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thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am
etcircenses) wrote in thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am
Entry tags:
- aunamee,
- cassandra marko,
- commander shepard,
- event: crowning,
- harley quinn,
- joan watson,
- matthew "punchy" o'connor,
- sigma klim,
- terezi pyrope,
- the grand highblood,
- the signless,
- wesker,
- wyatt earp,
- ✘ azula,
- ✘ cinderella,
- ✘ diana ladris,
- ✘ eliot spencer,
- ✘ ellie,
- ✘ enjolras,
- ✘ guy crood,
- ✘ hawkeye pierce,
- ✘ howard bassem,
- ✘ ian chesterton,
- ✘ ian gallagher,
- ✘ john a. zoidberg,
- ✘ john watson,
- ✘ kevin prentiss,
- ✘ marius pontmercy,
- ✘ maximus,
- ✘ mindy macready,
- ✘ neffa a reyeth,
- ✘ orc,
- ✘ peeta mellark,
- ✘ perry kelvin,
- ✘ pruna,
- ✘ r,
- ✘ rat,
- ✘ sherlock holmes (bbc),
- ✘ shion,
- ✘ venus dee milo,
- ✘ zelos wilder
The Crowning of Enjolras
WHO| All Tributes and Victor, plus a few Capitol guests
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.
The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.
Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.
When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.
Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.
The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.
And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.
For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).
"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"
He awaits applause.
"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."
Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"
He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.
-/-
The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.
They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.
For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.
The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.
Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.
When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.
Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.
The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.
And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.
For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).
"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"
He awaits applause.
"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."
Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"
He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.
-/-
The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.
They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.
For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.
Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE
"Get your hands behind the bars before it gets you!" he cried. "It'll get your arms!"
Then he ran through the door into a cell opposite hers that may or may not have been there before and slammed the door shut.
As soon as he did, a horrible furry creature came running down the hall, something that was a terrible mix between wolf and bear, its body striped with red-brown stripes. It let out deafening roar, one that seemed to make the very stone tremble.
Apparently their nightmares were blending just a little bit.
Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE
"You're a whoooooore, Eponine. Ypu're desperate." The voice hissed at her. She covered her ears.
"You don't love Howard. You never did. And he never loved you. Who would love someone like you? Do you remember the taste of his blood when you bit into his cheek? What did it taste like, Eponine? Tell me, now."
She closed her eyes as well, in hope of blocking out the noise, and she struggled towards the bars separating her from Guy.
"What was that thing?" She shouted over the noise from the pale, blonde young man who stood calmly against the back wall of her cell.
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He was still shaking as he finally looked back up at her.
"I, ah, I had a rough childhood." He nodded a little too fervently. "Whatever all...this is, it's drawing from that."
But what was going on here? The girl seemed trapped in there and there was some kind of menacing, nasty voice in there with her. After one more cautious look down the hallway, Guy pushed the door to his cell open, looked around carefully yet again, and seeing that the monster was gone, stepped forward to Eponine's door.
"Are you stuck in there? And who's the pasty shrew-faced guy and why does he seem to have a chronic inability to shut up?"
Then he started pulling on the door, trying to get it open to get her out.
He could only assume the other people in here with him were other Tributes caught in this nightmare, too, and if that ravening beast was part of his nightmare, then this cage had to be part of hers. He wasn't about to run off when she was stuck if that was the thing that caused her fear.
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She's still shouting over Draco, doing her best to drown out his continuous taunts. Still, she moves with Guy when he reappears at her locked door.
"He was a tribute here before he disappeared - Monsieur Malfoy, his name. I - I have to kill him, Sir, to make the door open." She was breathing heavily - she had spent so many arenas fighting against killing anybody. She couldn't do it. She just couldn't, She couldn't let herself sink completely into the abyss.
Finally, the Capitol had cornered her tight enough to make her give in. And she was terrified, though trying her best to hide it.
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The door wasn't budging. He looked over at the young man still mouthing his never-ending taunts.
"So he's not real? Like us?" She said she was at the Crowning so that meant she was probably as real as him. Ever the pragmatist, Guy said, "That monster will probably come back again because it keeps chasing me everywhere. Maybe when it does, you can just shove him partway through the bars and it'll grab him and eat him."
