{We've all Seen Better Days}{WT}

[aya]

I know you tried,
I know you're cursed,
I know your best was still your worst.

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Arbor Halt—

The second time Arbor came back from the Capitol, he was actually glad of it. The first time he'd visited the city, of course, he hadn't planned on making the train ride back home. He'd gone there to die, and for the most part, he'd meant to. So the trip home was nerve-wracking. He figured he wouldn't be hailed as a hero, of course — who wanted that crazy blind kid to win, anyhow — even if he did win them extra food and a small bit of dignity that was seldom bestowed upon the lower districts.

After all, the then-newly-sighted boy would have to have made enemies. He fought with his district mate, even dealt the deathblow. Right at the end, too. And then there was the whole "Oh, yes, by the way, I loved a boy and he died in the Games" piece of information he'd shared. Arbor was thrown blind into an arena to fight to the death with twenty-three other teens, and, after winning was more terrified of the ramifications of his reveal than he'd been of his death the entire competition.

So he hadn't exactly relished the thought of returning to District 12 the first time he'd ever left it. But things settled down (at least a little) in the year between the 54th and 55th Hunger Games. His family didn't really mention Shaw or Arbor's year-long relationship with the other boy. People still gave him odd looks on the street, except now for entirely different reasons. The mixed emotions felt by others towards the sighted kid had changed, and intensified. Instead of pity, strangers gave him pride. The scrutinizing glances (Arbor hadn't seen them before, of course, but he could feel their burn on the back of his neck) were more judgmental than weirded out. And there was some animosity, for which Arbor couldn't blame them. And for the resentment. How could anyone who knew someone more worthy than some lowly blind kid from the Seam not resent Arbor's victory? How he had lived where so many more able-bodied and well-liked figures had died would seem completely unfair. Arbor knew it was. Some glares were justified.

But it wasn't all bad. He was finally able to completely restring his guitar, able to provide for his family in a manner beyond taking out tessera for them. He'd gotten a nice house, and people still by and large left him alone. There were nightmares — because how could there not be? — but it wasn't so bad as soon as he woke back up. He'd heard that a lot of victors had trouble sorting their nightmares from reality, but it wasn't the case for Arbor. As soon as his eyes were open, he knew he wasn't sleeping anymore. That was the one beauty of his blindness, and the fact that the Capitol had repaired it: when dreams are all auditory, when the world is no longer black, it's easy to tell when you're awake. Even if the voices of the dead are still ringing in your ears.

And next thing he knew, the victor was back on the train to the Capitol, sent with two other kids — one was even older than he was — except the difference was that it wasn't Arbor who was supposed to die, it was these two. As miserable of a thought as it was to have, surely the two would. Both were hard to describe. The guy struck Arbor as overconfident and somewhat obnoxious, surely to be killed for lack of charisma and tact (and he was, although, to be fair, he'd have died anyway from poison by the end of the night.) And the girl, the little twelve-year-old girl, made Arbor's heart hurt. She'd been young and sweet and a bit naïve. And talked to inanimate objects. And she wouldn't make it past the bloodbath.

Except she did. And then some. All the way to the top eight. Then the top three. And the final two. And she'd killed the girl who'd been looking after her, and, as Arbor perceived it, not out of malice or bloodlust or selfishness, or even out of the desire to return home alive — but, somehow, out of love. Which astounded Arbor. And confused him. His heart was already a sorry, mangled thing beforehand: cynical and calloused and damaged beyond complete repair. And the entire ordeal made it crack and shatter completely for the third time in a few short years.

But being a mentor, especially all the way through the Games, was trying. For Arbor, who could be considered antisocial at best, having to constantly be in the public, attending various parties, speeches, interviews, and other frivolous events was just short of miserable. Looking out for his tributes (or, tribute, beyond Day 2) was stressful beyond belief. There was a feeling of helplessness tacked on to it — for the most part, there was nothing he could do but bite his nails.

