I sense it now, the water's getting deep

[pythianjudgment]

Who| Terezi, OPEN
What| Terezi's back from the mini-arena and there's a lot on her mind.
Where| District 3 suites
When| After the mini-arena plot, before Thicker Than Blood [backdated a little]
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of drowning, but that's probably it.


For the first time, returning from an arena, Terezi isn't faced with the overwhelming sense that she needs to apologize for her actions. There's no hurt or betrayal. Well... maybe a little. She's still not entirely sure what was up with Susannah, but that doesn't sting so much, since she barely knows the girl.

Instead, Terezi's mind is preoccupied with other things. Other regrets. She heads back to her district suite and promptly folds herself neatly into one of the couches. The TV is on, but she doesn't seem to be paying attention to it. It's just noise, compared to the thoughts rolling around in her head.

She should have picked a different trap, she thinks. It had seemed so simple at the time to meet the deep water with haste rather than caution. She could have swam more carefully and avoid the things that grasped and clawed beneath her treading. The traps in the District 3 section might have been quicker. Electrocution was a pretty fast way to go, albeit rather painful. But she didn't think any of those deaths were going to be pain-free. That wasn't how the capitol played it's game. Time had been running out, either way. It was so quick and so easy to feign carelessness. To make her actions look like panic rather than suicide. She hadn't regretted anything in that arena--not until something had snatched her and dragged her under.

She shudders a little at the recollection, wraps her arms around herself and breathes deep--reminding herself that she still can. Drowning had been a horrible way to go. Once underwater, her struggles hadn't been feigned in the least. She fought her hardest to get back to the surface, to try something else. Fought until her lungs burned and panic set in at being so thoroughly blind. Fought until she finally tried to gasp for air that she couldn't reach. She'd been scared--that it wouldn't be entertaining or convincing enough, that they wouldn't bring her back. But it was, and they did. Or they were lying to begin with. Either way, she's here and she doesn't care to figure out which it was just yet.

All she really cares about is existing right now, breathing deep and trying not to remember the feeling of the water around her. It's going to be a while before she can stand to get wet again.

Comments

[sleeplessinalternia]

Someone behind her is draping a blanket over her shoulder. "Supposedly thermal retention fabric is supposed to have calming your shit functions," Karkat says. "I dunno, but you looked cold."

He peers around from behind her. "I'm glad you came back," he says.

[pythianjudgment]

You looked cold. Terezi almost laughs at that, but it gets stuck somewhere in her throat. At least the blanket is appreciated. She doesn't smile, but she does lift her hands from her arms to grab onto the edges and wrap it more tightly around herself.

"I am, too." She would probably add a joke about her shit being thoroughly calm, but they would both know it's a lie, and she doesn't have the energy to make the attempt.

"...How much did they tell you out here?"

[sleeplessinalternia]

"That it was some weird scavenger hunt maze thing," he says, "and that more than one person could win, and that every time someone got culled by another tribute they'd give the rest of you another hour." There was also that weird shit about Bert's human lusus that the commentators had talked about, but he didn't know if that counted. "Why? Was there something else about it they didn't tell us?"

[pythianjudgment]

"I don't know. Maybe."

She hesitates, her attention shifting away from Karkat. She doesn't want to scare him... That might have been all that the threat was meant to do: scare them. She hasn't heard of anyone dying for good, and there wasn't nearly enough chimes for everyone to have bit it. Unless the rest of them had died after her, but she knows that she cut it pretty close...

"Is everyone else back already?" she asks, seemingly changing the topic at hand.

[sleeplessinalternia]

"Signless and Disciple are," he says. He knows because when he went to check on Signless the two of them had already found each other and he'd had to make a swift exit before things got too awkward. "Doobie's back too, I saw her on D12. As far as I can tell they revived everyone? That other guy in your district managed to win it and Wyatt and that prince guy from D5 and the clown cultist lady from D9--although I think she pissed someone the fuck off because when the elevator got to D10 a bunch of peacekeepers dragged her in."

He frowns. "There was weird shit. If there wasn't, you'd have just said no straight out."

[silberfuchs]

Albert hadn't watched much. He doesn't like to, feeling dirty for being privy to the most emotionally raw moments a person can have, feeling sorrow for his inability to do anything just yet to stop it.

When Terezi emerged and curled herself onto the couch, Albert happened to be in the suite's kitchen. He watches silently as Terezi slides her arms around herself, barely breathing in his being unsure of how to handle the situation. Were it him, he'd profess wanting to be left alone, but it may not be the truth.

