scoria onyx (onyx) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-02-05 21:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! backstory, - capitol, victor: 19th scoria onyx, victor: 42nd marcus greenstone |
WHO: Marcus Greenstone and Scoria Onyx
WHAT: Marcus calls for help after a night as a drug-addled cage dancer. Scoria handles it personally.
WHEN: Interim between the 42nd and 43rd Games
WHERE: If you're looking for an experience, look no further than the Capitol's hottest club
STATUS: Completed log
"SCORIA?" The noise of the club was so deafening that Marcus couldn't be sure his former mentor actually heard him over the phone, but it wasn't worth asking. Moving to an exit to find somewhere more quiet seemed like a stupid plan -- for that matter, where was the exit? He seemed to be in a cage, but if it was a cage, it was nearly the size of a room itself, packed with patrons and dancers, sticky and reeking of liquor. Everything was spinning. Marcus stumbled against a wall of bars for support, managing somehow to cling onto his phone. "I'm at the place at the corner of Via Triumphale," he croaked in the phone speaker's general direction, stomach churning. "I don't have my wallet or anything anymore, so could you just send someone with a car over here?" Marcus hung up, clinging against the bars (was it a cage? wall?) to stay standing upright. Glassy eyes roaming over the dancers, he wondered vacantly where his wallet and the crowd of Capitol socialites he had arrived with had gone. Scoria had to pull the phone away from her ear after she answered Marcus's phone call, the sound of club music and girls "woo!"ing roaring through the receiver. Of course it was Marcus. Of course he was in another club. Of course he wanted her to bail him out again, just like every other time this week. Well. She certainly wouldn't be sending a car to fetch him this time. The bouncer at the door almost objected to Scoria entering the club, as she was about 15 years over its age limit. All it took was one of her patented glares for the guard to move aside. A quick scan of the club was all it took her to spot Marcus as he clung to one of the bars of the dance cage. Elbowing her way through the crowd, she stopped in front of the bars separating her from Marcus and crossed her arms, just waiting for him to look up and notice that she was standing there. It took nearly a full minute for Marcus to notice Scoria -- after all, it wasn't his fault that there were nearly-naked women everywhere, many of whom were trying to make eye contact. But the familiar, nagging sensation at the back of his mind wouldn't go away. He looked up, meeting her eyes, and then quailed under the full force of The Glare. Much like the unfortunate bouncer, he would have stepped aside, but there was quite literally nowhere to step. "Hello," Marcus managed, attempting an expression of faux-innocence. It would have been more convincing if his eyes hadn't been bloodshot and his nose wasn't running slightly from the cocaine. "You didn't have to take the trouble to come yourself. I'm basically fine." This was punctuated by Marcus losing his balance entirely, and sliding ungracefully down the wall of bars to the floor. Scoria let Marcus slide to the floor without a word on her part. This was distasteful; he was from District 2, not District 6. She walked around the cage, calmly shouldering her way through the crowd until she was in front of the seventeen year old boy. The boy who had managed to murder his way through the Hunger Games, but who was already losing himself to Capitol life less than a year later. "I need this," Scoria said to a girl with neon green hair gyrating against her in the cage, grabbing the cup from the girl's hand. She then squatted down before him, smoothing back Marcus's hair from his face as a mother might her sick child. "You are embarrassing yourself," she said gently, then in one smooth movement tossed the cocktail in Marcus's face and yanked him up to his feet by his ear. "We're leaving." Marcus let out a strangled yelp. Eyes watering with pain, he let himself be pulled into a standing position, trying to rub the alcohol from his face with one hand and clawing vainly at his ear with the other. Scoria's grip, however, wasn't going to be broken by a belligerent teenager, and he resorted to snarling obscenities at her as he was dragged out of the club past the gawking crowd of dancing Capitolites. "Let go of me," he snapped once they were on the sidewalk, face pink with humiliation. Marcus was still swaying dangerously on his feet, but had seemed to regain a little more balance than previously inside the cage. "Let go. I'm not embarrassing anyone, and I don't fucking need you to be my fucking babysitter, Scoria. I'm a victor. In fact, you can just go --" the tirade ended abruptly, and clutching his stomach, he leaned forward, retching. One of the perks about being a victor -- besides the whole not being savagely murdered on live television thing -- was that you could alway say that you've seen worse. And Scoria had absolutely seen worse than the multi-colored vomit that Marcus had gotten all over her shoes. "Yes, I'd say you're handling yourself extraordinarily well," Scoria replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "Get in the car." Pushing the driver who'd run around the car to open the door for them out of the way -- she could open a door herself, thank you very much -- Scoria shoved Marcus into the back seat, then climbed in behind him once she'd scraped her shoes off on the tire rims. Once the door was closed behind her, she passed Marcus a bottle of water, then buckled in. She didn't say anything for several minutes, choosing instead to sit