It hadn't helped that he couldn't read, either. Having not been able to see words for the first decade and a half of his life, he'd never learned. Shaw taught him how to write his name, but so much had happened since, and it was a skill Arbor never really needed, so the sighted boy could've sworn he was doing it wrong. The first time he'd needed to read an official Capitol paper — a sponsorship contract — and get it filed in a hurry, it was just the illiterate teen and an avox in the room. The avox, it seemed, could read the document, but, being unable to speak, couldn't translate for Arbor, who burst out into the hallway, frantically looking for someone else to help him before his last tribute died of Pitfall Lizard venom.

The rest of his time in the Capitol could be summed up by a series of stressful encounters involving the press, hoards of Capitolites, horrendously tall stilettos, and an open bar available for the mentors. He started dreading the start of the 56th Hunger Games before he even left the Capitol. And this time, he'd be glad for the bit of peace District 12 offered, for the judgmental and resentful stares, for the way people seemed to get the hint that he'd like more than anything to be left alone, please.

—

After over a year since it was 'bestowed' upon him, Arbor still couldn't bring himself to fully appreciate the gift of sight forced onto him by the Capitol surgeons. There was no denying its usefulness, of course, but Arbor still preferred to resent the Capitol for anything and everything that he could (he was making little headway on his promise he'd made to Anastasia and Jared before he'd killed them, and he resented the Capitol for that, too.) He knew the streets of District 12 better without it, anyhow, and often chose to navigate by sound instead. The additional sense confused his memory — he couldn't put places to pictures, and frequently ended up lost when he tried to use his vision.

So the sighted boy found himself wandering home, eyes closed, intermittent gusts of wind pushing his hair back out of his face. In his arms, he carried a pink-frosted cake in a box, a desert he'd purchased simply because he'd wanted it. Arbor wasn't going to pretend he didn't like the victor money and didn't feel right spending it. It was nice to be able to actually afford things, even if he did get a twinge of guilt buying a cake for no particular reason, especially when more than half the district was starving. So long as he was supporting the local businesses, though, it was okay, he told himself.

But the thing about walking around with your eyes closed is that you can't actually see anything. Obviously. This, however, comes with the negative side effect of decreased sense of direction. So, if one was wandering about blind with their eyes closed, thinking about cake and trying to justify its purchase, and they happened to be three feet left of where they thought they were, it was quite possible that they might run into the low street sign that — apparently — read "Victors' Village."

This is a very specific set of circumstances, and probably wouldn't happen to most people. Arbor, however, was not most people, and got the metal sign head-on. He was knocked to the ground from the force and surprise of it, head receiving double the trauma from the impact with the street. He didn't bother to open his eye; a stream of choice swears flew from his mouth. His head throbbed, and he could already feel the lump forming where his head hit the pavement. Was his forehead bleeding? It sure felt like it.

Most upsetting to Arbor, though, was his poor cake, inevitably smashed inside the box. Not a ruined purchase, but somehow broken cake didn't taste as good as one that was intact. He groaned, but didn't bother to get up, or even really move. He just sighed and lay sprawled on the ground. It wasn't as if he'd had anything better to do anyway, so what was the harm in taking a moment to just lounge on the side of the street?

It was funny. He'd never given up during the Games, not really — he'd wanted to, but couldn't bring himself to stop caring, to give up, to just curl up on the ground and wait to die. If he'd given up, he wouldn't be here. But now that he was here, now that he'd been through hell and back to stay here, even though here wasn't all that great? Well, giving up was easy. Giving up was so easy when there was nothing on the line. He'd move eventually, get up and go home and eat his cake eventually, but there was no hurry.

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[WT]

((OOC- What the hell, Ara/Szet/self. Just... what?))



She turns out the light, anticipating night falling tenderly around her
And watches the dusk
The words won't come
She carries the act so convincingly, the fact is sometimes she believes it
That she can be happy the way things are
Be happy with the things she's done
And yet

The bell rung again. Aranica jotted down the final note on her ledger and looked up to find a young boy, probably about her age, carting a large cardboard box with some kind of scarf trailing behind it. “Hello?”

