lyme (lyme) wrote in colosseum, @ 2013-12-30 13:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! interim, - districts, victor: 42nd marcus greenstone, victor: 52nd diana lyme |
Who: Marcus Greenstone & Diana Lyme
When: Interim
Where: District 2, Lyme’s home
What: A chat over lunch
Warnings: none
Status: Prompt: Future [Table for Marcus | Table for Lyme]
"It's amazing what a local celebrity I've become," Marcus said loftily, lip curling slightly with disdain. "In fact," he informed Diana, spearing a potato with unnecessary force, "You should be hugely flattered I'm having lunch with you, because I turned down four or five invitations from families around the district for this. It turns out that two wins were all I needed to transition seamlessly from pariah to valued member of society--who knew?" The slight bitterness in his voice wasn't entirely hidden, and his gaze flickered restlessly from the food, to her, to the ornate surroundings of the Victor's Village, to the barren landscape of District 2 outside the window. "Anyway, I have about an hour until the train gets here--" he glanced down at his watch before leaning back and nursing the glass of water in front of him as if it were a vodka tonic "--but don't miss me too much, I'll be back in a month. I've been informed I am under no circumstances to miss my grandfather's birthday. Have you been to the training center this week? I like the looks of Rosenberg and Dominato right now." Toying with her food was yet another of those bad habits that people seemed determined to break Lyme out of, but it hadn’t stopped her pushing the vegetables endlessly around her plate instead of eating them. She’d shifted them with the fork all the way to one side of the dish and then all the way back, barely listening to Marcus as soon as he started talking about how flattered she should be. She rolled her eyes as he spoke, only paying attention again when he started talking of the potential volunteers and their training. “Haven’t been in a few weeks,” Diana had the decency to look a little ashamed of herself for her lack of interest in their potential tributes. “I’ll have to go again while you’re swanning around in the Capitol, I’d report back but you’re sure to forget who I am with all those lunch invitations.” It was a little catty, but she didn’t much care. "You should be going regularly, Diana," Marcus said flatly. "The trainers always hated, me, of course, but since both you and them are about as charismatic as boulders, I'm sure you'll get on splendidly. And it's useful--I was telling Brutus earlier that if you have any hopes of changing anything in training, you need to be proactive about it." He sighed, tearing a roll into shreds absentmindedly, and leaned back in the glossy wood chair. "I'm happy to turn down all my invitations to stay in this godforsaken district, lounge around barefoot, and refuse to eat my vegetables as you are, if you'd prefer--is that all you've been doing while I've been in a living hell here the past two weeks?" She glared down at the plate before answering him. “At least I’m not an asshole, Marcus, that might be why they don’t like you.” Stabbing her own potato quickly, she held the fork in her hand for a moment before brandishing it at him. “I don’t understand why you go all the time,” she told him. “Well, I do. But I don’t like it much.” The girl dropped the fork onto the plate with a loud clatter, potato still uneaten. “Besides, what can I even tell them? The fighting is good but half of them are incapable of independent thought?” Lyme shrugged her shoulders. “That’s why their system sucks. Most of the time you can be the strongest but being a sack of muscle and able to beat the shit out of someone doesn’t guarantee you’ll live.” Of course, it had worked for some, but Diana wasn’t fond of that method. She stabbed the potato once more, still with no intention of eating it. "Diana, the potato is already extremely dead," he said mockingly. "And we've been through the little song and dance of you insulting me so many times that I'm going to bypass it out of boredom. For what it's worth, though," he added, voice growing serious, "You're right about training, but unless you have actual solutions, it's not worth it. There's no proof that being clever can win, either--this isn't like Peacekeeping strategy. Honestly, mentoring means doing the best you can with what you're given, and we're extremely lucky that what we're given generally has some potential." He smiled slightly. "Though sometimes, you'll be given an obstinate pain in the ass." That obstinate pain in the ass looked up briefly, smirked, and proceeded to stab her potato once again. “Tastes boring, anyway,” she remarked smartly. “Don’t make yourself sick in the Capitol with all the non-boring food,” her smile vanished briefly as she raised her eyebrows at him. “And I never said that clever was a guarantee, I’d just rather not be a mentor to anyone who knows how to fight and blindly does that until they can’t any more.” Diana waved her fork at him again. “But I suppose that I should just sit down, shut up and stop complaining about that. I will, just not yet. You’re the unlucky soul who has to hear me.” Lyme shrugged her shoulders once again, not bothering to apologise for it. “Did you ever give up on any of them? Just figure they were a lost cause at some point?” Marcus frowned, reaching over to refill their water. "Well, not entirely, though there were several I've disliked. I think your standards are too high. And there's always a time when you have to pick one over the other, but of course you're aware of that. But speaking of that, as a mentor, you can't keep doing this thing you've started where you play chess with one of tributes." He added, without a hint of irony, "It's making you like them too much, and getting emotionally attached to any before they've won is inadvisable." She looked up at him, checking his facial expression to see if he was serious. Seeing no hint of a joke, she frowned. “Who says I’m getting emotionally attached?” Diana challenged him, but even as she questioned it she knew that he had a point. “It’s a game, Marcus. It won’t hurt.” She frowned before repeating herself once again, more to convince herself than him. “It won’t.” "My excellent intuition is telling me you're getting attached--well, maybe you won't be able to do anything about it," he conceded, a rare moment of self-awareness, "But you should try to. If you're going to play chess, you play with both of them. The last thing you want to do is send them into the arena having them know who you've picked. You're playing a different part this year, and you need to adapt accordingly." He tossed the last roll at her. "For what it's worth, I doubt you'll be horrendous at the job. Maybe I've had a good influence on you." “Maybe I can get them to play one another,” Lyme mused, already trying to find some way around what she realised was fairly good advice. “Would you think that’d be too much of an advantage, see how they think about things? Like getting them in a card game, would they bluff or take chances?” Her face lit up with a smile, already pleased with the ideas that she was spouting. She caught the roll neatly and aimed it back at his head. “That was almost a compliment, Marcus, I might die of shock.” "Please don't," Marcus sniffed, ducking instinctively. "I don't want to train someone new to keep an eye on my house while I'm gone." |