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

[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.