“Incoming items over here, please.” The twelve-year-old clambered over the counter, bypassing the swinging door that she probably ought to use, and hurried over to help with the box. She caught it just as it started to slip, and the boy gratefully let go and snatched up the scarf just before it fell fully from its nest. She turned before he could see her face and beckoned with one hand. “Let’s bring this to the counter, and we can sort it all out.”

“Thanks.” He followed after her and helped hoist the box onto the counter. “Um- how should they be sorted, exactly?”

Aranica had already begun pulling things out and placing them in piles. “Any different articles of clothing go together- so a pile for shirts, a pile for jackets, so on. Non-clothing items go together, except for kitchen things and toys.” She pulled out three small, childproof-looking toys as she said that last, and eyed the unusual amount of baby bibs and tiny, unworn clothes that were coming out of the box. Another family, another death, even with the second year of rations in a row. District Twelve’s female victor wasn’t sure if she wanted to kick something or burst into tears. Both, probably, but neither would be very tactful, so she just kept her mouth shut and kept going.

“Okay, tha- wait.”

She started pulling apart a particularly tangled pile of clothes, praying that he wasn’t about to say what she knew he was going to.

“Uh- are you-?”

She gave him her best smile- a weak shadow compared to those from a few months ago, but not awful. “Aranica Petros? Guilty as charged.”

Cue the long pause, in which he stared and she stared back, both unsure of what exactly they were supposed to say.

There were a lot of things about being a victor that Aranica was completely sure that she would never get used to, and this was one of them. No matter how she did up her hair, or what she wore, or how far down she held her head, people recognized her. It wasn’t always immediate, but give them a few moments and the dark face, the long hair, the too-young-to-be-old eyes clicked in, and almost invariably questions and comments were flying before she knew it. Resentment and admiration, pride and pity, came at her in equal measure. Ara didn’t know how she was supposed to respond to one of those, let alone all of them and the multitude of variations and other things tossed in. Should she defend herself from the people who accused her of being a killer? Was it a good idea to point out to the admirers that she hadn’t exactly managed to do anything but fuck up and kill her friends? Her grasp of simple conversation was pretty flimsy, never mind trying to deal with multitudes of people who seemed to know more about her life than she herself did.

This boy was one of the best types (the ones that didn’t tell her how horrible she was), but one of the hardest for her to deal with, because as they stared at each other she couldn’t find anything but curiosity in his gaze. Sooner or later he was going to ask questions, and questions were awful, because she just. didn’t. know. She didn’t know exactly what had gone through her mind at the very end, just after Dru died. She didn’t know why she had passed out that once, or what had made her fling the knife at Shanks shortly afterward, or how she had gotten so good at fighting without realizing it, or why the wind had driven her dart into Ree’s eye. She couldn’t tell people how she’d known about the cloud-assassins in certain tributes, because that wasn’t something she had learned- she just knew them, instinctively. She couldn’t tell them a thing about her new arm, because she hadn’t really been enlightened as to how it worked or how it was made. Worst of all, she couldn’t explain why she loved Dru so much, even though the girl was so obviously a- had so obviously been a monster.

And everyone wanted to know that. "She was a killer and a slut, completely heartless and a District One and creepy to boot. What did you see in that girl?" But how could she explain? Dru’s laugh, the glint in her eye, the knowledge that they were safe as long as they stuck together, the sheer heartbreak when the cloud-assassins spoke through her- how could she take all of that and put it in something as useless as words?

The seconds slipped by. Her smile slipped, and she shoved it back up. The boy blinked a couple times, then seemed to realize that he was staring and jumped. “Sorry!” Ara forced a very slight chuckle and shook her head, and the boy went back to work. “Awkard” was still written all over the situation, but for several long, blissful moments, they toiled away in silence.

