thecapitol | (no subject)

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WHO| Wesker and OTA
WHAT| Post-Death Reflection
WHERE| District 11 suites
WHEN| Morning after his arena death
WARNINGS| It's Wesker.

It was the silence that Wesker kept coming back too.

Among all the things that had happened, everything he had encountered thus far, it was the remarkable quiet that he lingered over.

He'd never realized just how accustomed to the noise he'd grown over the years. The screams of panic and fear, the rattle of gunfire, the incessant cries of the infected....

But here, now, standing in the suite he'd been - assigned - he marveled at the difference. At the sounds of life he'd forgotten.

The city below, muffled and distant through the glass. Hearts beating, strong and steady, relaxed in untroubled sleep, down the hall. The happy voices on the television, unwatched, but on behind him....

And there - somewhere close - of movement, of someone headed his way.

His lips pulled (his reflection smirked back). Perhaps it was, what was the word they'd used? His mentor. At last.

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Riddick had been "dead" to the arena since pretty much the first day. He was done reflecting on it. He was, however, trying to get as much information about this place as he could. As such, he had been paying attention to the Games, and he knew his Districtmate was out this morning.

So it wasn't much of a surprise when he came out of his own room to find Wesker out there in the common room.

"Mornin'." Might as well start off polite, right? It might not stay that way, of course.

Hands folded neatly behind his back, Wesker half-turned to get a better look. "'Mornin'," he drawled back, amused.

Behind the dark lenses, his eyes flicked up and down, taking a calculated measure.

There were dark lenses enough to go around: Riddick had a pair of too-stylish goggles over his eyes. His were more necessary than for the look, though, or to hide anything. They were only stylish instead of utilitarian because they wouldn't let him have his normal ones around here. They worked, though, and that was what mattered.

Riddick returned the look up and down, though neither of them could see the other doing it. "So you're the new guy."

"So you could say," Wesker replied simply. Behind him, his fingers twitched. A quick, unconcious gesture.

It had been a long time since he'd been in such a comprising position. Had been the unknowing rather than the one holding the cards.

He didn't care for it.

"And you are?"

Edited 2012-12-19 12:24 (UTC)

"Richard B. Riddick. Fellow detainee at this fucked up slam, dumped in for the same District as you." He didn't bother to offer his hand, but he did turn his stoid expression into a grin. It was, perhaps, very slightly mocking, but not neccessarily at Wesker. "Albert Wesker, right? They plastered your picture all over the place when you joined up."

A fellow tribute, hmm? That made things simpler, didn't it.

Inside he relaxed as the roles cleared once more and the footing equaled. Outwardly, one pale eyebrow simply arched.

"Made an impression, did I?" His knuckles tapped against his palm thoughtfully. "Good to know."

One side of Riddick's grin tilted up a little more. He never could resist pressing a button if he found one, and this guy? Obviously had an ego. "Oh yeah. Big impression. Just like all the little lab rats."

It wasn't ego if it was true.

The corner of his mouth twitching, Wesker, without missing a beat, replied, "Said the fellow rat."

Edited 2012-12-21 11:47 (UTC)

Riddick smirked still and gave the guy a little mocking salute. He was a lab rat, sure. For now; he didn't expect that to last forever. It never did, when he put effort into the escape. "You plannin' on playing their game, then?"

"So they really do call it a game?" Wesker mused instead of answering, his lip curling - more sneer than smile. "How very Roman of them."

He looked out the window again, down at the glittering city, and wondered. Just how Roman?

Were these, like the games of old, just a cover - a distraction for the masses? A bit of ancient slight-of-hand? And, if so, what for? What were they hiding?

It was times like this Riddick wished he'd had a better education. He had no idea what "Roman" meant, aside from once having heard someone's nose referred to that way. He didn't ask, though; maybe the library-- which was where he was headed today-- would have something he could read on "Roman".

"They call 'em Hunger Games, if you wanna be specific," he answered instead. "This the first you've heard 'em called anything?"

"The Romans would, on occasion, give titles to their particularly special events," Wesker mused simply, almost as if he were talking to himself rather than answering Riddick.

Mind working, he was engaging in the conversation only so much as he had too.

At the small of his back, his fingers curled, his knuckles whitening... and then slowly relaxed once more.

"Who are these people?"

"Big city types who like orderin' people around," was Riddick's only answer. He wasn't particularly interested in trading theories with someone he didn't know a damn thing about. All he really wanted was to get the man's measure, or attempt to.

"And watching 'em die, I guess," he finished with a derisive snort.

"That narrows it down," Wesker said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching. By that definition they might have been anyone - could have been Umbrella.

