#auretta

I was rereading an old work to continue and I just had to share my favourite part I wrote so far :)) Content: Interrogation scene excerpt; slightly inhuman whumpee; muzzled (not explicit); detention; restrained

"So you’re one of two people from Six who’ve won in several decades. How’d you do it?” Holland admired Auretta, always had, because she could appreciate a strong and self-assured woman. And now that she was in this situation -- this shitty, shitty situation -- she figured she needed to get all the advice she could from people who had been in it before.

“Your tributes are overdramatic and exhausting.” He feigned skepticism. In reality, a sting of envy caught him, because he could no longer do the things all of these tributes were free to do. Because he did no longer want to, as if he’d just run out of all spark after the arena. “I feel for Six, but I feel like being all mouth and no trousers does not grant you a victory.”

He had his single glass of whiskey (the only one he allowed himself at these things) in one hand while the fingers of his other hand trailed across the wall of the dining-room-turned-ballroom. “I guess when I heard they lived underground I sort of pictured... dirt walls,” he said, mostly joking, though he had found it difficult to truly picture what Thirteen would be like.

Sometimes when she was off-duty she liked to come into the viewing rooms. Occasionally there were sponsors there whose brains she liked to pick, or mentors whose conversations she wanted to listen in on. It didn’t really get her anything strategic, it was just that she was nosy.

“Are you planning to win again? Warn me beforehand, so I wouldn’t pour my heart into it for nothing,” he mocked, but did not exactly just mock. The conversation dynamic changed. He wanted to acknowledge Six’s victory with every chance he had.