in silence, arms folded in front of her as she stared Marcus down in quiet observation. She'd let him squirm for a bit. (Or she'd be able to tell if he needed some other medical treatment; who knew what he'd taken in the last few hours?) Marcus slouched sulkily against the tinted glass of the window, gingerly touching his ear and wiping his running nose. For a moment, it occurred to him to tell Scoria that didn't want her fucking water, but at the end of the day, he was immature, not completely stupid, and he took it, gulping the entire bottle at once. He glanced uncomfortably around the car to avoid her stare; they were now zooming with silent precision through Capitol traffic. The minutes stretched out. Some victors, he had heard, had nightmares about the arena and dove into morphling or alcohol to cope with the fear. It wasn't like that for him at all, though at times, he did wake up in terror. But terror, for Marcus, was about the entire life that stretched ahead of him, grey and dull. Fear was about being seventeen and never, ever being able to recapture the brilliance of making a kill in the arena, to never feel anything that strongly and intensely ever again. (He was hoping to almost get there again with Capitol pills and powders and shots and girls and paparazzi. Almost.) His childhood idol, now sitting next to him with an expression that would have inspired awe and terror in much braver people, might have been the only person who could have understood, had he been able to articulate what he meant. But it would have been admitting weakness to Scoria in a way he couldn't ever bring himself to, even though he thrived on her approval and her obvious disappointment with his behavior over the past months was crushing. After all, they were from District 2, not District 6. Instead, Marcus crossed his arms and said sullenly, "Sorry. About your shoes." Scoria's face softened (slightly) at the apology. She knew all too well what it took someone from District 2, particularly the Victors from District 2, to apologize. Rather than taking offense at masking the real apology with something material and replaceable, Scoria understood that there was a definite deeper meaning there. The afterlife of a Victor following the games had definitely changed since she had left the arena, but had seen enough Victors from Career districts leave the the arena to understand that they all felt the after-effects of the game differently than those from the outer districts. "Fuck my shoes. I have more," she said simply, rolling down the window and tossing them out onto the street. She knocked on the panel separating the back cabin of the car from the driver, then gave a different address than the apartments where the Victors were staying. "You're going to need to burn all of that out of your system tonight or you're going to feel like shit for the next week. Do you need more water?" "I guess so," Marcus muttered, leaning forward to peel off the filthy jacket that was clinging to his arms and back, reeking of vodka. He suddenly turned back to her, eyes widening with alarm as she talked to the driver. "Scoria, I don't need to go to the hospital. Really. It was just some cocaine and some other stuff, for fucks's sake, nothing actually bad." "We're going to a better hospital," Scoria replied, taking a quiet pleasure in letting Marcus sweat out what she actually meant by that. (She was too old for the club scene now, unlike these younger Victors. She had to get her kicks somehow.) The car rolled up to the outside of the nondescript building, and Scoria shoved the door open before the driver could get around to her side of the car to open it. "Come on," she said, practically dragging Marcus out by his collar. Inside, the building looked like a souped up gym, with titanium walls and padded floors, and the normal equipment that one might find inside one. To the left, though, was something much more reminiscent of District 2's training rooms back home, with weapons and tools of the trade and people beating the shit out of each other for fun (and occasionally profit). "Don't tell anyone about this," Scoria ordered, giving Marcus a little nudge inside. "You can't actually kill anyone, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd love for the 42nd Victor to bring them close to that edge…" Though he was trying his best to look bored (the only possible response to being dragged around by his collar like a misbehaving puppy), Marcus's eyes widened inadvertently. He had been avoiding spending time in District 2 for a multitude of reasons, but the side effect had been an absence of the rigid training schedule that had controlled his life for nearly sixteen years -- and, though it was hard to admit, it had been missed. "So this is my punishment?" he asked Scoria, leaning against a table to steady himself. The beginnings of a headache were forming, pounding against his temples, and he turned his attention away from two boxers who were pummeling each other. "Getting the shit kicked out of me at this place at --" he glanced at his wrist, which was bare, since someone had made off with his watch "--like two in the morning?" But his attention had already wandered and he was glancing with almost-longing at the dummies and throwing knives. "Who said you were being punished? I'm not your mother," Scoria replied, watching with quiet bemusement at the Marcus's reaction. Seventeen year old boys were always so determined to play it cool. "You need a better outlet. You don't stop being a Career just because you've won. You just have to make your own games now." "And if you puke on my shoes again I'll cut out your tongue and sell it to the sponsors." Life advice from Scoria Onyx. |