Tony thought he'd heard a sound - under the clamor of the television, of course, he might have imagined it. (They didn't cut their vocal cords, did they? The exact details of the procedure were nothing he'd ever really spent time contemplating - but, no, in the years he'd been surrounded and tended to by Avoxes, he was sure there had been yelps, grunts, a spectrum of involuntary vocalizations. The ability - the ability was there.) In any case, there had certainly been a look. This was fascinating, something like a new game - a thrilling work-around for his imposed solitude, providing the same rush of satisfaction as any unlooked-for solution. Like glancing up from a mess of a project to find that last screw you thought you'd been missing; like a gift in a parachute. Something that had been impossible was suddenly - simple.
Subtlety wasn't his strong suit, but he managed, somehow, to confine himself to a grin. He did not say: Regular chatterbox, you.
Jarvis would probably live to regret this. Talking invited response, yes; and responses invited talking. That wrinkled nose was all the encouragement he needed to go off on said Gamemaker's comportment at some party; his notoriously interminable speeches (reproduced at length and over the already disagreeable racket of the commentators); some disparaging comments his father had made about him over the years in less guarded moments; newer gossip he was only privy to now that he'd assumed his parents' place in the Capitol social circle. Tony had plenty to say, and even when he didn't, he could deliver - hopping from a scrap of memory to a barely-related observation to a half-formed theory, barreling happily along the whole way. One might have thought he lacked an outlet, that he'd been forced to keep his mouth shut all day.
And in some ways, he had - he'd been alone. (But not quite sufficiently alone to talk to himself, of course. Surveillance was a given, a constant, and a pretty effective deterrent for a man still young enough to give just a little too much of a damn about looking foolish.) Now ...
"You were there for plenty of it. You must have been even more bored than I was, you were - fucking tiny. Bet he wouldn't recognize you." He tipped that overfull tumbler with practiced ease exactly where it was supposed to go - not a drop lost. "When he sees me he acts like he didn't have a damn thing to do with giving me a seven training score. Talk about a travesty." He considered; drank again. "Maybe his memory's just going."