Sixth Dispatch | Action

[trinkett]

[Since her return, Effie hasn't been up to talking over the journals. Mostly she's been listening and trying to recover -- locked away in Katniss's house until Jack Horner returned, and then locked away in Horner's house. She hasn't wanted to be around people -- not with her face and much of her body still sporting some pretty vicious-looking scars.

In Capitolista culture, scars are just about the death-knell to any self-respecting woman's social life, career -- you name it.

Today, though, she is going to venture out to pick up some walnut-free cookies for Jack and some clementines for Clementine and some romance novels for herself. Bodice-rippers. Real smutty, steamy stuff that's perfect for escapism, even if one can only escape for a few hours per book. It's worth it.

Find her at the library and the grocery store. She will be wearing a cloak pulled almost all the way over her face, a scarf around the lower half of her face, and elbow-length gloves; tall boots and tights cover any evidence of violence on her legs. She's trying not to draw attention to herself, though she is wearing complete make-up and bright green wig.]

Comments

[greenjacketed]

...It was the wig. The wig was unmistakeable. And Sharpe supposed that there might have been some other someone bounding about with bright green hair, but it was unlikely. And he'd come to know her stride, her demeanour, her height -- with or without the heels. Living only briefly with her, he'd absorbed these details -- unknowingly capturing them in his memory in the same way he might learn the curvature of landscape or the pitch of a possible battlefield. Richard Sharpe had an eye for detail, but it usually took war to bring it into view. Here, in Luceti, his perception was allowed to run rampant. So he surprised himself when he recognized Effie at a glance and across the shelf-crowded library.

He ducked behind a rack of magazines. It wouldn't do, he supposed, to reveal why he was here. Miss Sage had agreed to tutor the soldier in his letters -- leaving room for more advanced learning than he currently possessed. It wasn't something he was ready to share with anyone, least of all Effie Trinket. Perhaps he could sneak out without her seeing.

[trinkett]

"This won't do," she muttered as she wandered -- unbeknownst to her -- in Sharpe's direction. She was flipping through a book called "Rowena's Gift." The cover was shocking. "Every scene is just..."

Effie frowned. All the good, steamy stuff trailed off into ellipses.

[greenjacketed]

...Bloody hell had everyone else planned a trip to the library today, too? There was a bottleneck at the door and the tall Major had to loop back, grumbling as he left himself full in the path of the distracted capitolista. He hunkered down, raised his shoulders, and braced himself for an uncomfortable social experience.

"Miss Trinket," he rumbled.

[trinkett]

"Richard." Her heart sank. Effie crushed the book against her chest, trying to spread her palms and fingers in such a way that they might mask the title and the cover. There was no ready escape.

"You're looking..."

Tall. Green-clothed. A wee bit ornery.

"...Well. You're looking well. And everything's well?"

[greenjacketed]

Well. His brows knit. That was...alarmingly almost-civil from the woman. But he kept up his guard, fearing that she might be baiting the hook with kindness only to reel him in and give him another little verbal slap-around.

"Well 'nough, now that the village has settled back into routine. Miss Trinket."

The name he added as an afterthought.

[trinkett]

Effie felt anything but routinish, but maybe she should play along. Yes, Luceti was its nice and normal self. She put on a dazzling smile and straightened her shoulders.

"I'm so glad to hear it!" She tried to sound pleasant without trilling too much. Jack Horner wasn't a fan of trilling. But the result was rather a sultry sort of trill. It was hard to eliminate it entirely.

[greenjacketed]

"We missed you during the madness," he countered obliquely -- wondering whether she'd been about or whether she'd been in hiding. She seemed to hide so much, lately. Sharpe was unsettled to find it worried him. "Such as it was. Probably for the best."

[inyourfavor]

"You did? Missed me?" She stumbled over the words and tightened her grip on the romance novel. It was a surprising revelation. "I've been staying in, mostly." Effie cleared her throat. "For the best, really. Were there...what happened?"

[greenjacketed]

He hadn't quite meant it the way she'd taken it. We missed you -- he'd intended it so literally, as if they'd missed each other. Passed by. Couldn't find their connection. But her own version seemed to stun her so completely that he felt queer about correcting her. Let her think it, he told himself, and move on.

He shrugged, kept his eyes on her book and not her face. "Got demoted, I suppose."

[inyourfavor]

"Really." Not surprising. He probably offended someone with his boorish bearing. "Richard, I can help you with that sort of thing, you know."

[greenjacketed]

"Help me!"

Her offer both bewildered and entertained. "Bloody hell, woman. I thought I were a private again. None could have helped me save Wellington himself."

