Try as I may I could never explain.

[the_marshal]

WHO| Wyatt and OTA
WHAT| Wyatt gets introduced to modern Valentine's Day.
WHERE| First Floor
WHEN| This week.
Warnings/Notes| None at this time.



Wyatt was lingering by Teddy again. The man's unblinking stare should have been unsettling, but there was something familiar about it, something about knowing how close they were. Sixty years like a blink of an eye compared to the thousand or so he'd traveled to end up here.

What had the man seen? What had he known? Had he watched the Capitol begin it's rise - or had that come later still?

They regarded each other silently, the former president giving up none of his secrets, until the elevator's chime broke through the quiet. He leaned back, mustache twitching slightly as his lips did.

Maybe next time.

Turning away he moved toward the elevators, hands loose at his sides, knowing that sweet little sound as the one for gifts rather than fellow tributes. The doors started to open, his head tipped curiously -- and suddenly red and silver, bursting into the hall, lurching toward his face!

He jerked back, a hand snapping instinctively toward his waist, the gun pulling free with same lightning speed of a striking snake, thumb pulling the hammer back as his shoulders squared and his arm lifted. A shooter's firm, steady stance where a heartbeat before he'd been all but at ease. Ready to fight or flee depending on what was being unleashed on him -- but the red and silver hearts merely hung there, silent and unassuming, floating at the end of the ruby strings that tied them to the similarly shaped basket resting on the floor of the cab.

He stared for a long moment, gun unwavering, waiting... then he shifted slightly, arm dipping as he glanced back over his shoulder. As if expecting to find someone behind him. As if not believing such a thing could be for him.

Slowly, he stepped forward, gun still out if down then by his side, and reached out with his free hand to curl his fingers around the thin ribbons, dragging the basket and all out of the elevator and into the gloom.

~.~

As strange as the thing was on the outside, it was doubly so on the inside. A prim, white box that when opened held a pair of figures - one in a tunic, sporting a handsome beard, a sword clutched in hand; the other with a wide brimmed hat upon its head, a mustache tickling its upper lip, a star upon its chest. A small, stuffed tiger - that rumbled and purred when he squeezed it. A card, with a pair of figures on the front, walking toward a sunset hand-in-hand, that played a twinkling tune he didn't recognize when he opened it.

Truth be told, the only thing he did recognize was the note inside.

The numbers dwindle every day. Stay the course.

Confused, he crouched there, Max's card open in his hand, staring at the contents of the basket, as the music played on.

Comments

[aintyourdad]

Joel expected just about anything, whenever he approached the elevator banks. And by anything, he meant violence, he meant supplies, he meant faces strange or familiar. Maybe even a monster, but the one thing he did not expect was, well.

A fucking Valentine's Day candygram or whatever.

Seeing as it was Wyatt, someone he knew via Ellie, he took a chance, stood up, cleared his throat. "Well, there's somethin' you don't see every day."

[the_marshal]

The revolver was coming up again, Wyatt turning on the toes of his boots before the grit sank in past the surprise. Before he recognize the low drawl not all that different from his own.

Finding Joel's face a few yards away, he tipped the gun slightly to one side, mouth lifting sheepishly at one corner as he lowered it again.

Sorry.

Sure, he'd only spoken to the man the once, but he knew Ellie. Liked her. He wasn't going to betray her friendship if he didn't have to.

"...Somethin' I ain't never seen before."

He remembered vaguely, the previous year something similar - the tables laden with sweets in the Tower lobby, the bright, pastel boxes filling the suites with the smells of baked goods and chocolate - but he'd never seen anything like in the arena.

Never would have expected it, least of all from Max.

[aintyourdad]

His hands went up automatically as the gun pointed at him, the universal gesture of 'I'm unarmed, I'm not planning to attack, please don't shoot me'. Wyatt was quick off the mark, though, and Joel got a little breathing space as he put the piece away.

"Never seen heart balloons before?" he asked curiously. Admittedly, Joel hadn't seen any in a very long time, but he was at least familiar with the practice. Familiar in the way an academic might be familiar with a historical practice that has no relevance to their current life.

[the_marshal]

"No, can't say as I have," Wyatt drawled, turning back to the basket. "Last I knew, balloons were made of rubber, not--" he pulled on one of the ribbons, the balloon jerking down and bobbing back up, "-this."

And they didn't come in silly shapes, or bright colors. Or attached to heart-shaped wicker baskets full of chocolate.

"An' I ain't never seen any of any sort in the arena."

He worked his thumb under the cover of the card again, the syrupy strains of the piano coming again as it opened.

"...Why would he send me this?" Wyatt murmured, more to himself than Joel.

