thecapitol | history: lines on my face

Entry tags:

history: lines on my face

Who| Davesprite (

anachronologistics) and YOU, with a closed prompt for Nill (

reassures)
What| Post mini-arena shenanigans
Where| All around in the Tribute tower; the lounge, rooftop, and D11
When| a day or so after the victors/survivors of the mini-arena emerge.
Warnings/Notes| Strider language and probably existential depression. Will update if necessary? Let me know in the subject line where your character is meeting up with this feathery asshole, or make up something of your own! I am very flexible.

Everything fucking hurts.

Normally, Davesprite wouldn't bitch about it. Honestly, it isn't unlike all those times when he spent hours strifing with Bro on the roof and woke up the next day feeling like every fibre in his muscles had been snapped.

His muscles ache, his wings are caked in slime and feel like they've melted in places where they caught acid from the water guns, and all he really wants to do is sleep.

D11;

The viking kid didn't come back from the arena.

Not that Davesprite really talked with him much, but he had been pretty cool. Nerdy, in a way that kind of reminded him of Egbert if Egbert knew more about turning wild boars over spits and wearing a bunch of fur and leather. A quick check reveals that his room is stripped empty, and there's a sort of violated feeling about that, kinda like walking into your room to find something out of place and knowing your bro has been rifling through it.

To his credit he doesn't outwardly look bothered by it, even as he splays himself on his stomach over a couch in the tribute suite, and rifles through a pile of sketches and doodles (most of them his own) that had been left on a coffee table. The television is on, left to broadcast coverage of post-arena bullshit.

What. He's looking for ~~his friends~~ himself on television. Wouldn't you?

Should anyone walk in, Davesprite doesn't look up from either one as he offers a casual, "Honey, I'm home."

Lounge;

He had decided very quickly after his arrival that the Avoxes are a little creepy, and that if he needed anything he was just going to handle it himself, masking it as being unable to trust anyone to get a satisfactory glass of apple juice. After a couple of hours of casually watching the post-arena media frenzy, Davesprite decides to saunter vaguely down into the lounge to get something to fill his gut in spite of the fact that he feels like hell. In the back of his mind, he knows that getting something to eat would probably be the best thing for him, besides a nap.

(At least he has the decency to change into some clean clothes, although his wings are still rather rough-looking from where it looks like he had tried to scrub congealed slime from his feathers and wound up just pulling them out.)

He hasn't really ever bothered coming down here before, and he doesn't really want to be down here now -- but if it came between dealing with creepy people in ball-gags (okay they really aren't ball-gags, that's just part of his entire internal dissertation) and dealing with the frenzy of the lounge, he'll take the lounge.

Should anyone make long enough eye-contact with him to where it would be awkward if neither say anything, he'll nod ever-so-slightly and casually ask, "What's good?"

Rooftop; Closed to Nill

Showering is awful. The residual traces of acid had washed away easily enough -- though it leaves him hissing because it feels like the world's worse sunburn under the shower spray -- but the slime actually repels water, so rather than wash clean with just a rinse it gets trapped further in his feathers and requires a god-awful amount of scrubbing with soap. Even then, though, a good amount of it is caught so high up that it's impossible to reach without turning into some sort of feathery contortionist.

He's sure this shit is starting to harden and chafe. He's also too tired to deal with it.

There are still a few hours to go before curfew kicks in, but honestly he doesn't really care about it. Nill will find him sitting on the roof and staring out over the Capitol. It's hard to say if he hears her when she approaches, but he doesn't seem to look surprised when he looks back over his shoulder at her.

"Hey."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

An orange dude with feathers who looks like his best friend.

That's what Karkat sees when he comes down to the lounge this day, likewise not wholly comfortable with the Avoxes. Being served like that is just weird to him - not something one of his not-even-a-caste could expect, nor something he really wants. But he is hungry, and he wants something better than just grabbing something of his own out of the kitchen area in district six.

It's just, you know, he didn't expect to see this guy. He knows who he is - it's Davesprite, no doubt - but he's looking worse for the weather. And why does he have legs? He's not going to learn anything by gawking, though, so he finally heads closer.

