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thecapitol2014-07-31 12:01 pm
stotte) wrote in thecapitol2014-07-31 12:01 pm
even a natural born fighter can find cause to break sometimes
Who| astrid and anyone
What| not getting the best first impressions on her first day
Where| training center (district 6 suites, halls/elevators, training room)
When| 7/31
Warnings/Notes| mentions of death
Astrid had grown up knowing nothing but how to fight. She came from a world where warring against dragons was once all that she had known, where there was only ever enough time to think of survival and whether she could be up enough of a defense to live for another day. But that had long since been over. It was years since the Vikings had made peace with the dragons, learning to live amongst them, obtaining the privilege to go about each day with harmony and the opportunity to just laugh without the constant fear of dying.
She never imagined being thrown back into a world like that, not in this way anyhow. Filled with strange foreign gadgets and nothing at all familiar from her home, all she's told is that she would be fighting for her survival--a tribute, they called her, yet all she can wonder if she had somehow been a sacrifice to the gods. Perhaps, that's what this was, a test of some kind. But even so, nothing explain this strange place she had been brought to. Where was Berk? Where were her friends? Where was Hiccup?
a ↠ district 6 suites
Insulation might be one of the first things she really takes notice of, oddly enough. But when you experience nine months of harsh winters in your home, it wouldn't take long to catch on to the incredible new sense of warmth that overtakes you. Not that the lack of cold truly made her feel better or safer in this situation anyway.
The entire floor was incredibly large, noting the almost endless amount of rooms that she'd learned belong to others much like herself. She finds herself in the common room, carefully touching the incredibly soft, bench-like furniture (Were those safe to sit on? Why were they so soft?) before noticing the moving paintings on the wall.
Except they weren't paintings at all, recalling someone mentioning televisions and that they would display everything she needed to know--about the "games", the Capitol, the tributes. She studies the screen with a mixture of confusion and curiosity, noting how the pictures seem to "speak" as well. But she hardly pays mind to the spoken words, not when suddenly the most disturbing deaths are displayed for her to see, horrifying images that even someone such as herself, so well acquainted with war, grows sick in the stomach just to watch.
The sequences switch through fast, but she has no doubt when she sees a well-known blond twin on the screen and subconsciously rejoices for a quick second at the sight of a familiar face before suddenly there's a bite at the neck and all she sees is Ruffnut being eaten alive.
A struggling gasp is all she can manage, the screen already switching to yet another gruesome death as if the one of her friend no longer mattered, just another number in the toll of all these people losing their lives so instantly lacking reason. If it weren't for an empty stomach, she'd have lost all its contents in that moment, not that it would do anything to help with taking in the next sight.
Hiccup.
It was only on the screen for mere seconds, but she knows that ruffled mess of hair and peg leg anywhere. And in a quick flash that she's convinced is an illusion, she watches as the love of her life gets stabbed in the chest, not even having put up a fight, falling hopelessly into death.
b ↠ halls / elevators
It wasn't exactly easy to be in the best of moods after seeing hundreds get murdered right before your eyes, including a close friend and your lover. But she needed to figure this place, figure out why she was here and what she needed to do to get out as soon as possible.
But this place was so large, odd contraptions scattered about, strange moving boxed rooms that took her up and down the height of the building--everything was too otherworldly, things she never could possibly understand. So in addition to the anger already dwelling up inside, frustration becomes a familiar friend as she wanders hopelessly through the different floors of the building, a lost Viking with no idea how to get out.
c ↠ training room
Finally, something familiar to her. Even if she's disgusted about this new environment, the sight of the double sided axe that she quickly takes in her hands brings an extreme comfort to her. Suddenly, she's much more protected. Even if it was just in this room, holding it brought forth a new sense of courage that she had yet to experience since she came upon this new world.
She swings around the axe with ease, and for a few moments, she forgets everything she's already seen that day, everything she's learned and her mind relaxes as her body becomes accustomed again to what she had always known well how to do: to fight.
