Test Drive #7 - Ten Forward and Captain's Yacht

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 01. Ten Forward: The first thing you see is a bar. A large, lively bar filled with many different faces and many different smells, sights and sounds. This is Ten Forward, the Enterprise's off-duty lounge; feel free to get acquainted with your fellow travelers and try to find somebody who's in charge: this is your new home now, after all...





Option 02. The Captain's Yacht: Oooh, you sneaky stowaway! You've found yourself in a very exclusive part of the ship: Captain Picard's personal craft, used for short jaunts when a shuttle just won't do. (One must retain some decorum, after all.) It may not be as large as the Enterprise itself, but there are sure to be some surprises aboard once people start snooping.


[OOC: The Captain's Yacht is located at the very base of the Enterprise's saucer portion, so if you put someone in there you can also play them trying to get back to somewhere they know!]

Comments

[fishermansweater]

Katniss.

He knows her voice, of course, would even if he hadn't spent most of the last few days trying to win her over into an alliance. Everyone in Panem's seen Katniss Evederdeen this and Peeta Mellark that for the past year, even if Peeta's the talker of the two. And Katniss, more than anything or anyone else, more even than his own survival, is his mission here.

But there's something wrong. This isn't Katniss as he expected to see her. She's not wearing the thin jumpsuit he'd dressed in this morning, and she doesn't have the just-groomed perfection in her appearance that anyone associated with the Games learns to recognize. Not like Finnick, with his hair artfully tousled though it may only last moments in the arena.

This is wrong, a sense of wrongness that shifts, subtly, in the world around them, that makes a fear he rarely feels for his own sake grip at his chest. Why is he here, not in the Games? Where is here?

He's suddenly unsettled, unsure of his surroundings and himself, and that gets you killed in the arena. Or in the Capitol.

"Katniss." His voice is wary, and though the tension in him relaxes just a fraction, he keeps his arm, with Haymitch's bangle, raised. There's something strange in her voice, something very different from any words she's ever spoken to him before.

"What's going on?"

[stillplaying]

She takes in his appearance. The perfectly coiffed hair, the familiar jumpsuit from the arena. And the way that stupid bracelet seems to glint in the light. She remembers that bracelet. It had been Haymitch's, a token to go with her pin and Peeta's locket. His not-so-subtle way of telling her to trust Finnick even when she didn't want to. But Mags came with Finnick. And she had wanted the old woman as her ally.

It seems like a lifetime ago. In so many ways, it is. They had all been different people, playing a different game. She hadn't trusted that Finnick. She hadn't learned to trust him, even like him, until they had suffered together in District 13. He had been worried about his Annie. And Katniss...

She shakes her head, willing the memories away. She can't go back there. Can't go to that dark place where she hid in closets and had to remind herself daily who she was. Tie knots in Finnick's rope when he could bear to part with it.

Forever ago. And yet...

She doesn't stop to think. Holding her bow so tightly that her knuckles turn white, she launches herself from her seat and runs towards him to wrap her arms around his waist in a tight hug. There are tears on her cheeks, tears she can't seem to stop.

But it doesn't matter. It's Finnick. He's here. Alive. Or something like it. He's already seen her at her weakest.

[fishermansweater]

For the smallest moment, he tenses, because he doesn't know what's happening. He'd been prepared for Katniss to try to attack him when he met her, to have to hold up his wrist to prove their alliance to her, to show that Haymitch wanted them to work together and she should trust Haymitch and, therefore him, because there are things going on that Katniss can't know. But though she's moving towards him, bow in hand, she's not reaching for an arrow.

She's crying.

"Katniss?"

And then she's got her arms around him, the embrace slightly awkward because of the weapon in her hand and, at first, the tenseness in Finnick's body until he relaxes, an automatic response from so many unwanted embraces. Katniss' arms around him aren't unwelcome, but the hug's a surprise, one that startles a small, genuine laugh out of him, through the prickling sense of unease that something is really wrong here.

Katniss has shown no sign of wanting anything to do with him over the past few days, let alone wanting to hug him.

"Hey, if you want to team up that badly you only need to ask."

[stillplaying]

She doesn't think, doesn't pull away even when she notices the tension in his body. Maybe she should have thought twice. Actually bothered to remember the tale Finnick weaved in that propo, to realize that the clothing he's currently standing in is the arena outfit from the Quarter Quell. He's not the Finnick from District 13, the Finnick who had helped her out when everything seemed so impossible. He doesn't know. He doesn't know so much. Has yet to live through.

To die during.

The realization hits her hard. She lets go suddenly and takes a step back. Katniss stares at him, a haunted and confused look in her eyes even as she uses the back of her hand to wipe away any lingering tears.

He doesn't know.

"I'm- I'm sorry, Finnick."

[fishermansweater]

Katniss Everdeen doesn't even like him. That's why he's got the bracelet. She didn't want him as an ally, didn't like him, but wanted Mags. Yet here's Katniss, running across a room to him, hugging him like nobody but Annie has hugged him in a long time, all fierce strength and desperation, holding onto him like a lifeline.

