Impromptu Sanctuaries && Inconvenient Trespassing [Raeoki]

[Natalya Vaughn]

'cause i knew you were trouble when you walked in ,
SO SHAME ON ME NOW. FLEW ME TO PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN, TIL YOU PUT ME DOWN. OH I KNEW YOU
WERE TROUBLE WHEN YOU WALKED IN, SO SHAME ON ME NOW. FLEW ME TO PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN...
now i'm lying on the cold hard ground, oh trouble !

It was amazing just how much having the right break could do for a person. It was also completely jarring on discovering that when it came, one could be totally unprepared for it. A lithe woman with bright pink hair was tucked away safely in the back of an elevator - sitting with her knees tucked into her chest. She looked, for all intents and purposes like one of those very fashionable models, or perhaps an office woman of some sort (if one would notice the very important and official looking data pad poking out of a beautiful handbag lying neglected next to her). The look in her wide brown eyes could only be identified as sheer unadulterated fear. Full lips that were painted a nice teal colour were parted as she breathed (more like hyperventilated) and a thin sheen of sweat could be seen beading just over the quivering upper lip as she made a sudden very desperate gasp for air. This woman was one Natalya Vaughn in a very rare moment of weakness. For Natalya, all she had been waiting for all these years was this one break. And now all she felt was not a vast wealth of confidence from years of training and working towards a goal. What she felt was the unusual and - in her opinion - misplaced emotion called fear. But she couldn't seem to stop struggling for air... to stop shaking as she sat there. At the very least, there were no tears... that was her one solace.

For now... she could feel them stinging, at the verge of spilling out, but she would not, could not break like this. Nikki Vaughn was fearless, much like her mother, Nicka. Not that she had ever known the woman, but from all the tapes and stories that Anya had shared with her she just knew that had to be case. Seeing that woman, Nicka Vaughn, brave the world with a smile, in a completely new job and blaze a trail... it was breathtaking, it was inspiring... She had to be fearless, how could she be anything but! She had a name to live up to. So, why was she here, in an elevator, whoosing toward her first task in her new job as the freshly appointed District 1 escort breathing slowly, all but falling apart the way she had when she was 7 years old! She had to pull it together. She just had to. Why couldn't she stop this bloody shaking?! What in the fuck was wrong with her?!

Gods, where in the hell was her self respect?!

"Tally. Breathe. In through the nose.... Out through the mouth." the pink haired woman said in a cracked and breathy voice as she began to coach herself down from this very dangerous precipice. It would do her no good if someone came into the elevator at this point. And heaven forbid they actually recognize her! Oh, no, no, no, no, no! That would not do at all. Her career would be over before it had even started. It was a lie when they said any press was good press. The only bad press that one could get that would be considered to be good would be something that the person had started intentionally about themselves. That definitely did not include a psychotic break in a fucking elevator. "Good. Very good Tally." her upper lip had ceased that damnable quivering and her voice, still soft and weak, but steady. Progress. Now, if only she could stop shaking and breathe normally.

Ding!

Crap! She was already at her floor. Before the doors could slide open, Natalya was at the panel, striking the number pad with an open palm. The elevator began moving again, where she didn't know... she'd hit several buttons in a panic. All she knew was that she had bought herself valuable time. Forcing herself to stand, Natalya scooped up her handbag and slung the straps over her shoulder. Gods, her legs felt like rubber. "Get your shit together. Fix your clothes, you look like crap." Hands that had been stuck to her side after retreating to the corner of the elevator were running over her skin tight ensemble, smoothing it, righting it... co-operating. Still shaking, but the familiar ritual of making herself presentable to the public had somehow soothed her. Within 3 minutes, she looked once again like Natalya "Tally" Vaughn, the odd television personality that people had come to know, and love. Well, most of the time.

And not a moment too soon.

Woosh!

The doors of the elevator slid open as it came to a stop at the first of the 5 buttons she had pushed earlier in a panic. Irked, Nikki glared, and lips that had earlier been parted to suck in panicked breaths parted to bare her teeth and then spit with what could only be described as venom, one word: "What."

As if this person were an intruder in some private sanctuary instead of simply using a public facility and service.

As if this person had intruded on her privacy in her sanctuary.

And perhaps they had... but how could they have known that?

