Katniss Everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stillplaying) wrote2012-04-25 06:23 pm
stillplaying) wrote2012-04-25 06:23 pm
Entry tags:
3rd Game
[Action;
Maybe they had caught on, these animals whose whispers she ignored when in the woods. She might not be the only hunter here, but she knows she's one of the more frequent. After all, she's out here every day. Sometimes she wanders further from the western lake but most of the time, she remains close to her treehouse home. Checking traps, gathering plants, losing herself in almost a ritualistic manner. It's the best way to keep memories at bay.
But on days like today, when game is scarce, it's harder. And she remembers. She lists the dead in her head, all the faces that haunt her in her dreams. The way they still all come together some nights to bury her alive. It's a recurring dream, always the same. Except, since coming here, she no longer sees Rue's face within the crows. It's the smallest of reassurances.
She's quietly whispering that list to herself, that list of all those people she's killed. All the deaths she's been responsible for. She has no right to be alive. She should be as dead as the rest of them. She deserves to be. And maybe that's what this is. Being back in a game again. Punishment.
But aside from that one awful shift, that horrible hijacking, it hasn't been so bad. And having Rue back... she doesn't deserve that.]
Cato. [The list continues as she continues to walk quietly in the forest, bow in hand.] Marvel. Glimm-
[The breaking of a twig stops her. She falls silent and looks around until her eyes fall on a young buck a few yards down, not even mature. The antlers are in velvet, barely little more than nubs sticking from the head. He looks as startled to see her as she is to see him. But a year or two older than any yearling. Perfect game. An arrow is drawn before she realizes what she's even doing.
There's only one moment of hesitation. When she remembers the last deer she brought down, with Gale's help, back in the woods of District Twelve. She's never attempted to kill one on her own. And a deer this size, it'll be too big for her to take back on her own. The amount of meat will be too much for two small girls.
But... she can think of people she's met here, potential allies, she'd happily share her meat with. Her arrow goes flying, piercing a lung. The buck bolts and her second shot isn't as true, hitting it in the midsection. And then she's running after it. It's not a long run. The animal stumbles over a log in its desperate flee and falls. She gets in one final shot, right in the heart.
There's a sense of grim satisfaction as she watches the deer exhale his final breath. Then she's on her knees, carefully removing and wiping her arrows. She places her bow on the ground and pushes the animal onto its back. She takes out her knife to make a small incision by the genitals. It's followed by a longer cut up towards the chest. Field dressing first. Then she'll request aid.
Voice;
So by the time she opens the journal, there are a couple of blood smears on her face. She looks uncharacteristically happy, though. Proud. She's never taken down her own deer before. It makes her forget any uncomfortableness that accompanies asking for help. She wipes some stray strand of hair from her face, leaving a small blood trail on her forehead.]
Is there a butcher in town? [An important question. Although she can probably butcher her deer on her own if worse comes to worse, she's never done it before. The first had been nearly attacked in the Hob, the other few taken to Rooba.] I caught a deer. There's so much meat. Too much for me and Rue alone. I'm willing to share. But I'll need help getting it to town, too.
Maybe they had caught on, these animals whose whispers she ignored when in the woods. She might not be the only hunter here, but she knows she's one of the more frequent. After all, she's out here every day. Sometimes she wanders further from the western lake but most of the time, she remains close to her treehouse home. Checking traps, gathering plants, losing herself in almost a ritualistic manner. It's the best way to keep memories at bay.
But on days like today, when game is scarce, it's harder. And she remembers. She lists the dead in her head, all the faces that haunt her in her dreams. The way they still all come together some nights to bury her alive. It's a recurring dream, always the same. Except, since coming here, she no longer sees Rue's face within the crows. It's the smallest of reassurances.
She's quietly whispering that list to herself, that list of all those people she's killed. All the deaths she's been responsible for. She has no right to be alive. She should be as dead as the rest of them. She deserves to be. And maybe that's what this is. Being back in a game again. Punishment.
