etcircenses: (Default)
Panem Events ([personal profile] etcircenses) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am

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.
gardienne: (go away)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-15 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Eponine had never realised how tight, how restrictive a corset was, and for the first few minutes of sitting uncomfortably in the high seats near Enjolras, she regretted all the time she had wasted wishing for such a dress as this. For Eponine, for once in a way, had got her wish exactly. She ended up dressed in a pretty pale pink silk, with short puffed sleeves and a wide belt that emphasised a waist pulled scarily thin.

But she had been glad of the dress. It meant that her stylists had listened to her again. It meant that things were starting to go her way at long last. At least, until the sky changed and disappeared, along with the majority of the tributes.

Almost immediately, she seems to sink into the earth, or perhaps the stones from the amphitheatre grow up around her, forming a small building around Eponine. A wide doorway forms, but it's barred completely. Eponine soon appears at the door: the room she's trapped in is small, after all, and she clutches at the bars. But gone is her pretty dress: she's in her old rags from Paris now, and her feet are bare, aside from the heavy manacles set with chain. Her right wrist wears a cuff to match the Capitol one still fastened to her left wrist, and another chain dangles between them. Eponine is in jail again.

"Eva? EVA? Monsieur Sigma? Monsieur Aunamee?" She cries out for help, trying to reach her hands through the bars of the door. "Please! Please, he's in here. Let me out. LET ME OUT. Please!"

From deep inside the room, Draco Malfoy hisses profanities and slurs against both Eponine and the men (and Howard) that she loves.
polyturtle: (too much ice cream)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] polyturtle 2013-12-15 08:53 pm (UTC)(link)
"Eponine?"

Don heard her. As did Don. And just as quickly, a shadow began to quietly fill through the bars of the cell. It was not a human figure, either.

A slow growl began to emanate from the outside - a warning. No, not a warning, a song. It was a tiny banquet, but a banquet was a banquet.

It figured. He just couldn't stop victimizing her, could he.
gardienne: (screaming)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-15 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)
"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Eponine screamed as the thing, the shape, began to fill the little room. It was dark inside, and dingy - and it smelled so badly of rotten food and unwashed bodies. But Eponine didn't seem to care about the rats near her feet or even Draco Malfoy's taunts. Instead, it was Don who scared her now, and she backed away as quickly as she could, stumbling over the chains on her feet.

"GO AWAY!" She screamed out again. "GO AWAY. I DON'T WANT YOU."
polyturtle: (WHERE IS THE BATHROOM)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] polyturtle 2013-12-16 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
There was no response, save an angry, hungry roar, as the monster lunged--

--and was restrained by the bars. Swipe and roar as he did, he couldn't get through, be it because the Capitol's safeguards still protected them - or simply, the creature wasn't strong enough to break through. Or even both. Who knew?

Don didn't. But even if he couldn't say it, he was somehow glad about it. At least he couldn't truly harm her here, in this place.
Edited 2013-12-16 00:22 (UTC)
gardienne: (crying)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 09:59 am (UTC)(link)
She shrieked again, and backed right away, tripping up over the chains that bound her feet, and she landed on her bottom, sprawled in the dirt of the cell with rats close to her.

But backing away from Don meant that she was closer to Draco, and his taunts grew louder, so loud that they would be clear even to Don on the other side of the door. Whispered taunts about Howard being happier with another man, whispers of Marius kissing a lady, a proper lady, Cosette. How they might employ Eponine to clean their chimneys and leave her to die in one. Whispers of what Eponine was, what she had done in Paris. All of it, over and over.

And in the middle of the two monsters, Eponine drew her legs in and put her head down and put her hands over her head and SCREAMED.
polyturtle: (WHERE IS THE BATHROOM)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] polyturtle 2013-12-18 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, that didn't sit with with the monster. Not at all. It lets out an angry roar in response, and even inwardly, Don winced. Not that he could do anything to stop her, or stop himself, but it was still, in its own way, effect, for a moment, as even as the monster roared, it reared back, trying to get out of the vicinity of the screeching.
swill: poppyapples.dw (ᴍᴀᴋɪɴɢ ᴡʜᴏᴏᴘᴇᴇ")

[personal profile] swill 2013-12-16 05:07 am (UTC)(link)
He had run from the storm and the front, but the helmet was still secure atop his head, the chin strap tightened almost to the point where it chafed and bit at the skin of his throat. But it was there. And his hands didn't run with blood but the blood had stayed and become dried and sticky and dark, like rancid honey. Hawkeye had run from that corner of his mind and now... and now there were bars, up from the ground, stuck there too neatly. He wouldn't have stopped if he hadn't seen the girl- and he didn't hear her shout the first times and his head felt empty as he just stood, exhausted, watching her cry out in desperation, thinking she looked like a caged cat he had pranked a friend with back in junior high.

