aragorn elessar telcontar strider feathercrown (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elfstone) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-09-30 08:35 pm
elfstone) wrote in thecapitol2014-09-30 08:35 pm
Entry tags:
some legends are told [open]
WHO| A scruffy lunatic in the park and you
WHAT| A Ranger gets the lay of the land and finds the biggest green space he can.
WHEN| Slightly forward-dated to shortly after Clara's win.
WHERE| The biggest park in the Capitol.
WARNINGS/NOTES| Just a reminder that your character is 100% welcome to have heard of Middle Earth and the things and people in it, but he's pre-canon, so I'd prefer if you kept spoilers to a minimum! Also, he'll be using an obscure alias and won't be recognizable from the movies. If you feel your character would still recognize him, message me!
Strider has never felt so trapped.
It is not that he is unused to cities. As Thorongil he had spent time in Edoras and Minas Tirith and had found it no worse than nights in the Wild, and Rivendell, though it was by no means a city, was where he would call home, were he asked to name it.
Buildings and beds Strider can handle. It is confinement to the city that makes his hair stand on end.
The materials the city is built of do not help this sense of entrapment. The towers of Gondor had been quarried from stone, good plain stone worked for strength. Strider knows not the arts by which the walls of this city were fashioned, but when he puts his hand on the wall of the Tribute Center, it seems to him him unwholesome. The stone is smooth, too smooth, as though it had been liquified and poured into its shape. Even the rough pavement below his feet feels like a poison.
Strider feels cut off from the outside world, locked in a strange cage with folk of strange talk and stranger dress. He has paced the limits of this cage by now, finding the edges of the city beyond which he is not allowed to pass, speaking with few. Finally, in the late afternoon, he returns to the largest stretch of green he has found and walks through it, casting himself on the ground at whiles and listening intently to the earth before rising and pacing once more.
Even if his behavior were less unusual, Strider cuts a strange figure; there is nothing remarkable about his hooded shirt or jeans, but his brown boots come nearly to his knees. He looks too old to be in such clothes: his hair is streaked with gray and his face is weathered, and always he wears a troubled look. Often his left hand strays to his belt, as though checking for something that is not there.
He's probably just mad.
WHAT| A Ranger gets the lay of the land and finds the biggest green space he can.
WHEN| Slightly forward-dated to shortly after Clara's win.
WHERE| The biggest park in the Capitol.
WARNINGS/NOTES| Just a reminder that your character is 100% welcome to have heard of Middle Earth and the things and people in it, but he's pre-canon, so I'd prefer if you kept spoilers to a minimum! Also, he'll be using an obscure alias and won't be recognizable from the movies. If you feel your character would still recognize him, message me!
Strider has never felt so trapped.
It is not that he is unused to cities. As Thorongil he had spent time in Edoras and Minas Tirith and had found it no worse than nights in the Wild, and Rivendell, though it was by no means a city, was where he would call home, were he asked to name it.
Buildings and beds Strider can handle. It is confinement to the city that makes his hair stand on end.
The materials the city is built of do not help this sense of entrapment. The towers of Gondor had been quarried from stone, good plain stone worked for strength. Strider knows not the arts by which the walls of this city were fashioned, but when he puts his hand on the wall of the Tribute Center, it seems to him him unwholesome. The stone is smooth, too smooth, as though it had been liquified and poured into its shape. Even the rough pavement below his feet feels like a poison.
Strider feels cut off from the outside world, locked in a strange cage with folk of strange talk and stranger dress. He has paced the limits of this cage by now, finding the edges of the city beyond which he is not allowed to pass, speaking with few. Finally, in the late afternoon, he returns to the largest stretch of green he has found and walks through it, casting himself on the ground at whiles and listening intently to the earth before rising and pacing once more.
Even if his behavior were less unusual, Strider cuts a strange figure; there is nothing remarkable about his hooded shirt or jeans, but his brown boots come nearly to his knees. He looks too old to be in such clothes: his hair is streaked with gray and his face is weathered, and always he wears a troubled look. Often his left hand strays to his belt, as though checking for something that is not there.
He's probably just mad.