He ruined that eventually, though, as most people were wont to do. “If you don’t mind my asking...?”

There was silence while Aranica waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. She glanced up to find him looking at her, actually requesting permission before he said anything more. She was grateful for that; most people just launched right into the questions or accusations, whether they opened with “If you don’t mind” or not. She gave a slow nod, and he carried on, looking somewhere between curious, shy, and genuinely bewildered. “Why do you still work here? I mean... you’re rich now.”

Aranica opened her mouth to reply, but things got lost somewhere between the part of her brain that handled concepts and the part that put them into words, and nothing came out. For a long moment the two just stared at each other, and then she slid her eyes over to the counter, where Ms. Charise was squinting at the ledger. “Just because,” she began as she moved her eyes back to the boy. Her breath caught and she had to pause briefly, but she kept going. “Just because I killed a bunch of people and got paid for it doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon the person who kept me above water for nearly a year.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that, really. Neither did she, so she just shoved the last item into the hat pile and rose, brushing off her pants. “I think the prices for some of this have changed recently, so you’ll want to talk to-”

“Um.” He coughed, looking slightly sheepish at interrupting her, but also faintly amused. “That’s not a hat.”

Aranica stopped talking and looked at the shoe she had just dropped onto the wrong pile. There was a pause while she turned back to look at the “hat” that was, in fact, a jacket. Her mouth worked as her brain tried to tell it to apologize, but nothing came out. She tried harder, but the words caught in her throat and-

Oh. Shit. Those weren’t words. Aranica clapped her right hand over her mouth and managed to choke out a strangled noise that sounded more or less like the word “sorry,” then turned on her heel and sped over to the back of the thrift store. Supply room, supply- door. She had to fling herself through it twice- the first time, she forgot to open the door and smashed her forehead into the wood- but she made it. The moment the door closed behind her, leaving her enclosed and alone in the dark room, the nausea receded, but didn’t pass away entirely. The twelve-year-old pressed herself against the wall, shaking visibly with tremors as she tried to throw off the urge to either throw up or burst into tears, whichever came first.

After a few moments, the door swung open. Anica flinched away from the light and tried to press herself further against the wall, but that only succeeded in making her slip and fall to the ground in the corner. This, therefore, was her vantage point when she looked up to find Ms. Charise silhouetted against the light coming in from the main part of the store.

Her mouth started moving without bothering to tell her about it beforehand. "I'll- get back-" she choked out through the shaking. "Just- a moment- and I can go- go help him with the- the stuff-"

The elderly shoppowner stepped forward and let the door slide shut, leaving only the dim glow from the emergency light. A weight thunked down on Ara’s shoulder, and she looked down in confusion to find her red-and-gold messenger bag. “Hmm?” She wasn’t being fired, was she?

Ms. Charise reached down and started to haul Ara up by her synthetic arm. The younger of the two, hearing her counterpart’s joints creaking, scrambled up quickly. The elder blinked at her once, then nodded and opened her mouth. "I can close up early. Go home."

The moment Aranica opened her mouth to argue, the old woman shook her head, forestalling the words. "Child, business has spiked since the- since you got back." Ara appreciated the attempt at tact, but winced a little nonetheless. At least something good had come out of those godawful Games (other, of course, than the allowance to District Twelve's residents- she had been very pleased to learn about that). "I won't be losing revenue. I don't think I'll ever lose revenue again. And you, girl, look like you're about to pass out. So, go home."

Aranica gaped, then launched herself to her feet and threw her right arm around the old woman’s torso. (The left followed a moment after, and- thanks to Ara overshooting the amount of effort she needed to move it- clung about twice as tightly.) "Thank you,” she mumbled, desperately fighting tears. “And thank you for letting me stay. And thank you for slapping me when I showed up kinda tipsy the other day. And-"

Ms. Charise patted her back awkwardly and kindly said nothing about the fact that the ‘kinda tipsy’ incident had been more along the lines of a ‘showing up at midnight, roaring drunk and sobbing for dead friends while swearing that it had only been one glass’ incident. “Yes, um. Of course. Anytime.”

