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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.
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
Trouble was, Eponine wasn't very good at saving anyone.
"Sir?" She moved to stand right in front of Guy. As skeletal as she was, she was unable to completely block his view of the pit, but she did her best.
"They show you because the Capitol is a cruel, cruel place, Sir. This is why they lock me in prison, and why those people say those things. Sir, they want us dead, do you not see? They show us to make us dead. Sir, we cannot die. We cannot. Not here, not like this. Do not look. Do not look as I did not listen. Sir, I do not know what to do."
no subject
"We have to try to get out. Climb," he said, reaching out a hand to her. Maybe if they helped each other, even though the sides of the pit were steep, they might make it to the top. "Maybe we can help each other to the top."
He was prepared to just stubbornly push his way through this, but a gurgling sound from the center of the tar pit made him freeze in place.
It was the sound a throat might make if it was being cleared of something very sticky.
Then came the sound of a raspy voice speaking and name bubbling, "Guuuy..."
Guy turned, slow and horrified, to look again at the center of the tar pit. The bodies slowly raised themselves upright, turning in his and Eponine's direction. Then they started to crawl, dragging themselves through the tar with a strength that was beyond human, doing what no living person could do. Their bodies twisted and contorted grotesquely as they made their slow crawl towards them.
"Why did you leave alone to die?" rasped the corpse of his mother. "We never should have let you leave."
Guy let out a pitiful, terrified cry that was just an adult version of the one the two of them heard earlier.
no subject
"Don't listen. Do not listen." She shouted over the rasp of Guy's mother. "Monsieur, please." Her hoarse voice broke through sheer fear, and she went to place her hands on Guy's shoulders, to push him into a crouch on the floor of the ravine.
"Sir, close your eyes. Close them, I say. And you cover your ears."
At a complete loss of really what to do, she scanned the ground for the biggest rock that she could lift, and threw it, as hard as she could at Guy's mother.
Did it count as murder if they were zombies? Would this nightmare stain her forever?
But what else could she do? Guy could not be left to kill his own family. She could sacrifice her honour - her morals that she had so fiercely protected for over a year - for a man who saved her from the poisonous hisses of her loved ones and Draco.
no subject
The rock caved in Guy's mothers head but still she kept crawling.
"You replaced us," his father hissed. "You've forgotten us."
"It's not fair," gasped his sister, once older than him, now younger, since the years had carried on and she hadn't.
The guilt hadn't started until Grug had told Guy it was okay to call him 'dad,' and even then he'd buried it, shoved it down deep, and tried to move on, knowing it was foolish when they'd told him they wanted him to have a good life.
"You told me not to hide!" Guy cried out. "You told me to live! You said to follow the sun and that I'd make it to Tomorrow. I did. I made it. I found a mate and she loves me, I found a new family -"
"You replaced us," said his mother mournfully. "You couldn't even honor us in memory..."
"I found other people that love me. Is that so wrong?"
The answer to that question they might give him would not help him, but Eponine could perhaps give him another.
no subject
Eponine's answer was a hiss, low, and she sank to the floor, and put her head right down between her knees.
"Yes it is. It is wrong. We cannot love anybody. And they will not love us. Not really. We only pretend to ourselves."
Her voice cracked: she didn't know what else to say. She sighed and looked up at the far side of the ravine, past Guy's parents. On the top of the ravine, a young man, dressed to the height of early nineteenth century fashion, albeit a shabby form of it, looked down at Eponine and Guy. Slowly he drew a knife from his inside pocket, and blew a kiss to Eponine.
"You see him up there? He loves me, but I do not love him. But he is all I will ever have. His knife at my throat and his lips on mine. And you - you will have this. That is it. That is what the Capitol wants. And what can we do?"
no subject
But Guy had spent a life finding hope where there was sometimes none. That meant that sometimes being confronted with a lie, with despair, still made it so that he was able to find that light in the dark, out of sheer bloody-minded defiance.
"No."
He looked at his father, still clawing his way through the muck.
"My dad - my dad and I didn't fall all the way. He got me to higher ground - and that's why he fell in. He could have saved himself."
For just a moment, the corpse flashed to something else, to man who was whole, who was alive, one who looked an awful lot like Guy. He was reaching out a hand, but it wasn't one trying to pull Guy in to die with him, it was one gesturing for him to go, to live, to find someplace better. There was hope on his face and love that was desperate and real.