And he can't read lips because he never practiced but the idea, he thinks, he understands. And maybe he shouldn't just walk up when the girl was strange to him. And maybe she swallowed a grenade and that was why she was safely tucked away in this place he didn't know. There aren't keys but he had been so sure a second before that he'd find them just there, on a hook near the cell, like in the movies. He had been convinced. His hearing returns with a blast, and the barefooted girl is screaming please and Hawkeye hisses out a shush and recoils. Tired and sluggish and he could swear he hears another voice. His right hand begins to drip blood again. But it's not his, he thinks.

"How do I-" Hawkeye walks back to the girl, bangs his hand against a bar and doesn't know why. "How do I get you out?" Assuming she was real and not in his head (and wasn't that a funny thought?) she'd reply with... well, he didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't know how his hands held so much blood, didn't know how he could be so alive in a nightmare. Things just happened.
gardienne: (holding back the tears)

warning for slurs and bloody descriptions of past arenas

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 09:37 am (UTC)(link)
"Your hands -" Eponine gasps in horror as blood from his hand splatters into the cell and onto her. "MY DRESS!" She had been waiting her whole life for that pink dress but she looks down, and no - no, she is wearing rags again. Well, it doesn't matter so much. Still, she moves back a little from the man on the other side, back towards those taunts.

"Who have you killed?" She shouts over Draco's words, trying her best to ignore them. But they're loud now, his taunts, over and over.

"Do you remember the first time I killed you? You were stealing my bread with your filthy fingers - who knows where they've been. If I'd known what you were then, rest assured I would not have held you against me whilst I pushed that knife in your neck. Do you remember that, Eponine? Do you remember how it felt when your stinking blood began to trickle out? Do you remember how pathetically you begged me not to kill you? How you offered - well, rest assured I would never touch you, Whore."

She closes her eyes, ashamed, but unable to not hear his taunts. It's why she's in prison, after all. Why Javert arrested her in Paris. Theft. Suspected of prostitution. She looked miserably back at the man with the bloody hands, and suddenly she knew exactly how to open the barred door.

"I have to kill that man, Sir."
swill: poppyapples.dw (ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏᴍᴇ ғɪʀᴇs ʙᴜʀɴɪɴɢ)

[personal profile] swill 2013-12-17 03:29 am (UTC)(link)
"The hell with your dress!" He shouts back, and it's more a snarl than he had meant. He hated that his temper had flared, that his voice had gone gruff. He stopped pounding, though, and he wasn't sure if it had been her question or the words he heard that had him cold. It must have been her question because his stomach flips- because he knew the answer but didn't know the names of them all. He just helped collect the tags, sometimes, and count them as inventory. And all he could do was look her over, head to toe, and he hated himself for that too. Natural reaction, he thinks, and he hadn't done it with the intention to-- and he just didn't think a girl should be called those words, not from a shadow he--

and suddenly he bristles again and the hurt he can feel coming off the girl in waves doesn't do anything to mitigate it.

"Don't-" And he tries to grab her, this time, by the shoulder or arm or anything he could grasp. Slander- so what? Grow up, he wants to shout. "Don't kill him!" Because he's the one who'll have to clean up the mess.
gardienne: (screaming)

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-17 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
She narrows her eyes.

"You think I am scared of you? I will NOT do as you say, Monsieur. Who are you to boss me about?" She shouts back at this strange man, even as she jerks out of his grip. His bloody handprint stains her arm now, and she looks down at it in surprise. Well, she should have guessed - bloody hands would leave a bloody handprint, no?

"Well how am I to get out of this hell, Sir? HOW do I escape this prison?"

She gives a short bark of derisive laughter then, scorn written clear on her face. "Or perhaps you think it is good that you see me here in jail? That a woman such as myself deserves to be in chains and locked away in the dark with the rats forever and ever? Should you lock me and chain me and forget? Well, I won't have it. I cannot stay here again. I cannot - "

And the roof of the prison began to rain little yellow papers, folded and not,written up in French script, and sealed with the Capitol insigna and signed by Eponine herself and a man - Javert. They were her papers, declaring her a prostitute. And Eponine, in the cell, when she realised what they were, simply sank down into a crouch and covered her head with her hands.

