sixthiterationlogs | the fog comes on little cat feet

Entry tags:

the fog comes on little cat feet

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: The Corydon #36, The Inn
WHEN: 7 September
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open

Raleigh had actually gotten the cat a week or so earlier but it had taken him a little while to settle on the name if only because the torrents of rain had distracted him from such trivial things as cat naming and driven him to spend most of his time catching rainwater and trying to keep from drowning. Once it had lightened up, though, he'd been able to do a little more venturing out and the snow-white cat had been called Yuki on more than one occasion and it'd just stuck.

Yuki, luckily, fends for herself. She comes back filthy at the end of the day and she usually brings him presents he doesn't want but she damn sure earns her keep. Right now, she's whining at him as he's making his way along the banks of the swollen river, checking his fishing lines and whining for a bit of the catch.

"You're supposed to feed yourself. Careful, you. Don't know how well you swim." He doesn't know what breed she is but Yuki seems to know what she's about because she carefully bats at the water and backs up when the current's too swift for her liking. Once he gets the fish up and out of the river, he heads up to the inn to clean it with Yuki following, ever hopeful that her master is going to give her something for her troubles.

Raleigh settles to work close to the fire, trying to dry out, and Yuki takes advantage of the warmth to clean herself and let her fur dry out. She sprawls on her back and lets out a long, anguished sigh.

"You're not getting this. You hunt for your food, you know that."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Although they're now living in one of the houses on the outskirts of the village, Finnick and Annie still aren't really a part of the community yet. There's been a lot for them to do now that the rain has lessened a little, much of it rebuilding their supplies of food. So Finnick's been out in the rain for hours today, fishing where he can in the swollen river and gathering supplies to allow him to rebuild some of the fish traps he'd made that had been washed away by the rising river.

He's about to start on his way back to the village when Finnick hears a voice and Raleigh Becket comes into view, followed by a little cat that must be who he's talking to.

"I think cats always want to be fed when there's fish around."

"Pretty sure that's how it goes," Raleigh agrees. He'd met Finnick once, a couple weeks ago, and had only seen him in passing a few times since then when fishing. The guy is handy with fish, that's for damn sure, and Raleigh hasn't gotten in his way; he can spot capable from a mile away and Finnick is more than capable.

"She begs but I think it's just because she knows I'll eventually give in every once in a while. Just enough to keep the hope alive. You've been doing okay? River's been high lately," he says, conversational but casual all the same. He doesn't want to spook the guy off.

"Always someone who will," he agrees and, for a moment, there's a normalcy in the scene that there hasn't been about anything else here. Just a cat and a man arguing over the catch.

There'd always been cats hanging around the docks back in District Four, a lifetime ago when Finnick had been a fisherman's son learning to be a fisherman like his parents and their parents before them. And there'd always been someone willing to share a morsel of fish, just like there'd always been cats to beg it from them.

The incongruous scene isn't enough to lure Finnick into complacency, but Raleigh had been friendly enough when they'd met. And ... nobody outside an alliance or a district partnership in the arena bothers with how anyone else is doing, except to count the dead and, by extension, their own chances. So after a moment's pause, Finnick shrugs with a half-smile.

"Had a few tough days, but we're okay."

"I know how that is. At least the rain seems to have slowed down," Raleigh says, looking up at the sky. It seems that this place is going to get rain and lots of it so he doesn't want to go speaking more of it into existence if he doesn't have to.

"I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to stop. Makes it hard to navigate this river with it so high, you know? But I figure you know your way around it. You seem capable."

Finnick has his theories about the rain. He's seen how the Gamemakers use the physical environment of the arena to manipulate the tributes, right down to the weather. The rain forced him and Annie to come out of the woods, when they'd been the only ones living there. Why, he doesn't yet know, but he's not about to believe it's as simple as the circumstances of weather, whatever the others said in the town meeting.

Finnick scoffs. "I should be."

It takes a couple of moments for him to remember that people here don't know him, or his history. Or they say that they don't. He still hasn't decided if he thinks that's part of an elaborate deception or these people really are from different worlds, but ... Raleigh either doesn't know or will pretend not to know his background.

