sixthiterationlogs | ψ take me to church

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ψ take me to church | CLOSED

WHO: Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta
WHERE: 6I: Church (House 24) & Odair Residence (House 57)
WHEN: 7 October
OPEN TO: Francis Mulcahy, Johanna Mason, Bodhi Rook
WARNINGS: Excessive amounts of sap. Possibility of references to traumatic backstory/sexual abuse.

If he'd been asked, perhaps Finnick would have imagined something different. In District Four, a wedding would have been a cause for celebration, with the formal part of the ceremony performed by a respected member of the community, and they would have been surrounded by people they knew. Not his family, no matter how much he would have wished them there, because they're long dead, destroyed in proof of the President's hold over him. But Annie's family, maybe, and the other District Four victors, and people they knew from the city. There'd have been a song about marriage being the voyage of love, and music and dancing. But that wedding was impossible in Panem, so impossible that Finnick had never allowed the image he thinks of now to tempt him.

It's only here, because they're away from Snow, that they can dare to do this. And if it's going to be simple, and different, what matters is that it's happening at all, and that Johanna will be there. He'll be with the two people left who mean the most to him, and at the end of the day, Annie will be his wife.

Finnick and Annie have spent days in preparation, working on the traditional net that should form a canopy over the couple. At Annie's suggestion, because the church-house is small and their supplies are limited, they'd draped it over the roof instead of setting up a canopy. Finnick's collected salt water from the sea -- if that's what it is -- to the east, to be used in the ceremony. They had wedding clothes already, gifts from Credence and Johanna on the day last winter when gifts had appeared. Annie even has a pretty necklace to wear, and Finnick's done her hair with the ribbons she'd gotten in one of her gift boxes from whoever's looking after them here.

They've been cleaning their house so they can have their small group of attendees and participants for a celebration lunch, and as much as possible is prepared ahead of time. That leaves just the ceremony itself, and at the designated time, the two of them make their way to the church.

[ starters in the comments, one for a short thread of the ceremony, and another for mixing at lunch ]

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Johanna's gaze is on Finnick the whole time, though she's listening to Bodhi. She's just not staring straight at him, because as much as she'd like to explain it to him, it's not her story to tell. "Ask Finnick, sometime," she settles for saying, because she's good at keeping secrets for her best friend. "Maybe he'll tell you the whole story. All that I can say is that when you're a victor, you're not done after the Games."

"You get a new role to play. Some of us play it very well, like Finnick. Others, like me," she says, with a vicious smirk, "well, we're not very good at being told what to do."

"Let me guess, both options are karking bullshit." Bodhi has been learning to swear like an earth-reared human, but he hasn't quite got it down yet and he tends to mix his new acquisitions in with reliable old friends. He doubts he'll ask Finnick for a whole story, on account of he hasn't asked anyone for any such thing in all the time he's been here. They might ask it back, after all. But he can guess.

"I, um, I was kind of wondering what the point of a wedding is, here, but, well, if--if that's it, I can see it."

"You don't win, not really," Johanna says, which is her agreement with Bodhi's words. Keeping her glass close at hand, she wishes she had something stronger to get her through this event, but she'll have to settle for what she has in hand. Eyeing the happy couple, she really is happy for them, even if it stirs up old bitterness in her.

"They can't have this at home," she says bluntly. "That's why I told Finnick to get off his ass and have it while he can. Who knows when we all get shipped back to the torture playground," she deadpans.

"You think that's what'll happen?" He should probably focus on the whole wedding thing, but he's still a little uncomfortable even if he can see the reason now. He'd rather explore this opinion. "If people disappear here, they... go back where they started?" But there can't possibly be any of him left back there. How does that work for everyone who's dead where they started?

"I can't think that it's going to take us and put us somewhere nicer." Giving a snort, she gives Bodhi an amused look when the laughter spills off her lips, genuine and on the cusp of an epiphany. "What the fuck does it say about me that this is the somewhere nicer," she says. "Where Finnick and Annie can be together, and I don't think anyone is trying to kill me today."

She drinks at that depressing epiphany, grimacing. "What, do you think there's just more levels of this? Or maybe we don't go anywhere at all? Maybe when people vanish, they just stop."

Bodhi isn't going to say anything. He's certainly better off here than he would have been being caught by the Imperials. Maybe better than if the rebels had him, too, considering his experience with Saw and the fact that he'd disobeyed the only orders they ever tried to give him. This place may be awful sometimes, but it's peaceful and sometimes allows for an illusion of comfort and safety for someone with nowhere else to go.

He considers her question for a moment and then nods. "That's what I've been... assuming, I guess? When you go, you're just... Back in whatever place people are stored before, would be my guess."

She narrows her eyes at him, wondering why he says 'stored' like that, but she dismisses it because this is just another one of those times when she thinks that wherever Bodhi comes from is very different than her home. Then again, Panem isn't exactly the common denominator for anyone else, is what she's learning.

"Is that your way of saying you like it here?" she asks, with a teasing glimmer in her eye. "Bodhi, that's almost sweet." And even if he isn't saying that, she's already decided that's what he is.

With Johanna, he doesn't have to watch his mouth too closely. It's sort of liberating to spend time around someone who doesn't give a shit what any of his secrets and wounds are like. "I'm literally dead where I should be, so what am I going to complain about?" Which is about as sassy as Bodhi gets. Yes, he does like it here, but only in that context. This is extra, a little more life to make up for the disaster his real one descended into.

"Maybe death and peace and quiet is nice," she says. "I used to tell myself that in the arena. Maybe, just maybe, if I had to die, maybe what happens after isn't going to be so bad," she says, but then when the field had been weak, she'd been able to take her victory.