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The one genuine bright spot was he'd found a little food market with real food. They never made the food in the Tribute Center spicy enough. Never. But there was a store there that sold snacks and he'd found some kind of spicy snack mix, something called "peas" mixed with rice crackers that were dusted in some kind of pepper powder. It still wasn't hot enough but it was close to fire flakes and better than nothing. Zuko was so eager to eat it that he popped open the bag and started snacking on it as he walked back to the Tribute Center, dignity and manners be damned.
It produced an interesting effect in that as he saw the stranger acting that weird in the park he was standing there still eating his snack, like someone watching popcorn while watching a movie.
"What are you doing?"
You weird, crazy hobo man.
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It was not simply that Zuko looked like an Easterling, nor was it merely Zuko's discourteous manner. It was both: the one fed into the other, and up came Strider's well-used walls of mistrust.
"Listening," he replied. It was flippant, matching the stranger's discourtesy. Strider did not stand up.
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Zuko rolled his eyes.
"Listening to what?"
And there he went upping that discourtesy like a heavy gambler upped a bet.
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Did you want rude, Zuko? Strider can do rude. Strider was accustomed to rude: he had dealt with it from strangers for many years. Perhaps, if Strider had been less used to strangers eyeing him with mistrust and derision, he would have been friendlier. But the years have worn on him, and Strider gave up hope of friendship easily now. He kept others out with a thick skin and a sharp tongue, which Zuko happened to be on the receiving end of today.
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But like many people in the universe who were fine with dishing it out, he was not exactly what you'd call adept at dealing with it when it was dished out to him.
Also, he wasn't used to anyone not respecting his station. In the Earth Kingdom, okay, they had a right to be angry at him - as a member of the royal family he represented his nation and the people in charge of untold suffering through the world. But here? Where he didn't carry that reputation?
He didn't exactly expect strangers to kowtow but he also didn't expect anyone to be snippy. Even the crew of his ship, as much as they'd outright hated him had still showed him respect, despite his being an exile. He just wasn't used to even minor rudeness.
Who did this guy think he was? Now that he was on a more even keel, he tried to show peasants the proper respect because doing otherwise was the opposite of classy, but at the same time there was no way he was going to take sass from some weird, crazy hobo.
His hand clenched around the paper bag his snacks were in and he narrowed his eyes.
"Excuse me," he said with fake politeness in a cloyingly sweet voice, like some someone making nice in a fake way at the market without someone they actually hated, "I didn't realize I was getting in the way of your conversation with the imaginary people living under the ground."
There was a 95% chance that somewhere out there in the infinite universe his uncle was shaking his head and sighing without understanding why he was doing it.
There was a 100% chance his friend Sokka would've laughed at him if he were here because despite all of Zuko's tracking of Aang, Zuko didn't realize it was an absolutely basic tracking technique that told you about the lay of the land.
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"I imagine," he said dryly, with a sidelong glance, "that the people under the ground are better conversation partners than you."
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"Imaginary people are the only people that would want to even talk to you, anyway. You're just a weird, crazy old man."
There went that temper flaring wildly, as he ignored the fact that he knew very well that he was absolutely terrible at conversation. And awkward.
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He closed his eyed and sighed, then got up -- if getting up it could be called, for he rose only to a crouch, one hand still on the grass.
"Have a care, stranger," said Strider, "for one day you might shout at the wrong crazy old man, and do yourself harm." It was not a threat, nor even a warning, but a word of caution. Crazy old men could be perilous indeed. "If that is all you have come to say to me, I suggest you be on your way."
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Now that he wasn't quite so miserable and on guard he'd gotten much better at distinguishing the difference between healthy criticism and an attack, but he had a harder time with it when his temper was already riled.
That was why he took it as a threat even thought it wasn't meant that way.
"Was that a threat?"
And here came the posturing.
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"If I were threatening you, you would know it." He is still crouched on the ground, making no move to rise.
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And then got super rude about it.Zuko let out a frustrated sound through his teeth, trying to restrain himself from something stupid like challenging him to a fight.
"You bandy threatening words to strangers and have the nerve to laugh at them when you don't know who you're speaking to. You're the one who needs to mind your tone!"