She hadn’t been trying to make the discomfiture in her voice obvious, but Ara heard it anyway, and dropped her arms back to her side in a panic. “Sorry! I- sorry.”

“Just go.”

Aranica nodded, and turned to start walking. She needed to pause at the door to gather her courage, but she didn’t falter as she left the comfort of a small room for the terror of a bigger one, and she managed to walk past the boy with the baby clothes without collapsing. Walking outside was a little harder. There weren’t a lot of people out in the middle of a workday, so she didn’t have to worry about too many odd looks, and no clouds marred the sky- they had been remarkably absent lately, though that was probably largely due to the impending end of summer- but the route home loomed before her, long and ominous and full of areas with absolutely nothing to protect her. A pang hit her for the days she had spent tucked away in either her cave or a spare room of her employer’s house; neither of those were very far away from here, unlike the Victor’s Village near the other side of town. Then, too, she hadn’t been quite so afraid- she was still ignorant of the dangers that came with allowing yourself to go out from shelter. Still, there was no choice in the matter; she couldn’t exactly stay here all day.

She took a deep breath and slipped one hand into her bag to touch the rock nestled in the front pocket. Its voice slipped into her mind, as softly encouraging as ever. You memorized this route. You could probably take it in your sleep. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

She bit her lip. You kidding? Of course there was. For the rest of her life, there would be things to worry about. But she couldn't let them stop her. If she stopped, then everything in that Arena was worthless. If she gave up and died, she would be letting down the memories of twenty-three other people- and while sometimes she didn't know if she had it in her to keep living, she didn't know if she had it in her to throw away those people's lives, either.

One step, two, and she was out from under the awning. She stood trembling for a moment, then ran, thanking the good fortune (and her dodging skills, and her sister’s aim) that had led Dru’s sword to her arm and not her leg.

Gusts of wind kicked up now and again, cooling her face and tossing her hair in all directions, and loose cobblestones called out greetings to her as she passed over them. She waved to each as she passed by it (or as it passed by her), but she didn’t stop. Every moment, every step, every odd look from a stranger made her more and more conscious that she was outside and completely vulnerable. One day she would find a way to roam the streets safely again, but for now she wasn’t going to feel safe unless she had walls around her.

Right. Fifteen steps and left. Second right, third right, first left, thirty-one steps and another left. Street names didn’t matter- she wouldn’t remember them anyway- but the details made a world of difference. The rock’s comment about how well she knew this route was only a slight exaggeration; she couldn’t run it asleep, but she could probably do it with her eyes closed if she didn’t have to worry about other people walking around where she didn’t expect them.

Even without the people, though, doing that would be a bit of a pain. Just because she had the number of steps down to an art form didn’t mean that she was about to ridicule the help of landmarks. She could feel the quality of the street beneath her feet in the evenness (or lack thereof) of the stones, but it was easier to just look at the ground. The colors of the buildings helped her place her location, as well; lots of things changed positions, but the shops and houses never did, and it was comforting to watch those large structures go by and know that she was getting closer and closer to safety.

Like right now. A familiar house went by on her right, and she managed a slight smile of relief. Just a little while longer. This street, then another, and she would find- yes, there it was. The sign, and beyond it the house that had become hers. She wasn’t entirely comfortable living alone in such a large place, but she didn’t really have much choice in the matter, so she had let herself grow fond of the place despite the lonelin-

As it was leaving the ground, her left foot caught on something on the ground, and her entire body- as well as everything attached- flew forward and down. She tried to put up her hands to protect herself, but the right one got tangled in the straps of her messenger bag and she was still having trouble with making the left one do what she wanted when she wanted it, so all she succeeded in doing was hitting her left hand on the sign as she crashed down head-first. A sharp crack sounded, and unfamiliar pain exploded in her face. Aranica started to cry out, but inhaled dirt off the pavement and started choking instead. The coughs wracked her body, knocking her forehead back into the ground a couple times, before fading entirely and leaving her with just the throbbing pain in her face.