What| not getting the best first impressions on her first day
Where| training center (district 6 suites, halls/elevators, training room)
When| 7/31
Warnings/Notes| mentions of death
Astrid had grown up knowing nothing but how to fight. She came from a world where warring against dragons was once all that she had known, where there was only ever enough time to think of survival and whether she could be up enough of a defense to live for another day. But that had long since been over. It was years since the Vikings had made peace with the dragons, learning to live amongst them, obtaining the privilege to go about each day with harmony and the opportunity to just laugh without the constant fear of dying.
She never imagined being thrown back into a world like that, not in this way anyhow. Filled with strange foreign gadgets and nothing at all familiar from her home, all she's told is that she would be fighting for her survival--a tribute, they called her, yet all she can wonder if she had somehow been a sacrifice to the gods. Perhaps, that's what this was, a test of some kind. But even so, nothing explain this strange place she had been brought to. Where was Berk? Where were her friends? Where was Hiccup?
a ↠ district 6 suites
Insulation might be one of the first things she really takes notice of, oddly enough. But when you experience nine months of harsh winters in your home, it wouldn't take long to catch on to the incredible new sense of warmth that overtakes you. Not that the lack of cold truly made her feel better or safer in this situation anyway.
The entire floor was incredibly large, noting the almost endless amount of rooms that she'd learned belong to others much like herself. She finds herself in the common room, carefully touching the incredibly soft, bench-like furniture (Were those safe to sit on? Why were they so soft?) before noticing the moving paintings on the wall.
Except they weren't paintings at all, recalling someone mentioning televisions and that they would display everything she needed to know--about the "games", the Capitol, the tributes. She studies the screen with a mixture of confusion and curiosity, noting how the pictures seem to "speak" as well. But she hardly pays mind to the spoken words, not when suddenly the most disturbing deaths are displayed for her to see, horrifying images that even someone such as herself, so well acquainted with war, grows sick in the stomach just to watch.
The sequences switch through fast, but she has no doubt when she sees a well-known blond twin on the screen and subconsciously rejoices for a quick second at the sight of a familiar face before suddenly there's a bite at the neck and all she sees is Ruffnut being eaten alive.
A struggling gasp is all she can manage, the screen already switching to yet another gruesome death as if the one of her friend no longer mattered, just another number in the toll of all these people losing their lives so instantly lacking reason. If it weren't for an empty stomach, she'd have lost all its contents in that moment, not that it would do anything to help with taking in the next sight.
Hiccup.
It was only on the screen for mere seconds, but she knows that ruffled mess of hair and peg leg anywhere. And in a quick flash that she's convinced is an illusion, she watches as the love of her life gets stabbed in the chest, not even having put up a fight, falling hopelessly into death.
b ↠ halls / elevators
It wasn't exactly easy to be in the best of moods after seeing hundreds get murdered right before your eyes, including a close friend and your lover. But she needed to figure this place, figure out why she was here and what she needed to do to get out as soon as possible.
But this place was so large, odd contraptions scattered about, strange moving boxed rooms that took her up and down the height of the building--everything was too otherworldly, things she never could possibly understand. So in addition to the anger already dwelling up inside, frustration becomes a familiar friend as she wanders hopelessly through the different floors of the building, a lost Viking with no idea how to get out.
c ↠ training room
Finally, something familiar to her. Even if she's disgusted about this new environment, the sight of the double sided axe that she quickly takes in her hands brings an extreme comfort to her. Suddenly, she's much more protected. Even if it was just in this room, holding it brought forth a new sense of courage that she had yet to experience since she came upon this new world.
She swings around the axe with ease, and for a few moments, she forgets everything she's already seen that day, everything she's learned and her mind relaxes as her body becomes accustomed again to what she had always known well how to do: to fight.
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For him, especially, he didn't know he wasn't dying for real. He'd lain there imagining Berk and Astrid leading it into a future where it would never turn into something like this place. He'd died tearing up from the sadness he knew Toothless would feel.
