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WHO| Orc, beer from the heavens and YOU
WHAT| Orc has been blessed with three cases of beer. Anyone dare try to take them from him?
WHEN| Week 4
WHERE| Near the labs
WARNINGS| Alcoholic 15 year old. Possibility for violence, homosexual slurs and homophobic talk

Orc had stepped out of the labs for a moment. He had told Howard it was because he had to take a leak.

But the truth of it was, all those empty cages and messed up equipment creeped him out. It felt stupid to get the willies from stuff like that after all he had seen and done and experienced...

...but memory was a powerful thing. And all he saw when he saw those cages was the zombie movie he'd stayed up too late to watch one night where the taxidermy animals came to life and were falling apart as they attacked.

And so he was trudging about the outside of the lab with his spear. The rest of his supplies were in with Howard. If there was one thing he trusted Howard could do, it was keep track of useful things.

That's how he found Orc after all.

Squinting against the light something caught Orc's eye. He ran his grey sludgy tongue over pebble coated lips and watched as a parachute with a shiny orb attached to it drifted down from the sky.

He was all set to go after it and see if he could find who it belonged to...but it seemed to be getting closer.

...it was for him!?

Let it land and approached slowly. He remembered finding something like this in the last arena too. There had to be something good inside...

His mouth fell open as he lay eyes upon a bounty of beer. Three cases worth! Back home that would be just enough to put him to sleep with a few cans left over to wake up to. But Capitol beer was something else! Something strong. A whole case would be more then enough to make him comfortably numb.

Without waiting, without moving to a safer place Orc promptly put his spear in the ground next to him, sat down and opened the first can with a satisfying and familiar "Pssssst!" Like the can wanted to share a secret with him.

He lifted the beer up slightly "Thank you." He grumbled to whoever out there had decided to take pity on him. And with that he set to drinking.

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Another gentle nod. He seemed to do that alot when talking with her, maybe he was worried that she wouldn't think he understood.

"So hot brandy, some sweets, maybe ice cream and cartoons. That should be good." He declared. Yes the perfect mix of sugar, alcohol and children's programming to help you forget that your life has become a long string of horrific murders and crash dieting via starvation.

"NOT ice cream. Ice cream - he - we - it is the thing I eat with Howard. Ate. It makes me sick, Sir."

It was what they'd done together, that night before the arena. They'd sneaked down to the kitchens and found the ice cream, and it was whilst they were munching that he told her that he was gay. That he had accused her of having johns. His voice echoed in her head.

Fuck you, Eponine. Whore. I hope you puke all over yourself, it'll match the rest of you.

She shook her head, and coughed to try to clear the lump that had formed in her throat.

"Please, do you mind terribly? Not ice cream."

Orc looked puzzled, then he had a look of pity on his features. For a FAYZ child no food was ever off limits. But he could be polite for her.

"No ice cream. But don't let him ruin it for you forever." He admonished. "He's not worth it."

There was a pang of guilt saying that about his best friend...but it was true and Howard would understand the importance of ice cream.

"I do not know what I did. Why he was suddenly so cross with me, you know? To go with a man because he thinks me so disgusting. He did not think I was disgusting when he took my clothes in the arena, or when he took away my t-shirt so he could touch me. Or perhaps it was so they can laugh at me - the Capitol people."

She sighed. He had probably thought her disgusting, her willingness to let him take her clothes. Her desperate attempts to please him. Her history from Paris, her lust for Marius, her relationship with Montparnasse. No wonder he had grown tired of her. No wonder he had preferred a man to her.

"He is not much of a good looker... but I perhaps deserve his actions."

Orc's jaw fell open.

"He...saw you naked? And touched you and stuff?" It was a stupid thing...but Orc couldn't ignore a pang of jealousy. All their life he had though himself the handsome one, the strong one that someday girls would be throwing themselves at.

And then...the FAYZ happened.

Still, he had never expected Howard to get a girlfriend let alone to be so...intimate with her. And then the thought settled in that Howard liked men. That just doesn't make sense.

"Do you think me disgusting as well?" She was worried - worried that he'd get up, and go away. And she really, really didn't want that. At all.

"But it's what happens, isn't it? When people are in love. Or - well. Those are not words for you, Monsieur. I thought it would make him forgive me. I thought it would be what he wanted. I just wanted him to love me."

She drew away from Orc, just a little bit, and suddenly eyed him defensively.

"If you think I'm disgusting, you can say it. I don't care. I don't care what anyone thinks of me."

She was a good liar, Eponine.

Now Orc looked startled at her reaction and shook his head.

"You gotta quit doing that. I'm not like the people in your world. And I'm not like Howard." Which was becoming hauntingly more apparent every day.

"You're not disgusting. So quit asking if I think that because I don't. I just...never imagined Howard getting that far with someone. Never thought about love and stuff." Love was stupid, a sissy emotion.

"It makes me feel disgusting now though. It all does. It makes me feel - oh, what the hell? Does it matter? I cannot change what I have done."

He made her feel disgusting. He made her feel -
Stop comparing me to Montparnasse and you fucking johns.... And even if I was that kind of guy, that wouldn't have been worth paying for anyway.

"Howard thought I was bad - that's it, isn't it? That's why he left me - because he thought I was ugly, that I was bad at sex. Sorry, Sir. I shouldn't say that to you."

She stopped short, and shrugged stiffly.

"I don't think that boy ever loved me. He made me love him, but he didn't love me."

Sex.

Not just touching. Sex. They had...Howard had had...

It was enough to short circuit Orc's grip on reality for a moment.

"Howard is...broken. Like me." He tried to defend his friend, though at the moment he felt like even Diana would find that an impossible task.

