helios solar (d.five) (leois) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-04-01 00:30:00 |
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So that was it. No more training, one night more with costumes, and that was it. They’d find out their scores, and then they’d be in the Arena and… Io was trying not to think about it. Every time she thought about the Arena, she felt shaky and somewhat sick to her stomach, and she didn’t like that. It felt weak and bad and like she was letting everyone down, and that was the last thing she wanted to do, but even being the last thing she wanted to do, it didn’t seem like something she could avoid. She was the very smallest, and she couldn’t imagine that things would end well, once they actually reached the Arena. “Not thinking about it,” she said, perhaps too loud. She’d drawn her knees up to her chest while sitting on her bed, waiting to be called back to the common area to hear scores, but the door was open, and she didn’t quite realize how loud she was actually being. Helios was making his way from his room to the common area when he passed by his district partner’s room. He wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly or not, and peeked in to see if Io was talking to anyone. Seeing her alone, hugging her knees and looking rather morose, she looked more fragile than ever. She looked out of place, he looked out of place, amongst the luxury of furniture and fabric and decorations in the room. They didn’t belong here. “Hey,” he said, leaning against the frame of her doorway, offering a small smile. Io looked up from the spot on the floor she’d been staring at before and, seeing that it was Helios standing there, tried to recover some sense of not seeming panicked and afraid. “Oh! I mean. Hi! I mean. Is it time? I didn’t think it would be time already, you know, but things are so different here and I think my clock may be broken or fast or slow or something or maybe it’s both? I don’t know, I--” She swallowed and caught her breath, trying to count to ten before speaking again and trying to speak in a slower manner. “Is it time for them to read our scores? And how are you?” she asked. A more natural smile seemed to rest on the older boy’s face. If Helios had a younger sister, he imagined she’d be something like Io. He waited for the girl to finish talking but could sense the nervousness from her voice, not that he could blame her. How positive could they be for their training scores after all? “Not yet, I was just passing by.” How are you?, she had asked, and Helios found himself unsure of how to answer the question. How was he? Anxious for his score. Nonchalant, as the score was irrelevant; this all was. He’d be dead in a week. Angry, though that thought was fleeting (if it wasn’t him, it’d be someone else). Sad, his family would watch him die. Accepting, what else could he do? “Hard to say,” he finally replied, an easy smile returning. “I think I’m alright though. How about you?” “Yeah, I guess it’s kind of complicated, isn’t it? I mean there’s just so many things to feel and it’s hard to sum them all up, and I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s a question in the interview, like ‘how are you feeling, Io?’ and I guess you can’t just say, ‘I don’t know,’ can you?” Having her knees drawn up no longer seemed either correct or comfortable, so she shifted to sit cross-legged and tried to match Helios’ easy smile, though hers came across as more vaguely nauseated. “I’m-- I guess I’m alright, I suppose. I hope I did okay for the Gamemakers. I don’t want to let anyone down, you know, or end up all alone in the Arena because they didn’t like what they saw or something, and I figure maybe if I scored really high for my age and my size, maybe the people I got along with all week would want to ally with me, you know?” She sighed and readjusted again, this time tucking one leg underneath herself. “I don’t want to hold anyone, I mean anyone like you, back, though.” Right, the interviews were coming up tomorrow night, and they didn’t even have their scores yet. His time at the Capitol felt ages long, and also like he had just arrived yesterday. He could get used to the training, the interviews, the assimilating into the Capitol culture, but then he’d remember he was being sent into an arena to kill every other kid here and he couldn’t slow time down enough. “You should talk to Jaishree about that, I bet she would know. But I think you should try to be as much of yourself as possible. Everyone back home will be watching too, not just the Capitolites.” Helios thought back to his training session. Had his display been too simple? What was he expected to do or show them anyway? At Io’s lack of confidence (though who had confidence here other than the Careers, really), Helios walked over toward the young girl, sitting at the edge of her bed. “Hey. It doesn’t matter how you did or who you let down or impress. You won’t be alone and you won’t be holding me back.” Io looked up at Helios as he came to sit beside her, her fidgeting calming significantly. “I won’t? I know I’m not very good at most of the things we’re supposed to do and I know I’m small and not very strong, but…” She exhaled slowly and managed something of a smile. “...I’ll try to believe that.” |