Of course Ruffnut had been the one to suffer, without Hiccup knowing she was even there. She'd died horrified and in pain. Her body had been -
Even if he could have managed sarcasm or a simple confirmation in regards to his own death, he'd seen Ruffnut's playing on a screen unbidden not that long ago, and he'd had to reach for the nearest fancy Capitol flower vase to throw up in.
So he looked at the floor and just nodded, without looking at her eyes, his face going pale, looking like he'd just swallowed a chunk of regurgitated fish.
A silent Hiccup was a terrible thing, as anyone in the village knew. He lived for talking, so for him to stare at the floor, look like he was going to throw up, and only manage a nod - that showed the weight of it, the realness of it despite it sounding impossible.
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No matter how upset she was at the current circumstances, she couldn't possibly understand what he had gone through. If seeing it play over the course of a few seconds on some screen had affected her as much as it did, there was no telling what living, or dying, through it must have been like.
She can't comfort him with words, though not much of anything could make it better. But even so she pulls in to lightly graze his chin, to lift his face back up, to catch sight of the light in his green eyes, the ones that often renewed her hope whenever all seemed lost, hoping to reflect them back at him through her own.
She follows it with a light chaste kiss to his lips, simply as a minor celebration that he was alive now, that he hadn't been permanently taken away. And that somehow they'd figure all of this out together.
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He'd spent a childhood following her, with scrawny little legs that could barely keep up, falling farther and farther behind the older they all got. When he'd grown old enough to notice how pretty she was, but far more importantly, how graceful she was under fire, how much tougher she'd gotten, how much more sure of herself she'd grown - he didn't run after her as much anymore, knowing it wasn't welcome, and turned and walked right the other way if she made it clear she wanted him out of his face, but he spent his days pivoting, always angling to face her, wistfully looking at her in the distance and hoping he could prove his worth.
It was his worth he'd had to prove, after all. She'd owed him nothing and to impress someone that impressive, he had to be someone that was good at something, whether it was killing dragons or good at being, well, good. He would have laid it to rest if he'd managed to become the kind of person that could attract her attention, if it turned out that wasn't what she wanted, anyway - that he just wasn't it - but he'd always wanted to try first, to become someone she might find worthwhile.
Then, one day, he'd started to care more about being someone he found worthwhile. The day he downed an dragon and wouldn't kill it. That night in the glade, when he told her he was going to protect Toothless. The day he decided to show the village another way in the kill ring.
That had done the trick and won her over, but still, just like before, she hadn't owe him anything. When he and Toothless had killed the Red Death, she still hadn't owed him anything.
She had never once owed him this, no matter how brave he'd gotten, no matter how much his cleverness had turned out be strength, and that was why everything she gave him was a gift.
She kissed him, chastely, and he gently wrapped his arms around her waste, kissing her back just a little bit more fervently, the ache in his chest making him realize even more clearly just how terrified he'd been that he'd never see her again.
Hiccup felt tethered to her at that moment the same way he felt tethered to Toothless when they flew, as if it was one of the only things helping to prevent him from from falling.
When he finally pulled away to face her, he brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek.
"You know, I, uh," he said thickly, "I don't even think I realized how much I missed you and was afraid I wouldn't see you again until now. It was just somethin' I couldn't even think about."
The door finally dinged open to a (fortunately) empty hallway.
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Even as their lips part, she refuses to pull her arms away, keeping a hand nestled at his neck, fingers playing into the ends of his hair. Even in a different setting, a harsher setting at that, at least they still had this, these precious moments that often guided them along.
She still finds that high pitched bell ding when the elevator doors opened to be quite obnoxious, struggling to find a purpose in it the thousands times she's already heard it in one afternoon, but this time she finds cause to drain it out, finally giving Hiccup a smile, albeit a sad one.
"Well, I'm here now. And I don't plan on leaving you. You won't be without me ever again."
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Even though he knew they had no control over whether or not they were all revived, it was still reassuring to have her say she wouldn't leave. If anyone could take this place on and tackle the task of staying alive successfully, it was her.
Holding her hand again, he led her out into the hall.
