Fifth Dispatch. Practice Makes Perfect, And Perfect is Me. Action.

[trinkett]

[It's a hot afternoon, and Effie Trinket has sneaked into the Barracks -- first checking to make sure no one else is in there.

No one is.

It's far too hot and dusty and anyone in her right mind would choose the techy comforts of the Battle Dome over this place.

This is a good thing. Effie doesn't WANT to meet anyone today. For one thing, she feels very awkwardly dressed: running shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt (yellow is a Power Color); white athletic socks with that 1970s-era striping at the top; sneakers. No heels, no shoulder pads, no wig, no makeup.

She is here -- VERY GRUDGINGLY, MIND -- to train for warfare. Her last announcement to the village brought on plenty of warnings, and even a subtle death threat or two, and at least a few people giving well-meaning advice. She can hardly believe any of the doubters who'd said the Malnosso would sacrifice her in a battle, but better safe than sorry. One never knows when the higher-ups might make a clerical error or shifting error and accidentally send a valued subject into dire straits.

The second reason she doesn't particularly want to meet anyone is because she knows none of the Luceti peons like her very much. That's fine with Effie. Eventually the Malnosso will take her into the inner workings of the organization and place her right where she belongs. Until then? Well. She can and has been staying indoors a great deal, being a bored journal stalker.

Unfortunately, this lonesome round in the Barracks confirms that Ms. Trinket is not cut out for warfare at all. It turns into hesitant prods at practice dummies with wooden swords, a lot of staring out the windows, and a frustrating turn at a punching bag.

Fighting is horrible and she's horrible at it and consequently is in a horrible mood.]

Comments

[onlyeffie]

"I'm better at the swinging bag."

A thin red line welled up on her palm; alarmed, she shoved her hand into her pocket.

"The wooden sword was just here. Hanging on the wall." There were spears, too, but Effie had found them too big and clumsy. The things that looked like axes she hadn't even wanted to look at.

[greenjacketed]

...Sharpe wasn't even certain what the swinging bag was. But he didn't want to admit so, not when he'd set himself up as a kind of expert in the field. Instead, he asked: "Can you aim?"

And he stooped to retrieve his sword, pretending as though he didn't see the way she hid her hand.

[onlyeffie]

Could she aim? Effie had never tried.

"Everyone can aim!" she retorted as she backed away toward the punching bag hanging in the corner. She'd show Richard Sharpe what she was capable of.

"You just point."

[greenjacketed]

A slight scoffing sound -- though, if he was truly honest, Dan Hagman had muttered something similar. Once, when pressed about his unnatural accuracy with a rifle: it's just a matter of pointing and shooting, sir. The men had laughed. Sharpe had laughed, too.

"With a gun, Miss Trinket. Can you aim a gun?" But his tone dropped, because now he was curiously watching what on Earth it was she was doing.

[ruthlessismore]

"Guns are so vulgar."

She began to slap the bag. SLAP it. Like a naughty schoolboy.

The bag swung away a little bit; then it swung back and she ducked out of the way and slapped it some more.

[greenjacketed]

Well, Christ. Now he couldn't help but laugh -- loud and deep and from the belly, which still stung from her sucker hit with the wooden stick. He winced and laid an arm across his stomach.

"A bullet is damned tidy when compared to a sword. Or, I should add, yer fists."

Because a man who'd been pulverized to death? Aye, that looked mighty vulgar.

[onlyeffie]

She wasn't even USING her fists. She'd learned with Clint -- that hurt. Her knuckles hadn't been the same for days.

"I don't have a gun."

That was true; there were no guns or ammunition in the Barracks. Effie licked her palm and scrubbed it on her shorts. A coppery flavor spread over her tongue. She stopped the bag's gentle swinging and leaned against it, choosing to regard Sharpe with cool blue eyes.

"Besides. It's snack time."

Anything to get blood flavor out of one's mouth. Ugh.

[greenjacketed]

It's entirely possible that this man -- who'd once squirmed his way through a Danish chimney and another time tracked naked through a sewer in Coimbra -- actually pulled a face when he watched Effie lick the blood off her hand. He swore softly under his breath, then wondered whether he hadn't developed a sensibility or two since arriving in this town.

"You get nabbed by one of their bloody lists, Miss Trinket? And I'll make certain you've a pistol and ample cartridge." Anything, really, to keep her alive -- but he'd hand a precious firearm over no sooner than a draft itself. He cared for those guns; perhaps more than he cared for her.

[inyourfavor]

"What's a cartridge?" That sounded interesting, actually. USEFUL maybe. She found her duffle bag in the corner and unzipped it.

[greenjacketed]

"Ammunition."

Conveniently enough, his black cross-belt held his cartridge pouch. With his sword sheathed, he could reach one arm behind his back and deftly select a round from the leather-bound box. What he'd called a cartridge looked more like a fat cigarette with a slight bulge at one end. Sharpe wasted no time in biting off the bulge and spitting a dark round hunk of metal onto his palm. The rest of the cartridge held fine powder which he also poured onto his hand in an unceremonious heap around the bullet. Although he kept his distance, he tilted his hand to show the vital parts.

Personally, he preferred to load ball and patch -- but one never failed to have cartridges handy just in case speed was required.

[inyourfavor]

Effie looked. Oh. That was a cartridge. It didn't look useful at all. It looked messy. She would have to wear gloves on any draft she was accidentally sent on. If it happened. Heavy, thick, protective gloves.

