so here's my hope, my tired soul. ( open )

[schnapp]

Who| beth green / open
What| one zombie survivor gets used to showers. and actual food.
Where| training center
When| afternoon
Warnings/Notes| tba



TRAINING CENTER COMMONS

She's been here for a day now, enough time to convince herself that this isn't some kind of awful dream. In a lot of ways, it's almost surreal. For one, she's clean for the first time in months - actually, truly clean. In part, thanks to the efforts of her prep team, who had tsked at the filthy and matted state of her when she'd been brought in.

So here she is, squeaky clean and sitting in the corner of the common area in front of one of the many television screens. Watching one of the programs that seem to run around the clock. This time, it's highlights from the last arena.

Beth's no stranger to violence. Her life has been full of it for the last two years, ever since the dead stopped staying dead. She's seen a lot of it. But this is a full highlight real of awful, grisly murder being narrated by people with chipper voices like some kind of sick sports event.

"I'm gonna be sick," she mumbles quietly, mostly to herself.

TRAINING CENTER RESTAURANT

They give her more food than she's ever seen in her life, and Beth looks down at it like it's an alien thing. Like it can't possibly be real. She's perched on the edge of the bar on a stool with a plate heaped high and for a moment, she doesn't make any move to eat it. Because even before everything went wrong, they never had food like this on a farm where they grew mostly everything they ate.

She sort of just looks at it, fork in hand, like she's in shock.

Comments

TCR

[oopsright]

"Staring at it like that isn't going to make it eat itself."

Tess had made her way down to the restaurant to grab something for herself, a small plate with some veggies and dip and a toasted sandwich with the works (lettuce and a tomato slice, a slice of swiss cheese and meat), a glass of orange juice to top it off. She had only decided to come on over to the young girl's side, approaching slowly and carefully, when she'd caught that expression so openly on her face.

Setting her plate down on the counter she slides up into the stool next to Beth, seating herself there despite the empty booths she could've settled into for a meal on her own.

[schnapp]

Beth gives the lady who climbs up on the stool next to her a tentative smile - it's a little tired, and incredibly hard-won. She looks down at the food on her plate one more time before sticking her fork to spear a piece of meat and take a bite.

Oh. You can see it in her face, the way her eyes light up. "It actually tastes better than anythin' we had before everything happened. Did you want some?"

She offers, sliding the plate over, even though Tess has got enough on her own.

[oopsright]

"You go ahead and eat." It sounds like the girl could do with eating everything on her plate and more, such as a second helping.

The way Beth's eyes had lit up, Tess couldn't miss that. She'd no doubt worn the same expression in tasting real and properly cooked food after twenty years of rat and rations and whatever she and Joel could get their hands on.

"You care to talk about everything that happened?"

Tess is only bringing it up because Beth had done so first, and because it's got Tess' attention caught.

Training Center Commons

[wizardplease]

"Some people think it's not actually real." The voice comes from a young man sitting one table over, a cup of coffee in hand. His eyes are also fixed on the screen, though after a sip of coffee they slide on over to her. "That'd be crazy, right? Killing people and treating it like it's all fun and games, hm?" He smiles, or... tries to smile. There's an upwards twitch of his lips. This really isn't a situation that calls for smiling, but you're supposed to smile at people when opening up a conversation. So he's trying.

[schnapp]

She's glad enough to find an excuse to turn away from the scenes of gore presented before her. It's different, with the dead. That kind of violence is...it's still traumatic, but not like this. And Beth knows she's going to have to experience this at some point.

It's frankly terrifying.

"The people that live here? The ones that watch everythin'? How can they be so stupid?"

[wizardplease]

Now there's a good question. Haruto breathes in sharply, not quite laughing, and looks briefly down into his coffee cup. "It's probably normal to them. If something's normal, why think about it too much? Why not just enjoy the fun?" He takes another, longer drink of coffee, then sets the cup down and shifts in his seat to better face her. He's had time to think on all of this, but not much chance to talk about it. Risky business, that. But....

"Or maybe they're cheering so that they're not the ones thrown in here."

Restaurant

[smarterthanthem]

"It's going to get cold if you don't eat it." comes a helpful piece of advice from a young girl, currently clambering up onto the stool next to Beth's. It's a bit high for Clementine and she might be more comfortable sitting at one of the tables but she liked getting to swing her legs and secretly felt more grown up sitting at the bar.

It wasn't like they'd serve her alcohol or anything.

Clem picks up the menu to peruse what's on offer today, the meals regularly changed and somehow, always, were delicious prepared despite that.

As she does she gazes sidelong at the woman beside who seems a little stunned at the food on her plate. She wonders if it's the quality or the quantity, or both.

[schnapp]

Call it protective instincts, but Beth immediately looks over when Clementine slips up to the stool, legs swinging without touching the ground. She's very young, probably younger than Carl was when they'd first met. She hopes that maybe she just lives here, instead of actually being a participant in the games.

