thecapitol | Anxiety is a harsh mistress

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Anxiety is a harsh mistress

Who| Harold Krebs and all of y'all
What| Attempting to find a place to hide and learn about the world he is in.
Where| Training Center and around looking for a library
When| Right now, in the afternoon
Warnings/Notes| He is shy...if that counts as a warning?

Krebs was more than a little lost and confused. This place was far different from anything he had ever witnessed. The technological prowess of its people was both awe inspiring, and frightening. And from he had gathered that they were using it for, more than a little backwards. The idea that you were to take a group of innocent people and make them fight for entertainment was more than a little sickening and Byzantine in his eyes.

What was even worse? He held absolutely no knowledge of this world either. It only served to raise his anxiety to new levels. Krebs does not do so well in new and unusual environments. He needed to leave, he needed to find a way back to the familiarity that was his life. But first, he needed knowledge.

To gain that knowledge he decided to go people watching at the place that most seem to gather. It was some sort of gym, as far as he could tell. Weapons, devices and other things lined the area. Perhaps this was where they were to be trained as gladiators?

Well it seemed as good a place as any to ease drop on a person or two. So he moved to take a seat and stare at whoever caught his ear. He wouldn't speak to anyone yet, he did not wish to make friends, though he knows he should. Friends always have a nasty habit of dying in front of you.

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The training center is useless.

At least, for its implied purpose, which is 'train hard enough and you might win an arena and get out of this shithole'. Roland's limited experience with arenas is enough to tell him that who wins those can seem ruled by even more chance than real-world fighting, and in the moments when he's too tired not to imagine it, Roland finds himself thinking that becoming a 'victor' must be an even deeper level of hell.

Well. Training to win is useless, but maybe the training center itself isn't, quite. It's the most useful part of this whole ridiculous building, and victor or no, he'll be damned if he's going to let a lifetime of skill slip because he's too busy moping.

Today Roland's working on holding various weapons in his right hand, tracking how long he can hold and use each one before that hand's lack of an index or middle finger makes the grip impossible. He's frowning, appearing deeply focused on the sword in his hand even when he addresses whoever it is that's sitting not too far away. "Plenty of other places to go if you just like to watch."

Krebs for the most part, just deigned the man a glance, before looking away. He doesn't want to talk, much less to a person who doesn't even appear focused on the person that he is attempting to talk to. As near as Harold was concerned, this was just a man who was focused more on his own survival more than anything else.

And so, Krebs kept silent, watching and listening to the others. People often say the darnedest things when they do not believe that you are paying attention.

He grunts as the sword starts to fall from the right hand's grip, steadying it with his left and putting the sword away. Then, finally, Roland turns to look directly at the man and walks close. Not close enough to look threatening, but enough to make ignoring him unlikely. Not impossible, but certainly harder. "Advice from one prisoner to another - spying on our technique goes much more smoothly when you're doing some fighting yourself. This," he gestures to the seat, "might work in a crowded bar. Far too obvious here."

A casual stare goes to the sword, it's quite obvious that this man is having difficulties handling it. Not that Krebs truly cared all that much. A sword would only do a person good if they're able to reach their opponent, and the person wielding it knew how to not fall on the damned thing. Most likely the reason why the military had done away with them when they got to Europe. Not much use against a man who can hit you before you can reach them.

Either way, Harold was not all that interested in fighting anyone here. He was not interested in picking up a weapon again, whether that be a knife, a gun, or the shovel. "Perhaps I was not attempting to blend in." If he wanted to do that, he would not even be here at the moment.

"Then you're doing a fine job." With that all that there is to say, as far as Roland's concerned, has been said, and he turns away to go back to practicing. The left hand this time, which needs considerably less work, but also requires considerably less patience. He'll keep an eye on the other man, but it doesn't seem like he wants much more than to stare. Annoying but endurable, for a little while.

Spontaneity was not chief among any minimal list of virtues Buddy Glass would have ascribed to himself. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he took lunch on the steps outside the library. The exact same library that, as children, he and his brother Seymour had been their Saturday mornings at, buried behind the stacks, surreptitiously avoiding the cantankerous old librarian that lurked in the Poetry section. No, if anything, Buddy would say that his virtue was, if anything, predictability. And, honestly, he didn't know if that itself could be said to be a virtue at all. It toed dangerously the line of being settled, boring.

He watched Krebs as he chewed his sandwich, lettuce and tuna on a roll. (This was also the same sandwich he ate every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, if it must be known to fully illustrate his personal boorish, settled, predictability.) It was impossible to not observe the strange man, looking blearily around the wide and altogether too ornate block. People-watchers could always recognize one another in a crowed. They were sneaks, voyeurs preying on the unsuspecting. He focused his attention on the man as if to let him know that he'd been caught. It was his best cop stare and not terribly unintimidating, if Buddy was to allow himself a moment of self-congratulation. I see you, it silently declared. Watch people all you want, but don't be a goddamn sneak about it or someone's going to watch you back.

Sure enough, Krebs eyes found the other man's for a brief second before looking away. He was being watched as well, a change of pace from the norm, not unwelcome, but also not really welcomed. He was fine with people watching him, it was only fair. Though what they believed they would be capable of deriving from watching him, he didn't know. There wasn't much to Krebs as a whole. Nothing of interest or of note.

Just that he looked like a regular guy, watching people. He was also listening as well. An attempt to pick up on anything he may have missed. Something that he was never told. Harold was not really one to socialize, not anymore. He had learned the hard way what socializing got you.

No, he continued to watch others, and every so often glanced back at the staring man.