She grabbed a clean silk scarf from her duffle and wound it around her palm.

"You must always have a horrid aftertaste in your mouth."

[greenjacketed]

"...You get used to it." And you get thirsty. Even now, once the powder was brushed from his hands and the ball pocketed for a later rewrapping, he dragged his canteen from his hip. He drank deep. "There's fancy guns what just have the bullets. Easier to load; I've seen'em. Modern things. But it ain't easy to get their ammunition -- the Malnosso ain't keen on handing it out."

Sharpe's way? Ah, well. He could make his own with a little help from the smithy. He sometimes wondered if he wasn't the best stocked gunner in the whole village on account of his backwards ways.

[inyourfavor]

"Katniss uses a bow and arrows."

Might as well keep this unfortunate conversation going. That, at least, was one of her talents.

Effie lifted a locked metal box from her duffle.

[greenjacketed]

"And to great effect. Better'n I ever could. But bows and arrows don't maintain accuracy at a distance the way a rifle can."

Granted, he knew nothing of grand fancy modern bows versus his old Baker. "An' the wounds are different. An arrow to the gut is a blessing compared to a musket ball." It was a difference between slicing and blunt force trauma.

"Of course, arrows are damned near silent. That's a boon."

[inyourfavor]

If life in the Capitol had granted her anything, it was stoicism in the face of horrible wound descriptions.

"Swords are silent, too."

She lifted a chain from around her neck; on the end was a small key. Effie unlocked the box and brought out an array of labeled and wrapped food. Granola bars represented the bulk of it, but there were also small metal cannisters of dried fruit and nuts and other snacky things.

"But I don't think I like them much."

[greenjacketed]

Having had a ball in the gut before, he could not stay so stoic -- and a familiar itch in his abdomen drove him to change the subject: "You lock up your food? Clever."

After all, he suspected she was still spooked by certain threats. So he decided not to tell her about what a lockpick could do that lunch pail.

[inyourfavor]

She hadn't eaten fresh food in a while. Not since their garden conversation over The Lieutenant's Handmaiden's Hunger. No -- everything had to be either from a metal can or locked under key or wrapped in such a way that tampering would be impossible. Safety Seal had become Effie's middle name.

She took out a clear pink-tinted plastic bottle filled with water.

"They won't get me THAT way," she assured him with a certain grim confidence. Maybe this was training for Panemanian politics. Helpful.

"When the Malnosso take me on, I'll make sure certain people pay."

[greenjacketed]

"I'd not painted you as one for vengeance, ma'am."

[trinkett]

"Oh? How HAD you painted me, hm?"

[greenjacketed]

He drank again from his canteen, dragging his hand across his mouth after he swallowed.

"The kind of woman who stands back and waits for vengeance to fall on others' heads because she believes it will, and it must, and any other outcome's against the natural order of things."

But Effie had been so clear in her wording: she would make them pay. It caught him by surprise.

[ruthlessismore]

There is a surprised kind of laugh at that. "Wait? Wait for vengeance? My dearest Richard, vengeance IS the natural order of things. But it's also how we are.


Where I'm from."

She was quick to add that.

"It is natural for man, woman, and child. My best friend turned her mother in to the Secret Police because she wouldn't allow her to date the boy she liked! Has Katniss taught you NOTHING about the Games? The Games are vengeance. Long, long years of vengeance."

And with that last bitter vengeance she slammed the lid of her lockbox shut. It bounced back open again and hung askew.

[greenjacketed]

He's shocked and dismayed to find that her laughter wounded him. God, he hated when women laughed at him -- he could only ever speculate that it had something to do with how desperately he wore his sash and how he clung to his progress. Men's laughter was simple: challenge the bastard to a duel, give him a hard thump on the field, or else simple stand tall and threatening. They generally stopped. But women's laughter...

Sharpe turned away -- his voice a hard mask once again. As if giving his opinion to a dangerous fellow officer. An unstable one, liable to drag the whole company to Hell without intervention. "You truly want to make them pay for what they've said to you? Threatened you with?"

[onlyeffie]

"Yes." She eyed her water bottle. Could it be trusted? Maybe she would have a drink from the taps at the restaurant instead. Later. No water now. She poured it out on the floor.

[greenjacketed]

Sharpe turned back at the sound of trickling, wasted water. He grimaced at her paranoia, but still offered up the last few mouthfuls held in his canteen. It was clean enough -- safe enough -- considering he'd been drinking from it, too.

"Pick yourself up out of the muck. Do what you're doing -- and get better at it. Most importantly? Do it for your bloody self, and not the bastards with the Malnosso. Make the souls who've threatened you in the past respect you, now. And if they can't do that? Make'em feel like shite for that, too."

Be someone self-made. Although Sharpe's leap into officerdom had come at the hands of an aristocrat, everything afterwards had been blood and sweat and toil. Hard work for hard won advancement, and now -- as a Major -- the kind of men who'd had him flogged when he was in his twenties now had to call him sir. That, he decided, was the most flavourful vengeance.

[onlyeffie]

She hesitate only a moment before taking his canteen. Learning to fight made one THIRSTY. She chugged as much as she could; it spilled over the corners of her mouth and she choked a bit before pulling back.

"So in other words...do what I've done my entire life, Major."

She hadn't exactly risen from much the same way Sharpe had, but could it be that they had some element of "self-made" in common? She regarded him with a new kind of interest. Curiosity. Compassion, maybe. Maybe not.