Riddick considered, then relented and at least gave Wesker the general layout of the place. "Country's called Panam, or somethin' like that. City's called The Capitol. There's twelve Districts that send shit to the Capitol. Ain't really much more than that to be found without a little diggin'. As you can tell," he added, "they ain't that creative with names."

"Panam?" Wesker mused, repeating the word slowly. As if tasting it.

Somehow it felt familiar, memory tickling. He mentally picked at it, trying to place it, and suddenly, with a strike of clarity, an unpleasant thought came to him.

What if he'd been too quick to dismiss the obvious? Perhaps he recognized it because he was supposed to.

"Does 'The Umbrella Corportion,' mean anything to you?" he asked Riddick, a vee appearing between the eyebrows of his reflection as he considered again the possibility that this was all Umbrella's doing.

"Nope. Why? You heard somethin' I didn't? Or's that somethin' from your world?"

Yeah, Riddick had already fully accepted the whole multiple-worlds-thing. Nothing else made sense, and he did have space travel and all, in his own time.

Wesker turned, his full attention suddenly recaptured.

"My world? As if to say that they are not all one and the same?"

"They ain't," Riddick shrugged, not phased by the idea. "I got taken off a small spaceship on route to an ice planet. There's some alien guy here with a bunch of eyes and eight legs, obviously not from anywhere I've been. There's people from an Earth way behind the times I remember, and I don't have any idea what planet this is. Panem's just a country in it, far's I can tell."

His jaw didn't drop. He didn't gasp. His outward expression didn't change at all.

Behind the lenses, however, Wesker blinked - once, twice - and his mind turned a mile a minute.

"Then yes, I suppose you could call it something from my world," he said eventually.

Was that really that the answer? This was... another planet?

That was more comforting than being trapped inside an Umbrella simulation, he ventured, but was it actually possible?

Edited 2013-01-07 13:17 (UTC)

Riddick waited patiently, watching Wesker-- or perhaps watching the window behind Wesker; it was hard to tell, with his glasses that dark-- while he sorted through that. "Probably not somethin' on this world, then. The only power seems to be the people who run the capitol city, this city here, that we're stuck in. Ain't seen much else." Yet. He was still looking.

Howard's been making rounds through the rooms here, trying to decide if anyone's got a nicer suite than him (so far they seem a bit egalitarian, although the grass is always greener, he supposes). His own has everything he forgot he wanted back home, including a scale that tells him actually having a steady diet of luxury food to stuff himself on has let him put a few pounds back onto his emaciated frame. Ready access to toothpaste, medicine and soap has left him feeling like a teenager again instead of like some sickly old man's body trapping a teenager's brain.

Locked doors? He has no patience for locked doors. He's fashioned some lockpicks out of a pair of fancy Capitol tweezers and a dismantled pen in case anyone bothered to lock doors.

Granted, he also wasn't expecting to run into anyone. He listened at the door to see if he could hear anyone inside, and when he didn't hear anything assumed whomever was in there was sleeping or gone. Instead he comes face to face with Wesker.

Not much to do but wave a hand and meekly say "hi?"

Wesker turned from the window, slow and unhurried, as if he'd been expecting the boy. His face - eyes shielded by the dark glasses, mouth firm, but turned neither one way or the other - revealed nothing.

His nose, however, did twitch, flaring as it picked up the scent of fear.

Listening to the boy's pounding heart, he replied dryly, "I'll give you points for resourcefulness, but none for style." His eyes scanned up and down, sizing him up quickly. "Or smarts."

"I'm probably getting cocky with all the dying and coming back," he says nervously, lowering his hand. This guy looks, for lack of a better word, serious. And a little inscrutable, behind the dark glasses.

"So..." He tries to sound casual, but there's a slight tremor in his hands, so he shoves them into his pockets. "Good odds for District 11?"

He smiled then; a flash of even white teeth, that did nothing to warm him. If anything, it was all the more a warning.

"And you'd do well to remember it."

Howard takes the grin as a warning, but also as a cue. This guy's healthy. All his teeth are there and not falling out. In his own mouth, Howard pokes his tongue at the line of holes where some of his back molars once were.

"I should, um. I should show myself out, right?"

So he had some sense of self-preservation, that was something, Wesker supposed.

"A wise choice." His head tipped a fraction. "Perhaps next time we'll start with such."

Howard scurries out, shutting the door behind him quietly, as if on someone asleep.

Wesker watched him go, sniffing delicately as the last of the boy's scent faded, pushed from the room by the gently circulating air. Then, with a small shake of his head, turned back to the window.

Children. Wonderfully useful when handled correctly, but so rarely did he have the patience for it.

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