundreds of miles wide. ]

Well she's a cocky bitch, too, but you already knew that. [ And yet, not entirely unlikable. There is a part of her that fears the ones who end up like her will eclipse her. Cashmere's survival is dependent largely on the Capitol's admiration for her. If they move on to loving someone else, what will happen to her? ]

[queller]

Well, maybe she'll win and make you all so proud.

[Johanna slumps just a little more into the couch before checking herself and leaning forward to straighten out her back. It's a good opportunity to look away from the TV, right as someone picks up an axe. Ah, yes. That takes her back. Bad thoughts.]

She had good numbers, and everyone loves her sweet little face.

[64th]

Nothing like watching a little girl's dream come true. [ Looks like it's going to be a bloody night. The Capitol is going to be thrilled - that axe is a thousand times more interesting than watching the Career pack eat dinner. ]

I know somebody else who used to have a sweet little face. [ She shoots a look at Johanna. The Careers never play weak - they don't even usually downplay their strengths. So little Johanna pretending to be so frightened, so harmless - Cashmere won't forget that for a long time. ]

[queller]

We all had dreams.

[More dull sarcasm as that axe's blade glints, carried with such determination... But she looks over just in time to catch that look. Cashmere has her pegged. That's how it had to be, sweet, innocent, perfectly vulnerable until chaos and blood and fear and death. Careers have it easy. Johanna had to do what she had to do. Maybe in a way she once envied the Careers, their willingness to do anything, their fearlessness. They'd never die in the eyes of their Districts. They'd be martyrs or some bullshit.]

How did it feel? I mean when you picked up the first weapon, how did that seriously feel? Did you want to use it or did you just need to?

[64th]

[ How did it feel? Cashmere sets her jaw - tries to figure out what Johanna is trying to do. The real answer is that she'd been trained since she was a child to believe that she wanted it, to believe that killing was nothing, that her entire life would build to the moment she got to represent her district. She had no idea what it would really be like, not even after she saw what winning did her to Gloss (her twin, her soulmate, her world). Despite the distance in his eyes and the nightmares that woke them both she believed what the Academy told her.

But the arena was different. First weapon: knives, laid out at the cornucopia like they'd been hand-picked for her. maybe they had. Only in her hand for a moment between she sank one into the boy from Eight. ] I wanted to win. Everyone else was just in my way. I didn't have to feel. I just had to do it. [Surviving as a Victor is a very different game, but her strategy remains the same. ]

You looked pretty fierce. [ Meaning: don't forget, Johanna. You're a killer too. ]

[queller]

[For once, Johanna isn't trying to snipe. She's legitimately curious. How can you go through your young life ready to kill and be killed? How are you not afraid? She was terrified, but when she figured out the strategy, she stuck to it until it worked. She willed it to work.]

You had to do it. Fair enough.

[Johanna gives her a sarcastic half-smile.]

I wasn't even scared. [Another death on the screen. Today's red.] I did what I had to.

[Bone and muscle and gut and brain and god knows what else she revealed to the world about people she didn't even really know sometimes she just hit and hit and chopped and chopped until they stopped moving. Sometimes it felt good, too. Sometimes she felt powerful and triumphant and it was a rush, to kill or be killed. They're all the same at the end of the day.]

[64th]

We all do.

[ That last death gets a replay, slow-motion and from additional angles. Templesmith looks absolutely delighted. She looks between the screen and Johanna, and down at her own hands. She wasn't scared until later, when she lost her partner. That fear was temporary and she let her anger swallow her whole. Cashmere remembers more of her Games from watching the recap during her Victor's interview than it actually happening. The worst moments only come back to her in her nightmares. She remembers drowning a Six and the strange intimacy and power of feeling someone struggle and then stop. ]

I couldn't leave him. [ and that's her bit of honesty. Gloss had one very close call in his own Games and she vividly remembers her own panic, the anxiety that she would be alone forever. He won, so she had to win to keep their bond, to have enough pieces between them for a whole. She couldn't let him lose her, leave him alone in the too-big house. He would never recover. Her parents would never forgive her for being anything less than a tribute and a Victor. Any other way and she would be remembered as the lesser child. ]

[queller]

[Replay after replay, comment after comment, laughter, smiles, quick little memorial photos and then nothing. That person is reduced to nothing but video and a lump of meat and bone that the Capitol will dispose of quickly enough. Johanna wants to feel sick, but instead she just feels numb. This is how it is. This is how it will always be. This whole world is fucked up, inside and out.]

You didn't let anybody down.