Wait, there was another solution. "Or."
He held up a finger, suddenly, making the little "nngh" sound he often made when he had a sudden thought.
"Or you can just shove him near the door anyway and I can kill him. If he's not real it doesn't matter." Draco spat out some more insults even as Guy was talking. "To be honest, even if he was real, I'm starting to get really tired of the sound of his voice."
And he couldn't just leave the poor girl alone.
"Will it let you shove him near the door?"
He knew the nightmare might not let her have that much control.
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She flinched at the insults, but looked back at Guy. If she concentrated on him, on just his face, nothing else, she could make the taunts go away. Or perhaps fade a little. So she stared and stared, trying her best to control her breathing and remain vaguely calm.
"You'd kill him? But - but you'd be killing him. Do you not mind?"
She was on her feet immediately. Helping with murder she had done often enough. Had she not stood and watched Montparnasse slit a throat or Brujon beat someone bloody? Had she not pulled the teeth out of the dead bodies and sold them for a sausage each? She was on her feet immediately, tripping over her shackles as she went to Draco.
"GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF ME, SCUM!" But Draco, aside from increasing his insults, made no move of resistance as Eponine propelled him forward. And she simply ignored it, focusing on Guy.
"How will you kill him?"
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He waved her over.
"Just get him close and once I've got him, close your eyes and put your hands over your ears if you can reach." He wasn't sure if she'd be able to because her wrists were bound. "I'll strangle him through the bars."
His eyes were wide and somehow innocent despite what he was about to do. They were very kind.
"It's okay," he promised her.
Killing was killing was killing. He was a kind man, he was a compassionate man, he always tried to talk his way out of a fight or run, but sometimes that just wasn't possible. Sometimes you were backed into a corner and facing down scared, dangerous people that wouldn't let you go, wouldn't let you run, and you had to do what you had to.
The easiest way to carry no guilt from killing was to make sure you only did it as a last resort. Every time.
So it really was okay. There were some people that could kill and walk away without a stain on their soul. He just happened to be one of them.
And he wasn't leave her all locked up here alone in this horrible place with some shadow thing treating her so viciously. Especially since he didn't know if it would escalate and get worse.
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So she pushed and shoved Draco towards the bars which somehow miraculously became more widely spaced, wide enough for Draco's head to go through and Guy's arms to reach in. Draco's taunts grew louder and more vicious as he was manhandled towards the bars - but as she reached them with him, his shape morphed and changed: the figure shrank, and his skin darkened, his hair curled, unti it was Howard who stood in front of the bars. Howard who was going to be strangled.
And Eponine stopped pushing immediately.
"You can't kill him."
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He huffed out a few panicked breaths.
"Okay. Okay. So we can't get you out that way." He waved a hand at her. "C'mere. Just - just c'mere for a minute. Don't listen to anything he has to say. Just...give him a shove and pretend he's not there for a minute."
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And Eponine would be able to take every word of it. Usually, it wouldn't bother her in the slightest to have someone calling her names. But these people, they meant something to her. Draco, who she had tried to impress, who had driven her to bite Howard's face off, and Howard himself, dear, hateful Howard who forgave her and loved her and touched her and left her. She couldn't concentrate on Guy. not whilst Howard was there. Not whilst his image shifted and changed again, growing taller and fatter and longer hair and Latina skin. Eva. Eva, her adopted mama spewing the vile about her.
Eponine turned back to Guy. "Not Eva. Anyone but Eva." She was breathing heavily, panicking just a little bit, trying to keep control. Still, she shoved past the thing, standing right in front of the bars. The creature came behind her, and wrapped Eponine in it's arms, whispering lovingly into her ear.
"You're disgusting. Do you know why I keep you around? To laugh at you. To make me feel better about myself. You're vile, Eponine. You don't deserve happiness. Just pain. You didn't deserve Howard. You definitely don't deserve Marius. You deserve to die."
Eponine, under the dirt, paled as Eva whispered on and on, pouring more poison into her ears. Finally, she cried out,
"Oh, Monsieur, the knife. Pass me the knife so I might end it all!"
