the fog comes on little cat feet

[rangerbecket]

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."

Comments

[rangerbecket]

"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.

[fishermansweater]

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."

[rangerbecket]

"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."

[fishermansweater]

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."

[rangerbecket]

"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."

[fishermansweater]

"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.