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

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.

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When Beth starts eating, it's hard to stop. Her body isn't used to eating such rich foods and she's most definitely going to be sick later, but at the moment it's really nice. Being clean and fed is such a foreign state of being, but it doesn't do enough to distract her from the looming threat this place presents.

"It's...kind of a long story," she replies, after a moment. Putting her fork down because it's too much at once and she's starting to feel queasy. The reason why she doesn't explain right away isn't because she's uncomfortable with it, but because most people have no idea what she's talking about.

It's become easier to assume that nobody does, at this point.

Two bites out of her sandwich and a celery stick dipped in the ranch dressing later, Tess finishes up chewing. With hesitation like that, from the young girl, it might be better to not push it. Long stories aren't the kind anyone wants to talk about.

"If you'd rather not, that's fine too. Long stories are known to be a pain in the ass."

Tess nudges her plate over closer to Beth, silently offering her some of her veggies and dip, carrots and celery and broccoli.

The vegetables look tempting compared to all of the complicated food on her place, chock full of dairy and rich ingredients that will probably make her sick later on after months of going without. After a moment, she reaches out and takes a carrot. It tastes good when she crunches into it. Fresh. Not something out of a can.

Reminds her a little of the farm.

"No, I just...most people I talk to don't know anythin' about it. They all seemed so happy, I figured they wouldn't want to hear about the world endin'," though it's a little weird to talk about it like that, the end of the world. It's just phrasing that other people have used, though it doesn't feel completely right,

"No one wants to ever hear about the world ending but it happens." Tess chews a celery stick and falls into a moment of silence, thoughtful silence. "You either die with it or you fight to survive."

Fight to survive and do things you never thought you would have to do; killing and stealing, breaking and entering, committing all kinds of crimes.

Fight to survive sounds like something Daryl or Rick might say. A painfully consistent mantra that always seems to hang over their heads. Do you keep going? Do you lay down and cry? Because if you choose the later, you might not get back up again.

Beth knows that, maybe more than most in her world. She looks up at Tess with a thoughtful sort of expression, the food momentarily forgotten. "You sound like...you're talkin' from experience," maybe she's isn't, though. In which case, she'll be happy for her.

Because it'd be a little selfish to be disappointed at losing the opportunity to bond with someone over shared and terrible life experiences.

Tess meets the look with a glance, seeing the expression worn on Beth's face. She nudges her plate to her again - there's lots so don't be shy, that's what the unspoken gesture means.

Is this something she wants to get into and explain? Is this a story she wants to tell? Is it one Beth wants to hear?

As far as Tess is concerned...they do have the time to spare.

"I am, about twenty years of it." Because they're discussing the world coming to an end, Tess then adds, "How did it happen?"

"Twenty years?" it's been about two since the outbreak happened, and it already feels like an age. Feels like they've lost so much. She honestly can't imagine twenty years into the future when she's not even really sure what tomorrow holds. If she's dead or not, when the last thing she remembers is blackness.

She chews thoughtfully on a stalk of celery, enjoying the crispness of it while she can. It's a long and painful story, but she'll try to trim it down as much as she can. "I don't think anyone knows. People just...started gettin' sick. When they died, they'd be different. They'd come back, but they wouldn't be the same. They wouldn't be people anymore. Nobody knows why - the government, the folks at the CDC...they're gone now, as far as we know."

Well that's one hell of a way to contract an infection.

"And it wasn't airborne? Something in the water?" She takes a carrot in between listening to Beth and letting her mind wander to the cordyceps infection, biting into it and chewing. "What were they? Was there a name for them when they came back and were no longer people?"

Tess is reminded of the conversation she'd had with Clementine about their world similarities.

"Walkers. I think most people called them that. Some other folk had other names for them, but that's what we called them," biters, or rotters, Glenn used to call them geeks. "We used to think you just had to get bit, but...everyone has it. Everyone who dies comes back as a walker unless you destroy the brain."

Which, as a whole, means that people in her version of apocalypse now are kind of fucked, 24/7.

"Walkers," she repeats. "Someone else I talked to called them that, a little girl by the name of Clementine. You bump into her yet?"

But really though...all of that sounds so fucked up to Tess. Almost like there's no hope, no point in trying to stick it out to the end when you know what's going to become of you when you die unless someone takes the right measures.

Jesus, it reminds her of herself. Of what's currently attached somewhere in her head, to her brain, like a leech but without the sucking out her humanity bit.

It's harder, to figure out how to keep hoping after a bombshell like that. Understanding that some kind of cure is probably going to be all that more difficult when everyone's infected. Actually, scratch that. There literally might not be any hope of a cure, ever. The world might not ever go back to the way it was.

You pick the small things to keep hanging on for.

"There's someone else here?" that gets her attention to the point where Beth's looking up in a hurry, food instantly abandoned. In fact, the plate gets accidentally knocked off the counter, shattering at her feet.

Well. That's great.

The smashing plate and the girl's reaction startle Tess enough that she jumps in her seat and straightens up. Her hands come up and she reaches out to steady Beth. "Easy - easy."

She looks down at the broken plate and sighs. She imagines herself not having that kind of reaction if someone had told her Joel or Ellie or anyone from her world was here. She would do the opposite of wanting to find them, she would want to avoid them. and for good reason.

"You know her?" she asks as she moves off the seat to crouch and begin picking up the bigger pieces of broken china.

The way she reacts reminds her of some of the other people in their group. Jumpy, trained by necessity to react to loud noises, anything that might signal a threat. She's on her feet in a second, too. Picking up glass despite the fact that the avoxes are moving towards them to clean it up. Beth's never going to get used to being waited on. And even though she moves out of the way because she's not sure what else to do, she watches them with an expression that is equal parts anger and sadness.

What was done to them was terrible. She tells them, thank you and they recoil like she's hit them. It takes her a moment to calm down, to reach back to what they were talking about before this.

"No, I...I'm just thinkin' about who else they might've brought, if it isn't just me. I'm -- real sorry if I startled you."

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

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