His voice is less harsh when he explains.

"My parents were fishermen. I was meant to be a fisherman too."

Raleigh laughs softly. "Then it would have been a shame if you weren't," he agrees, thinking if he'd followed in his parents' footsteps, he probably wouldn't even be here. He's never been the kind of person to follow a set path; he's always marched to the beat of his own drum and he's always tried to go headfirst into danger. Reckless as the storm - both of the Beckets. He's a little less now that Yancy's gone but the itch is still in his blood.

"But you say you were meant to be. What did you end up becoming if you're not a fisherman?"

It's an interesting choice of words, if nothing else, and Raleigh wonders what the other man might mean by it.

It's one of the things he got famous for: that he could fish, that he could weave himself a net and use it to kill, that he could wield a trident like it was made for him. And try though he does, green eyes sharply intent on the other man's face, Finnick can't see anything but an apparently good-natured man interested in talking about fishing. The whole -- his whole -- world knows Finnick's story in sometimes intimate detail, but Raleigh apparently doesn't.

But it's not as if he can outright say what he did that changed his course, going to the Academy to learn win the Games. That's still a secret, and District Four has had enough troubles already thanks to the Capitol's crackdown. He's not going to offer them up for that.

"I won the Hunger Games," he says, instead. "Victors don't have to work."

"Hunger Games? I don't think I've ever heard of it. Some kind of charity event or something?"

It's not something from his world, anyway, but Raleigh's been in the village long enough to realize that even two people from earth might not be from the same time or the same version of the planet. Hunger Games means nothing to him but it clearly means something to Finnick.

"We don't have them in my version of the world."

He'd expected Raleigh to show ignorance of the Games, just like everyone else here other than Annie. But the suggestion it might be some sort of charity event is so far from reality that for a moment Finnick just stares at the man, trying to work out if that's so ridiculous it means he really has no idea, or bad enough taste to be a suggestion by someone from the Capitol trying to pretend he has no idea.

Incredulity is clear on his face before he can control his expression: lips slightly parted, eyes widened, and when he realizes that, it's only in time to look away for a moment while he steadies his features.

"No. It's a punishment for the Districts of Panem for rebelling against the Capitol. Each district sends two children to fight to the death in an arena. Last one standing wins wealth and fame and a life of leisure."

It's hard, saying all that without letting his hatred of everything to do with the Games seep through, but speaking in carefully neutral language is something everyone in the districts gets good at, with time, and he's had a lot more practice than most.

It takes Raleigh a moment to parse all that but once he does, the first feeling he gets is overwhelming disgust. Children? Children made to pay for the crimes of someone else while the world watches? It's sick and wrong and his mouth twists into a scowl just thinking about it before he can even come up with a thought to voice to words.

"That is...who would do such a thing," he manages finally, eyes meeting Finnick's in a mix of sympathy and awe that he not only survived such a thing but apparently won it. He'd been a Victor, after all, so he'd bested such a twisted system and come out on top. Maybe it was out of necessity, sure, but doesn't necessity breed greatness?

"It's sick and it's wrong. Who would send children to do something like that? Who would...it should be stopped. They should all be stopped."

Finnick is good at controlling his expression. He has to be: he has to play the Capitol like he wants what they do to him, like he revels in the attention, like he enjoys his part in the whole foul spectacle. Because you can't say what Raleigh's saying.

He's good at it, but he's not good enough, because for a moment of stiff terror, panic fleets across his face.

"It's a reminder of the cost of peace," he says, levelly, though he hates himself for the words. They're the words of the Capitol, but while he's still sure they're all being watched and manipulated, he can't speak the truth, no matter how much he believes it, with everything in his being.

The awe in Raleigh's face makes him uneasy: it's too familiar. It's not the worship of adoring fans in the Capitol who never stop to think what he did to win his fame, but ... winning the Games takes skill and luck and strategy, but he's ambivalent now about the value of the skills it takes.