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So he did the best thing he could think of to do, reaching his arms through the widened bars and punching the image of Eva in the face. The moment she recoiled back, he reached out and gently grabbed Eponine by the shoulders.
"Nothing it says matters. Nothing," he said gently. "Come here. Come here."
He rested his hands on her shoulders in half of a gentle embrace.
"I don't know you but I don't need to know you to know you don't deserve someone being that cruel, because no one does. No one."
All he could do now was try to fight cruelty with kindness.
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Even so, she hid her face against Guy's chest, her cheek pressed against bars and bare skin. She tried not to listen, she tried her best not to listen to Eva - the thing - as it continues to spout malice, but it's so difficult.
"She said she loved me...she said - OH!" She pushed away from Guy, suddenly furious. "It's always the same, isn't it? People pretending to like me, but this, always is what they think. Well, I shall show her. I will. I don't care. If she thinks me horrible, than I shall be horrible."
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Guy pointed to Eva. "What she's saying is just - it's mean. It's cruel. The reason I'm being kind is because everyone deserves that from someone. Everyone deserves someone being kind."
He tugged futilely at the bars again.
"And because I can't - open - this stupid - door." He stopped and banged his fists against it. "I don't know how else to help you. Being kind when something or someone else is being so cruel is all I can think of to do."
It was just his nature to want to be kind, to want to fix things. He liked to feed people and not just food - with love and hope and thoughts of a better world.
"I don't know you and maybe if I did I wouldn't like you, but right now, for at least one moment, in this moment, you deserve someone being kind."
She was in chains, for goodness sake.
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She looked back at the figure, slowly morphing from Eva to herself. And then back to Guy.
"Are you really so kind all the time? That is a good thing to be - and even to a strange woman in prison? That is a good thing to be - you know, I know of no-one who does that."
As guy kept banging, perhaps he'd notice the bars slowly weakening under his fists, little puffs of dust escaping from the top, cartoon style. Perhaps it isn't murder, but kindness that will save Eponine from herself.
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Maybe to get a good ending to this one, the story had to hit on the right ideas. Maybe that was the way to get a good ending to the story, to the dream, for her.
"Yes," he said quietly, his face open and gentle. "My world is dangerous, with things - there are things like the monster from earlier. My family died when I was very young and I was alone for a long time just trying to survive and that means I - I like people. Some of them can be cruel and some can be dangerous but a lot of them are good. So I try to be as kind as I can be. The only time I stop is if they're hurting me somehow and I need to get away. But even then I still wish I could just be kind rather than fighting or running away. Everyone has something - a little something beautiful in them. A little...a little light inside them, even if there's darkness there too."
His gaze grew a little distant. He held out his hand as if holding something small and precious, as if a butterfly was alighting on his finger.
"I feel like kindness helps protect that, helps it grow."
That distant gaze went sharp again as he looked back to her.
"It sounds like people have hurt you," he said gently. "And it sounds like you're angry and sad because of it, which makes all the sense in the world. But it also sounds like you just want someone to love you. And maybe - maybe like you wish that it was safe enough to love them back. I think - I think that if the way you react to being hurt is still wanting love, that might be part of the little light inside you. Just like - just like the fact I can still be kind even though I spent so much time in the dark, in a world that was unkind, and I still want to be kind - that's the light inside me."
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They grew thinner and less substantial, so that at last, Eponine lurched forward, suddenly finding herself clutching nothing more than thin air. She righted herself and dropped into a curtsey immediately.
"I do not know how you are such a kind man, Sir, if what you say about yourself is true. I do not know how you keep your light alive, indeed. But - thank you. Thank you for making the bars disappear."
She didn't want to acknowledge what he had supposed about her. She didm;t want to think about wanting someone to love, and to love her. She couldn't think again about Howard right now.
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It seemed that it had been enough for now, to free her from her cage.
"I'm glad I could help," Guy said and his voice hadn't lost any of the gentleness of earlier. "I'm Guy. What's your name?"
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"Oh, you're one to talk! I'm not even sure I can pronounce that. Epon - Ep - I'm just going to call you Neen. That's all I can manage."
