thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Annie Cresta & Some ovMennet
WHAT| A meeting of sorts
WHEN| Mid-Arena 03
WHERE| Outside the Training Center
WARNINGS/NOTES| None as of yet

Back home, Annie had always liked to go on walks. The ocean had always had a calming, rhythmic, soothing effect that calmed her. Kept her grounded. The Capitol was about as far away from the sea as she could get, and there was almost nothing calming or soothing here that she could find. But she couldn't stand just keeping herself locked away all the time. Besides, she found that if she was out and about, it kept their District 4 escort - a woman that Annie had never liked - from hounding her about her 'responsibilities as a victor' and her 'duty to all of Panem.'

So, Annie went for walks. Sometimes just around the building, the common areas where people could see her and maybe come to assume that she was doing 'important mentor duties,' but she preferred the less-frequented areas more. The gardens around back, and the rooftops, the hallways of the South Wing. Today her walk found her near the Training Center. She hadn't exactly meant to go there. She had been following the long smooth lines on the floor to see how far they went, and before she knew it, she was there. In a place she had not been to for years.

The fear in here did not boil over as she expected. The flood of memories kept themselves safe behind the damn she tries so hard to maintain. Instead, all she does is stare ahead, down the hallway she knows will lead her into the training center gymnasium. She stares, long and hard and tells herself that she is not afraid. That this is only hallway.

It is only the sound of movement that breaks her stare.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Some was down here for reasons similar to her own, in all honesty. There was an invitation for him to a party out in the City waiting upstairs. A party that he had no interest in attending, a party celebrating the death match that was still ongoing. He hadn't made any kills himself, had only been there long enough to die, but they still wanted to know. The people here, he couldn't understand them. The place he'd been before had allegedly been the City of Sin, but he'd still take it any night of the week over the violence-by-proxy that obsessed so many here.

And he would be going back, he'd been told. No choice in the matter, not until he won a match, something he had no desire to do. So he'd come down here for solitude. He considered slipping away without letting the woman see him, but then she'd heard him. With a quiet cough, he stepped out of the shadows, nearly-silent on his four feet.

"I am sorry, I did not meant to startle," he said, speaking with just one mouth, his voice at its most human.

It takes a moment for her to process what she is seeing. In fact, she isn't even sure she has. Her breath catches and her eyes go wide. Large and filled with both startlement and fear and maybe just a hint of curiosity.

The breath she catches in her throat started out as a scream, but died before it ever left her lips. "I-I..." she takes a small, tentative step backward, and finds her own hands clasped over her heart. "I am sorry. I didn't know anyone else was down here."

In truth, she wants to turn and run. But she doesn't know if that would be wise or just... rude.

"Neither did I." He didn't step forward at all, wrapping his lower arms around his ribs defensively. "I'm sorry, I don't have a very good mind for faces." Human faces. "Did we meet?" If she was another Tribute, he couldn't place her.

Forming the words is harder than answering the question. Annie blinks at him and shakes her head, "No. I... I don't think we have." She still hasn't quite decided if she should be afraid or not. She's seen their images and heard talks of all the newer and more exotic looking tributes, but she has never really dealt with one first hand before. Right now, she is simply hoping that this person before her is, indeed, one of those tributes, and not...something else.

"Were you in the- the Arena?" he asked delicatey, tone soft in the way humans expressed apology. "I'm sorry, I can't tell the people who live here apart from us yet."

Her eyes fell to the floor as she curled her arms around herself, "Once," she told him, though it probably did not help distinguish her from the rest. "You... you were one of the new ones, weren't you?"

At least he wasn't a mutt. Whatever he was.

"They let you stop?" he asked, head rising a little. "I- yes, I am. I wasn't there... long."

The nod she gives is so small it's hardly noticeable. "You stop when you win," she tells him, none to proud or thrilled to be saying so.

His upper mouth formed a silent 'oh' of disappointment, and he retreated a short, shuffled step, nodding.

"Wh-when, can I ask?"

She swallows down the fear still threatening to boil over, "Five years ago," she explains, "Before the brought in others. They made the children from the districts play. I..." her eyes fall to the floor. She doesn't like to talk about it. "I am from District 4 by the sea."

Children. That's right, he'd been told that the games used to be a slaughter of children, before the new system. And she'd been one of them.

"... I'm from River-Eaten," he offered, accepting her change of topic with gratitude. "It's a cavern in All-Falls-In."

There is a lightness on her face when she looks up again, relief. Less tension. Annie tilts her head in question. "I bet you miss it. What was it like?" The place sounds completely foreign to her, but she knows what it is like to miss home.

"I do. I have not been back in a long time... Two years, or a little more, I think." Keeping track was tricky. "It was... very wild, compared to all these cities. My kind do not build. My home, my family's home, was a bowl..." He shaped two of his long, spidery hands into a wide, shallow bowl-shape, and gestured to the center of it with a third. "We marked spaces, but the shape of the pit was water-made."

"Like caves?" she wondered, trying to understand his meaning and imagining the rocky shores not far from her home and the caverns in the cliff-sides pounded into existence by the waves, or the shallow tide pools filled with life when the sea pulled away from the shore then she even smiled a little. Even if that wasn't quite what he had meant.

"Exactly caves." He smiled, still aware of his teeth. "In the first half of my life, I never once set foot above ground. Did you live near caves?"

She shook her head slightly, "Not exactly. There were caves nearby. My father was a fisherman and I would go with him on his boat when I was a little girl and help him toss out the nets. There were caves on the side of a cliff not far from my home and pools full of shells. He would take me there sometimes and we would look for starfish."

His smile was strange, but... not as alarming as it had been.

"Oh, fishing. I learned to fish in Bete Noire." He mimed, briefly, casting a rod. "The last city I was stuck in. It can be very fun."