Obviously, all they wanted to do was use the damned elevator.

WORDS: 876 ! TAGS: RAEOKI ! NOTES: FIRST POST, WHOOT! KIND SHORT THOUGH, SORRY !

[Raeoki]

(ooc: Oh, please don’t apologize about the length! It’s the quality that matters, and your post’s chockfull of it. :3333 <3333 )

It really was a mockery, how the physical and the metaphysical can be in such an overt dissonance with one another. The emotions could roil, broil, and be excessively truculent; but the scene of the explosive rage could be airy, beautiful, and quite heavenly. Or, it could be vice versa; but people rarely ever notice a dismal scene when they are focused on their own euphoria or triumphs. However, once their joy is shattered and their fun halted, there are some people that look around them, note the gaiety and brightness of the room they are in, and ponder if this was some additional mockery: that the room (or they who designed it) was trying to remind the fellow of his lacking mood and position.

Hospes Compleo was such a fellow. He sat upon a long sofa that stretched itself into a ninety-degree angle; his body was stiff and straight and very stationary, and his fingers were curled about his knees, with the fingernails pressing into the pants. The only piece of him that showed movements were his eyes, whose pupils flicked about from one side of their respective socket to the other, and a respective lower eyelid would suddenly jerk upward, half covering its red eye, and then be sent into a very swift moment of a twitchy convulsion, before lowering itself back into its proper place; and, during this present moment of time, this spasm was the closest Hospes ever came to a blink. For he was too busy glaring at the room to close his eyes and rest them, even for a brief instance; too busy spiting the room, the room birthed by such a practical, yet ingenious architect; the room that was sleek and elegant, yet cheery and inviting; the room that – though, admittedly, a little on the ritzy side (then again, the majority of Capitolite things are of that sort) – was really quite breathtaking. And Hospes kept on hoping that everything little thing about it would go up in flame.

Perhaps it was slightly petty, to hope that misfortune would befall a room, simply for the fact that it was a rather nice room; but it was very therapeutic for Hospes, and he couldn’t help but go off on a string of curses and damnations that was aimed at every piece of furniture that dared to be set onto the room’s floor. May you be knocked onto the floor and shatter, lamp! And you, coffee table: may you be taken and chopped up with an axe and be tossed into a fireplace, you rotten, wooden, disgusting fool! Goddamn it, pillow! Goddamn it! I do hope that someone takes you by your ends and rip you open – and you’d deserve it, you useless, contemptible, cheeky little ass! What good have you ever done to society, eh?! Aside from having the capability of being used a murder weapon – which does not count, so you may know, because that wasn’t what you were intended for when you were first invented, you soft sack of feathers!

One might assume that cursing furniture – though even Hospes would admit it all rather silly – was better than cursing people, as Hospes had been fervently doing when he had stepped out of the train. It was most reminiscent of last year’s return to the Capitol after the reaping, for Hospes had done much scowling and growling as he was exiting the train then as well. However, that was because of a certain little tribute he had decided to remember as “Lolita” – but he’d rather not think too much about her; that would only push him into a worse, more explosive mood. This year, though, it was not the tributes that had set him off; rather, it was the victor.

His very existence had troubled Hospes; being in his vicinity was as vexing as having chunk after chunk of one’s flesh torn off and thrown to side. What added to the torture was that Hospes had been so certain that he could forget; that the trauma and its humiliating aftermath would be as realistic and tangible as ghosts. Such was not Hospes’s luck; one glance in the victor’s direction, and the memories went within him like knives. No detail of the past was ostracized, and no moment or action pertaining to the victor was without some sort of affliction: the sound of breaking glass was in his voice; if Satan (so Hospes often called the victor during a mental soliloquy) even so extended his arm, Hospes’s muscle would brace in preparation to spring, for surely the ugly bastard was reaching for a bottle to toss at him; and if Hospes heard Satan’s footsteps, his arms would tremble and lift up slightly, in preparation to shield his face – for he was then remembering what it was like to sit on the floor with a back pressed tight against the wall, small, evil shards of glass in his hair and perched atop his shoulders, listening to the footsteps of a predator coming nearer…and nearer…and nearer…

Last night had been the worst of the train ride; for that was when Hospes – for the second time in his life – knew paralytic terror. Of course, he had never been a stranger to fear; but Hospes was not one who fled from frightful things: he was the sort of man who endeavored to end the things he feared the most. But when his body was stretched out on the bed, and the skin of his face felt the coolness of the mattress, and the pillow was firmly set against the back of his skull by his palms which rested atop it, he found that he couldn’t move; nor could he think. There was no instinct to attack, no small voice ordering him to rise up and stick a knife into Satan’s ribs before he could do the same to the escort, just panic, and one realization: that Satan was in the compartment directly across from Hospes’s; and how simple it would be for the victor (who was a broad fellow, to be sure) to break open the door and maul Hospes with a bottle or a fist.