[aintyourdad]

"It's a Valentine," Joel said absently. "You got a secret admirer or somethin'?"

[the_marshal]

Wyatt's curious frown only deepened. The changes to Saint Valentine's Day were even stranger than the ones Christmas had taken.

(Not that he actually remembered all that much about the last one he'd seen. The day was still something a blur after he'd eaten those chocolates...)

"I know who sent it, er who's supposed to have sent it." Max's name was there on the pale pink insides of the card, and the sentiment written there certainly sounded like something the man would tell him... "What I don't know is why he'd send this." He gestured with the card to the basket. "Ain't got much use for chocolate and toys."

[aintyourdad]

"Maybe somebody's pullin' your leg?" Joel offered absently. He had no idea who Wyatt might be referring to, nor was it really any of his business. Presumably a friend or partner back in the Capitol.

And he also assumed that anyone Wyatt respected enough, would know better than to send him useless chocolate crap in a death match.

"Guess it's better than nothin'," he mused eventually. "Might be able to rig up some kinda alarm with the balloons, if you were gonna hole up somewhere."

[the_marshal]

It made perfect sense once it was said.

The Capitol, of course. The Gamemakers, having themselves a grand laugh at the tributes expense. Messing with not just their supplies, but their - feelings.

The ties that kept him bound.

Shaking his head, he flipped the card closed and rose out his crouch.

"'Spose it must get awful tiresome for 'em, watchin' us kill each other," Wyatt muttered with a shake of his head. "Got'a livin' it up somehow."

Tucking the card into his coat, he glanced over at Joel. "Don't suppose ya fancy yerself some chocolate?"

No real use for it himself, the least he could do was offer it to a friendly acquaintance.

[aintyourdad]

Joel snorted vaguely, still somewhat disbelieving about all that crap. Sure, okay, he'd accepted the premise on logical terms. God knew there was no way out of this museum that he'd been able to find.

Sick sons of bitches.

He gave Wyatt a long look at the offer, though. "Can't say I've ever had much of a sweet tooth," he pointed out. "Are you sure you wanna be givin' that away? Food's food, and we'll all be short on it soon."

[the_marshal]

"A couple rounds back, the arena was made out of this stuff - everythin' as far as the eye could see. Before that, there was a sponsor who sent tainted sweets to tributes."

He slanted Joel a side-long look.

"Better it go to someone who can still stomach the stuff. 'Sides," his mouth twitched slightly, fondly, "I imagine Ellie would have somethin' to say if I tried to be stingy 'bout it."

[aintyourdad]

"Tainted?"

It was one thing to miss the expiration date on something and pay the price for it - something else entirely to maliciously poison people. Joel frowned, but after a moment, he held out his hand for the sweets.

He hadn't been lying about not really having a sweet tooth - even back before, he'd never been much of one for candy or chocolate. But, as he said, food was food, and he was short on it already - dangerously short.

"And she'd yell at me for bein' too stubborn," he finally muttered, almost reluctantly. Joel wasn't the sort to talk about those that were gone, if he could help it, but he'd reluctantly accepted that most people here were assuming she wasn't really gone.

[the_marshal]

"There was somethin' in 'em..." Wyatt drawled, reaching to pick up the little chocolate-Wyatt and breaking him in half. "Don't quite know what, the memory's still fuzzy."

All he really remembered was the headache that had followed. The taste in his mouth like a herd of animals had slept on his tongue.

"Here," as it felt a bit strange to hand someone else his face to eat, he handed Joel the half from the knees down. "Wouldn't want anybody gettin' facing that girl's wrath."

[aintyourdad]

"Maybe it's not the best thing to be tellin' me as you offer me chocolate," Joel pointed out wryly, but he took it all the same - inspecting it, giving it a sniff - as though he might be able to smell if there was something wrong with it, which was silly, given his lack of knowledge about chocolate in general.

Then he took a bite. "Oh, I am intimately familiar with Ellie's wrath," he found himself muttering. Maybe he just liked Wyatt more than Hawkeye, and that was what was loosening his tongue. Maybe he was just wanting so much to believe what everyone told him, that she was alive out there, waiting for him.

[costing]

Watson’s notes aren’t meant to be cryptic, but they set Sherlock on edge anyway. He’s not ready to accept this place and its impossibilities—he has evidence, now, but can’t eliminate the other options. His mind runs in frantic circles like an athletic hamster, and he’s worn out and irritable because of it.

It’s the music that draws him, really. He hadn’t planned on making himself known to anyone else, not unless it became necessary. But the music is whimsical, cheap and somewhat mocking. He might be able to appreciate the irony in it, if his nerves weren’t already scraped so raw.