He asks, "How long have you been here?"

It's awkward. He feels awkward. He's never actually spoken to Davesprite about anything; it's just impossible to misidentify an orange bird Dave, is all.

There is only one thing that Davesprite does not envy Dave for, and it's that Dave was the one that wound up having to catch the meteor express. If it had been himself, Davesprite is pretty sure that he would have put a shitty sword between his eyeballs. He doesn't have as much patience for the trolls as Dave apparently does. It's kind of the thing that happens when one of them kills your best friend and you have to doom your whole timeline and everyone in it just to fix it.

His tone is still casual though, almost bored, even if his wings do try to tighten against his back in spite of the way that they ache.

"Approximately twenty seconds, and I'm surprised it took that long for my troll magnetism to kick in."

Really, Davesprite should have been prepared for this. Even with his attempt to wink to try to comfort Milla, there is no escape from the inevitable. The inevitable parenting that comes with Milla Vodello as a suitemate.

Dave's greeting knocks whatever she was thinking about out of her mind entirely as she moves towards the couch Dave is strewn upon. "Oh, darling." Concern is written across her features and she's likely to hug the boy if he sits up.

She'd ask if he was alright, but she knew the answer to that. It wasn't even worth asking. The most she can muster is something simpler. "How are you feeling-?"

Davesprite piles the papers so that his own doodles -- it looks like talking nachos? -- are on top. He doesn't sit up just yet, his back hurts too much for sitting up, but he does prop his chin on his hand and watches her from behind his shades as she comes closer.

Wings notwithstanding, there are a couple of superficial cuts and scrapes but they look like he's already attended to them. He tries to shrug a shoulder, so that it looks more like he's just flopping his hand around, and glances at the hologram television replaying the past few days' events.

"Like I just woke up grinning like a goddamn bear full of honey from a delightful nap on a bed of soft flowers and I'm ready to take on the day."

All his words do is make her frown more pronounced as she moves to crouch next to the couch and touch his forehead. The gesture is gentle, careful for any bumps or bruises he might have gotten on his head.

Milla doesn't question the sarcasm or demand Dave answer her honestly, she just looks concerned and accepts this is Dave. A teenager who deflects a question like that. "You certainly look the part, dear. Bursting at the seams from all that honey."

Milla opts for honesty on her part. "I was so worried about you, darling. I'm glad you're back."

The aftermath of the Arena had left Nill unsure of how to really react. How were you supposed to act, how were you supposed to feel, after you just watched kids fighting for their lives and dying? And some of them even dying for other people?

Watching the Arena had been horrific, but at least she knew what to do. Get tickets (no matter her comfort level), send them to people. Smoke (a lot). Drink (a little). Try not to lose it (she had, when Initiate died). Very standard, no matter how awful.

Then came the after, and though Nill didn't honestly know what she was supposed to do with the after, she at least had some idea. A tiny thing in the back of her mind that was something she could do, that no one else probably could. It wasn't like the place had a surplus of people with wings, and it certainly didn't seem like Davesprite could handle all the stuff he'd had dumped on him by himself.

The roof wasn't the first place she checked, but after she got there, she wondered why she didn't look before. Nill walks across the rooftop until she stops a few feet away from Davesprite, and she offers him a small smile, though it doesn't reach her eyes. There's a bag in one hand, and her notepad in the other, and after taking a moment to flip the page she holds it up, a message already written on it.

I thought you could use some help

In some fucked up way, coming out of the Arena had been worse than actually being in the Arena. At least, in the Arena, there was hardly any time to think. Just run, don't do something stupid, keep your shit unfucked, don't do something stupid, get Clementine over the finish line, and don't do something stupid. Coming out of the Arena there was nothing but time.

How are you supposed to act, coming out of a death race against a bunch of other kids and knowing that many had died. How were you supposed to feel, knowing that some hadn't come back at all? Meaningless death is not foreign concept to Davesprite -- it's the concept of finality, that is. What determines whether someone is brought back, and how does he know if he's slated for return packaging?