The experiences that Hospes went through currently were now very paralleled to what had tormented him in the aftermath of Abel’s funeral. The continuous blast of a sharp, piercing wail that filled his ears till no other noise could be processed; the soft little thumps as tender flesh rolled down an endless staircase; the thud of a tiny casket that echoed up a small hole, rising as faintly and grimly as a specter floats through walls: he could hear all of it when he was seven. Also, just as when he had been trying to close his eyes for rest during the night of the train, he had known that terror that kept him so still, so stupid: the image of that petite, frail little body at the end of the staircase, shattered and twisted, blood oozing from gaps and dents in the skin and skull. That had been what had kept him frozen at the top of those stairs, sprawled upon his stomach, the small fingers of one of his hands curled about the edge of the staircase’s head, and his breath coming in and out as shuddering wheezes. No tears; no screams; merely his numbed mind exerting itself to remind its master to keep breathing. And that had been the moment that followed Hospes in dreams when he was young: the stench of blood; the sound of screams; watching his parents paw at the little corpse in the same way and for the same reason as a cat paws at potential prey: to check if it was truly dead.

In the realm of the present, upon a couch rather than a staircase or bed, Hospes Compleo’s mouth twitched into a very thin, very fake, very emotionless smile: for it was all rather funny. There had been one therapist that his mother had insisted upon him seeing (whom he had never spoken to during any one of their few visits, only stared at him), who had told him once: “Hospes, if you only tried, you can surpass this! And you can! In fact, I do believe that you will be triumphant in this!”

You know, he never really had – tried or triumphed. For it was all very foolish sounding to him then, as it did now: one could not simply surpass what had transpired between him and his little brother. That was an effort far too foolish, too silly, too useless, and too taxing for Hospes to even attempt.

And, when he had first stepped into District 8 for the reaping, he had believed that it was all over. He had triumphed; he had prevailed. Nothing would ever bother him again; he was untouchable. What had transpired in that bar would never transpire again Now, however, to look back on this was all so embarrassing that Hospes couldn’t help but laugh at his own arrogance and self-assurance. Of course he wouldn’t survive any of it; it would be there to haunt him for as long, just as Abel’s death would be perpetually stabbing and raking at his heart with its dark claws. And it would most definitely happen again; perhaps even kill him, eventually. Obviously, he could quit the job, return to welfare: but would that truly save him? How good were the odds that Hospes wouldn’t bump into Zachariah Daniels on the street, or if Satan hated the escort so passionately that the victor would set out and find him? Of course, it would be a safer approach than actually being forced to live with him for a few weeks annually; but there was also the psychological factor to be considered. To make an end to his life as an escort for the purpose of avoiding Daniels would be, in a way, a subjugation to him: an acknowledgement that the victor was a cruel despot that ruled Hospes’s life and conceits, and could manipulate him with the power of fear to leave an occupation that Hospes did rather appreciate (though not all the time, admittedly; but that was more of the people’s fault than the job’s). And with this in mind, it would be very difficult for Hospes to leave the job in good and earnest conscious: though he knew he ought, to at least try to better the chances of survival.

He couldn’t quit presently, though. The president would be very angry with him if he randomly shoved a resignation into some dim-witted secretary’s face during prep week, when escorts were in dire need to keep on their toes and prepare to spring for the moment an order was barked. Until then, Hospes would have to survive another prep week with that brute of a victor; the only matter was how, and if there was a point to it. Hospes was as fragile as a toothpick when compared to Daniels; he knew from experience that trying to fight back if the fool attacked again would be a very fruitless venture. Avoidance was always possible; but, again, there was the subjugation factor, as well as the fact that never coming across Daniels at least once during prep week would be nigh impossible. Unless I…unless I…unless I…

At that moment, Hospes came to terms with it: There is nothing I can do.

