thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Peggy & Clint
What| A bloodbath with no blood
Where| Training Center
When| Today
Warnings/Notes| General feelings of violence and mild PTSD?

She felt dirty here. Dirty in ways that rankled her nerves and turned her stomach and made her want to curl up somewhere silent and away from the constant noise of this place. She flung a knife at the distant dummy and watched it glance off the damn things shoulder without sticking. She missed her gun. She missed the feeling of purpose and power and surety. She missed home. America. England. The battle fields of Europe and the smell of wet dirt and sweaty men and the knowledge that she was working toward a goal that was right and just, where death was a consequence but it wasn't a murder and it wasn't entertainment.

A second knife left her hand, her breath escaping in an aggrieved grunt as she watched it arc through the air and stick from the dummy's forehead, wishing more than anything that it could be sticking out of the head of someone in power, someone who brought her here and then let her be burnt alive for the joy of a captive audience.

The absolute wrongness of all of it was a hard knot in her chest that had not once let up, would not let up, wasn't allowed to let up. Otherwise they would have won. And she was never going to give any of them that satisfaction.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clint was used to people using training to cope with all the craziness, all the pain and anger, in their lives. He tended that way himself.

So when he saw her flinging knives at a poor, defenseless dummy, he knew pretty much exactly what she was picturing.

"Nice shot," he said, after the second one landed.

She hadn't heard him come in, but then maybe he hadn't wanted her to. "It should be better."

And that frustrated her most of all, at least here in this room, that she wasn't as good as she felt she needed to be. That she had once been. There was a reason she had been in the position she earned and it wasn't because she showed a little leg and wore a vibrant shade of lipstick.

"It's been a while," she adds, moving across the room to retrieve the first knife she had thrown.

"Then you'll get better," Clint said with a shrug, coming a little closer now that she wasn't likely to startle and fling a knife at him. "That's what this place is for, right? Polishing up those rusty killing skills?"

He said it lightly, but his expression was hard. He was an assassin, sure, but he always chose his own targets. That had been the one thing he'd insisted on in his SHIELD contract. He got final say over where the arrow landed.

"Survival skills." Peggy whipped the knife she had just picked up and watched with grim satisfaction when it stuck to the dummy's mouth. It would be good enough if they were attacked, better still if they were starving and there was some kind of animal to be found.

Though it hardly mattered. How many of them truly refused to fight for their own survival at the expense of others? If they believed everyone played the game the way it was meant, they weren't watching what she was,

"Same thing, isn't it?"

He still hadn't actually killed anyone in the arena, but he had to acknowledge that the possibility might come up someday, and he certainly had been prepared to once or twice.

"I'd like to pretend there's a thin line." She closed her eyes for a brief moment, shaking off her anger and resentment before turning to face Clint with a small smile.

She hadn't seen him in quite some time, considering and it surprised her how glad she was to see his face, however grim. (Though she couldn't recall it being anything less.)

"How are you?"

"Maybe there is," Clint conceded, nodding. "It's just getting kinda hard to see."

He's pretty glad to see her as well. As far as he's concerned, he doesn't see the other people from his world nearly enough. He wishes there were some way they could just all have a place together instead of being split into different districts.

"I'm still breathing. You?"

"Much the same. I can't make myself adjust to this."

That would be nice, but the division was likely deliberate and Peggy didn't wish to know what happened when someone pushed too hard.

"I can't wear my hair down." It's about as much a concession to her true emotions as she can give, had given anyone. Not even Steve knew how difficult the first few days outside the arena had been for her, and she had no intention to tell him.

Yeah, that...

He doesn't even know.

Except that he does, sort of. He knows what it's like not to be able to forget something that was done to you, something you couldn't escape that will completely change the way you live the rest of your life. He knows what that helplessness feels like.

"It looks good up?"

Yeah...he fails at comfort, Peggy.

"Thank you, Clint," she says and smiles. She wasn't looking for comforting, just the knowledge that someone out there knows and won't use it against her. That there was another person who understood what that feeling meant.

"I don't suppose you would be willing to teach me how to use a bow?"

That much he can give her, as long as he doesn't have to articulate it.

He smiles at the question. It's not something he's considered before, and he's not sure he'll be a great teacher, but in this place, he couldn't very well turn her down. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"