His feathers puff, save for the ones that are coated in congealed slime, and he scoots over a little as if to make room for her next to him. Not that there isn't a whole rest of the roof for her to sit.

"If by help you mean taking in mad scenery, I think I got my shit pretty much handled."

He's relatively unscathed. Another bonus to having wings, save for exceptional balance -- natural shields against bullshit that's prone to flying at you during death races.

"Winnie the Pooh ain't got nothin' on me," it feels a little weird to have a hand touching his face. He's not sure what to do with it, and so his brow furrows and he just watches her look him over. "Shit got pretty hot to handle, but we took care of it."

Mostly. He kind of wishes he hadn't failed so spectacularly at getting Dave through the arena, or a couple of the others.

"Did all the adults have an epic meltdown when we all left?"

"I'm proud then, dear. You survived." She states softly back, only pulling her hand back when she's satisfied. "And you didn't hunt anyone down for 'fun'." Milla is proud of that, proud he didn't indulge the games anymore than he needed to.

His question earns an amused sound from the psychic, "Darling, they made us have a drunken slumber party with the ugliest pajamas known to mankind, so, yes. Yes they did." Even if lying feels like a better choice, Dave's a teenager, he wouldn't believe everyone was fine.

Edited 2014-11-12 10:22 (UTC)

Instead of taking the obvious offer, Nill drops the bag of stuff beside him. The contents are a pretty impressive first aid kit, which has almost everything except the usual plastic box as opposed to the bag. There's a bigger emphasis on bandages and creams, a tiny pair of scissors, some tweezers - the works, really.

Nill doesn't write anything. Instead she gestures towards his wings, her own shifting against her back in a slightly sympathetic gesture, as if just looking at them is enough for her own to ache. Then she lifts an eyebrow at him, the general intent behind it obvious. She can take care of that if you let her, Davesprite.

Well, he's a Strider alright. Karkat's eyebrows lower and he passes a sigh through his nostrils.

"Not that, you obtuse tube of jello. I mean here." His arms spread in a broad motion. "The Capitol, Panem, this place. I haven't seen you yet and just because we haven't spoken before this doesn't mean I can't come up and greet Dave's fuzzy bird double who suddenly has legs."

He hikes a thumb at himself now. "I'm Karkat Vantas, leader of the Alternian troll team, the one that made you all, and I'm trying to assemble a mental list and some kind of contact with the people here from our conglomeration of universes. And no, I don't remember what past me did here if you were around to see him, so let's just sweep that out of the way now."

"Wow, there is absolutely nothing in anything you just said that I care about."

Davesprite doesn't really remember much of his conversations with any of the trolls prior to his boarding of the reverse-timeline express. Almost a year of bullshitting around Sburb plus three years of bullshitting around a flying battleship sort of trumps the memorybank of the few hours he might have had in contact with any of them before they fucked off to whatever corner of the multiverse they were shitting up and everything went to literal garbage. He remembers Terezi -- though, to be fair, it is kind of hard to forget the person who royally fucked your shit to hell and back -- and even further back he sort of remembers the weirdly cheerful one who called herself a maid of time before he even knew what that actually meant.

But he had spent three years bullshitting around a battleship with Jade, who did more than her fair share of talking about the trolls even when he didn't want to, so he knows the name. She'd talked about him a lot; he was the shouty one who turned out to be something of a nice guy.

"But that's nice, I guess. Now can I respectfully request to be removed and put on the do-not-call list? You assholes always call at dinnertime and it's so goddamn unmannerly..."

It's kind of like old times, isn't it.

Edited 2014-11-12 17:55 (UTC)

Haruto staggers into the central lounge, clutching a cup coffee, and the presence of Davesprite there catches him by surprise. "You're back." He normally wouldn't say anything as really obvious as that, but he is wrote. There is no internal censor anymore, and his brain feels positively liquified. This is but the first of many dumb things he will say today.