Before the true gravity and meaning of the realization could be settled, a sudden, sharp, obnoxious, and very repetitive beeping noise blasted Hospes’s thoughts, and his body twitched upward. He glanced down at the back of a wrist, and slid down its cuff with his fingers, which had been looming over a small watch that was very easy to accuse as the noise’s maker. Moving in slow, mechanical movements, he cut off the noise by pressing down on a small, nub-like button at the top of the watch, and rose from the couch, and approached the elevator – for, at that moment, the seats for the Opening Ceremonies were being readied to be opened and accessed, and it was always good for an escort to go forth and get a good seat – a “good seat” really just being the seats where the sponsors often mingled, thus making them open for teasing and cajoling and tempting.

Though Hospes hadn’t even reached for the button yet, the doors of the elevator slid apart in a quick, sweeping jerk, and the next thing Hospes knew he was staring into the capsule. A slender woman stood within it, her hair a very eye-catching pink, and her face slightly recognizable (though Hospes could not place a name or why he found her recognizable; for Hospes never really watched television, and though he might have seen her for a brief instance back in her television personality days, the recognition and its origin were both still very vague). However, as it contorted into a vehement, impatient countenance, the recognition was soon gone.

"What." It wasn’t a question; it was a hard, flat, venomous command to withdraw, lest an appendage be removed. It made Hospes jerk back; not in fear, but in response to the suddenness of the anger that quickly swarmed within him, becoming an inky, bubbling swamp within his chest. His body tensed; by instinct, his hands curled into tight fists with whitened knuckles, and his fingernails dug into his palm, making minute, crescent shaped ditches in the skin. For Hospes really wasn’t in the mood to be snapped at by silly, pink-haired flappers who acted as if he had trespassed into their territory; nor was very anyway he was going to submit to her demand of retreat just because she was in a nasty mood.

Thus, the cold smile that was still plastered across Hospes’s face twisted and wound into a larger, icier grin, whose meaninglessness seemed more profound and evident than the one had worn earlier. His voice was filled with a cold, acidic sweetness as he began: “Oh, I’m sorry…” For only a brief instance, he paused; and in one quick and abrupt jerk, Hospes was an inch away from her, and his face loomed over hers, the grin now twisted into a vexed grimace, and an impatient, indignant shadow was in Hospes’s widened eyes; and he continued, his voice now a rough growl: “Did I call on you and not realize it?”

Before an answer could be made, Hospes jerked away from her, as if he had been yanked on by a rope, and he whirled about in a very swift motion to face the panel. He lifted a hand, and an index finger was extended; however, before he pressed anything, it became still as his eyes flitted up and down, noting all the buttons that had been lit up as a sign that they had been pressed: and Hospes couldn’t help but find this intriguing, for aside from himself, the flapper was the only passenger here, and one would think that only an individual passenger would only require an individual floor.

(ooc: Yeah…it really fizzles out at the end, but I lost my muse. )x Anyhoodle, sorry for an inconstancies and the like. Please do tell me if you find anything!! Oh, and much apologies for the many rambling paragraphs. That’s sorta the way I go about posts. xDx And errors in syntax, of course! It was very late when I wrote this, so, uh…sorry. DDDx)

[Natalya Vaughn]

'cause i knew you were trouble when you walked in ,
SO SHAME ON ME NOW. FLEW ME TO PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN, TIL YOU PUT ME DOWN. OH I KNEW YOU
WERE TROUBLE WHEN YOU WALKED IN, SO SHAME ON ME NOW. FLEW ME TO PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN...
now i'm lying on the cold hard ground, oh trouble !

It should have been a given that her venom would have been met in equal measures if she had been thinking rationally, but she wasn’t. Nikki was still very much rattled, even if she didn’t look the part anymore. However, the manner in which it had been met was less than desirable. His closeness, it was almost as if she had been touched. It made her skin crawl, for, if there was one thing in the world that Natalya hated it was being touched. Being touched implied a certain level of trust and closeness, neither of which she was in a habit of giving freely. So, when this stranger, this thing, this spiderlike… thing, ‘touched’ her – she could not control the emotion of complete and utter disgust that coursed through her and flitted momentarily across her soft features.

