The Darkest Night Will End... right?

[gardienne]

 Who: Eponine and OPEN to ARENA 2 people
What: Eponine's gone a-wandering in the desert
Where: Somewhere in arena 2
When: Some time during the night time 
Warnings: Unless you guys want to bring any?

It's night time in the arena and now Eponine is glad for her long sleeves and her velvet dress.  It's been strangely okay so far, this arena. Not too many deaths. Not too little food - or perhaps she just hadn't got used to the sumptuous luxury of the Capitol. Either way, between her bottle of water and the horrible cacti, she's okay. Just a little bored. 

Whilst her friends sleep, Eponine wanders. She's on the look out really, for food, for weapons - anything that will keep her alive for a little longer. And, of course, she is on the look out for danger.

But tonight, Eponine hasn't found danger, or weapons, or even food. What she has found is one of the screens, projecting images from the first arena. She stands for a minute, watching the other tributes in wonder. And then a face so familiar, so dear to her, flashes onscreen. Howard.

At once, Eponine is closer to the screen, pawing at Howard's face magnified as it is. But then she steps back because Howard has suddenly somehow burst into flames before her very eyes. Startled, she lets out a yelp and scrambles back, settling cross legged in the sand as she watches him trying to put out the fire, knowing she can do nothing to help him.

"HOWARD, YOU ARE A SILLY!"

Her shout of despair echoes in the still night, and Eponine claps a hand over her mouth in horror. She hopes nobody heard that.

Comments

[whosalicewhite]

"Nobody wants just an hour. They let you think that, but it's never true."

Opening up her bag aka petticoat (she'd been using the scythe as a carryall, like an old-fashioned hobo, until the ninja turtle thing), she lays everything out:

2 cans of beans
2 tins of sardines (gross but protein)
One litre container for water
Sunglasses
First aide kit.

"Wish I could've got more, but look, dinner!"

She holds out one can of beans, and one of sardines. Hmmmmmmm, tasty.

[gardienne]

"Have you - " Eponine looks quickly up at Parker, before looking away again.
"Have you experienced it, Madame? Men - people - in the hour?"

She can't look at Parker now, worried that she's pushed it too far, and she lapses into silence.

"You're lucky, Madame." Eponine looks on enviously. She doesn't care what things taste like - who is she to turn her nose up at food? Maybe Parker will let her have the leftovers - if there IS anything left over.

"What are these?" She picks up the sunglasses in wonder.

[whosalicewhite]

"I've had people want things, I don't want to give them."

There's a dangerous tone there, the voice of a little kid who once blew up a house, the voice of woman who thinks stabbing with forks is a rational reaction.

"Broken enough. Don't need more. Don't give them what they want."

Parker waves her hand out as if asking for them back, if given, she'll open them up, and move to put them on Eponine's face.

"Sunglasses. Stops the sun."

Now, she's peeling off the lid to the sardines. first. She doesn't like the idea, but whatever is in the can is going into her, or Eponine.

[gardienne]

"My Papa made me. We needed the money. I don't think he knows what some of them men have asked me to do - or he don't care."

It's the first time Eponine's admitted that aloud. "And then Montparnasse - it is give in or the knife with him. Sometimes he held it at my throat until I gave into him. It is not so bad, you know. And I think he loved me. He DID love me. In his way."

She hands over the sunglasses - and then laughs as Parker covers her eyes with them.

"Oh, HOW I wish I had a mirror, Madame. Do they look good on me? What do I look like? These will be good when it is light, yes? You will be able to see properly now."

Oooooooh, that smell. That salty, fishy, horrid, LOVELY smell. She crawls closer, already licking her lips. "It smells like the mudbanks."

[whosalicewhite]

"Didn't love you at all. If he comes here, kill him." Parker is as serious as she gets, and if Eponine doesn't do it, Parker will.

But Parker's moods are as changeable as the weather in the middle of an ocean, and Eponine's amusement by the sunglasses and the fish. "Have to ask someone else about the glasses. Sophie's the fashionable one but don't they help?"

"Don't think that'd sell, mudbanks." She holds out the can. "Take half."

[gardienne]

"He DID. He loved me." She has to cling onto that - because the reality, that she was completely alone and unloved, was too much for the poor girl to bear.

Eponine reluctantly takes off the glasses and holds them out to Parker.
"I should have liked to have been fashionable. I used to look at the ladies' dresses; I coulda worn clothes like that and looked pretty if I had the money." But Parker didn't seem interested and Eponine shrugs.

At Parker's request, though, she shakes her head.
"I cannot. It's yours." Even still, she licks her lips. "You wouldn't have my water; I can't have your food. Well, perhaps your left overs, Madame. I will lick the lid if you don't want to."