"It's not right," Raleigh says, shaking his head. "I mean, you do what you have to do to survive, I get that, but it's not right to make children fight one another. Especially not as a reminder of peace."

It's not something Raleigh thinks is going to happen in his world but what does he know? He's not there. The world post-kaiju might radically change.

Nobody says that in Panem. Not where they think the Capitol could hear. Not in the arena, because the cameras would cut out on them and the Gamemakers would have their revenge. Nobody even says that you can't say it, for exactly the same reason.

Finnick lets his lashes drop, the coy flirtation that's such a distraction that it usually wins him time, sometimes a total deflection.

He wishes he didn't have to sound like an apologist for the Capitol when really, he hates everything to do with it, but he can't agree with Raleigh. Not out loud, not in any obvious way.

"The rebellion started a war that cost a lot of lives. The Capitol believes the tribute will remind the districts they were wrong to revolt."

"Well, they're wrong. Someone ought to fight against that," Raleigh says, riled even if it's not his fight to fight. He's always been the kind of guy who can't stand a bully, who can't stand seeing someone getting pushed around and that's exactly what this whole situation sounds like.

"That government sounds like a tyranny and it's not something that should be in place. They should revolt. They should fight like hell until it changes, until everyone has a voice and everyone is free."

If this really were some sort of arena, the cameras would have been off Raleigh by now. Off him long ago, as soon as he started talking. Off him for the public but no doubt on him for the Gamemakers. So that every treasonous word can be recorded. That's what this is: treason.

Worse, because it's treason that stirs the anger Finnick keeps deep in his heart: the anger, the grief, the longing for the sort of life people here say they have, that Plutarch says people used to have before Panem was known as Panem. The longing that is his deathly secret because he's part of the very revolution Raleigh says should happen.

Finnick's well aware that friendly, helpful Raleigh Becket could be a spy. Anyone or everyone could be a spy. This could be some sort of mind game on them all to try to draw out revolutionaries. He wishes he could say that he knows everything Raleigh's saying, but he can't.

So he deflects.

"There was a revolt in my district," Finnick says, taking a risk. Nobody would dare broadcast Raleigh's statement, so nobody will be broadcasting what he says, either. A revolt he'd helped to foment, though he could never admit it to anyone.

His voice is hard because it's the only way to keep the memory of it all from undermining him by making it tremble.

"The Capitol hung the leaders and locked down the whole district for two weeks. Two weeks, you went outside, you got shot. Day everyone was allowed back to the docks, the dock where most of the ringleaders worked blew up at dawn."

Some day, maybe, he'll learn to live with that, like he's had to learn to live with the kids he killed to win, and the kids he's mentored to their deaths.

Finnick looks down again, folding his arms. "That's why people don't revolt. They own us."

"Enough people fight back though, enough people...eventually they're going to fall. No monster always wins. That's what I learned piloting jaegers. Kaiju are big and bad, sure, but the human spirit is always going to triumph over that. You just have to have the numbers. Besides - people keep trying, keep revolting? Eventually it's going to break."

Raleigh has full confidence in that. Then again, he's always been kind of optimistic and idealistic about things, has always tried to keep his chin up in the face of adversity.

"Nobody owns you, Finnick. You own yourself. That's it."

"Seventy-five years and they're still strong."

This time, he doesn't say it so much like he really believes the Capitol's propaganda. But he does invest his words with a weary inevitability, so that it sounds like this is what's behind his insistence that rebellion will fail.

Raleigh's likeable enough, but wanting someone not to be a spy doesn't mean they're not one. And even if Raleigh is being genuine, they're still being watched.

For a moment, though, he sounds like Annie, trying to make him think that he's really his own person. It's hard enough to believe when he's wrapped up in her arms in his bedroom, where the Capitol can hear them but they have the tiny luxury of the leeway he has that they're allowed to be together so long as they're never seen in public. It's impossible, here.

"Guess that's easier to say when the President doesn't personally dictate your life." He'd never say it where he thought he was being watched, except that he's sure the broadcast is turned somewhere else after what Raleigh's said.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the fog comes on little cat feet

hoping this is all right!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject