thecapitol | Suspects' Holding Cell

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Suspects' Holding Cell

The vans drive for what seems like an hour before they come to a stop, and Peacekeepers blindfold and forcefully drag even the most cooperative suspects into a building.

The suspects are all held in one cell, a large, metal room with a thick door and a single ledge that serves as a bench. Bright fluorescent lights beam from overhead. There are no windows and no clocks, no sign of where they might be.

The Peacekeepers take off the blindfolds, though without much care for whether they come off all the way or chafe or stay slung around the suspects' necks. The suspects' hands are left cuffed behind their backs, and even the most ingenious of them won't be able to pick the lock on their restraints, but they're otherwise left to roam freely through the space.

Suspects are removed, one at a time, at unpredictable intervals, by Peacekeepers armed with tasers. Some take three hours to return, while others are back within only a minute. Each of them comes back having been clearly roughed up and pressed for information that they may or may not hold; some are bleeding or sporting the beginnings of black eyes.

They'll be sleeping here tonight.

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Hearing about Hiccup's world was sufficiently interesting and almost made her forget about the throbbing heat in her bruises or the chill of the floor on her rump.

His praise though made her stomach sink once more.

"I'm not that strong. The only reason I've lasted this long is the people around me. Smart people, strong people or people who are too kind to give up on me when I keep letting them down and screwing everything up."

Her mind flashed to an image of Effie and a fresh tear squeezed out of her eyes. Her voice was a shaky whisper and horse from all the screaming she had done during her interrogation.

"They took the most important people away from me. Then they threw me in here. I don't know how much else I can lose."

"Of course you're strong. Look at me. I'm about a hair's breadth away from crumbling and I just got here. And you've been here a year. A whole year and you're sad and you're hurt but you're still with it enough to be those things. I think that's strong. Strong isn't always just about surviving how well you can fight. There's other kinds of strong."

He leaned closer, conspiratorially. "I'm the chief of a whole tribe, you know. A tribe of very tough, very strong Vikings and they think I'm tough enough that they should listen to me. I've even faced down a dragon the size of a mountain. But I'm not going to be here if I have to stay a year. If I'm stuck here that long, I probably won't even make it."

He nodded. "It is very strong to last that long and not just be a curled up ball of misery that doesn't even talk anymore. And if you've been that strong so far you can be strong even longer."

She watched him with wide eyes and gently nodded accepting his story and logic. It made sense that there were different kinds of strong. But could she really consider herself strong after everything she'd been through? After what she'd done?

"I guess." She answered in a non-committal way but the look on her face appeared that he was getting through to her.

"If we make it out of here...and you start to get that way I have some friends who can help you stand up again." She added in a low voice. "They picked me up every time I fell." She pointed across the cell to another girl, slightly older then her with a much colder and more dangerous look about her.

"She's one of them."

"I've got some people from home here, but I might take you up that. This place seems like the kind of place where it's good to have all the friends you can get."

He knew it'd make her feel like she had more control if she could offer help to him and there was a chance he might need the help in the future. (Provided they weren't all killed.) He wasn't lying about that. It wasn't like he was a fragile person but he knew that this kind of sustained cruelty was going to get to him.

She nodded at his assessment.

"I'd be alot worse off without friends. My very first arena was this big frozen snow and ice place. I'd never even seen snow before. I ran away and this big guy named Riddick followed me till I couldn't run anymore. Then he taught me how to survive in the snow and wandered off. That was the first time someone took pity on me here."

Something she would be eternally grateful for.

"I never saw him after that first arena. He died and never came back. They all do that eventually." Her voice fell and she let her gaze droop again.

"Even the special ones."

She thought about Pruna and how skilled she was. How amazing and dangerous she was. She thought about the smile she always got when trying a new ice cream flavor. Even Pruna was gone now.

"So I keep making new friends. But it never gets easier when they're gone."

"I know it's hard to deal with losing someone," Hiccup said, "getting used to the idea that they're not going to be there all of a sudden. I just, uh -" His voice grew a little thick "- I just lost my dad, right before I was brought here. Didn't have time to really grieve even. And he was the one who raised me. My mom got dragged off by a dragon when I was a baby so he was kind of like a mom and a dad, and we didn't always see eye to eye but by the time I was fifteen, we figured it all out. He believed in me so much, and he taught me so much about the kind of person I should be, and he - he loved me enough to die to save my life."

He drew in a deep breath. "He's gone now, and all I have are the memories, the things he taught me, the love that he had for me. But recently I found out my mom was alive and I got to have her back in my life again. Someday, if I even ever get home, I'll have my time with her but I'll eventually lose her, too."

He paused. "What I'm trying to say is that life usually works that way, where you have people and lose people. In this place, it's pretty much ramped up to eleven so that people come and go more often than they should, but one thing that's going to stay the same as long as you are still here is that you'll always find new people that care about you and as long as you're alive, you'll still carry little bits of the people you lost with you. And if anything happens to you, the people you've met will carry bits of you with them, too."

He leaned a little closer, "Like, for instance, if I survive this, I'm always going have the memory of how I met a little girl tougher and braver than I am, and how I should try to be that tough and brave, too. That's what we can all give to each other and what we can all hold onto."

His words stabbed at her and suddenly she had one of the most basic instincts a child can have and it tore through her chest. She felt her muscles tighten and her eyes watered. A sniffle and she tried to hide her face in her knees. She longed for her daddy.