[The same couldn't be said for Johanna. She lost everything and everyone. Once they saw what an animal she was, people avoided her, snubbed her, faked any sort of niceties they were supposed to and forewent anything else. No hero's welcome. No family waiting to embrace her. Just death. Destruction. Loneliness. And after how the arena changed her--or did it show her true face?--she wasn't even remotely surprised.]

Must be nice.

[64th]

[ She pauses, and then shrugs noncommittally. Was it nice to go home a winner, to have her portrait hung on the wall at the academy? Of course it was. And then Snow offered his deal and she accepted without a second thought - so she still has her brother, her parents. Even when she's miserable she still thinks it was all worth it.

But what does Johanna have? Nothing, if the whispers are to be believed. Cashmere's never had nothing, never know what it was like to truly be lonely. She's feared it, and it was enough to volunteer despite already being guaranteed to have an easy life, and it was enough to drive her to win. And though Johanna knows best how to find her last nerve and shred it, she does earn some of Cashmere's empathy. In One they tell you that no one but a Victor really understands what it's like to live. If she lost everything the way Johanna has, Cashmere thinks she wouldn't have any reason to keep breathing. ]

It was a relief. [ She shrugs again. ] For a while. You know how the rest goes.

[queller]

Glitz and glamour.

[Her smile is more like a grimace, sarcastic as usual. Johanna honestly would have died on the inside even more if she'd had some kind of real celebration of her "victory". It's fine to be a killer, really. Fine to be feared. It's even fine to be alone.

Yeah, right. Being alone chips away at her. All she has is the other Victors, and goodness knows that ain't much when the Games come around. They sit here and mourn and talk and grind their teeth, waiting for the end, hoping they know the last one.]

We all know what happens, and we can't fucking tell them. This is a joke.

[64th]

Mine wouldn't believe me, even if I did tell them. [ She could, she supposes. But what good would it do? If they did believe her they'd only want to die. Dying at the Cornucopia isn't the way anyone from One wants to be remembered. It wouldn't be worth it. Cashmere didn't even believe her own brother. ]

But hey, look on the bright side. I look real good in this dress.

[queller]

It's better if they don't know. Selling yourself is a chore.

[Stupid fucking Capitol snobs and pieces of shit. But the last comment sends a little wave of cold through Johanna, cooling the passionate anger she felt only a moment ago.]

So do I. My stylist got over the tree thing for one whole day.

[64th]

[ The real chore is keeping the illusion that you like it, to pretend that the power in your own sexuality is yours to wield. Cashmere goes home covered in jewels, and lets everyone believe all of this has been her choice. ]

Did you send 'em off to the doctor? Sounds like somebody hit their head. [ Because seriously what is with the tree thing. It's odder now that the theme isn't followed - maybe they finally ran out of trees to copy? As awful as they are otherwise, Cashmere likes the One prep team. They've had the same stylist for ages and sometimes it even seems like she might have a sliver of human decency in her. She usually manages to disprove that theory almost immediately. ]

My eyelashes feel weird. [ she blinks heavily, and sure enough there are some massive false lashes glued to her face and tiny crystals topping them like gaudy snowflakes. ] You think they're gonna rip my real ones out?

[queller]

[And Johanna hates it, and she knows how much they all hate it, save for a select few freaks. Johanna doesn't go home triumphantly or glittering. She goes home with head defiantly held high and a dead look in her eyes to balance it out.]

I should have. I thought she was going to pass out from the lack of foliage. God forbid I look reasonable. Ever.

[There's a slight pause, followed by a chuckle that almost sounds sincere.]

Your eyelashes? Seriously?

[Johanna reaches out, uninvited, and tries to somewhat delicately run a finger over the very end of the false lashes.] What the hell. Not that I haven't had worse. I had giant feathers last year.

[64th]

Feathers? Lucky bitch. [ She blinks heavy again, and then snorts with laughter. ]

I wasn't the one who told you this, but you have to see Gloss. If you think this is bad... they love to dress him up, like he's a doll. Last night he had this insane feather head dress.

He doesn't even have a shirt tonight. I watch them bedazzle him for like, three hours.

[queller]

What are they trying to do? You're going to blind people.

[Johanna laughs, though, and toys with her own eyelashes, glancing over at Cashmere and batting her eyelashes in a fake seductive manner.]

It's his own fault for being named Gloss, anyway.

[64th]

I'm going to blind myself.

[ Johanna is rewarded with a theatrical swoon, the kind of audience reaction they like to show during the Games. She giggles at Johanna's swipe at Gloss. Normally she wouldn't stand for something like that, but the joke is in this case harmless. And Gloss looks like a disco ball. ]

Can you imagine having to pull those off at the end of the night? He'll be finding them for weeks.