"I guess the next step is telling you everything we've figured out so far. Most of it is distinctly not good, so get ready to have your mind blown with how terrible this place is. The death matches aren't even the half of it."
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Ruffnut appeared almost out of thin air looking disgruntled and irritated. Spotting Hiccup and Astrid's hand holdings her face screwed up for a moment bracing itself before she sighed "Please tell me I missed the mushy stuff. I just ate."
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Astrid can still remember the scene she had witnessed, flickers of Ruffnut being bitten and pulled apart by teeth still standing out in her mind. But she brushes the thoughts away because Ruffnut was right there, alive and well right in front of her. Just as Hiccup was. Everything she had heard was right, everyone that died somehow came back.
At the comment, her grin softens to a usual smirk, raising an eyebrow to the annoyed girl as her mood temporarily brightens up simply by seeing her friend once more. "Glad to see someone definitely hasn't changed. Although ..."
Did she look younger?
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It took him a second to figure out what Astrid was pausing over.
"Oh, I didn't mention the part about them being able to bring people from different times, did I," Hiccup said awkwardly. "Sooo, now I'm mentioning it. They can do that. Ruffnut's from a few years back. I'm assuming from how old you look that you're from around the same time as me."
He led them both in the direction of his room.
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Upon closer inspection as Ruffnut drew into their group and offered a relieved smile over her initial grumpiness, it was apparent Ruffnut had undergone the same treatment as Hiccup...or perhaps more. Her hair was silky and shiny looking like fine spun gold. Her beloved braids were combed out and there wasn't a single split end to be seen. On the flip side all the hairs on her arm or the back of her neck, even the little blond girlstache she had been developing were gone leaving her with smooth clean skin that was so completely unlike Ruffnut Thorston it was almost unreal.
She even smelled nice. Like fruit and flowers.
Her clothes were rumpled and relaxed looking. A hooded long sleeved thick looking top that had a circle on the back and upper right corner of the chest. The logo inside the circle read "District 7" And featured a dead looking tree and a pair of wood chopping axes.
Her feet looked bare at first, but she was actually wearing a pair of open toed flat shoes. Such things would have been a first class ticket to frostbite town in Berk.
And what was perhaps most hilarious of all, her toes were painted in a glittery, neon green. The nails were smooth and manicured and if Ruffnut caught anyone looking at them she would quickly try to move their attention elsewhere.
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"Different times, huh?" She wants to call it ridiculous, but a lot of seemingly ridiculous things ended up being quote true in this place that it was hard to honestly question it so much anymore. Besides, seeing her now, Ruffnut was being her usual off self, sans a making googly eyes at Eret, At least she was alive
Continuing to follow Hiccup down the path, relieved to follow someone who was well aware of his surroundings, she considers his assumption, trailing over her thoughts. "Depends. We just finished things with Drago." It was the best she could do without saying too much to an apparently younger girl who definitely hadn't experienced the travesties of that war.
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Which, given he'd spent so much of those four days on cleanup, meant he'd had no time to even properly grieve for his father. He'd taken more time to do it since getting out of the arena, but it had been extra turmoil on top of the situation itself, initially.
"Ruff already knows what happened. I figured, if - if she ever does go home, I don't know. Maybe she could warn us, make it so things happen differently."
He was careful not to look at Astrid as he said that, and opened the door to his room and revealed an utter mess that was very typically Hiccup.
Sketches of things he'd seen - and of people - were scattered all over, along with pages of notes on how some of the machines worked and hand drawn maps of sections of the city. Good old fashioned paper books bought from an odds and ends store littered the floor and his bed. They had titles like "Capitol Military Superiority Through the Ages" so they were clearly biased in favor of the Capitol, but with the sheer number of them, it was clear he was trying to take in as much information as he could to pick the truth out of the lies.
He threw out his hands dramatically.
"My humble abode. You can just, uh...shove some things off the bed I guess." He hopped onto it and proceeded to kick some of the books to the floor so they both had room to chill with him there. "The mattresses here are freakishly soft, by the way," he said to Astrid. "You're gonna hate 'em. I still spend most nights sleeping on the floor. It's like trying to sleep on the backs of a bunch of sheep. Except with less moving a bleating."