Being passed around so very much – even though she didn’t know it yet – had made her develop a mentality very similar to some of the tributes from the less fortunate Districts. She was beaten into a survivor, for those months, years, where she had been neglected by her aunts, cousins, those who should have cared for her but had not… and the blessing it was that she had been in the company of her elder cousin who had imparted his knowledge, she had learned to fight and had become accustomed to violence, developed a certain… taste for it. And despite what people thought, being ‘loved’ never killed those instincts; it just dulled them – for a moment. All it really took was one instance. One instance to trigger a memory, one instance to send thoughts and responses that had the body react instinctively to the stimuli it had been fed. One instance for her hand to slip discreetly to the inside of left thigh and grasp at the hilt of the concealed blade she had all but forgotten the reason why she carried it. Until now.

It was because of people like him.

People like him that didn’t embrace or understand the concept of personal space.

“Yes, cochón”. Natalya said, her tones soft and lady-like, as she slowly began to free the blade from its secure and hidden hilt strapped to the inside of her thigh. He had already swung away from her; she didn’t need to do it. She didn’t need to wait for the ding of the elevator, she didn’t need to bury the cold metal into the base of his neck as she sashayed out, and she didn’t need to be careful of the bloody spray that would ensue – or worry about getting any of it on her nice new clothes. But she wanted to. They needed to be taught manners… He needed to be taught manners, just like the others.

But that lesson could wait.

Here was the second of her five hurried stops… Ding! The pink haired woman carefully replaced the blade and covered up the action by pretending to pat and shift her clothes into their appropriate places. ‘Calm down, breathe. Be perfect. Always perfect.’ Natalya set a small barely audible sigh out as the doors wooshed close and they began to zip toward their next stop. It couldn’t even have been a full minute before they slowed once again. Ding! The third stop. Ironically, the final stop was the floor she needed. So, she only needed to survive two more stops with this…. thing. Theoretically speaking, of course – for all she knew, he could get off at the next floor.

Discreetly, she allowed her grey eyes to glance over to the repulsive thing that had made her already bad day worse. It was lanky, and spindly… it reminded her of a spider. Something that needed to be crushed and then scraped off the bottom of her shiny pumps, and right quick… Now, whatever should she call it? Maybe if she studied the face a bit more it would come to her. Natalya was now openly dissecting his features. She had swivelled slightly, taking it all in, head to toe.

And unbidden it slipped out: “Noh”.

Its face was hard, devoid of true emotion, like that nasty little smile it had flashed her. It was a mask.

A noh mask.

That’s what it was. That’s what she’d address it as from this point on.

WORDS: 717 ! TAGS: RAEOKI ! NOTES: SORRY FOR THE DELAY! SO SORRY ;!

[Raeoki]

" The perpetual agony of Hospes Compleo is revisited once more... "

To add to the little bundle of button-mysteries that the pink-haired girl had shoved into his arms, a new question was added to the weight: What’s a cochón?

Immediately, a crap-colored cockroach skittered into the shadowy mazes and rusty traps that Hospes’s mind housed. It was the consonants – and a vowel, but nobody cares about vowels – that had released the distasteful vermin into his house of thoughts. It perched atop his traps, scrambled up the walls of his mazes, and then wiggled its whisker-like antennae at the roof to mock its highness. Perhaps if it hadn’t twitched its feelers, Hospes would not have had the urge to swoop down and plant his sole firmly atop its back. The thing was simply so...scornful of him, you see, and Hospes was simply so damn tired of being scorned. It was getting to be such a harsh whip, the scorning, and, really, Hospes was truly beginning to feel like an old mule at the front of a heavy, griping plow. Perhaps, if most of the scorning was simply of lower levels (unlike being accused of perversion over and over again, unlike being reminded time and time again that the words of victors would always be better heard than the words of escorts, unlike being assaulted like a submissive wife, unlike being reminded of the aforementioned assault every time he glanced at one of his coworkers), Hospes would bear it like any other ordinary man. However, unfortunately for the world (and Hospes), that was not the case – and Hospes hadn’t been very good at being an ordinary type of fellow for the past twenty-four years.