The hug lasts long enough to be uncomfortable, not because of how tight she's holding, or because he doesn't like her or want to watch out for her -- that's all he's trying to do in the arena -- but because the contact is so intense, so sudden, because he barely knows her, because he has so little control over who can touch him and when.

(There'd been a time when Finnick was as free with hugs and touches as anyone, but that was many years ago.)

"Katniss?"

When she pulls back, it's of her own accord, and Finnick has managed not to tense up again only through so many years of schooling himself in pretending to want things and people he loathes.

At least he doesn't loathe Katniss or begrudge her touch, resent her though he might for claiming with Peeta the relationship he's forbidden with Annie all for the sake of strategy in the Games.

What strikes him most, though, is the look on her face, a look of sorrow and loss and uncertainty.

"Sorry for what?" he asks, genuine for a moment before a smile flashes over his features, a smile he doesn't really feel. "Turning down the sugar?"

It's a stupid joke, but it's light, deflecting, something to give him time to think, to assess, because this could get him killed.

There's something deeply, deeply wrong here, not just in seeing Katniss not wearing her tribute's costume, but in how she's acting. He's watched a lot of footage of Katniss Everdeen, and she doesn't hug near-strangers and apologize to them. He was expecting a struggle to even get her to ally with him.

[stillplaying]

The grin is familiar. It's Finnick's grin, a grin she thought that she'd never see again. It makes her forget, for a moment, why she there are tear streaks on her face, why she's apologizing to him. The guilt that's weighed so heavily on her heart since the moment he decided to sacrifice himself to give the rest of them a chance. To give her a chance.

And how did she repay him? Not by killing Snow. Not like she had planned.

She never avenged him. Instead, she had made a selfish choice. She chose to protect herself and to avenge Prim. She had chosen Coin, not Snow.

He has no idea how much she owes him. How much she has to atone for.

Where does she even start?

She has no idea.

A shrug means so little. And yet, she can't find the words to say anything aloud. She's lost her voice again, the Mockingjay made silent by something that ought to be entirely impossible.

[fishermansweater]

She's looking at him so strangely, staring at his face, and not in the way he's used to being stared at in the Capitol by the crowds of people who want to be in love with him; he'd tested that when they'd first met, trying all his flirtation, all the chatter about life as a victor, that had been silly before it had turned so close to home and he'd hit back with a barbed strike about her wedding, the wedding organized and cancelled for her feigned arena romance, when even to love Annie, let alone admit it, is forbidden to him by the role Snow has him play for the Capitol.

He'd tested, and she'd passed, cool to his charm, only a little fazed though he'd overplayed it for her. (She'd only blushed once; that's saying something.)

No, she's staring at him like she can't quite believe what she's seeing, apologizing and apparently then unable -- or unwilling -- to tell him what she's apologizing for.

If he weren't such a good actor, his smile would slip, but that's a skill like so many he's learned for the Capitol.

He has plenty of other questions to ask her, ones she might answer. Ones about here and now and this situation.

"Why aren't you wearing the tribute outfit? We're supposed to be in the arena."

[stillplaying]

She can almost hear Haymitch’s voice echo in her head: this is how a revolution dies (check quote). It had been crucial then, crucial to the uprising that she put on an act then. That she convince Snow and Panem that she firmly believed each and every word she had spoken. She had been a lousy liar then. Not much has changed in that respect. Now, when she needs so much to lie again, to protect Finnick from… from something (she’s not even sure what), she can’t.

She wears her emotions on her face. Maybe it’s no surprise everyone else knew what she was feeling before she ever fully pieced it together herself.

Thankfully, Finnick asks a question. A question that she can actually answer. Katniss blinks a few times to snap herself out of her daze and then quickly shakes her head.

“That was nearly a year ago.”

He’s alive. He’s alive and standing here in front of her and asking about the Quarter Quell.

“Finnick, why are you wearing yours?”

[fishermansweater]

"Because it's now," he says, slowly, his faint district accent drawing out into a drawl. He's staring at her, green eyes suddenly intense, catlike.

The first time he'd met Katniss, he'd asked her for her secrets, like he's done so many times, to so very many people he'd rather have nothing to do with. Tell me a secret, he'd tease across the pillows, eyes gleaming in the dark, and none of them ever knew just what he was doing with them. Katniss passed that test better than any in the Capitol, too: she'd replied that everyone else always seemed to know her secrets before she did, and Finnick, after a moment, had agreed.

He certainly knew more about her than she seemed to expect him to.

It's as true now as then. Everything she's feeling is there in her face for him to read, and he's never found it hard to read her, not even last year when he was mentoring, before he ever met her.

Those emotions clear on her face are what tell her secrets, but Finnick can't quite interpret their confidence. Sadness, guilt, surprise, disbelief ... there are bits of all of them there, and they go with the haunted look in her eyes that is more than just the ghosts a victor carries.

He suddenly feels cold.

"You weren't expecting to see me," he says, quietly, something sinking in his posture.