thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Eep and Guy, and you, if you'd like to be screamed at and possibly bitten!
WHAT| The freaking out of a super-strong cavewoman.
WHERE| The District 6 suites
WHEN| After Eep is pulled from her world.
Warnings| None currently, other than that you're more than likely to get tossed around if you're not careful; patience is not Eep's forte. She'll most likely end your conversation with snarling and running off.

Eep woke up covered in the most strange furs she had ever felt. It was the first thing that came to her senses, that she was wearing something soft, fluffy. What it was, in fact, was crinoline: lots of it. A bright salmon tutu, with long, bright teal leggings. Her shirt was a wrap, a salmon kimono-like apparatus that had clearly been carefully put together in the most detailed and delicate of fashions.

It was too tight around her neck. She ripped the shirt's collar immediately, tearing, panicked, at it. Was something wrapped around her neck? Was something trying to choke her? It may have well been. With the collar ripped, the shirt loosened itself and fell off her shoulders, staying up only by virtue of being attached to her back. Someone might have foreseen this issue.

In her struggle to turn around and around to get the fabric away from her neck, she felt the scratchy lace of the crinoline, looked down, and screamed. Something was ALL OVER HER. She was COVERED in ... STUFF. She began tearing at this as well. Whoever designed this petticoat was going to be rather disappointed. Pieces of it began to drop to the ground.

In her frenzy, Eep turned over, trying to get at the leggings, and accidentally turned on the television in her room. It buzzed to life. "...at the Arena, with the brave stylings of one Guy..."

Eep froze. There was a hole, a hole in the wall, and it had said Guy's name. It was showing--art to her. And the art was moving. It looked like what was happening, but it wasn't. She pressed her fingers to the glass of the screen, as a tiny version of Guy began running across what looked like a field.

"Guy," Eep whispered at the screen. He was tiny, like an ant. Maybe if she yelled? "GUY."

He didn't notice her. Instead, he was picked up and thrown by something that looked like a giant pile of rocks in the shape of a man into a tree. Eep screamed then, terrified, and whimpered, as Guy slumped to the ground, and there was another woman there, and Guy, Guy, Guy. Desperately, clawing at the screen, Eep tried to reach her hand into it. There was no way to do so. Angrily, she rushed her hand forward and smashed the screen, which shorted out and fell all around her fingers. She moved her hand too quickly to be hurt, but the electric short out that happened immediately afterward made her jump back.

Why was this happening? Where was she? Why was she covered in fur that looked so completely different from any fur that she had ever seen before? Why was Guy in a painting that moved? Why had he been hurt? Where was he?

Eep began to hyperventilate, clutching at her throat where the collar of her shirt had been. And then, very quickly, she began to yell. And the yelling turned into a screaming, the kind of screaming that she made on the hunt. Loud, powerful, terrified, angry.

Eep stumbled out of her room, covered in salmon tutu pieces and teal leggings, and proceeded to scream her way through the hallways of the District 6 quarters.

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He took her by the hand to help her to her feet but after that, holding her hand just wasn't enough. As he led her to his room, a protective arm was wrapped around her shoulders, holding her in close.

She always fit perfectly there, right at his shoulder, because of their heights.

She was usually the one that was better at protecting him - stronger, faster, less prone to panicked yelping, but he was still always willing to protect her if she needed it. That was what that arm around her shoulders was saying.

It was saying: 'I'm here and just like I know you won't let anything hurt me, I won't let anything hurt you.'

His room was cozy at least - warm, because he'd discovered the thermostat and dialed it up to what equated to a balmy 80 degrees.

The bed and mattress had been shoved to the side of the room - too soft - but the blankets and pillows had been piled into a little nest.

"C'mon, let's climb in, and the hugging will commence, and then I'll explain. The cuddles will help it go down easier."

Now Eep would learn about the wonders of cloth and how blankets were even comfier than skins.

Edited 2014-01-06 04:59 (UTC)

She looked at the tiny room that looked like her room, like the one she had left behind. It was warm. Like a tiny, white cave. He had piled all the blankets to the middle of the room. She recognized what that meant immediately, and when he sank to the ground, she followed him.

The cloth and blankets WERE comfier. She ran her hands over and over them, mesmerized.