Before either of them could make light of anything else, their situation darkened. Literally. Though they could still see somewhat, the light of the prison suddenly dimmed, making it more difficult to.
Just as it did, growls echoed up from the one end of the hallway.
Guy's face fell. In the space of a moment he stopped looking like the grown man he was and looked instead like a small child, lost in the dark.
"We have to move," he said, voice hitched with fear, grabbing Eponine's hand and tugging her in the direction opposite the growl.
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"What is it?" She panted out as she ran blindly through the darkness, still clutching Guy's hand.
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Behind them, the creature let out a deafening, gravelly screech. Ahead of them, the way only got darker. There were no growls in the dark in front of them but they also couldn't see what might be there.
Guy was trembling so much that Eponine would feel it as she held his hand, shaking movement that wasn't just because they were both running. His breathing was hitched, as if he was barely keeping his panic under control.
He hated the dark. But going back wasn't an option.
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Eponine didn't slow her step. She was completely unafraid of the dark. Even, the sounds of the monster didn't bother her as much as they seemed to Guy. She squeezed his hand as she ran quickly through the blackness, her free hand outstretched so she wouldn't run face first into a wall. She slowly took the lead: Eponine, for all her thinness, was a swift runner and she pulled Guy behind her.
"What must we do to rid us of it?"
warning for corpsey stuff
When he lacked the tools to live in it, when fear was clouding his mind and making him feel like a child instead of a man that had beaten the odds, the world was his monster.
He was almost hyperventilating now.
"I don't - I don't know - I don't -"
There was a part of him that feared the darkness would go on forever. That they'd be trapped here for a relative eternity, running in the dark, being chased by something worse than the dark, never waking up.
That part of him was wrong to fear it, because the ground suddenly sloped in front of them sending them sliding and rolling down a rocky scree.
Guy's hand was wrenched from Eponine's as he slid down the slope in a tumble of limbs, yelling in alarm.
When they landed at the bottom, the dark finally gave way to light but it was not a warm light, not a welcoming light. A gray-yellow sky was above them and the sun was harsh on their faces. They were in a pit, with steep, sloping earth covered in shifting stone at the sides of it, possibly climbable but not without difficulty.
The air smelled strange and plastic, with hints of sulfur.
The reason for that was what was at the center of the pit. There was only a little bit of flat ground at the bottom, but that dropped off into a pool of sticky, inky black tar. Viscous bubbles rose to the surface, popping messily, giving the impression that the whole thing was boiling even though no heat was rising from it.
As Guy sat up and saw what was in the center of the pool, he let out a low moan of horror and turned away, covering his face, threading his hands through his hair like he wanted to rip it out.
For right in the middle of the tar pool were three sets of arms, sticking up in the air. They were rotting, bits of flesh picked away - most likely by the vultures circling overhead. Bone was visible in a few places. The heads and torsos attached to those arms were slightly visible, but sunken under the tar, as if the three of them had flopped over forward and backward into it as they'd died.
One set of arms was small, as if their owner was barely more than a child, maybe thirteen or fourteen.
Not far off there was the faintest sound of a little boy crying in the most piteous way possible, his voice full of anguish and barely bridled terror. It was followed by the sound of him trudging away, small feet making little pitter-pats in the dirt and shifting stones.
Re: warning for corpsey stuff
"What is it?" Even as she spoke, she edged closer to the tar pits, and went to jab at the edge of it with her bare toe.
She held her hand up against the glare of the sun, and stared hard at the branches - branches? - no. Arms. And the sound. The child crying. The footsteps. She looked around fearfully.
"What is it, Sir? What does it mean?"
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He tugged at his hair, eyes still squeezed shut.
"My family," he choked out. "I was seven. The rains made the paths unstable and there was a rock-slide. They fell in, I didn't, and they couldn't get out. No one gets out of a tar pit."
Then they'd said the words and he'd left them to die of thirst and exposure.
"Why is it showing me this? It was a long time ago..."
He'd grieved. He'd moved on. He'd found a new family.
It mostly just hurt to see what had become of them. It was something he'd tried not to see even in his imagination.
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