Though from what she's seen, it doesn't seem likely.

"I know," and she gives her food another glance-over before sighing. Breathing in the deliciousness. "I guess I'm just not used to havin' so much. Or eatin' anything that didn't come out of a can. Or snakes, this is way better than eatin' snakes."

[smarterthanthem]

"I know how that feels. First time I got here? I ate everything. Which turned out to be a bad idea, I got pretty sick for a while." she watches this girl curiously now she mentioned that, "I'd go slow with dairy food if that's what you're used to."

Clementine cocks her head, smiling, "I didn't know you could eat a snake."

Though that mention has her wondering, since Luke and Nick turned up then maybe...

food times -- with a bit of time breakage

[burningdaylight]

Luke knows that blank-faced look of wonder all too well. Heck, he stumbled in with it and it’s all over his face still while he struggles to grasp how any of this can exist, nevermind the excess of food that tastes just as he remembers it. All he knows is that he has no hope in hell of finishing his own plate and he’s plucking carefully at his helping of fresh-cut fries like they’re the wires of a live bomb when he glances her way and takes in her expression.

"...Y’alright?" He tries, quietly, from a few stools down. For a moment he wonders if the fry cooks might have left something nasty on her plate. A deep-fried insect or two, maybe.

[schnapp]

Luckily, no insects. Just deliciousness. Actually, the food smells so rich just from here that it almost makes her stomach queasy after living off of nothing but baked beans for months on end. Her clothes are clean and there is no dirt under her fingernails and it's all a little novel, despite the fact that none of this distracts her from the horror of it all.

But the man a few stools down has an expression that looks like how she feels at the moment. "I'm alright. I guess I should ask you the same thing," she nods at his impossibly full plate and the way he picks at the food like he's afraid it's secretly poison or something.

[burningdaylight]

“...I’m fine.”

If ‘fine’ meant troubled and bewildered by the turn of events since he had stirred awake in a cold, stiff cot and snatched his first painless breath in days. Of course he was immensely grateful to no longer be struggling his way along with badly aching ribs but it was somehow worse knowing he could have never healed this well within days, nevermind hours. He must have been here for far longer than he realized. In a coma, maybe.

It’s the best theory he has.

“It's jus'... it's been a while since I've had this much.” Luke looks back at his plate, biting into a fry. He’s fiercely hungry, but after months and months of bland, tinned food that he realizes just how greasy and heavily salted this all is and he knows he’ll suffer for it later. The best he can do is try to pace himself.

TCR

[ruffntumblenut]

"Yeah no kidding."

The scene that had been playing out was of a lanky blond girl who had apparently been about to fight a pretty dark skinned girl. The blond only held a can of something while the other girl had a bat. At the last minute an old man with a metal arm had stopped the fight and sent the other girl on her way.

As soon as the blond girl let her guard down though, the old man had run her through with a blade.

And now that same blond girl had appeared behind Beth looking irritated. "That guy is such a loser. I mean if he wanted me to die he could have at least given me a fight instead of sneaking up on me."

She looked remarkably not dead. Her hair was shiny and clean and her clothes...while wrinkled and still showing a few stains from her breakfest were at least not torn and ripped and bloody like in the video.

"I liked being eaten by the shark better." She added. "Least the shark was honest about it."

[schnapp]

She was aware of the fact that the people in these videos were the same people who lived in this centre, but it hadn't really sunk in until now as the girl appeared in front of her. Maybe that means that everyone here happens to be a murderer of some sort - but people do desperate things when they're scared and Beth knows that firsthand.

But the way she watches herself get gutted on television with some kind of casual non-chalance makes her feel a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe the people here become desensitized to dying and killing over time.'

It's a little disturbing.

"You're...bein' very calm about this," she says slowly, a little wide-eyed.

[ruffntumblenut]

If Ruffnut noticed the girls discomfort she didn't show it. Instead she grinned a crooked grin cheekily.

"Well next time I saw him I threw my drink in his face in front of a whole party . I would 'a punched him but every time I hit someone around here the peacekeepers zap me with those lightning guns."

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at one of the white jumpsuit clad peace officers standing in ominous and silent vigil over the area.

"You must be new." She added in a continuing sort of casual way.

commons!

[aintyourdad]

"You don't need to watch that crap," Joel says quietly, after watching a sequence of himself killing that younger guy - the French one - who tried to attack him in the last arena. It was a short but brutal fight, and it never gets less weird to watch himself.

The girl looks young, though, if a bit underfed and hollow-eyed. Like someone from his world might look after a bath. Maybe that's why he's talking to her - both of those things. He feels especially bad for the kids brought here.

[schnapp]

Beth doesn't know if she'll ever become accustomed to watching brutal violence. She hopes she never does, because the price of that kind of desensitization has to be incredibly high. She watches as the man in front of her kills the other man with ruthless efficiency and turns to look at him with a purposefully steady gaze. It's sort of obvious that she's trying not to freak out, because that isn't an option.

