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Travis is quiet.
This gives him enough time to just — watch. Enough time to listen. Enough time to understand.
And so, he does. He watches. And he listens. And he understands.
He pushes colors of distance, of coldness, of loneliness, into his clothes, stitches messy and jagged as he sews patches of cloth on hoodies and pants with trembling fingers. He pushes patterns of home into his room, desperately showing pictures of sewing patterns to his Twitch chat, and in those patterns are messages.
Messages, when decoded, speak of— home scared please forgive lonely miss you mom sorry sorry sorry—
And he finds distance and coldness and loneliness in the fact that District 8 could be watching. That District 8 could see his patterns and his colors and listen. That District 8 would understand.
—
And he finally breathes.
—
Travis watches.
He looks around corners, in holes, through hallways, just to get a firmer grasp of Floor 6. He practically had to track them down, look back from mentally jotted down notes, just to get an idea of who they were. Just to talk to them.
Just to keep the conversation going.
Just to keep surviving.
He absorbs information like powdered dye does to water, greedily and hungrily. It almost reminds him of grounded plantain roots, staining his hands a deep forest green.
He notices when the glint in Noah’s eyes spark like lightning bolts and firing synapses, and grows flaxen and gold, brilliant and ever gleaming, lighting up like LEDs or copper wires or the start-up screen for the T.V. or a computer that sits in the corner of his room, nearly taunting him.
He notices when Cooper’s tone gets angry and bitter and hurt and harsh , and grows carmine and cardinal, passionate and fiery in its own right, and it’s yelling, it’s screaming at him, intense and expressive of fury that couldn’t be explained, but still raged to be heard.
He notices when lies spill from Ted’s speech rapid fire and sure in intent, aiming in the bullseyes of targets, and grows ivory and alabaster, curving in and out of words, winding through sentences like elephant tusks and tree branches that sway with the wind.
He notices when Charlie’s laugh edges on tiredness and slows with fatigue, and grows viridescent and chartreuse, sickly and saccharine with sweetness and empathy, in unasked questions and expressions of worry and pushed on masks of confident and affirming smiles.
He notices when the bits that flow from Schlatt’s speeches borders on fear and bitterness, and grows ultramarine and prussian blue, rare and vivid and encompassing, crashing over him like a landslide, choking him under rubble and dirt in how utterly dry it felt.
When a stream gets a bit too long. When keeping his eyes open gets a bit too difficult. When breathing, at all, gets a bit too hard to grasp, a bit too short to clutch, a bit too flighty to keep—
— he notices when his —
— he notices when Trav’s—
— he notices when Travis’—
He notices when traves gets pulled back.
Pulled back to peacekeepers peering over shoulders and stitches, pulled back to grey, gleaming factories that made up skylines and pulled houses under the black void that was their shadow, pulled back to piles and piles of fabrics and sewing machines and looms.
Pulled back to the distance, to the cold, to the loneliness.
Pulled back to air that was more smoke than anything else. Where smog blossomed and intertwined with dark clouds, where it danced, suspended mid-air doing a waltz he can’t remember, in time to a beat he can’t forget. But the feeling he has, even as he traces out un-uniform steps, even as he listens to the silence in his room that’s almost deafening, he realizes something.
It’s still there .
District 8 is still there.
And, traves, no— Travis, no— Trav, no—
—
And he finally breathes.
—
Travis listens.
He tucks whatever he can get from the other Victors as close to his chest as possible.
He remembers every bit that he hears. Only ever good at numbers and patterns, never a talented speaker. Letters get jumbled up like his newly found discovery of alphabet soup in cans, words spin like ballerinas, twirling ever-encompassing fouettés around his head, and sentences fall from the sky like shooting stars, breaking into the stormy waves of District 4 and creating craters on unmined quartz quarries from District 2.
He eavesdrops as much as he can, gets as much of an edge in the game as possible. He uses his analytical and observational skills to just listen. To just let it soak in.
And when he shows an inkling of being smarter than his character, his chat explodes with Twitch emotes and question marks and exclamation points.
(163, they chant, and it‘s only a small reference to an even smaller moment, that's easily forgettable and dissipates in mere minutes, but it scares him. His childlike wonder is a safety net, a safety net for unfiltered thoughts and unfiltered looks. Childlike wonder for that of a child’s naiveté.
How wholly befitting.)
He shoves a bare comment of luck into the spotlight, before ignoring the incident entirely.
And not for the first time, Travis disappears, and traves stumbles out, innocent and goofy and dumb.
(He can still remember Tommy, behind curtains on the interview stage, slightly shaking his head.
He can still remember Travis, clamping his mouth shut, shoving off something about luck and fear.
If only they knew.
If only they fucking knew.)
What would they do if they knew he was smarter than he seemed? What appeal to the masses would he have left? He knows this persona was designed to appeal, designed to fit Capitol standards, designed to win his Games. He knows it’s irrational, he had things to fall back on if his painstakingly crafted half stitches were ripped aside.
If his needles broke, he had replacements ready in-hand, ready to transfer in and replace at the drop of a hat.
But he can’t help it.
(traves, thoughtless and childish, grins on stage, earnest and timid and mulberry purple.
Travis, observant and a child, cries on stage, scared and fearful and buttercup yellow.)
So he only listens, and he never speaks.
He never points out the fallacies that dot the faces and personalities of Twitch, he never sees the inconsistencies in stories, he never looks further than face-value at other content creators, he never listens to the lies that slip out of mouths after years of pretending and acting and performances.
And he never drops traves.
He thinks it’s a part of him at this point.