"I miss my dad." She whimpered "And my Mom." She added her fingers curled on the legs of her pants squeezing them tight.

"And I miss Effie." She sobbed softly as tears finally burst from the corners of her eyes and spilled onto her pants.

"It's not fair." She tried to think back far enough to remember his face and found that her father's memories had become so blurry she couldn't even remember the color of his eyes or what his voice sounded like.

"I'd give you a hug right now if you were okay with it, but my hands are, ah, a little tied."

He never thought he'd be stuck in a situation like this, so powerless he couldn't even comfort a crying child. He wasn't exactly great at this. There were kids in the village and they pretty much thought he was the greatest, but he didn't exactly spend the most time with them other than helping them learn to take care of their dragons. It meant he usually saw them at their happiest.

"What, ah, is there anything I can do or say to help you right now?"

"Lie to me." Her choked voice rasped quietly from behind her knees. "Lie to me and make me believe that this is all going to work out. That we're gonna get out of here or someone's gonna save us. Give me enough hope to hold onto."

It was something she'd felt slipping through her fingers more with every arena and it seemed in this dark cell there was no hope outside of hoping they wouldn't come back for her to beat her some more.

Somehow channeling his father, he spoke with absolute surety and perfect calm, in a voice he didn't even know he had.

"I don't need to lie. It's going to be okay. It's going to hurt and then it'll pass. The others will be mad that we were taken so if they were to kill us, at this point it'd probably cause a revolt. Even if they could contain that, they'd take more of a hit with it than they'd want so they can't risk setting that off. They seem to hurt people here right up until the point it'd collapse under them if they went farther. Eventually we'll get rescued or they'll let us go, and then we'll all comfort each other. We'll work things out. We'll... we'll do what we can."

He didn't want to outright say they'd rebel but the implication was enough for her to pick up on.

Her heart rate began to slow.

Her breathing was steady.

Blinking at her tears they began to slow as well because for at least this moment she dared to believe him.

"That's going to have to be enough." she whispered barely audible.

Was it hope? Not really...but it was close enough to give her something to look forward to.

"What's important is you're strong enough to make it. You're strong enough to hold out. Don't ever forget that. Don't let them trick you into thinking they've taken it away from you."

That was something that, no matter what they did, the Tributes had a choice to hold onto. The potential within themselves. The personal power and promise that could be unlocked the moment they had an opportunity to snatch up a key.

"There's two kinds of strength. Strength in - in control and power. In making things happen. We're running a little low on that right now. But there's also strength in enduring things. Waiting for your moment to turn around and strike, even when you're barely staying in the air."

She knew the strength of endurance well. It was the only reason she ever survived an arena without Pruna to protect her. But even the strongest buildings crumbled over time.

"But what if that moment never comes?" She dared to whisper as the question had filled her head time and time again while she waited for a hero.

"It always does," Hiccup whispered back, voice filled with absolute surety. "Always."

Dragons the size of mountains could fall. Vicious madmen with dragon armies could die. It was the one thing he was always sure of, that things could get better.

Even centuries' long wars could give way to peace.

"You just have to hold on."

Because people like him were going to fight for that. If he survived this he was going to learn all he could and fight with everything he had. Even if it killed him.

Especially since there was a chance it could keeps these absolutely insane people from killing innocent little girls like her.

She fell silent once more thinking hard, reaching for that bit of hope left inside and nodding gently.

"Yeah...I guess I can hold on a little longer then." She muttered tightening her muscles up like she was bracing for the next round of abuse coming her way.

"I've held on this long...what more can I lose?"

It was almost like a dare to fate.

"When they've already taken so much, not much," he said. He added, "And there are some things they can't take. That's the thing to remember."

At least he hoped so, but doubt wasn't the thing she needed to hear right now and that was why he was so good at this, of convincing people of things and convincing them of ways things could be better.

The conviction he put in it, even if he wasn't feeling that conviction 100% himself.

Because sometimes that was what people needed to hear.

A little more sure of what he was saying, he went on, "They can't change the parts of you that are important deep inside unless you let them. You get to decide what's important and what you hold onto in there, even if they hurt the outside, even if you can't always talk about what you're keeping safe."

Edited 2014-09-19 10:43 (UTC)

This kid was pretty sharp...or he was just guessing. Either way he was hitting the right topics for Sandy quelling her fear slowly but surely.

Still there was doubt, there would always be doubt.

"I held onto those parts of me for a long time and it hurt too much. I thought if I changed it would help and it did, but I guess you're right. Some parts of me just haven't changed yet."

She was still a coward. Still a better runner then a fighter.

Still rebellious.

And she had discovered, she was spiteful. She was vengeful.

She could be cruel.

"I guess since we don't know how long we have to live, it's a good thing we're figuring all this stuff about ourselves out so early in life." She muttered with half a bitter smirk.

She shouldn't have had to. She should've had a life that was free of this kind of cruelty. Even back home, amid a war, children on his island had time for play, and most importantly of all, the adults looked out for them.

Even when everyone had thought he was a joke, they were all willing to protect him from harm.

"You shouldn't have to figure it out so soon but if it helps to know who you are, then figuring that out might be a good thing, even if you're a little young. That means you'll have something they can't take."

She fell silent once more, dark ringed eyes starring into the middle distance as she tried to sort out the mess in her brain.

Maybe his words would be enough to hold onto the next time she was taken away for questioning.

Maybe she wouldn't break after all.

So much of her life was full of maybe.

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Suspects' Holding Cell

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