"I'm gonna be seein' it eventually," she replies, but she's glad for the excuse he presents to tear her eyes away.

[aintyourdad]

"Doesn't mean you should put yourself through more of it than you'll be gettin' in there," Joel points out. "There's more to do around here than watch us all kill each other for stupid reasons."

She seems a lot younger than Ellie, in a way. The way she looks - like she's upset, like she's not yet accustomed to it, it sort of reminds him of the first time Ellie shot a man. And she also looks a little like his memory of Sarah, with her blonde hair and skinny frame. He pushes that thought aside, though.

"I guess you just got here, huh."

[pimpcanes]

"If you don't like what they've served, lass, you only need to tell the Avoxes. They're quite handy. They'll replace it in a moment."

Tom's own plate isn't piled nearly so high, but he's enjoying what's on it - it's certainly a sight better than prison food, and he knows once they get back into the Arena they'll once again be scavenging for meals that will be, in all likelihood, unimpressive.

Despite the fact that the hour is encroaching on afternoon, he's eating breakfast, and his clothing is ever-so-slightly rumpled. He's just come down from a night with Molotov, and hasn't seen fit to really start his day yet. His cane rests on his thigh as he perches on the stool.

The girl down the bar from him, he assumes, is another Tribute, and not a particularly intimidating one at that. He raises his eyebrow at her as he adds yet another unsolicited comment.

"You eat with your mouth, not your eyes, you know."

[schnapp]

Her stomach's grumbling is so loud that it's embarrassing, but the sheer scent of the food is overwhelming after two years of bland meals. She tells herself that she's trying to stop herself from eating too much too fast and getting sick. It's a very good plan, and it's why she finally helps herself to the smallest mouthful.

Just one. And then another, and another because it's so good and Beth's been hungry for so long that it's almost impossible to stop. She should slow down and try to cherish the taste of it all, but she doesn't. And she only stops when she makes herself, putting the fork down and pushing the plate away for a moment.

It's too much all at once. Everything about the Capitol is.

"The avoxes?" she replies finally, once she's done chewing. "The...people who can't talk, right? That's awful."

[pimpcanes]

Tom raises his eyebrows and watches with horrified fascination as she puts food away at a pace that would have left his partner Cain in the dust - and the Juggernaut weighed nearly a literal tonne. He manages to turn his head and look like he's not observing her behavior with something akin to disgust right before she looks up from the plate and back at him.

"Their tongues are cut out, so I hear, but I haven't heard them making any particularly interesting moaning noises either, so I think they might have had their vocal cords removed to. Regardless," he sighs and picks at his food, appetite ruined by Beth's 'antics', as he would call them, "they have their uses, and at least the Capitol hasn't executed them for treason. Some totalitarian governments would."

tcc

[reassures]

The viewing options around here are genuinely depressing, and poor Beth certainly doesn't look like she's enjoying it a great deal. Nill spots her when she wanders in from the street almost immediately, and after a moment of making sure she's right she quickly walks over to where Beth's seated, making sure that her footsteps are heard and that she doesn't sneak up on her.

When she stops she already has something written on her notepad, and she holds it up for Beth to read.

are you ok?
there are better things to do than watch that.

[schnapp]

Daryl's taught her a little bit about tracking, and she's spent enough time in the woods to make her paranoid about every little noise. She hears Nill approaching and is glad for the excuse to stop looking at the television for now, though the awful commentary is still going. What an exciting win, they crow as the crowd cheers, and for a moment Beth wishes she had something to smash the damn screen with.

She keeps waiting for the girl in front of her to speak, and tilts her head a little to read what's written on the pad. Trying not to be too curious about it. Maybe she doesn't talk - maybe she can't.

"But that's why we're here, right? For that."

restaurant!!

[gladiayyygirl]

Gannicus knows that look. He's sure he had the same look on his own face when he had first been presented with the kind of food that he could never even possibly had dreamed of in his entire life. It was a shock, an actual slap in the face, to be given so much. And for free, without even having to kill it or do something in return.

His own plate is smaller. Gannicus has learned that - after a lifetime of slave diet of simple meat and bread and wine - gorging was a terrible, painful idea.

The gladiator slides in to a seat across the table from the blonde girl and nods at her plate.

"Eat that with haste and risk seeing contents of stomach upon floor," He warns with a lazy, easy grin.

[schnapp]

Honestly, it had been a little shocking to step into this restaurant and be immediately handed enough food to easily feed three people. She wonders if if has anything to do with her stylist's comments about apparently being dirty, unkempt and underfed, and not in the stylish way- whatever the hell that meant.

She doesn't really know where to start, so she'll spare the man who just slid up next to her an uneasy sort of smile. "Is that what happened to you? When you first got here, I mean."