Ultimately, he can't ignore a person in pain, even one who grates on his nerves as much as the young Troll does. He shuffles his way to the back of the couch, making no more secret of his presence so he doesn't startle her. Softly, Albert rests a large but gentle hand on the back of the sofa near her head. He'd rather rest it on her head in a comforting paternal gesture but after one very awkward conversation he doesn't feel they're close enough for that to be taken well. As it is he's ready to be dismissed outright but he can't not try. "Is there anything I can get you, Terezi?"

[pythianjudgment]

Honestly, Terezi wasn't expecting to be approached. She doesn't seem to pay any attention to Albert as he draws near. It's only when he's at the back of the couch that her shoulders tense visibly, making it seem like she's curling inward. It could be possible that she was watching him the hole time...not that it would be easy to tell what a blind girl is paying attention to.

Her answer isn't immediate, but at least she doesn't dismiss him, either. She frowns a little, her head turning just enough that she can catch his scent to know where he is. Her body language reads as wary and uncertain, like she doesn't know why he's trying to talk to her.

"...Is there hot chocolate out there?" she asks finally, conceding to the offer in a quiet voice. After a moment of thought, she adds: "The kind with the little marshmallows in it?"

[silberfuchs]

He smells of menthol and coffee and his voice is still low when he answers. "Yes, I think so. I'll make some."

With soft footfalls - he's in socks and so his steps are muffled - Albert retreats back into the open kitchen to boil some milk for hot chocolate. The directions on the packet say water but this will make it richer and perhaps more calming.

"It will just take a few minutes. Is there anything else you need in the mean time?" Food? A blanket? Someone to talk to? He's surprisingly open right now, different from the stubborn obstinance he'd displayed over the network.

[pythianjudgment]

"Your ulterior motive would be nice," she responds, still frowning. She hasn't moved from the spot where she's sitting except to unfold her legs from their spot against her chest.

"I thought you didn't like talking to me."

[silberfuchs]

"Nothing ulterior. I may have disagreed with what you were saying, but that doesn't mean you deserve to be ignored." Not when she so obviously needs some kindness. He's not sure what happened exactly, but he's here and he's willing to listen or just be a calming presence. He's been told he's good at that.

He shrugs and rummages for cookies or something equally sweet. "We just got off on the wrong foot."

[carnagecarnival]

He'd intended to yell. He'd intended to be angry, to lash out. He'd intended to demand answers.

Once again, she's robbed him of such.

He watches her fall in and he doesn't breathe. She's tugged down, down below and he sees the water move and then stop. He feels the press around and on his lungs, all the ocean seeping in, that desperate motherfucking moment and arms around pulling him down, bubbles of air escaping to the surface while thinking please, please take me with you. He stands, reeling, grabs the nearest glass and throws it hard against the wall, wanting something more than the sound of ocean in his ears. He upturns every bowl of water in his room. He smashes this thing and that.

And then he waits. His back is to the wall, head back as much as horns will allow. His eyes are closed and he simply breathes. Trying to remember how again.

When they start coming back, when he finally goes to find her, he finds his anger again. It never goes for long and its always the easiest to default to. He is not in these games to be kind. He isn't kind. He finds her and he says, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!"

[pythianjudgment]

There's a blanket wrapped around her shoulders now, a gift from Karkat that she kept for her own peace of mind. She clings to it now, wrapping it tighter around herself and cringing away from his anger. She doesn't want to hear this, not so soon after coming back.

"I don't know what you mean," she says, quiet in comparison to his demand for answers. "I'm sure it looked like exactly what it was. I haven't watched it for myself. I've been a little busy living it."

[carnagecarnival]

"Hoofbeastshit!" He snaps. "DON'T PRETEND YOU AIN'T KNOW. I went all at to teach of the waters, you should've known better then to just--" to not look. To just let it happen. Leaving him to sit and watch that. He growls. "AND TELL HIM, WHAT PART OF GIVING ALL WHAT YOU COLLECTED TO SOME OTHER FUCKER SEEMED AT LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO YOU?!"

His hands grip the air, open and closing. Focus, focus.

"Something, I ain't no what got to be different up in that arena. AND YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME, SO HELP ME, PYROPE."

[pythianjudgment]

Should have known better... Yes, she should have. She was smart enough, she could have avoided that trap easily. But her haste had her taking risks that she couldn't afford--at least, that's how she hoped that it looked to the audience.

She pulls the blanket up over her head and her horns, as if she's trying to hide away from his anger. He voice comes muffled from within her shelter: "I was running out of time. I had to hurry, or I would have missed the deadline."