After a minute of lying there underneath the blankets, she just rested on top of him and sighed. The calming presence of his skin against hers made her feel almost like passing out again.

Yeah, there went the poncho so he could feel her skin against his chest properly. It was warm enough in here that he didn't need it and even if it hadn't been, body heat was a wonderful thing. As he lay there, he ran a hand against her hair. Not through it. Eep's hair was pretty much a solid mass that was more likely to hold your hand hostage than let it run through it. He just kept smoothing it over, petting her head.

He was still crying a little. He couldn't help it, although it was silent, no sobs. Tears just kept dribbling out because she was okay and she was here, and also because she was here and that was not okay.

He'd never felt so torn about something in his life. He wanted her to be here more than anyone else in the universe and at the same time it was the worst thing that could've happened.

So the tears - of relief, of sorrow - kept dribbling out the corners of his face and down along his temples to the blankets.

He had to clear his throat before he spoke again. There was a lump in it that wouldn't go away.

"This place - it's not a good place. You know how Tomorrow was another world? A different one from Yesterday? This world is called 'Panem' and the people in it are - they're not good people, Eep. And they can do things that seem like magic because they're just so far along as a people. You know how we talk about all different stuff like if people could build a way to fly? Like what if people just kept building on the things people before them made to make those things better?"

Edited 2014-01-06 05:42 (UTC)

Tears were dribbling out of her eyes and out of her nose. She was one big snotty mess. She rubbed her nose against her arm and sighed, a big, long, tired sigh. She held onto him like a lifeline, tight enough not to bruise, but only just.

She just felt like if she let him go, he'd disappear again. He was going to have a hard time getting her to let him out of his sights for a while.

"If this isn't Tomorrow," she said, slowly, "then... how do we get back?"

Because that was the only thing that mattered. Eep's arms constricted a little bit. She wasn't even aware of it, really. "Why do they keep building things? Don't they stop building to eat? Or sleep?"

"It's - it's more that they've been doing it a really, really long time. The people of this world brought us and people from other worlds, other Tomorrows, to this one. And people here - when they see me, when I tell them about home - most of them say that in the worlds they come from, people like us existed thousands and thousands of summers ago. It's like...our world is newer. Their worlds have had people in them for longer - and so has this world. And in this world, they've built on everything in all that time until they learned how to make things that seem like magic, when they're really just so far ahead of us that they make the impossible seem easy. So they built something that was able to pull us here - to pull people from all different worlds, all different Tomorrows - and - and I don't know if it can send us back. That's what people are hoping, that we'll be able to use the way they brought us here to go back home, but no one knows for sure because no one knows how they did it, other than that it was something they made instead of magic."

He sucked in a deep breath.

"And in the meantime...in the meantime, things are bad here. The people who brought us are -" his voice dropped to a whisper. "They're bad news."

That was what he called bad things, bad surprises, bad things that were new.

Edited 2014-01-08 03:45 (UTC)

"Bad news," she whispered. "Oh, no."

She was quiet for a very long time, wrapped up in his arms, her head buried into his shoulder. After what seemed for an eternity, she raised her head; her eyes were red, but clear, and determined.

"We have to get back," Eep said, firmly. "I don't care if this place is--is newer, or whatever. We need to go back. We need to go back to the family. And we've figured it out before. We'll figure it out now. If they pulled us from our world, they can put us back."

She moved her hands in reassuring circles on his back. Guy was the smartest person she knew, in the whole wide world. He would figure out a way to get out of there. She would help him. She would calm him down so he could hear all the thoughts in his head. And they would go back.

He needed this. Something to center him. He'd been aimless before he'd fallen in with his new family, bouncing from one thing to the next. He'd been happy but he hadn't been centered.

Not being centered, being unfocused - that was a bad thing to be if you had a fight on your hands.

It helped to have someone remind him of the fight.

It helped to have someone to fight with, side by side

He wiggled closer to her.

"We'll figure it out. Somehow. In the meantime, we have to be careful. They can hear anything you say and see anything you do wherever you are. They have these things called bugs but they're not bugs that are alive, they're fake ones they made and they're everywhere. Inside our rooms, outside in the world... And they get mad if people say too many bad things about them, especially in public. They kill people. Sometimes they cut out their tongues. They're trying to use us for something and for it to work, we have to smile and pretend everything's fine when it's not."