"Maybe he doesn't know what it means to love." That would explain the gay thing. Maybe he just freaked out, maybe he was just confused. Yes clearly...

"Probably not you. Probably him."

He hadn't - they hadn't. They hadn't got beyond touching, but that was enough. Still, his words made Eponine laugh.

"Monsieur, do you not think we are all broken? You think I am not? You wait - just wait until I die here and you see me. I have asked them not to make me beautiful - then you'll see. I do not have rock for a skin as you do - but you have such lovely eyes, Sir. I could look at them for an hour!"

Orc's eyes went wide at her words and he looked utterly dumbfounded.

"I...wha...my eyes?"

Lovely had never been a word he would have applied to himself in any sense of the word in any way. Let alone after his "death"

"T-thanks?"

"It is nothing." She waved away his embarrassment.

"You are not good looking as Marius is - but you talk to me properly and you look at me. I do not know - I should be scared of you but your eyes are kind, I think. Most men I have known do not have such a feature."

He tried to hide his embarrassment with a swig from his beer and crumpled the can dropping it to the grass.

The alcohol helped, it kept him calm. She was saying such nice things...no one ever said nice things about him. He didn't deserve nice things.

"You just...you're pretty and you seem delicate and shouldn't be here. Your world was crappy enough without all this."

She burst out laughing all over again at that.

"Delicate? Me?" She couldn't stop laughing.

"Sir, I am not delicate! Not in the slightest - I wish I was; a proper lady is. But me - I know how to rough it. I have slept under bushes and beneath bridges. I can take a punch or a slap. I don't care. I do not know. There is not much good in me, Even before I came here. I don't care - but I will not let them make me worse. I am not killing anybody."

The made him smile, a rough craggy smile through cracked pebble lips.

"You're delicate to me then." And then added "Good. Don't give up, let the people worse then you do stuff like that."

People like him.

She took a sip of beer.

"One day, we will all be in hell together. Or perhaps this IS hell, only we do not know it. And Monsieur Snow the devil... Is your skin really made of stone? Can I touch ?"

Orc had considered that before, and having someone else say it made him feel better.

He was hesitant, but what could it hurt really? He was drunk enough to not be bothered by it...hopefully.

He nodded "Yeah, it's stone. Go ahead."

Gently, she rubbed her dirty, bloodstained hand over Orc's arm, a look of wonder apparent on her face.

"And a fairy did this? Because you killed a girl?"

She stopped touching, remembering herself.

"Canthe Capitol not make it go away? You know, they took my scars and gave me soft hair and sparkly eyes and everything. They can perhaps do something for you if you don't like it."

"Not a fairy." He shook his head, "God...or maybe the devil. I was killed by Coyotes and it happened."

But her suggestion, it made him pause and consider it, why hadn't they done it yet?

"I think they prefer me like this. At the last victory party they painted me." But it was worth asking. If they could bring people back from the dead what couldn't they do?

"Painted you?" She didn't look impressed.

"If I was you, I should have not gone if they didn't give me clothes. And you know, they do not always listen- they make you how they want - but I have made my stylist promise to leave me be, with no teeth and scars. I Am fed up of looking how they want me to. But if they can make me beautiful, then they can do the same for you if you like it."

He pouted, which was an amusing concept given his rough features.

"They made me wear this leather skirt thing. Like a kilt. It felt weird." He was just drunk enough to admit that.

"I'll ask em when I get back..." But he didn't seem too optimistic about it. He wasn't even sure there was a way to reverse it.

She began to laugh - she just couldn't help it. The idea of Orc in a skirt was just too funny - she supposed she had been caught up in her own drama, in her tears over Howard to notice it at the time. But now she laughed.

"They dress you up as a woman, Sir. Now that - that is funny! I should have laughed if I had seen that. I wish I had. Their clothes are peculiar, though. Always they like me in trousers, as a boy - perhaps they were trying to make me as Howard liked? Or perhaps they got our clothing confused? But then, you are so much fatter than I..."

That made Orc snort and laugh.

"That's cuz I drink so much." He patted his stone belly through his shirt and it made a solid thud.

"Do you prefer wearing pants? Or dresses?" He tried to imagine it and decided she'd look good in both.

She laughed again. " Perhaps brandy burns away the belly and this is why mine is small."

By this point, having feasted for a large part on fresh air and wistful dreams, she was back to looking as she did when they revived her after every arena. Emaciated, the thin of starvation. But she didn't seem to mind .

"Me? It is wrong to show your legs in such a manner as this, Sir."

She indicated her bare legs, her shorts cut shorter because of Suzannah hacking at her legs.

"But always, they like me to. Even the dresses I am given have little front or stuff so thin you see my legs. That is what I want - a proper dress - velvet, perhaps, or silk, in a lovely colour, green maybe, or purple. And lots of skirts beneath it, and pearl buttons at the sleeves and lace at my neck. Like Cosette's. Like the real ladies wear. I used to look and look. And I longed for their dresses. I never got one though. I would sit in my mama's old chemise and a skirt made out of my oldcloak and so ragged that it had rips to my waist, and a bitof old string to hold it to me... I do not know what it is to wear a lovely dress."

Orc shook his head when she asked if it was wrong, then as she launched into her tirade about her desires and dreams he nodded and listened carefully.

"So...if the Stylists only make you dress the way that's in fashion...maybe you can make those sorts of dresses in fashion?" He reasoned and then another idea sprang to mind. This was really an amazing day for him to be thinking so much. Maybe he'd found the magic number of beers.

"What if you threw a party? And told everyone they had to dress like that? Then your stylists would have to make you a dress like what you want."