"Whad...?" Clutching her nose, which felt a little too out-of-place for her liking, Aranica rolled over. A couple more coughs forced their way out her throat, squeezing her eyes shut and enhancing the pain in her nose. She would have to deal with that pretty soon; she was quickly becoming sure that it was broken, but other than the hand clenched against it, she was just going to ignore it for now. Having your arm chopped off didn’t desensitize one to pain, but it did put things in perspective.

Her right hand hit something as she finished the roll, and she turned her head a little to see what it was. Half a sandwich lay under her last two fingers, still in its plastic bag- leftovers from lunch, which she couldn’t bring herself to throw away and had stashed instead. That hand slid forward and pushed it back into the bag as she slowly propped herself up on her left elbow. A glance around revealed that the sandwich hadn’t been the only thing to fly our when the bag hit the ground and flew open; indeed, it appeared that almost all the contents were scattered around her. Not that she was totally sure what “all the contents” consisted of, mind you. The list that popped into her mind included six pens, a broken pencil, that sandwich, some spare money, a small yellow shell, two small sticks, four pebbles, seven cough drops, two butterscotch candies, band-aids, a water bottle, one hair clip, a bouncy ball of unknown origin, and the journal that she wasn’t very good at remembering to write in- but for all that, she was pretty sure there were a few things she was missing. In any case, it didn’t really matter, because all of those would be perfectly fine if they hit the ground, but she wasn’t, and- more importantly still- neither was the person whose stomach was currently acting as her footrest.

“Arbor!” The offended feet came up and then set down on the pavement, a few inches away from the boy. Ara couldn’t quite scramble up, what with the pain distracting her (apparently her shoulder and ankle hurt, too- as the pain in her nose faded, the rest of her body started voicing complaints) and the one arm not being as helpful as it should be, but she did push herself into a kneeling position as quickly as she could. “Did I knog you ober?” Why his forehead was bleeding when he seemed to have hit the ground facing upward, she wasn’t sure, “Sorry! I wasn’d baying addention.”

For a moment she had completely forgotten about her terror, but that sentence reminded her why she hadn’t been paying attention, and it washed back in. Her hand, which had been reaching out to Arbor’s shoulder, flinched back and curled in against her chest. Her wary gaze went toward the sky and then swept across the street, an involuntary reflex that revealed absolutely nothing. No clouds, no people who looked like they were out for blood. Only blue sky, and way too much empty space. Her eyes continued to flicker up, just in case, but she allowed herself to look back down at Arbor and his slightly squashed-looking box. He was okay, right?

[aya]

Arbor Halt—

But of course, the universe didn't want Arbor to give up, not yet. It had said so, sent him a nice little message in the form of a swift kick to the ribs from one Aranica Petros. There were maybe under ten people that frequently ventured out to the Victors' Village, so the chance that one of them would be happening past and be absent-minded enough to trip over the boy already on the ground were slim to none. Divine intervention, in a way? No, not really — Arbor refused to believe that everything happened for a reason. If it did, then he was obliged to make good on his promise to take down the Capitol for metaphysical reasons rather than for his own — a thought he did not particularly relish.

"Mmmph!" To be kicked while he was already on the ground, more or less in the middle of nowhere did come as something of a surprise to Arbor. This time, he resigned himself to the Capitol's gift, and his eyes flew open. Above him was a vast sheet of blue, all one color, with not a cloud in sight. The weather had been nicely cooperative recently, which was hard not to appreciate. Arbor had always loved the feel of autumn, and the nice breeze and cooler air made it quite clear that his favorite season was fast approaching.