"I HAVE DONE NOTHING. LET ME OUT!"
swill: poppyapples.dw (ᴛʜᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇ sᴀʏs "ʙᴜᴅ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴊᴀɪʟ")

[personal profile] swill 2013-12-22 09:11 pm (UTC)(link)
He should tell her off, but she was just a girl. There's no masking the distaste in his expression, the way he huffs out a breath at nearly every other word she sprouts. He lets his hands down, but he leans bodily on the bars separating them. She's still ranting when Hawkeye blurts out "Don't be ridiculous." Because he wouldn't wish this anyone, damn it, because he can think of a few things to say about prostitutes that are so flippant and gay they wouldn't help any matter here, any matter of what had been trouble for the girl in her nightmare. "The rats are my friends- I wouldn't subject them to this." He says, but finds himself every bit as restless as before though his voice has evened out. He wouldn't subject anybody to this torture, why the hell was she pinning it on him?

Then the papers begin to flutter down. Hawkeye knows only enough French to be obnoxious in bars. He moves his hands again to help himself away from the cell, to maybe grab a note, but he stops himself.

He exhales, pats a red hand along the thigh of his pants, trying to dry it off. "I don't know how you're supposed to--" He cuts himself off and takes another breath and kneels to be at her level, as if that act alone will smooth his voice. It does, actually. "I don't know how you're supposed to get out. I can't find a key out here. I've looked. You need to calm down-" and he's obviously a do as I say not as I do person, "because this is just a nightmare. It'll--" run its course, he wants to say, but isn't sure. So Hawkeye glances around, this way and that, and the curiosity of those little yellow papers is killing him. "Don't kill anyone, if there's anybody there with you. It won't solve anything. That injection they gave us, that's what's doing this."
gardienne: (accusing)

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-26 09:39 am (UTC)(link)
"So I am worse than a rat?" She clutches at the bars, pressing her face right up to them so that she can spit, as hard as she can, at Hawkseye.

"THAT is what I think of you, and your rats and telling me to calm down. Would you calm down - "

But she catches herself, because over her yelling, and the poisonous hisses of Draco and the sift of paper as she pushes the notices and licences impatiently aside, she hears Hawkseye.

"They're doing this? The Capitol do this to me - us?"

And with that realisation, slowly slowly, the bars begin to melt away.
swill: poppyapples.dw (Default)

[personal profile] swill 2013-12-31 06:00 am (UTC)(link)
Well, gee. Now he felt bad.

"It was a joke! A stupid joke! I'm so-" and he promptly shut his eyes and mouth and flinched back, and felt the spit hit his chin and catch his neck and he wishes it was a new experience, but no. Nothing ever was, anymore. He steps back, even, and when the bars melt away, begin to pool at their feet, he's still drawing back and only trying to dry himself with the sleeve of his shirt. It had been a stupid and insensitive thing to say, and he felt sick not at what had happened but at what he had said and done. And so when he does bring himself to open his eyes, when he doesn't feel another wet spot on him, he has to gape.

You know, for a little while.

Because he couldn't look excited and happy, by God! But-- she was out. Getting out. Just like that. It didn't make a lick of sense. All of that damn drama for something so-- "Well, you're not going to be doing this to yourself," he ventured. "If it was a nightmare of the normal kind, I wouldn't be here because I don't know you. And I wouldn't ever wish this on anyone." And he wondered about the boy's voice he had heard before- the voice of the boy Eponine had said she'd have to kill. His blue eyes dart this way and that and he's absolutely helpless. "I'm a doctor. I don't know what they drugged us with, but they did." His hands wouldn't be bleeding otherwise, an endless stream, and he wouldn't have his combat helmet. His eyes settle on her, on the girl, and he looks scolded and worn. "Looks like you're gaining control."
gardienne: (accusing)

[personal profile] gardienne 2014-01-02 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
"You're a doctor?" Worry registered in her eyes and she stepped back, just a little. She had had quite enough bad experiences with doctors. But when Hawkseye didn't make a move towards her, she relaxed her obviously agitated stance at least a little.

"Why should they do this? Why have they drugged us and given us such things? What have we done? This is not the arena - it is not supposed to be so here. Not at the crowning. Well, I won't have it. I won't. And you ought not to, either."

She glanced again at his hands. "Sir, did you kill someone? No, do not come near me. Stay there and tell me. I will not have a doctor near me. if this is a nightmare, I know what will be next if you come near."
swill: poppyapples.dw (ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ɢʀᴏᴏᴍ)

[personal profile] swill 2014-01-03 05:04 am (UTC)(link)
Or a butcher, he almost says, but he steps back when she does, and the space between them only grows. Whatever he says- it's wrong. Alright. Finally a recognizable pattern. If ever there was somebody with his background that screwed up, or screwed up deliberate screw ups in reverse- it was him. It was a joke. He knew that. Everything was a big, damn joke. Like this dream. Why be frightened? Nothing here would hurt them. He wasn't trained on the power of the human mind, though, damn it all. All he could see now was that the girl was as talkative as he was. He stooped his shoulders forward, a 6'2" man attempting to make himself small without resorting to curling into a ball.