He thinks that it's a part that he’s stuck playing for the rest of his life.
(What happens when you can’t tell the difference between the puppet and the puppeteer anymore, he sometimes wonders. He doesn’t ever tell anyone though.)
But, when he finally gets to relax, when he finally gets to click the ‘Stop Streaming’ button, he sighs.
And he gets out of his distant, cold, lonely room, shuffling into one that’s messy, comforting, and real , crashing in during the middle of a bit that Ted and Charlie are keeping up.
And he gets to elbow Cooper in the side as he nestles on the couch, Cooper rolling his eyes without bite as he grins, and shoves him back.
He listens.
And he gets to entertain witty, ingenious puns from Charlie, the master word player working his magic, spurring on light and teasing groans. And he gets to see Noah smile, unbridled and free, and sharp and filed, and soft and subdued, in all the right ways.
He listens.
And he gets to watch Schlatt lower his infallible guard and just joke along unprompted, not once tiptoeing around interactions. And he gets to take in and absorb uncontained chuckles from Ted that don’t get knocked back by lies and unbreakable shields.
He listens.
—
And he finally breathes.
—
Travis understands.
He understands that things aren’t good, to say the least.
He understands that things could be better. That things, despite deserving to be better or not, might never reach that peak. That he could be stuck at the 6th floor of this godforsaken tower, speaking nigh different languages in terms of view counts and subs and bits. That he and his family could be trapped for the rest of their lives, whether natural or not.
That his fate relied on his relevancy, or its lack thereof.
Travis understands all of that, and more.
He knows better than anyone what Cooper lets slip, behind closed doors where chlorine snakes along the walls, and where blue light reflects off his face. Where microphones have been dead, dead, dead, and cameras gone, gone, gone.
Whether intentionally or not, he understands.
He gets that he’s trapped, gets that they’re all stuck in this prison until someone’s nearly forced to rescue them, gets that they can’t ever be free.
(If no one helped them in the past 60 years, why would they start now? So, Travis understands he has to give up, gleans it from the way heavy bags set under eyes and the way windows are a rarity to treasure in the Tower of Babel, but every so often, he sits on the balcony, despite. And he waits.
He waits.)
Travis understands a lot, but this is the most important thing he knows.
So, he throws himself into the routine of the tower. He grows into gold cards and whispered words and dull, dull eyes.
But, he forces himself to understand hope, he allows himself to stay determined.
(It’s in the way he welcomes Schlatt with open arms, the way he laughs loud and smiles brightly, the way he knocks on Schlatt’s door at meal times, the way he led Schlatt to his room on his first day in the Tower.)
It’s in the way he can feel so distant, so cold, so lonely.
It’s until the words he’s scribbling over and over again on a spare piece of paper blurs his vision, until he can hardly recognize letters among the harsh stripes and patterns of his own writing, that Travis gets a small inkling in the back of his mind that he might have a problem.
It’s when Noah shoves over a cup of his precious black coffee to Travis, when he spots the way his eyes droop and his movements grow lethargic in nature, reactions delayed and reflexes slow, and has the foresight and kindness to add cream and sugar to it.
It’s when Charlie leads him to the balcony on sleepless nights where nightmares chased them both, beckoning him to follow as he trailed blankets at his feet, padding through marble halls. They sit, and just feel the breeze blow through their hair, hugged tightly by a warm blanket.
It’s when Schlatt joins them in a stray game of UNO or Monopoly, when he notices his eyes dim and his smile falters, and when he laughs if only to make others laugh. So, Schlatt prepares his bits, in earnest, if only to keep the joy going in a place that lacked it in theory.
It’s when Ted pulls his hands away from books. It’s rough, more of a yank, but it’s grounding. He needs foundations and structure and routine, and if Ted tugging his hands away from pencils and paper to pass a simple sandwich into his hands achieves that, he dutifully accepts it.
It’s at that point, where Travis shuffles out of his room, winding through hallways until he gets to the pool, and sits at the edge. Chlorine curls in his lungs, prompted by quiet inhales, and he stares into his reflection on the glassy water. And that’s when Travis thinks he might have a problem.
He can faintly hear the door opening, and closing, with a gentle click. He can barely see Cooper in the peripheral of his view, before he starts bawling, before throwing himself into Cooper’s already open arms. And that’s when Travis knows he might have a problem.
So, he moves to clothing sketches.
Now, he runs notepads dry, full of designs and patterns and color palettes.
It’s bad. But not as much as before. (Never good at words, never a talented speaker, so he uses patterns and colors to shout and scream in the only way he knows how.) When he catches expressions of worry, he shrugs it off with a quick grin, and he keeps working.
His chat fawns over them, and he’s forced to be bashfully earnest, and bare his teeth in a semblance of a grin, and force his hands to stay firm and steady as he holds them up to his webcam. His eyes slightly narrow though, when there’s an influx of text starting to flurry through the slow mode they’re currently in, in the language of minerals and flowers and roots and dyes and powders and colors.
They’re quickly swept away by more spam and praise, while his Twitch mods work quickly, sweeping the gibberish from the chat logs, but Travis still sees them.
Travis knows better.
And he knows they’re still watching.
He laughs, and it’s more air than anything, but he laughs. It’s a response.
He knows things could be so much worse. Things could stay stagnant, in a world that moved too fast and too rapidly. He knows things could be so much better, though. He knows hope is a power not many have. He knows determination is a power not many can keep.
He knows that they understand.
He knows that District 8 understands.
—
And he finally breathes.
—
And he finally exhales.