Arbor bent his knees, considering getting up for a moment, but ultimately deciding against, as he realized that he was sort of pinned down. Ara's feet kept him from moving — not because the girl was big or physically all that strong — as they were resting on his irreversibly squished box of cake (at least it had served some purpose, acting as a cushion between Arbor's stomach and the younger victor's feet.) He'd wait until she got up, and by then he would have sufficiently regained the breath that was knocked kicked out of him. It decidedly wasn't so bad, though, the jab to his side. The resulting bruise would probably skip purple and yellow, starting directly with almost-healed brown. (Colors, Arbor admitted, were fantastically useful for nearly every aspect of life. That was one reason why he loved the autumn so much — everything was a different color.)

The fleeting pain in his side subsided rather quickly, until it was just a residual throb that couldn't even keep up with his forehead, which was decidedly gashed. The wound stung with the wind, which cooled the blood that had already seeped onto his brow. Arbor couldn't help but be reminded of the Arena — the blood cooling against his skin the instant it escaped his body. A chill ran up the back of his neck. His pulse quickened, and, for a moment he forgot where he was. Forgot why he was on the ground, why his knife wasn't in his hand, why this younger girl was crouching over him.

"Arbor!" That was all it took to make Arbor realize that he wasn't lying in a snowbank, that it was a crushed box of cake and not a backpack resting on his stomach, that Aranica was not his enemy, and was not going to attack him any more than she had accidentally done — and even then, the sign and ground had done more damage than the girl.

Ara apologized to him through what sounded like a banged up nose — broken or not, Arbor couldn't tell — which made it seem as though the ground might be the worst enemy to both victors at the moment. For a split second, it occurred to Arbor that they might all be better off with no ground at all, just an expanse of sky. Catching Aranica shrinking back and stealing a glance upward out of the corner of his eye made Arbor banish the thought. What was it she had asked?

"What? Oh, no—" in truth, Arbor had been on the ground for a good while before Ara had shown up. He sat up all the way, the blood draining out of his head as he did. A wave of white light crashed over his vision briefly; he relished the temporary anti-blindness. Completely different than the pitch-black kind he had known for so long. As it turned out, there were different ways to not-see that he'd discovered since not-seeing was no longer his default setting.

"No, no. 'S not your fault." It's completely mine. I don't know why I didn't just get up after I'd been knocked over. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know what I'm doing. He gingerly pressed a hand to his forehead. The blood had dried to the point of being sticky, but not quite caked to his forehead, but if you got passed the fact that his brow was smeared with the stuff, it wasn't actually a bad gash. A horizontal line, right at sign-height. The wound stung as Arbor rubbed his fingers over it, which were salty and grimy from the day. "I was on the ground anyway. Mourning the loss of my cake."

He smiled gently as he picked up the now-compacted box, trying to make light of the peculiar and somewhat painful situation. Yes, it was a shame that the pastry inside was now little more than a few yellow crumbs glued together with pink frosting. But it wasn't the end of the world. Not even that serious of a financial catastrophe, really, considering the wealth he'd come upon when he'd been crowned victor. He was a little worse for wear for it, but largely intact.

His eyes fell on Ara's left arm for a brief moment before he quickly averted his gaze. The symbolism there, Arbor had picked up on, was largely talked about by the people of the Capitol. That it had come down to the two girls who'd been attached at the hip during the Arena, and that each might have been the other's hand. So Aranica lost hers as she lost Dru, and — according to the Games analysts, as they called themselves — the other girl may as well be the missing arm of the Victor. They'd been close, much closer than Arbor had been to any of his allies, even Archer (and he'd had little trouble making the other boy lame so Zinnia could finish him off.)

Just as quickly as he'd focused on the girl's left hand, he turned his stare away. Countenance soft, he asked: "How 'bout you? You okay? I kind of tripped you — sorry." He shut his eyes again, this time not so much out of an unsatisfied craving for rebellion, but for the headache that seemed to have started where the back of his head had made contact with the ground. It was easy to find the swelling lump through his messy hair. Wasn't your vision center somewhere at the back of your head? Maybe he'd be allowed to walk around with his eyes open and not see at the same time, after all.

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