One was to wonder if it had been the consonants or the person who gave life to the consonants that had released the wiggling cockroach in the first place. Hospes, who preferred putting the blame on people rather than words in any situation, promptly decided that the bug’s liberator was the latter; and – as if he was not so eaten by hate already – he felt that devil of an emotion take another bite into his tender, delicious flesh. His shoulders did a slight jolt skyward, and then again, and then again, as the cockroach wriggled its antennae again, and again, and again. His neck jerked, yanking his head in a small twitch, before it finally swung his head fully around so he might look at the cockroach’s emancipation proclamation. His sanguinary-colored eyes found the pink hair first (it was rather hard not to); the pupils promptly proceeded to poke at the candy hair that curled around the scalp; and they were children swooping down a slide as they followed the twists. It was hard to tell if they were elongated, softened feathers of some exotic bird or the contorted product of a candy-maker, for the locks were so vivid, so very dyed. Of course, Hospes knew that such was the case for several Capitolites of her age – but when one stands in such close proximity to another, and when that other happens to be one who just made a cockroach wiggle its unworthy antennae at a fellow, said fellow tends to record several mundane things for future ridicule.

The eyes clawed away the hair and stole the face from its pedestal. The mouth below still grinned that icy, too wide, far too wide, purposeless smile, as if it was uselessly frozen in useless time. Indeed, the only part of his spider body that dared to twitch were the eyes, which swooped down and then up as they set the face back on its pedestal and began to examine the pedestal itself. The pedestal was quite slender, he thought, in an attractive enough way; the skin looked bleached; tall; as for that face he had stolen earlier but then had the kindness to give back, he was forced to suppose that it was attractive like her skinniness, if only it’s familiarity didn’t prod at him so, as slight recognitions always do (they’ve Napoleon complexes, you see). Hospes would have liked to have claimed that the short, Napoleonic recognition would have been merely a product of noticing too many faces like hers, but another, more honest spot in him leaped onto its soapbox and cried, “You lie!”

Little did he know that the residents of Candy Cane Lane all had their eyes upon him, just as he had his eyes upon their pinked street, and they had stolen his own face as well, and were running their gazes across his useless mouth as if their eyes were fingers. Then, without really meaning to, the good residents of Candy Cane Lane came together into one mouth, and slipped a word into Hospes’s ears: “Noh.”

Of course, Hospes, having little to no comprehension of ancient Eastern cultures, did not realize that there was an “h” at the end, and thus his mazes and traps all found themselves huddled beneath the weight of a black fog, breathed by the immortal demon Confusion. The cockroach, however, stood atop one of his bear traps with its mocking whiskers, a waste-colored light in the darkness. Its newfound bio- illumination was as cheeky as its twitching whiskers; and oh, how Hospes wanted it smashed! Smashed! Smashed!

The light of the cockroach propelled him forward, so that he stepped closer to the girl. His stretched fingers bent and stretched crookedly, like a pair of dancing spiders, as his eyes reached forward and snatched Candy Cane Lane’s own pair. His frozen, frosty grin moved in quick twitches as he replied: “Oh? Oh, what now, my dear? Am I not allowed to look at you? Is that what I’m not allowed to have? Because you’re unbelievably precious?” His shoulders leaned forward; his face perched some inches from hers. “Or are you so simply Aphrodite-esque that you rightly assumed that I was going to ask you if you’d like see the inside of a bedroom, and thought you might as well crush my dreams before they could bud, no?” (Future note to the reader: whenever Hospes meets someone he dislikes, he promptly assumes that they are not only arrogant bastards, but also arrogant bastards with an overabundant sex life, especially if they are fairer than he is.)

His shoulders and head sprang away from her, and one of his hands crawled up to his stiffly grinning lips; the fingers leaned against them, as bent as spider legs, and a little giggle dribbled from betwixt his teeth, though he really wasn’t in the mood to laugh – sometimes, the little notes of amusement simply marched into the light and proudly died by their own separate wills, you see. “Eeeh hmm hm! Well? Well? Are my dreams crushed, my dear? Eeeeeeh hmm hmm hm-hm!”

(ooc: Sooooooooo many apologies for the wait!!!!! Ugh, I'm so sorry!!! DDDDx Also, more apologies for the very amateurish (quote/unquote) "template" here. I've been rather flirting with the idea of designing such things, and I must admit that I'm very boring at it. Blargh. This is probably the last time I'll ever try it - at least, with this character.)