“A classic. How quaint.” He says it out loud, taking a step forward with both hands raised. It wouldn’t do to alarm the other man, after all.

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[the_marshal]

Joel had moved on and Wyatt was planning on doing the same. He'd repacked the strange basket, but as he'd stared thoughtfully at the balloons - unsure what to do with them - he'd dropped the card, the twinkling tune filling the hall again as it landed open.

He snatched it back up quickly, but still not fast enough apparently to stop it from drawing more attention.

The voice called out to him, unfamiliar, and he whirled - card in one hand, gun in the other. The latter coming up, blue eyes sighted down the snubbed barrel.

A long moment passed as Wyatt sized him up, then noting the raised hands, the revolver lowered - but didn't disappear. He didn't know this man and as such didn't trust him.

"Classic to who?"

[costing]

The gun is to be expected, really. Sherlock doesn't sidestep, doesn't reach for any weapon of his own. Instead he continues to hold both of his hands level with his head. There's a stupidly arrogant streak in him that believes he'd be able to dodge a shot, or talk his way out of an attack. It's been working well for him thus far, at least, so he has no reason to correct that assumption.

Now, he nods towards the card and adopts a pensive expression. "Oh, anyone around in the late twentieth century. Popularity's faded a bit, in the new millennium, but it's still considered one of the most romantic stories of all time."

He can't say much for the film, or the song. He has no high regard for romance, either.

"It's a tragedy," he offers, helpfully.

[the_marshal]

If the man was hoping some sort of reaction - a dawning realization, maybe, or for Wyatt to be impressed - he was surely disappointed by the way he merely continued to stare. Pale blue eyes sharp on the strange face in front of him.

The most he got was the small twitch of an eyebrow, arching up slightly on Wyatt's forehead.

"Sorry, friend, still don't mean much to me."

[costing]

"They're making fun of you," Sherlock says flatly. Perhaps he should have said "us," but he'd never openly admit to being mocked.

But he tilts his head to the side. "I didn't expect it to mean much. I very much doubt are respective contexts overlap, much."

[the_marshal]

Wyatt's mouth tightened, a twitch around the corners, lips thinning just so.

"If by 'context' ya mean time, then sure." Considering he'd have been in the ground long before the millennium, even if the Capitol hadn't snatched him up.

[costing]

"Time, place, historical circumstances." He waves a hand, lazily. "Yours would be... 1875, or thereabouts, judging by your intonation? And somewhere in the American midwest, or west." He has a theoretical mastery of dialects in time, but it's hard to match things perfectly when you've only ever thought about how they must have sounded aloud.

"I hail from London, originally, in case you had wondered. 2013, so a little ahead of your time, as well. But seeing as we both appear to be quite human, I'd say we have more in common than any two Tributes chosen at random could expect."

[the_marshal]

Well, wasn't that just unpleasant?

"1878," he muttered lowly, disquieted by how the man seemed to know him - without even knowing his name. That he understood, even expected, anymore, but without so much as 'how to do ya do?'

Couldn't say he liked it much.

"Kansas." He chin dipped, fixing the man with a flat stare. "But in all fairness, time an' place an' species an' really what concerns me."

Plenty of humans were perfectly happy to gut a man as soon as his back was turned. Some of the aliens were downright neighborly. Skin and blood meant little to Wyatt anymore.

[costing]

Sherlock tends to be entirely ambivalent to the fact that he rubs people the wrong way. In the past week in the arena, he has found that he doesn't care, more and more. The people he's encountered, a good number of them, are willing to kill on command or whim. Why should he offer them any basic courtesies?

(Watson's voice echoes in his ear, tells him his lack of regard is going to get him into trouble. He tries his best to ignore her.)

But for now Sherlock just nods, expression curious. "What does concern you, then?"

[the_marshal]

"Yer intentions," was the flat, direct reply. The gun still held at Wyatt's side, not pointed directly at the stranger, but in a steady, confident grip of a man who knew what to do with it.

Who would have no trouble taking aim on a suddenly moving target.

"Who are ya, what do'ya want?"

[costing]

Sherlock lifts both hands, palms up. "Sherlock Holmes. And yes, I'm aware my name's common, around here."

He turns, slowly, and it should quickly become evident that he isn't armed.

"I wanted to know where the music was coming from. That's all."

[the_marshal]

Copies.

Like the two Katurians, different faces, different histories, but the same names. The same strange qualities shared between them - anxious, and twitching; the soft voice like a poet.

"An' ya found out," Wyatt replied, not entirely placated. (The other Sherlock had had it him to break a child's hand and walk away.) "Now what?"