But aside from that one awful shift, that horrible hijacking, it hasn't been so bad. And having Rue back... she doesn't deserve that.]
Cato. [The list continues as she continues to walk quietly in the forest, bow in hand.] Marvel. Glimm-
[The breaking of a twig stops her. She falls silent and looks around until her eyes fall on a young buck a few yards down, not even mature. The antlers are in velvet, barely little more than nubs sticking from the head. He looks as startled to see her as she is to see him. But a year or two older than any yearling. Perfect game. An arrow is drawn before she realizes what she's even doing.
There's only one moment of hesitation. When she remembers the last deer she brought down, with Gale's help, back in the woods of District Twelve. She's never attempted to kill one on her own. And a deer this size, it'll be too big for her to take back on her own. The amount of meat will be too much for two small girls.
But... she can think of people she's met here, potential allies, she'd happily share her meat with. Her arrow goes flying, piercing a lung. The buck bolts and her second shot isn't as true, hitting it in the midsection. And then she's running after it. It's not a long run. The animal stumbles over a log in its desperate flee and falls. She gets in one final shot, right in the heart.
There's a sense of grim satisfaction as she watches the deer exhale his final breath. Then she's on her knees, carefully removing and wiping her arrows. She places her bow on the ground and pushes the animal onto its back. She takes out her knife to make a small incision by the genitals. It's followed by a longer cut up towards the chest. Field dressing first. Then she'll request aid.
Voice;
So by the time she opens the journal, there are a couple of blood smears on her face. She looks uncharacteristically happy, though. Proud. She's never taken down her own deer before. It makes her forget any uncomfortableness that accompanies asking for help. She wipes some stray strand of hair from her face, leaving a small blood trail on her forehead.]
Is there a butcher in town? [An important question. Although she can probably butcher her deer on her own if worse comes to worse, she's never done it before. The first had been nearly attacked in the Hob, the other few taken to Rooba.] I caught a deer. There's so much meat. Too much for me and Rue alone. I'm willing to share. But I'll need help getting it to town, too.
[Action]
[It's not quite true. She can cook. But only very basic meals. And they're never as good as her mother's, let alone the food found in the Capitol. She's been cooking for her and Rue well enough.
But then, she doubts the girl would complain even if she wasn't.]
What's a microwave?
[As soon as she places the fat in the pot, it begins to sizzle. She takes a wooden spoon from the mat and begins to push it around gently, coating the whole bottom of the pan.]
[Action]
[shrug]
For people who can't cook, it's a goddamn blessing.
[He pauses, wrinkling his nose.]
You'd probably think it's like Capitol crap you'd find. I'm not sure if they'd have it or not, but back home most people had one.
[It's really weird, being able to use someone's world as an example; little trickles of Panem, etched into his brain. The salute, The Capitol, Games, Districts. He doubts he'd be able to forget any of it, and by now he's made peace with himself enough over most of it that he wouldn't want to.]
[Action]
So she shakes her head. She can't think of any Panem equivalent.
But she does remember how the canned food in the Capitol tasted nothing like the fancy meals she had grown accustomed to there.]
I don't think we did. [She steps away from the pot to gather what vegetables had been sliced.] We definitely didn't in the Seam.
[Action]
[A short grin, as he pushes over what he's cut so far. He's still tense and perhaps that really can't go away as it is, but it's better than staring hollowly into the fire. He hates it, really, that he went from handling fire on a daily basis to being in fearful distance.
Couldn't even bring himself to get a lighter from the shop. He didn't bother looking at them.]
Seen anything else in this place that's particularly weird for you?
...
Besides the talking animals. And the vampires. You haven't had to meet any vampires, have you?
[Action]
Vegetables are dumped on top of the now fully greased pot and gently, she begins to push them around with her spoon. Sautee these now, the rest when Rick's done with them. Sizzle from pot and fire can be heard as she thinks on his other question. Anything particularly weird?