"A surgeon," he added, and nodded. "Yes." And that was the first question down- a million to go. Slug through the ones he knew the answer to first, he figured, and let the others die. An invisible triage. He pats his hands against the fabric of his pants again- and again to no avail. He could cry. But he's steady and composed, and swelling with pride at the fact. As requested, he doesn't budge an inch. "I was taken to a war before I was brought here. I worked on a lot of boys. This must be their blood-"

it was the only damn explanation he could dredge up. He hadn't killed anyone. Not him.

And he wonders where his dog tags have gone.

"-from when I operated. I don't kill people. My job is to heal people, not to injure them." He wasn't sure how convincing his words were when a finger twitched. He wanted to smile- a little, at least- because the girl was fighting. But he couldn't, because that'd be insane, so he stays sober and grave. "I was trying to help. I'm sorry I lost my temper and I said things I shouldn't have. This hasn't happened to me before. Right now I just want you tell me if you're fine, apart from being frightened." If, he had said, so he wasn't feeding her the answer.
gardienne: (accusing)

[personal profile] gardienne 2014-01-03 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
"Heal people who have the money to pay?" Her voice was acidic. "Is that what you do? Whilst the rest of us are turned away or here - here perhaps I am brought in so that you can do as they stylists wish to my body whether i like it or not? Yes - yes, I know your type, Sir, and I shan't have you near me."

She crossed her arms about her waist in an almost defensive movement. But her step forward, the way she sort of leaned in and out of the step, rocking slightly, perhaps betrayed her nervousness, her determination not to show her nerves.

"Why are you apologising? You don't need to apologise to me, Sir. Not to me." She spat the words at him, looking all the time at his hands. "I am not afraid. I have already said. You must listen, Sir - see. That is the thing with doctors. Never do they listen. Only - if you saved a life, why do your hands bleed?"

(no subject)

[personal profile] swill - 2014-01-06 04:17 (UTC) - Expand
acroodawakening: (012)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] acroodawakening 2013-12-16 08:36 am (UTC)(link)
A shirtless young man ran by, screaming at her in a voice filled with panic.

"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.
Edited 2013-12-16 08:36 (UTC)
gardienne: (never mine to lose)

Re: SHARED NIGHTMARE

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 09:23 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh my -" Eponine had seen neither bear nor wolf before, but even so, in that dim deja-vu-ey kind of way that can sometimes happen in dreams, she recognised the monster as one of those she sometimes hallucinated stalking her in the streets of Paris. She shrank back from bars too narrow to fit even her skinny hands through much, and into the blackness of her cell. Back towards the voice of the most horrible Tribute she had ever met - Draco Malfoy.

"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.
acroodawakening: (027)

[personal profile] acroodawakening 2013-12-16 09:34 am (UTC)(link)
"Childhood friend," was Guy's glib response, as he craned his neck to look down the hallway. The creature seemed to have turned a corner and vanished. "In a sense. If friends are ravenous animals that try to eat you."

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.
gardienne: (holding back the tears)

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 09:47 am (UTC)(link)
Eponine merely stared at him. "You were friends with a thing that tried to eat you, Sir? Only, what do you mean - what this is? I do not understand what has happened. They made me go to the Tower and then to bed and - and then the crowning and then this happened. Truly, I do not understand."

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.
acroodawakening: (086)

[personal profile] acroodawakening 2013-12-16 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
"It was a joke. The friend thing," he explained. Then he was just honest, realizing this was someone who maybe needed it. She was clearly upset. "It was sad and scary so I make jokes. About it."

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.
gardienne: (scared)

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 10:14 am (UTC)(link)
"He WAS real... a long time ago. But now... no."

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?"
acroodawakening: (044)

[personal profile] acroodawakening 2013-12-16 10:26 am (UTC)(link)
"He's not real. If he's gone from this world, then this is not a person. We were all in the dream and it turned into a nightmare. That means he's just a shadow, just as mindless as that monster, pulled from your memory to hurt you like that monster was for me."

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.
gardienne: (worried)

[personal profile] gardienne 2013-12-16 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Eponine couldn't. She couldn't release herself from the guilt. And it wasn't the guilt exactly that made her unwilling. It was more her conviction that she was bad - she was bad; there was no debating that. But if there was a single ounce of goodness left in her, it was that she hadn't stooped to murder. At least, she didn't think Alex had counted as murder. She just wanted to be a little bit ladylike. Unfortunately, the Capitol didn't seem to care about what she wanted.

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."
acroodawakening: (004)

[personal profile] acroodawakening 2013-12-17 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
"Agh." That was a noise of frustration Guy made. He recognized Howard and dream aside, he was a lot more uncomfortable strangling a dream him rather than a stranger. "The nightmare's cheating."

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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