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"They have people who come and clean your room for you." Here she glanced warily at Hiccup. "How'd you get them to leave you alone? Every time I come back my clothes are in the closet and my bed is made again. I can't even get it to smell right because of how often they change it."
Ruffnut was used to sleeping just about anywhere including on the backs of poor innocent sheep. But she was also used to her own smells and she could hardly call a place her room if it didn't smell like her.
Her initial excitement over the comms seemed to have passed and though she managed a smile whenever Astrid looked at her it was wary like she was expecting something. It was the same look she sometimes wore when she and Tuffnut knew that Stoick was looking for them. Because Stoick never went looking for the twins unless they were in trouble.
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But she realizes that Hiccup must have wanted to change things if he could. They never had the chance to discuss it after it happened, not that she'd think he would have wanted to, but he must have still been thinking about that. It was easily to tell, even now.
The sight of his room, being in a state typical of his own back home, is a relief. It brings about a few reminders of Berk, a definite comfort in this strange world.
"Yeah, I've already have my encounters with the couches too or whatever they are. Seems people really like to make sure everything's soft and squishy here." She initially thinks that maybe she'd get used to it, until it crosses her mind that she doesn't want to. She wants to go and lay on the furs from back home, even the weird Viking-esque smell of the village would be satisfying right about now.
Even so, she climbs up on the bed, sitting with her back up against the wall. She's been wandering all day, getting lost all over the building in her frustrations. Even if she wanted to hear more about this place, she couldn't deny that some rest would be nice as well.
"So? Tell me. Everything."
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"To start with, they can watch and hear everything we say and do at all times, and they don't like when anyone speaks out against them, sooo keep that in mind before we go on. They have little weird bug...things that are tiny machines that let them watch us."
Astrid needed to understand that with everything he was about to say, any outbursts and commentary against them were a no no.
"Anyway, far as I can tell, the Capitol is a big tribe that controls twelve other tribes, called districts. A long time ago there was a war where the twelve district tribes decided they didn't want to be under the Capitol's control, so they fought for their freedom - but the districts lost. To make sure they never challenged the Capitol again, the Capitol started to take away everything from them. All the Tributes here are assigned a district to represent a district and if they win, that district gets extra food, which makes it clear extra food is a big deal for them. Before any of us were here, though, aside from taking most of what they had, the capitol set up something they called The Hunger Games, where they, uh -"
Ooh boy. This was the part he had trouble not getting furious over himself. He took a moment to make sure his voice was very controlled.
"They took two kids or teenagers from each district, aged twelve to eighteen, shoved them all together in an arena, and had them all fight to the death." His lips briefly pressed together into a grim line. "Only one got to go home, because back then, they didn't bring anyone back from the dead. They did it once every year and set it up so the people of the Capitol - who didn't have to give up any children to the Games - could all watch and take bets on who would win."
He paused there to let Astrid get the what-the-heck out of her system, giving her a serious eyeball to show that if she was going to do it, she needed to do it without cursing them out.
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"Uh...yeah about that twelve tribes thing...there used to be another one before the war. They kinda wiped it off the map. One of my whatever-ya-call-ems told me. The people who tell you where to go and what to do?"
After a moment she added "And they took another one out not too long ago. Something about a plague. So how many does that leave?" Again the Thorston's natural enemy...math.
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"Betting on people's lives, huh?" She sighs, biting her lip, knowing she couldn't do much commentary, but upon Ruffnut's explanation, she raises an eyebrow curiously, hearing some new information. "The escorts? Mine gave me a gist of the situation, but I hadn't heard anything about wiped out tribes or districts or whatever they're calling them."
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"Okay, eleven. Eleven districts." Horrible. So horrible, an entire tribe, probably even bigger than theirs, wiped out in an instant. Their tribe was pretty much their whole world. Well, at least a significant portion of their world - maybe 75% of their world. (After all, there was a world outside the tribe that was part of their world, too, since they went flying in it.) Hiccup couldn't help but think about how easily these people could rain fire down on their own tribe, too.