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What Aragorn said struck a nerve but not for the reasons he was probably thinking. It was because Zuko refused to believe that they were defined by the Capitol now when all of them were still the same something that they were back home. He was still the prince of the Fire Nation and a warrior, someone that wanted to go back with his friend and make his world a more peaceful one. Aang was still the Avatar even without being able to bend the four elements, a being deserving of respect.
They were all still people, that couldn't be redefined by force at the hands of maniacs and killers.
His attitude shifted from petulant annoyance to being offended in an entirely different way at Aragorn's suggestion.
"Who we were in our worlds counts for everything because we're still the same people. Everyone is. Kings are still kings, soldiers are still soldiers, mothers are still mothers, and people who are friends to the people around them are still good friends. It matters."
And he was still the same cranky, irritable person who lost his temper too easily, he realized. That had happened a lot over this conversation but he was too proud to admit it.
He did manage to calm down his tone just slightly at least. Slightly. And he crossed his arms.
"I asked what you were doing because you were acting strange and I've never seen you before. It's good to know who people are in this place. You didn't have to be rude."
Neither did Zuko but in Zuko's eyes the stranger had started it.
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But this was not going to turn into an argument about who started it. Instead, Strider asked, "And who are you, who gives himself airs before he asks who he is talking to?"
What he thought of the first thing Zuko had said, Strider kept to himself. His hands rested in the pockets of his jeans, and he bent forward slightly, a slouched, decidedly un-regal posture.
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It was his birthright, it was who he was for good or ill and no one and nothing could take it away from him. That pride naturally came with its share of impatience for people that didn't respect his station and that was on top of him being naturally easy to rile.
But his tone of voice had an edge of steel to it that wasn't just someone royal puffed up over themselves, however. The hardship he had gone through that had made him what he was - that was etched on every word.
"But even if I wasn't a prince, I didn't need to know who you are to think you were acting strange and this isn't a place where the uncertain is usually a good thing."
A.k.a you're a weird shady-looking hobo dude, Strider. Weird, so far, never turned out to be a good thing in this place.
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"Then I do not think much of the courtesy of the Fire Nation, if its heir is wont to roll his eyes at strangers."
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He added, his voice filled with a bitterness that wasn't directed at Aragorn, "They would call you a filthy foreign peasant and possibly get violent.'" He shrugged and it was a very young person shrug. "I think you're just weird and rude."
While he'd taken extra affront that someone so obviously a peasant had been insulting, he still wasn't about to make the same judgments on his worth as a person like most people from home would.
That was because Zuko was cranky and cantankerous and blunt and outright rude but in his eyes just blurting whatever he felt off the top of his head was better than using delicate words to dance around the truth. Like 'The war is our way of bringing our greatness to the rest of the world' was a delicate lie meant to make the Fire Nation's pointless, power-hungry war look noble.
His people liked to use pretty words to talk of their greatness, they tried to act as if they were so much more dignified and civilized than everyone else, but in the end, everything they did was barbaric.
In the face of all that, blunt honesty had become the way Zuko cut his way through every social hurdle he came across, the way he confronted that pretend delicacy with something more real.
But like many teenagers struggled with, he hadn't found the balance yet, the difference between rude bluntness and tactful honesty.
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Perhaps, if they had gotten off on a better foot, he would have asked Zuko more about his people. Perhaps he would have taken the time to get a more nuanced view of this young man who was rude but not as rude as his fathers. But not right now.
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He'd let his temper get the best of him and strayed too long and he had snacks. Snacks that he was neglecting that tasted like real food.
Most of all, he didn't want to admit he was rude and that he'd made things far more hostile than they'd needed to be. He was frustrated because the man had the same ineffable, hard-to-rile thing his uncle did and he had no idea how to deal with that.
The fact that the man hadn't really escalated things was making him start to feel hot-headed and stupid, like if his uncle had seen the entire conversation, he'd be tsking him for his discourtesy to strangers reproachfully.
He was too prideful to admit fault, though.
"I don't know why I'm still wasting my time talking to you. I'll leave you to do whatever weird things you were doing."
He waved a hand dismissively, expression sour and frustrated as he turned to walk away.
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But he thinks he detected shame there, at the end of that conversation: an undercurrent of shame, masked by pride.
What a disagreeable fellow.
Strider let him go.