The tuna was dry today, but Buddy finished it off with the air of someone resigned to his fate. In a way, he was. The people-watcher was, if anything, a break in the monotony, and he found the game of glance-glance-look away-glance to be interesting at first, for what it was. Ten minutes in, however, he found himself with no more tuna and thus good excuse for remaining rooted to his spot on the library's steps. The gig was up.

He folded the foil the foil that once held his sandwich perhaps a little too meticulously. He did everything meticulously, it was an unfortunate side effect of too many years of military life. It, along with a month-stale letter from his sister that had made it out of his breast pocket prior to spotting Krebs, were both tucked back into the same breast pocket. It was as if the foil and the letter somehow carried the same level of importance and sentimentality. Then he stood, dusting any stray crumbs off his grey flannel pants, and began his approach.

Buddy knew he was tall, and he bore himself up to his full height if only for the affect of it all. There was something to be said for a suited police officer staring down a foreign national on public property.

"You're new around here," He stated, tone lacking the generosity of a customary greeting. "Can I help you find whatever it is you're looking for?"

Indeed he is new, Harold that was rather obvious. He did not carry himself with the same weight of certainty that most others here do. Nor did he appear to have as much knowledge on the other folks around him as those who were seasoned would. But at the offer for information from Buddy, he perked up a little. Yes, he desperately was in need of information, but had no means of getting it.

If there was one thing that both the military and university had to teach him, it was the importance of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is far more valuable than any mineral, far more precious than any friend, and stronger than any army.

So, turning to look at him with eyes that were quite dead, he spoke in a quiet tone. One that any man, or creature, would have to strain their ears to hear. "Yes, books."

He was not all that used to talking to others yet. And felt like he could derive more from a book, or newspaper, than by word of mouth.

Buddy felt himself smiled accommodatingly, not out of any genuine desire to do so, but rather due to some vague societal mandate the likes of which were, quite probably, ingrained in all of them. There were certain things one did given certain sets of circumstances. Trading small, unerringly polite smiles for answered questions was one of them.

"This is the main branch of Panem's national library system. I'd say you're in the right place." He gestured to the building behind them. It had great, pseudo-Grecian columns and two mythic, lion-like creatures of stone stood guard on either side of the elaborate staircase leading to its entrance. "I don't happen to know if they give out library cards to Tributes, but there's nothing keeping you from looking around inside if that's all your after. When did you get here?"

Well, at the very he wasn't too far off. It didn't matter if he could check the books out or not, so long as they stayed open long enough for him to learn what he wished. And Krebs had a feeling there was much to learn. Possibly far too much.

If one wished for freedom, then one needed to learn and acquire knowledge. Something was troubling him greatly. There was something about this world that upset him greatly, something that gave off an air of familiarity. From the basic geography that he had gleamed, well, the continent looked all too familiar to what he knew. But he didn't want to believe it.

"Recently, would they happen to carry old newspaper clippings, government records and history books?" While he was itching to read about the history of these people's warfare, he was far more interested in how the civilization first started. Even biased sources were far more useful than no sources. Or word of mouth; there was something about the written word that made it easier to detect lies.

It was the way the sentences were constructed, the grammar and word choice. It also took a liar to know a liar.

"They should have a copy of the daily Tribune, at least." Buddy declined to mention his involvement with the paper or the media at large. It took a liar to know a liar, but it took a propaganda man to really make heads to tails of all of it after it had been strung together. "And history books, for what little they're worth."

In the first place, history had never held much appeal to him. It reeked of pedants puzzling over things they weren't around for and probably would never really understand. In the second, anything in Panem had to be taken with a grain of salt. District 3 was just the lasted example of how the truth was something carefully buried, well beneath the official records or anything the pseudo-intellectuals lurking around the universities would have access to. In actuality, if Krebs wanted the truth, his best bet would be to talk to people. Word of mouth could be deceiving, but in a society officially built on lies, there wasn't much more damage it could do.

"You won't have the clearance for government records. There's a Tribute liaison you can contact for any specific information you might want."

That may have been for the best. Otherwise Krebs would have known he had run into the man who most likely held most of the answers that he wished for. As far as propaganda goes, however, he has more than enough experience in reading between the lines. The various images and so-called "news stories" that the public had been fed back home, still swam through his kind. Stories of women chained to German machine guns, or of how the war was being fought courageously, instead of in holes and trenches in the ground.

No, he knows to take things with a very, very fine grain of salt and magnifying glass. Perhaps taking those courses in English really could pay off here?

"...That's what I was afraid of." It's unfortunate, but he highly doubted that the liaison would even grant him the records he desired. Those being for births and taxes. Krebs figured that if he could follow the paper trail, then he could figure out how old this civilization actually is, and for how long they have lived like this.

"Don't look so put-out by it," There's a particular defensiveness that comes over him at Krebs' reaction to the wife of his old superior officer. It's a guarded, somewhat societally dictated protective instinct. Besides which, it's not like Jennifer had ever tried to be anything but helpful to the Tributes. Even he, who stubbornly and patently avoided the Games even prior to the Never-ending Quell, knew that. "Mrs. Blackwell's not half-bad if you give her a chance. And she wants to help you lot, which is more than I can say for a lot of people in the Capitol these days."

Between the network hacking, the recent affairs with Peacekeeper HQ and the general, visceral, inevitable regard for cannibalism, Tribute sympathy was not exactly at an all-time high. The way Buddy saw it, people were still engaged for the novelty, because their own lives were hardly interesting enough to be engaged in, not because they saw the outsiders as some kind of mythic heroes. He squinted at Krebs again, trying to feel out what this particular outsider was really after. Was it just the general bleary malaise that seemed to overtake them all? Or was there something more sinister about his quest for information. "Anyway, if you do end up talking to her, be polite. I don't want her thinking I only send troublemakers into her office."

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Anxiety is a harsh mistress

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