She doesn't respond to the bit about Eliot... She doesn't know how to begin answering that.

[carnagecarnival]

There it is again. Hurrying for deadlines. And he certainly notices where all she doesn't answer him.

"And what pray motherfucking tell, would all have come of the deadline that you couldn't heed what at I taught?" He hisses through his teeth, leaning in.

[earthborn]

Shepard's poker-face had but one, solitary tell; the timing. She only really used it, after all, when it was a proper fight, when there was something to hide. You didn't put nothing behind the walls of a vault, after all. Vaults were there to hide what had value.

She watched the girl drown with a vast impassivity, arms crossed, merely staring. That panic, the flailing limbs, the failing struggle, she remembered that. Remembered the stars burning and collapsing, drowning lungs, remembered darkness and panic, pushing against nothing to gain a purchase that wouldn't come.

The inexorable pull, down, down, down. Asphyxiation is, of all her favorite ways to die, the least. When it was done, she paused the feed to save her place in the recording, fished out the final bottle of plum-wine from the last sad dregs of Azula's gift-basket, and took the elevator down to where she knew the kid would be waiting.

Because if there is one rule to this shithole, it was that The Capitol Lies. And she might have believed that they would truly kill the tributes they took under any other circumstances, except that they warned of it beforehand.

[pythianjudgment]

The Capitol Lies, indeed. Terezi is exactly where Shepard expects her to be: in her suite and certainly not dead. She's still not sure if that's because her struggles to find air were entertaining enough, or because they were lying to begin with. Honestly, either option is a good possibility.

There's a blanket wrapped around her shoulders now, and she's a little more aware than she was with her first few visitors. When Shepard enters the suite commons, Terezi lifts her head, turning to sniff at this newest distraction. She's a little surprised when she realizes who's there.

Terezi flips the blanket from around her shoulders to up over her head. "I don't need boot camp. You can't make me." It sounds half like a joke, but Terezi's still not smiling.

[earthborn]

"If I thought you really needed it, I wouldn't give you a choice," She's a hard one, our Shepard, but she has a good heart buried underneath that candy-coating of bitter, bitter crap. If you can get through it.

"I brought you something," she has no idea if it's rude or not, but there's no hiding under blankets when you have horns, so she'll just knock the bottle against the pointiest parts of Terezi's impromptu hood, "We're gonna share it."

[pythianjudgment]

It's incredibly rude, and Terezi emits a half-hearted 'ow' from beneath the blanket... before finally lifting it to figure out what Shepard had so rudely tapped against her horn. It's a bottle of some kind, but obviously the woman means whatever is inside the bottle. Whatever it is has Terezi's interest piqued.

"What is that?" she asks, sniffing at it and scrunching up her noise. "Poison?"

[earthborn]

"Sure," because it is, after a sort, "Of the best kind. Knocks your problems right out, for a couple of hours, at least."

[iflipmyhair]

She had her ways of being quiet and subtle. Though, she figured that Terezi probably could tell she'd slipped into the room, before she spoke. but Homura didn't quite care. She had questions, and she had to know if Terezi had answers. Comfort - whatever little Homura could even hope to offer - could come later.

"You're back."

Terezi might have felt Homura's stare fixed right on her.

[pythianjudgment]

"If I'd know this would get me so many visitors, I would have drowned myself sooner."

Despite the humor in her words, there's very little to match in her tone. Terezi, for one, doesn't seem too impressed by Homura's studious observation. She's back to sitting on the couch, wrapped up in her blanket. The TV is still on, though she might have been paying a little more attention to it this time.

"Did you need something?" Homura isn't exactly someone she expects a sympathy visit from, so Terezi assumes that she must be here for some reason.

[iflipmyhair]

Unfortunately, Terezi was correct. Homura wasn't the most sympathetic of people but, she didn't care if anyone understood why, among other things.

"As I promised." Her hand flipped through her hair. "I'm here about the Incubators."

[pythianjudgment]

This again. Terezi sighs tiredly.

"Man, I've never had a deaf friend before. This is going to be really awkward when we start completely missing social cues and conversation topics between the two of us." Terezi doesn't bother turning to face Homura. It's not worth the physical effort that it would take for a motion that's virtually pointless.

"At least, that's what I'm going to assume, since I've already told you I don't know what you're talking about. If you're that adamant about hatching things, I'm sure there's a shop in the city that will tell you all about incubators."

[iflipmyhair]

There was a long silence as Homura ruminated on Terezi's words. But...she had said...it...

"Then you really were joking." Stupid. Stupid stupid stu- "No. I don't want to hatch things."