She watches Finnick and Annie, grimacing. "They're going to do that stupid dance at some point," she says, because they love that in Four. At least in Seven, they just get to the point. "You should be careful, otherwise you might be roped into it. Literally."

It probably says something about Bodhi that he sees maybe death and peace and quiet is nice as conversational filler that doesn't demand any special response from him. "No, there's a law against it." An auxiliary to the Rook Isn't Allowed to Sing rule. "There's a specific stupid dance?" He hasn't been to a lot of weddings, and while he always intended to have one of his own eventually, the ceremony and the party never featured heavily in those particular fantasies. Dumb dances seem to feature fairly frequently. He always assumed they were optional.

"They do it in District Four, I think because the sea-water seeped into their brains," is her even reply, mainly because she's not exactly about to tell them that they can't do it, but it's always so annoying every time she sees it. "Don't worry, I won't let them get at you. I'm sure spinning makes you dizzy or something," she assumes, because he seems like the kind of person who gets easily sick or dizzy or, well, just about impacted in the slightest way by anything that might happen.

Bodhi stares at her a moment, considering his options, and then says slowly, "I'm a pilot." He's not sure if she never listens to things he says or if she's just never thought about what that would mean, but getting motion sickness easily would be kind of a problem. "I've only even been to two or three planets with surface oceans, though, so I probably still can't."

"They practically live in the sea," she says, with the dismissive nature of a girl who prefers the woods and the smell of fresh pine and wood. Still, she supposes that if they're as happy as they seem, then she's allowed to give them a break at least once in a while.

"Did you ever want to do this? Throw away your future with someone else?" she asks, curiously.

He assumes she means be married, which he did plan to do, rather than have a silly wedding ceremony, which he really never did, unless the shadowy and indistinct future spouse wanted one. "I always figured I would? Never really, well, got that close..." He'd thought he saw potential a few times, but had been informed he was wrong, and he hadn't been old enough to really begin worrying about it before the point obviously became a moot one.

"This isn't the part I, well, I thought about. I mean, a relationship's for the people in it, right? But a marriage is so everyone else knows about it and the paperwork is easier." Which is why the marriages here mystify him so much.

Johanna listens to him, but her eyes are on Finnick and Annie, not daring to look away because maybe a part of her wants to know how it is that the both of them went through the same experience that she did and didn't come out the other side unable to love. They're damaged in other ways, of course, but hers feels worse, because it isolates her.

"I always thought a marriage was about having something between two people that no one else got to share," she says, a quiet moment where she talks about what she'd seen from her parents, before she got them killed.

"I guess it could be if that's what they want? I just never thought of the married part as the important bit." He got a similar reaction from Kira, and that wasn't at an actual wedding, so he probably deserves the incredulity. "That's, you know, what you put on your request for transfer, so there's a paper trail about why you want to move routes... Or whatever."

"So, it is something you do think about, though," she latches onto, not bothering to focus on the part where she'd briefly let herself open up about thoughts she'd had about marriage, because that's not something they need to linger on. "Bodhi, are you a closet romantic and I just never knew? I'd tell Finnick to give you some tips, but he's absolutely shit at that," she says bluntly.

"It's... It's not a secret. I'm pretty shit at it, too, though." He's getting better at swearing like he's from earth. Practice, perfect. Or at least he's okay when he has someone to mimic exactly. "It's pretty abstract. I mean, I'm pretty much... out of the game... I just don't see the point of being married here."

"If you can't be back home, if you're dead, or if you just want to deny the idiocy of this place so much," Johanna lists three reasons that she thinks people would take advantage to be married here. Not that she'd ever take advantage of any of them, even with point number one applying to her (at least, while Snow and his cronies are alive).

"Does this mean that you're also thinking about someone else in the abstract? Is it that weedy little guy you always hang around?"

"Kira is my roommate," he says absently, knowing she knows that but willing to put in a little token resistance for friendship's sake. It's probably not fun for her if he doesn't react.

The possibility that he has anyone else to think about is not to be entertained.

"I'm definitely dead at home. That doesn't make me want to file paperwork here." Maybe there's just one thing he's very unromantic about.

"Sure," is what she replies, with the look of a woman who's probably never going to actually believe that, no matter how many times Bodhi says that. The glint in her eye is mischievous, though, and not mean, for once. Maybe the wedding's put her in a decent mood.

"Well, don't worry. You can stay in my happily unmarried club as long as you want, I'll never kick you out," Johanna assures him. "Mostly, the club just sits around and complains. It's a great club."

"I would have guessed periodic violence, or possibly drugs, since it's your club." He doesn't sound the least bit accusatory, and he expects her to take these observations as compliments, or at least neutral conversational points, so there's no reason to hedge.

"The violence is only when it needs to happen." She pauses, and self-reflects for the briefest of moments. "Or, when I get bored," she admits with a roll of her eyes, mainly because even though she's the one who forced herself to admit it, she doesn't do it lightly.

"It's still pretty good," she decides. "At least you're lovable and stand a chance of some happiness," she points out. "I burned that bridge a long time ago." With the rest of her husk, emptying herself out so she doesn't feel pain.

He should just let a comment like that go, or maybe try and find something supportive to say. Instead he shrugs. Johanna makes it hard to try and keep up that facade of being sort of competently human. "No, I'm not in that pool either." To be lovable you have to be touchable, you have to be something other than batshit, you have to have something to offer.

"Well, in that case," she says flatly, staring at Annie and Finnick being happy and normal and in love, "you and I, we can just hang out here and watch other people have this. I'm getting good at keeping my jealousy from taking everything over. It's like once you get practiced at it, nothing can hurt you."

Just like shutting down your emotions or barricading yourself off from feeling anything. It just takes practice and time.

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onlyeverdoubted - 2017-11-19 02:27 (UTC) - Expand

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