"...why are you even watching that?" Like this, for example. He'd spent the last twenty four damned hours being forced to watch it, and he would like to never see it again, thanks. Unsteadily, he moves in to try and find the remote and change the channel.

"Hell yeah I did."

But a lot of other kids didn't. And a few of them didn't come back. Like Hiccup. What did that even mean?

There are a lot of adjectives he would like to use to describe the whole situation. Fine is not one of them.

"... Were they footie pajamas?"

Why, yes, he's asking this seriously.

He glances down into the bag, and then back up at her.

"Jesus tits, I think the only thing you're missing is a goddamn bonesaw and one of those adorable paper hats. Knock, knock, it's time for your lobotomy..." He props his elbow on his knee. As if to mimic her, his own eyebrow rises behind his shades. "You're definitely missing the lollipop for being a good boy, though. I might be inclined to start screaming and thrashing and being a generally intolerable and inconsolable little shit without one."

His wings relax, though, as if waiting for her to start doing the thing.

Edited 2014-11-13 07:30 (UTC)

"Sup."

... wow. Gone a couple days and suddenly coffee never smelled so good. The feathers on his wings perk a bit, and Davesprite props his chin on his hand.

"Looking for myself on tv, what does it look like?"

It's obvious what Haruto's looking for. The remote is on the coffee table. Davesprite isn't going to protest if he changes the channel.

She has to suppress a grimace at the bonesaw comment, but otherwise she seems pretty unflappable. (Ha, ha.) Nill digs into the bag, and pulls her notepad out from where it got shoved to near the bottom of the bag. She takes a moment to write on it before showing it to him, and makes no moves to reach for anything else until she gets a response.

I'm going to cut some of the feathers off.
it will hurt less than pulling them.
they'll be replaced with new ones when you molt.
is that ok?

She certainly can pull them, but it's gonna hurt a hell of a lot more, and probably have some bleeding and stained feathers. Plus it risks getting the crap in his feathers in the wounds and getting infected.

He's familiar with molting. Similarly, he's familiar with growing an entire wing back, but he doesn't really feel like having to explain how that even worked. The entirety of Panem just got finished watching him make an ass out of himself in a Luigi costume during a hatejuice-fueled Chuck-E-Cheese obstacle course from hell, the last thing he really feels like doing is explaining the bullshit properties of being a sprite.

"I like orange ones, just so you know. I'm damn serious about my orange lollipops," he adds while she writes, and he waits until she's flipped the notepad over before leaning in just a little to peer at it. At first, it looks like he might refuse her offer all together until finally he just shrugs. The wings fall even more lax as he crosses his arms and looks back out across the city.

"It's cool. Just make sure that it doesn't look stupid. Tomorrow's picture day at school."

She looks like she wants to double check, to really make sure, but she's also worried that if she gives him too many opportunities then he might not actually let her do anything, and no one else around here was gonna be able to deal with his feathers like she could. It didn't seem to be a very huge fashion statement in the Capitol, thank goodness.

She digs into the bag, and hands him a bottle, one that he might have thought earlier was just a thing of iodine. She also hands him a wrapped sandwich, which was at the very bottom, before pulling out the tiny pair of scissors and moving to stand behind him.

Cue Nill very carefully brushing her fingers over his feathers, trying to find the spots where he got hit, and making sure she doesn't miss any. She's probably gonna be at it for awhile.

Milla is used to being the comforting adult, the one who wraps things in a bow to make them better. Right now, she can't really see the point of it. They all know what's going on here.

"Yes, yes there were. They were all extremely hideous." Says the woman who wears bright eye confusing patterns on a regular basis.

"Hey there sweetpea," Gary calls back as he steps out of the elevator. Yes, part of this is just to tease, but if the hop in his step is any indication, he is genuinely happy to know that Davesprite's back. The lingering discomfort from making so many people in the Arena angry, combined with the wariness of finding one of the rooms in D11 empty earlier in the day, has Gary feeling particularly grateful, if not outright clingy at finding people he recognizes going about their business. Just like normal. Nothing wrong here.

