Bolt Wheeler, D10 (boltwheeler) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-01-15 18:28:00 |
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Halfway through his tour, Bolt was already sick to the gills of being on display. He gave his scripted speeches, offered his (generally genuine) condolences, counted the hours until he could just go back home. When he came to District 6, he met Shay. She won the games only one year before he did, and was one of the few people Bolt felt he could relate to anymore. He'd seen her during his training and immediately after the games, but hadn't really had a chance to talk to her. Now that he did, he only asked one question. "Does it get better, after the tour?" Shay had been there to greet him. And while she was disappointed that it wasn't the tributes she had mentored making the rounds, she didn't blame Bolt at all for surviving, and she wasn't angry with him. It probably wasn't an attitude conducive towards winning, but it was one she had and one that was keeping her all right. The question stumped her, though it was probably one she should've expected and one she'd probably get again. Her mouth opened to give her initial response, and then she closed it again to think. "Yeah… I think so. The tour hasn't been worse than the arena, has it?" Bolt rested a hand on the back of his bald head--a souvenir of the arena--and considered the question. "No, of course not," he said. "As far as I know, nobody's trying to kill me on the tour." It was a weak attempt at a joke, and it fell flat before Bolt even finished the sentence. He glanced around at the people nearby; his own team and train crew, the people of district 6 forced to celebrate him. "I just don't care for being the center of attention," he confessed quietly. It was a joke that made Shay laugh none the less, though she stifled it when she noticed some people looking over. "That I can promise will go away," she said, with no trace of regret or unhappiness. She wasn't that into the spotlight, and now that the Capitol had a shiny new victor in place of her, they had no qualms moving on, canceling her appearance on a cereal box and dropping a few appointments after her tributes had died. "If you really don't like it, this…." she gestured and made a face as she tried to find the right words, "storm of publicity, it'll die down by seven months' time." Unless his district won again. "Just in time for some lucky new kid." Bolt sighed. He hadn't let himself think too far ahead yet; he could think of the next games (and everything mentoring might entail) after he'd survived his tour. But now, his mind couldn't help look to the storm ahead. "I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other," he said simply. Once a year for the rest of their lives, or so. There was a slight twist of Shay's lips as she nodded to his first words, but she honestly didn't harbor any ill will towards him. "Yeah… It was nice to meet you," she said, more genuinely than when she had said it to the previous victor during her own tour. "I mean, it's probably not that great, but it's better than being dead!" She smiled and looked at him like she was trying to get a laugh from him after he had made his own weak joke. Bolt didn't laugh, but only because he didn't take her statement as a joke at all. It was exactly how he felt; they'd both done what the needed to to survive, and no one could blame them for that. "Yeah, exactly," he said with a gravity in his voice Shay probably hadn't been going for. "It was nice to meet you, too." |