Her first instinct is to mention the wings. But then she realizes that they weren't weird. Not compared to some of the other augmentations she had seen in the Capitol. People with cat whiskers, green skin, animal tails. So no. Not the wings.
And the talking animals, she ignores. She has to, for the sake of her sanity.]
Magic, I think. [That sounds about right. There's definitely no magic in Panem.] Everything you can do with it.
[Action]
[Being able to manipulate wind? Healing? Fire? Those would have made a pretty huge difference. Too bad it's all comic book and fiction novel territory. He shrugs, putting the knife down.]
Or the last few days there, anyway. The place I was guarding was in a preeetty awful state. Dunno' if it'll get any better at this point.
[It's a shame. A damn shame. They'd almost done it - gotten everything fixed back to normal. Now... who knows. He fears the worst, but what can he do? It's not like he's going back to see the future. All he can wonder is if any of his friends'll show up here, give him good news. Or bad. Maybe both.]
[Action]
What would the Gamemakers have done if they had access to all this?
But she knows about pretty awful states. Knows too much about it. Panem had been pretty horrible before the uprising. And what had Plutarch said? That maybe they were finally witnessing another stage in human evolution? That there would be no more wars and mistreatment?
She doubts it. But then, some part of him must still remember all this.] Why was your Earth so bad?
[Action]
It wasn't so bad... Well, it had a lot of problems. A lot. But it wasn't the worst place to live. I guess every world has its downsides, though.
[He's seen the worst society has to offer. Katniss would be better off not knowing about the sadder facts of his Earth. He shifts in his spot. Getting to the answer.]
There was an incident. Wasn't in my country, but it was overseas: one of our allies, Britain. They were working on something in their labs but it got out of hand - someone was bitten or scratched or some shit by one of the lab animals.
[Monkeys. It's always apes or monkeys with labs.]
It started a virus that spread all across Britain... It - It's like it took whatever made a person human out of them. When they got the virus, nothing was left but this overwhelming anger, and all they wanted to do was find uninfected people and take their minds away, too. Ran around and ripped into whoever they could.
... Eventually, the whole place was nothing but mindless bodies running around.
[Another pause.]
So... After they all starved and died, the government deployed me and a team to help Britain get back on their feet.
[Action]
But it's not unexpected. Not knowing the Earth they had inherited. She doesn't know where Britain is, but Earth is Earth. And she does know for certain that he's from the past. A past where people didn't care much for the future. Where there were wars. Where they decimated a planet.
No. She's not so surprised after all.
The vegetables come out. The meat goes in instead.] Is that where you were before you came here?
[Action]
Our job was simple... Burn things that could, uh... be contaminated - couldn't leave anything to chance, that sort of thing. After a few months we were able to let people back into District 1.
[He actually pauses, furrows his brow. District. Haaa.]
... Anyway... I was assigned to watching everyone through my scope. I'm sure they probably hated getting peeped on, but it was to make sure nothing went wrong, really.
[He feels bad for interrupting some of the more... romantic moments. But he was gentleman enough to focus himself elsewhere, at least.]
[Action]
But she has to ask. Because while Doyle might still have some level of her Panem, there's so much she doesn't know about the Earth that came before.]
Like Panem's districts?
[Action]
[He figures he knows exactly why she asked.]
You're wondering if our worlds have a connection?
[A shrug.]
I admit, it's possible... If the new infection reaches far enough, it'd cause enough chaos to change the world. I don't much remember anything about how Panem became what it was, though. Even before the Games, I can't for the life of me remember the stupid speech they throw at the citizens.
[Action]
It's possible.]
I don't know where Britain is. We're... [A pause. Talking about home is strange. Not something she does on a very frequent basis. But this is Rick she's talking to. Rick, who has been there. Whose helped District Twelve with rebuilding even when he had no reason to.] ...in North America. What's left of North America. District Twelve is in the Appalachians. The Capitol in the Rockies. And I know those terms are old. Very old. Names for places we've inherited. But we're not taught much about what came before Panem.