[whosalicewhite]

"No." Parker's a realist. "Find other people, who'll like you. I like you okay."

She shrugs in return, as Parker would definitely treat her better than Eponine's father.

"Wouldn't've taken so much if you weren't going to eat it."

[gardienne]

"That is different, though, Madame. He loved me, Montparnasse. He did. And he only hurt me because I was bad. He... he is not a nice man, but he is fair with me."

She was so glad that she had Parker though.

"You took some for me, Madame? You slowed yourself - you risked yourself for... me?"

She couldn't quite believe that. She couldn't believe that someone would care enough about her welfare to risk their life to help her.

[whosalicewhite]

"If they tell you they hurt you 'cause you're bad, they're the ones who're bad." Parker glares at her. People tried that before, in the foster homes, but no one got away with it. In her own way, Parker's issues helped her know what was wrong about that logic.

"Pfffft, I was already there, and it's one more of everything."

It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, though Parker's not sure of the right thing. "You're not mad at that, are you?"

She's mistaken surprise for anger. This is the woman who mistook sex for exercises once.

[gardienne]

"He IS bad, Madame. But so am I. When I do not do as I am told, or quick enough... it's only then. It's only when I'm bad."

She doesn't believe it - but she wants to believe it. She wants to believe it so much. She has to. She presses her lips into a thin line, glaring straight back at Parker.

"He loves me. He does... it is just his way of it."

But she sighs.

"Madame, I am not mad. I am cross you say that he does not love me - but I am not mad. You do not know Montparnasse. You don't know. But I am not cross that you have brought me food - I just do not understand why you risked death for me. Why do you not look after yourself and let me die? You are so kind to me... but I have nothing to pay you back with."

[whosalicewhite]

"No!" Parker's insistent. "People made to do bad things aren't bad. They're stuck." She glares back. Parker's view is immutable. "He's mad at you 'cause he's not getting something he wants. That's not what people do you like you."

Or be a better thief Parker was once told. She did, but without the help of the man threatening her.

The sardines are put down in between them. "I didn't ask to be paid. This has," as Nate says is, "an alternative revenue stream. You don't pay me."

[gardienne]

"No." Eponine was just as insistent. She HAD to believe it. It was all she had. He was the only person who ever loved her, who ever WOULD love her. She had to believe it or admit to herself that she was truly unlovable and alone in the world. And that she could not do.
"He. Loved. Me. He did, he did, he did, he did."

She glanced down at the sardines. "Not in money, Madame. But in water, which you refused, or in a favour. You wish for my hat?"

She reached up to begin removing the zillions of bobby pins holding it on.

[whosalicewhite]

"People who love make things better, not make you worse off." Parker has to pull out the philosophy of Hardison. Love is a hard thing to understand, even if a person isn't Parker.

Her crew's made her better, made her not feel alone.

Holding up her hands, as if to repel the hat in question. "Not a gift if I ask for something." She's sure of that. "It's a glad you're not dead gift."

[gardienne]

"He did make it better, Madame. He reminded me that I were alive... he reminded me to feel...something. Sometimes it is so easy there to forget that you are not a ghost."

She hugged herself, shivering even in the heat. But she smiled."You wish to give me a gift, Madame? That is kind - I never have presents. Well, if you do not mind, well then, Madame, I would like some food. I am hungry!"

[whosalicewhite]

"Being a ghost isn't so bad. No one can arrest you." Parker's wanted in 9 separate countries and only since Sterling have there been any pictures.

Still, they only have one name. Parker has at least 6.

"Yes. I prefer cash in non-sequential bills as gifts, but food is good here."

[gardienne]

"Well, Madame, that is a good thing that you like it, for we will both be dead and ghosts soon enough..." Eponine snorted.
She had no idea what sequential bills were, so she just shrugged the comment away. Food was good enough for her, and she stared eagerly at the tin, waiting for Parker to open it.

[whosalicewhite]

"Rather stay that way in the Capitol." Parker hates seeing her pictures there. Fortunately, she's not very popular, so she's not everywhere she goes.

Once the food is open, Parker's not going to invite to start eating. She just will, and then grin at Eponine, sardines in her smile and all.

Who needs table manners?

[gardienne]

Not Parker, apparently, and certainly not Eponine. She hesitates until Parker starts eating, but then begins to wolf the fish down. The food isn't to her taste, but it doesn't really matter, does it? She's silent whilst she gobbles a couple.

"I always thought I would like to be seen. But here, it's different to Paris. I do not like being known as 'the girl who stripped her clothes'. I would rather be 'the girl on fire' like Mademoiselle Katniss. That is a better title, I think. Then people would ask to see my flames and not my body."