"That's what they do, they just -" He dropped his voice, very low. "- they destroy everything they touch. Not long ago, though, something happened to make the Capitol worried. Far as I can tell a Tribute in one of the arenas did things that might have made people get a little more inclined to rebellion, so they stopped taking kids from the districts and started bringing in people like us. This way the districts're not having their kids taken away, so they're less likely to rebel, but they can show how powerful they are by reaching into whole other worlds to bring people, and by playing gods by bringing them back to life over and over. It still shows off how powerful they are, without making the districts take it personally anymore. They still don't seem well off but now they're not being forced to watch their kids go through it and now the people in the arenas come back - most of the time."
Hiccup shrugged.
"So here we are." He added, "Uuup to our necks in dragon dung."
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Interestingly enough, she was grinning.
"But we've got two things they don't. " she pointed at Hiccup, "the biggest headache any tribe has ever known..."
And here she pointed upwards.
"And Thor."
Ruffnut had never been terribly devote so it may seem strange to Astrid that she was invoking Thor's name even if he was the twins "favorite god."
Then again Adtrid hadn't net Thor yet, or seen his biceps as Ruffnut had.
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She'll meet the thunder god very soon, much to her delight, helping with getting her to understand the statement a bit more.Rather, she tries to gather all the information in her head, trying to sort out how any of it worked. Though none of it still explained why they were here, almost as if they had simply been picked at random.She sighs, hunching down against the wall. "So we're really stuck here right now, aren't we? Someone already told me no one gets to go home, even if you win. Another said some people have even been here over a year."
Her eyes go to Hiccup, seeking out for some sort of answer in his. Because he should know something, shouldn't he? He always had an idea, a plan. When things looked hopeless, he always knew. Right? "Are we just meant to fight now?"
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He shot her a very casual look that suggested very clearly that it was meant to be just for now.
This wouldn't be their future - this wouldn't be anyone's future, if he could help it.
"For now, let's just keep our heads down and figure out how this place works. Everything we can."
You had to know how something worked to utterly rip it to shreds.
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"Well I know how the elevator, the light switches and most of the bathroom work." She offered before adding "Still a few buttons in the shower I haven't tried." Mostly because she was still put off by how often they expected her to bathe.
"Oh! And those little things the guards have." She mimed holding an item in her hand.
"If they shoot you with it? It's like getting hit by lightning but it doesn't stop till they turn it off."
Ruffnut's second night I the Capitol had involved a taser after a bar fight that she'd started.
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"Well, good to see that you're still causing trouble as always, Ruffnut. How many times has Hiccup gotten you out of trouble already?" She asks with a smirk, not doubting a high count.
"Then again," she begins, leaning over to give Hiccup a typical jab in the stomach. "Who's been keeping you out of trouble?"
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"I just got here," Hiccup said in glib response.
No one'd had to get him out of trouble yet because he hadn't had enough time to get into it.
"Wait, so...you haven't tried all the shower things?" Hiccup asked, turning to Ruff. "I figured out the magical make-it-go-away level for the toilet but I only figured out how to make water come out for a bath. Do the other buttons do stuff?"
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Springing from the bed she waved to them and led the way to the bathroom "Come on losers, class is in session."
The bathroom was...like most of the Capitol, lavish and sparkling clean. The shower was big enough for multiple tributes and had benches carved out if the walls for sitting. It could even serve as a large bath the way the walls were set up.
Buttons lined one wall and Ruffnut wasted no time fiddling with a knob that appeared to do nothing. This puzzled her a moment before her face lit up.
"Oh right this button first."
She jabbed it and noise exploded all around them echoing off the walls and vibrating their bones.
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"Is this really a bath?" Why did it look so complicated? All you needed was a tub and some water. It really didn't make sense to have so much space or any of those buttons really.
She flinches at the noise, hands immediately moving up to block her ears. "W-what is that?"
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also end?