Just that there were wars. And destruction. Lots of it. And Panem was what arose.
[Action]
[Wars and destruction. Sounds about right - who knows if her world was a product of his, but frankly, it wouldn't be surprising. He remembers certain things. That her world wasn't that strange or foreign. It felt like it could've been reality, not just someone else's, but his own world's.
He shakes his head.]
Britain's across the ocean. They were allies. Needed help, but we weren't even really able to help them worth a shit.
[The memories are a bitter reminder, and he tries not to think about it often. But during the sleepless nights, all he can do is relive bits and pieces in-between restless sleep.
He breathes softly. The fire is still going. He hates being around it, but he's too ashamed of that fear to pardon himself.]
Hell, maybe it was over the moment it started.
[Action]
She stares down into the pot as the meat finishes browning and she adds the vegetables back in. Not much longer now. They’ll have their lunch and she’ll extinguish the flames. Maybe that’ll help. Maybe it’ll make it better for them both.
The girl who was on fire. There’s been far too much fire in her life.]
I don’t know if there’s anything across the ocean. [If there is, that’s been a Capitol kept secret. Would Thirteen have even known? But Plutarch hadn’t said there was. And he knew more of a time before Panem than anyone else she know.] Not anything that’s left. Or anyone.
I hadn’t even been to the ocean before the Victory Tour. [Her lips quirk to the left. District Four. Not a horrible memory.] It looked like it could go on forever. Did it? Was Britain very far?
[Action]
From my side of the map, it'd be about a 11 or 12 hour flight non-stop by plane. New York, it's about 7 hours, give or take. [He looks up at the lake, and tries to imagine the ocean in its place. He loved the ocean.] Most of the world is ocean. Land is just a little bit of it.
[He shrugs, smiling faintly despite the quietly formed anxiety it's blanketing.]
Considering our bodies are mostly water, maybe we're all part ocean, too, in some weird as hell way.
[Action]
It should've been easy for the Capitol to fly that far.
Maybe there really was nothing left in the rest of the world.]
You wouldn't think that in District Twelve. [Said quietly, sobered by the prior thought.] It's all land, land and mountains and forests, for as far as you can see.
[Action]
[And then he looks back up.]
Maybe someday I could go back, help out some more.
[Since. Y'know. It's either here, or some other world that isn't his. If the malnosso actually manage to pull that off.]
[Action]
But maybe Plutarch's right. Maybe Rick's right. Maybe now will be better. Nicer. A good place to live.
And she'd like to have him there, helping. She'd like that a lot more than she cares to admit.]
You don't want to go back to your home?
[Action]
Wait he's got it.]
I admit, I'd miss my family a lot. But I don't mind going this way or that. Even back home, I was never much good at staying in one place... Traveling has always been something I looked forward to.
Traveling to different worlds is just a bigger version of that, I guess.
[Action]
I think I'd like that. Having you in District Twelve again.
[Maybe she could even show him her lake this time. Her favorite spots in the woods they never got to because of her depression.]
[Action]
Maybe then I'll transfer from sniper rifles to bows and arrows. Who knows, right? I'm too restless of a person to sit on what I already know.
[Action]
Even without considering the rebellion, she shouldn't be alive. Not even yet eighteen and she should be dead. Some days, she still wakes up wondering why she isn't.
But thinking of someone else's future - of Rick's future - that's okay. That's easier. And it even makes her chuckle.]
We have rifles, you know.
[Action]
Hey, I could expand my horizons. I'll turn into a woodsman, live in a tree with your fellow squirrels. [Yeah, that allusion is never going to go away, deal with it.]
... Though having a rifle would be good, too.
[Action]
It's nothing she's used to. But something she thinks she could easily want. She even chuckles as she bends down to pick up her small canister of water.]
Rue's more like a bird. [A gentle correction, said in good amusement. She dumps the contents of her can into the stew and covers it. Then she takes a seat on the blanket near Rick, purposely placing herself between him and the fire.] Now it just has to cook.
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]
[Action]