His voice echoed from somewhere very distant.
"Just follow the sun. You'll make it to Tomorrow."
Then it was a corpse again and Guy knew what to do.
"No, you're wrong. They just want us to think that, that love isn't real. But I know it is." He pounded a fist against his chest. "Every time I see my mate smile, every time I hold my daughter in my arms..."
He looked over at her. "And you - you still tried to help me, when you say you don't think you can love anyone. If you can't love anyone, you wouldn't help anyone, let alone a stranger."
He stood up, facing his family. They were almost to the edge now but the fear had gone.
"What can we do? We can love anyway, even when it hurts, even when it causes us grief - or guilt."
With those words, he started to walk to the edge of the pit.
no subject
"You will kill yourself, Monsieur ." Her voice was emotionless, tired.
"You will die."
no subject
His sister was the first to throw herself over the edge, clawing at the earth with skeletal hands..
"You can take me and drag me down with you. You can bite off my face. I don't care. I don't expect this to have a good ending. But that still won't change how I see you. I know you all loved me."
He shook his head. "And I didn't replace you. I did what you said. I didn't hide. I lived a good life, as happy as I could manage. I followed the sun - and I found my Tomorrow. I found family that loved me. But they're my second family. I didn't replace one for the other - I got to have two and I'm so, so sorry you'll never get to meet them."
Then in a bout of what was basically absolute insanity, he crouched down and pulled the rotten, disgusting body of his sister against him in a slimy hug. His mother and father wrapped skeletal arms around him, clawed at him.
"I'm sorry for what you couldn't have but I'm not going to be guilty for what I have now."
The bodies all froze in place. They could drag him down into the dark, they could rip him to shreds but that momentary horror was not what the nightmare had been aiming for. It had tried to twist guilt into abject despair, it had tried to sully his memories of the people who loved him - tried to change his love for them - and it had failed.
That meant that its current approach was useless. Which is why Guy's sister's body melted out of his arms and the pool collapsed in on itself, draining away, as the ground around them melted into desert sand.
They were now sitting in the middle of a desert, hot and unforgiving but it seemed the nightmare was taking a moment to mine for some new horror to throw at them. Or maybe it was losing its power and starting to fade, so that they'd soon wake up.
Guy still sat crouched there and turned back to look at Eponine.
"You'll find it, you know."
no subject
She looked up when Guy spoke, but she shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it, Monsieur."
But even as she spoke, the scene began to shift. The temperature dropped, and snow replaced sand. Under foot, rough floorboards appeared, followed by drab walls, an empty fireplace, a smashed window. Two little trundle beds, covered in rags, were in the corners. On one sat a girl, perhaps a little younger than Eponine, but very much like her to look at, though perhaps her hair was a shade lighter, her eyes just a little duller, her expression more blank. She nursed a bleeding hand. But there was something wrong with the scene. It sort of flickered, and Azelma's outline blurred just a little.
Eponine in the middle of it all, just blinked. "If they bring in my sister, I do not know what to do." She bit the inside of her lip. "She is a stupid child, but she is my sister." She shook her head and closed her eyes. "Make it go away. Make it stop. Have they not punished us enough now?"
no subject
"I don't know that well - or at all, really, but I've seen enough to think that they're trying to make you punish yourself."
He tapped his temple.
"They're using what's already here. They're using guilt and pain and grief and making it bigger."
Now he tapped her forehead.
"This is where you have to fight it. And I'll help you as best as I can, but I can't figure it out for you."
no subject
"I have no guilt." She hissed at Guy. "Leave me be, Monsieur. Come. It 's over."
It wasn't guilt. It was jealousy that caused that last little vision.
no subject
And then she wasn't, because she'd tried to help him, even though she didn't know who he was. She'd tried to pull him by the hand and walk in the front, braving the dark for a stranger.
He could think of nothing to say to all that had just happened, to visions of a world he could never hope to truly understand.
All he could think of was something to do.
Reaching out his hand he gently patted her cheek. It wasn't a caress, it wasn't something that could be taken as romantic, it was more the way a brother might offer a sister some affection or a friend might to a friend.
It was all he could think of.
That and looking at her with kind eyes - not pitying, just kind - as the dream ended.