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

[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.

[greenjacketed]

"Then you've done it damn well, ma'am; the seams don't hardly show."

Her flaws and foibles and messed up little opinions? Aye, those show well enough. But he figured them as the result of being handed her life. Given her authority over children like Katniss. Privileged. It did not occur to him until now that maybe -- just maybe -- they were learned behaviours.

[onlyeffie]

"Please. I'm not even made up right now."

[greenjacketed]

"And I'm still missing my buttons. Don't mean I'm not me."

[trinkett]

"At least your eye doesn't look as horrible."

That was such a half-lie. Effie had never thought his craggy face horrible. It certainly made her uncomfortable in many ways, but not in that way.

"Where are they? The buttons? You'd never fit into the Lieutenant's Handmaiden's Hunger now."

1/3

[greenjacketed]

"They used to be 'round Katniss's n--"

2/3 i know numbers.

[greenjacketed]

Him? He? Richard Sharpe of the 33rd, 47th, 95th, and South Essex regiments? Fit into that....book? That book he'd been trying slowly to read on the sly ever since he'd filched it from the porch?

He cleared his throat.

3/3

[greenjacketed]

"Dammit, woman. I'm nothing like that--" WAIT. "I mean, I'm assumin' I'm nothing like...

The hungry maiden's Lieutenant's probably filthy rich and had his commission bought for him at the age of sixteen. Of course I wouldn't fit into that stupid book."

[inyourfavor]

She just looked at him, her mind still on that track. The fine, noble facial structure. The rough-and-ready attitude and appearance. That tousley hair that made a woman itch to tidy it. An upper lip that held mysteries beyond those which mortal lips ever seemed to reckon with.

Sideburns.



Hm.

[greenjacketed]

Oh, God. She was looking at him. Just...looking at him. And not saying anything. And...

"Wha--?" He asked, artless and seeming to be just a little lost under all this scrutiny.

I like this icon better. : |

[ruthlessismore]

[greenjacketed]

"Orright, Miss Trinket. Wipe the smirk off your face and give us back the canteen..."

He defaulted back to his usual standoffishness, holding out a rough and powder-burned hand.

[onlyeffie]

"You never did tell me where your buttons went." Now THAT was a trigger she would have to save for another time. Romance novels. Effie wiped her mouth-spit off on her t-shirt before holding the canteen out to him. "Something about Katniss?"