[inyourfavor]

"Wellington teaches manners?" She stood, hands on hips, and peered up at him.

[greenjacketed]

"Wellington does better; he teaches gratitude."

[trinkett]

Well that shut her up for the moment. Not right, Effie. You used to be able to read people. What has happened to you here? They turn you into a puppet for a week or two and you suddenly lose your gumption?

"Gratitude," she responded evenly -- perhaps even in a bit of a strained, hoarse voice, "is very important. One must always know whom to thank."

Had she thanked Richard Sharpe enough for what he'd done for her?

[greenjacketed]

Sharpe shook his head. He hadn't meant anything close to the literal act of thanking someone. Never -- not ever -- would he have turned to the Duke of Wellington and dared to have thanked him. Aloud. With words. No, there was now only on way in which Sharpe could repay him for his position: to consistently and unquestioningly lay his life down for the Duke's causes. To be the man who will go on the mission -- whatever mission -- without reservation. Or, at least, no spoken reservations. And to save his death for when it would be most convenient for Wellington.

"And how to do the thanking," he finally clarified, thinking about his position. And about his engraved spyglass.

[onlyeffie]

Effie's palms broke into a sweat. She rubbed first one, then the other, against her hips, trying to dry them. She had nothing -- nothing at all -- to offer Richard Sharpe in thanks. She didn't even know what his How would be.

She folded her arms across her chest. Shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Was there a ladies' room in this shop?

"Ah. How. How to thank. There's many, many ways to thank someone. Gifts; favors; words..."

[greenjacketed]

Our gallant Major, whose head was thoroughly occupied by the power dynamics of his own debt and how strange it'd been to live free of them in this village, spoke without thinking: "Or service."

He spoke without even considering or contemplating that Effie was struggling with a way to thank him.

[inyourfavor]

"Service."

That was terrifying. Well done, Sharpe.

"So if someone were to save your life...?"

[greenjacketed]

You've done me a good turn, Sergeant Sharpe. Now I'm about to do you a damn bad one. The threat/reward still rung in his ears; he'd just slaughtered near a dozen Indian soldiers. He'd been in a haze, knowing only violence and the need to protect the man on the ground. Wellington -- then simply known as Arthur Wellesley -- had spared him the brunt of a whipping, once. And it was his duty to protect the chain of command. But in the wake, the Duke's gratitude had taken the shape of a battlefield promotion. From that moment, he'd become the newly minted Ensign Sharpe. Bloody old for an ensign, certainly, but now commanding more of a lot in life than he'd ever done before.

"I suppose...you try to give him a future. A chance, in life, he might not already have. No matter the challenges."

Because there had been challenges. Still often were.

[inyourfavor]

This dumbfounded her. "This...will require some thought on my part, Major." Because what chances was she meant to give him? "Perhaps if I'm promoted..."

Maybe he would notice that her usual when had turned into an if.

[greenjacketed]

"Perhaps when you're promoted what...?"

And he had, in turn, transformed her if into a when.

[inyourfavor]

Wait....wait....her mind went through a series of backflips, front-walkovers, back-walkovers, and splits.

Did a routine on the balance beam.

The uneven bars.

"Richard..."

Did he mean THAT sort of chance?! The book fell from her fingers.

[greenjacketed]

"...Eh?"

Bless his soul, but he was lost. Terribly lost. So buried was he in ruminations on his own debts, difficulties, and duties that he hadn't the slightest notion that Effie might feel at all beholden to him. After all, as far as he was concerned, it was an officer's right and privilege to lend aid to even trilling, troublesome women.

But he was not so lost that he couldn't stoop -- lean -- and catch the falling book. Snapping it shut as it fluttered through the air.

[happyhungergames]

The scary thing was, the more she tried to imagine it, the more plausible it became. Terrifyingly plausible.

"I can't promise you that chance," she near-whispered. "I can't even..."

She couldn't even manage things with Jack. Not even when she tried to do everything by the book. Keep house? Keep a man? Make a life? It all seemed so impossible lately.

The ribbon around her throat began to itch terribly. The healing skin did that sometimes. She reached for the book.

"My body is not behaving correctly." That was blurted out. "I mean," she hurriedly corrected, "it is not responding to...

It would be very challenging."

[greenjacketed]

He withheld the book -- not on purpose, really, but from preoccupation. What the bloody hell was she nattering on about, now? He nearly didn't want to know. Sharpe wasn't keyed in to every social norm for library behaviour, but he figured you probably shouldn't start talking about your body in one.

"Effie. Miss Trinket..."