He walks into the common area and his eyes are immediately drawn to the television. Gary parks himself behind the couch. "What have they said? Anything about me?"

"Ah." He sounds not the least bit thrilled about this, and grabs for the remote the moment he spots it. "You know, you're really easy to spot...." What with being bright orange, and also the focus of many an exciting focus moment, or instant replay. Why, look, they've cut to a nice shot of him and a pink-haired girl dodging acid slime. There's time for the both of them to appreciate it while Haruto tries to remember which buttons change what. He manages to get the volume to rise, then to lower, and then finally hits on the right combination to switch it to a nature documentary.

With that arduous task completed, Haruto drops the remote back to the coffee table with a clatter. And then, clutching his cup of coffee with both hands, he has a long drink of it. It seems to bring a little life back into him, because he speaks again. "....you did pretty good."

Karkat's face scrunches up in a downright affronted look. What's this guy's problem? He's a version of Dave, alright, but one with all the annoying qualities back at the forefront for reasons he doesn't know. He never had some jealous conflict over Terezi with him, so what gives? He didn't even have part in the doomed timeline business, and it's not like they ever spoke to have a bad history before.

"Did someone excrete in your breakfast grains this morning? You don't even know me. Or if it's something past me did, I'd appreciate being informed instead of a bland 'don't care, don't talk to me' response that clarifies absolutely nothing."

He can tell what the sandwich is immediately, but he isn't really hungry just yet. He sets it down next to him, though, close enough that he definitely won't forget about it. The bottle, though, he just turns over in his hands a couple of times and listens to the liquid inside slosh around.

The wings are in pretty bad shape. Probably worse than he's let on to anyone.

The slime is congealed in most places, weighing down the primary and secondary feathers, and caking into the downy ones. Some feathers have already been plucked out, leaving the skin underneath raw, red, and puffy. All things considered, though, it doesn't seem like the slime is what has caused the worst of the damage. That was left to the acid. While the feathers had mostly acted as a sort of natural buffer, there are still undeniable patches where the skin has been rubbed and scrubbed raw to the point of bleeding.

(He had been a little shocked to see he actually bleeds red, but that is neither here nor there.)

The muscles in his back tighten as she works, and for a good few minutes he's very quiet; holding his breath.

"Did anyone in your district not come back?"

Nill does her best to be as gentle as possible as she goes, getting the damaged feathers that she can't do much for but that are within easy access out of the way. She's very careful about it, and a few times resorts to cutting off the fluff so as not to cut too close to the base of the feathers. It's definitely gonna look funny, but she figures him complaining is better than hurting him.

Then, the slime. She's got a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a huge pile of cotton balls that she's trying to use to get the slime out, among other things, since water probably hadn't done the trick for it, though she keeps it well away from any of the places where he's got open wounds. It's for cleaning only, not making him hurt worse than he already does.

She didn't wear gloves. It's easier to work, easier to find what she needs to; she doesn't know what feathers should and shouldn't feel like through latex or rubber. It'll probably sting later, maybe, but for now she doesn't feel it. She hadn't felt it when she got the various small scars on her hands, either. It doesn't matter.

Her fingers hover over a particularly unpleasant looking gob of slime, debating how to answer him. She doesn't want to try and write anything, it'd just get more junk on her hands, and he might get infections. Eventually she lifts one hand to very gently tap the top of one of his wings, and then the other, twice this time. One for yes, two for no. She's not sure it's common enough for him to pick up right away, but maybe she'll get lucky, or he'll suggest a better method.

Then she taps the first wing again, just once. Yes.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4

history: lines on my face

The Lounge

no subject

D11 - prepare for momming

but mooooooom

no escape, no surrender, only disco mom

closed - god damn it I had a nicer one written and then it got eaten I'm sorry

... would you believe me if I said the same thing literally just happened to me?

surrenders quietly to that sweet night

no subject

yes I would, go us

no subject

no subject

D11

no subject

We are the most talented. It is us.

no subject

damn right

no subject

no subject

no subject

D11

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject