thecapitol | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who| Everyone
What| Lockdown
Where| Tribute Training Center
When| Starting around dusk
Warnings/Notes| None atm. If your character tries anything extravagant, shoot the mods a pm.

Dusk was falling when it started.

Anyone in the District 12 suite's would have heard heavy sounds above them moments before a loud explosion rocked the entire building. The electricity flickers once, twice, then goes out, replaced by cool, blue glowing lights running along the ceilings. Avoxes appeared silently, as they do, herding people from one room to another.

Once the door shuts, it doesn't open again until the last person is there, sealed shut. The windows in the rooms with them were darkened, and the computer would not respond to any request to show anything. However, food could be called to the room, the trays appearing as they normally do. But the doors would not budge, and the cool blue lights stayed the only light source, the only power.

Although there was nothing to see, there was lots to hear. Banging, foot steps in the halls, on the floors above, explosions, straining metal collapsing, scraping down the side of the building. Occasionally the repetitive rapping of gun shots. Yelling. Screaming. Those near the top of the building could smell smoke, at times strongly. The elevator can be heard moving up and down, even though it doesn't respond to any calls from those trapped.

The sounds last into the late night, finally quieting around midnight. Finally, at 1 am, a calm, cool voice comes over the loud speakers.

"The rebellion forces have been repressed. We will be clearing the building for the next few hours. Please stay patient and sleep well."

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Bloody creepy. Absolutely bloody creepy.

"Do you ever stop?" Draco asked warily, decidedly more bothered by the parade area now that Katurian was suggesting things to him like this. It was almost impossible to ignore, especially with the sounds coming from what felt like all around them.

"No," he said.

The ratta-tat-tat of bullets echoed above them. Then there was a yell. Another. Another. Katurian closed his eyes and imagined bullet holes carved in flesh. He imagined blown-out eyeballs. Splintered bone.

Maybe they were being rescued or maybe it was a massacre. Who knew anymore?

"Maybe you ought to. We're in the Capitol right now, not the Arenas. I'm surprised Effie hasn't said something to you yet," he stated, a wary sneer tugging at his mouth.

He took a moment to listen in on the noises, frowning upwards before pulling a more harsh face, "What are they even doing up there?"

"There's not a thing that's illegal about what I do," he said, but his attention was elsewhere, on the booms and cracks and shrieks. He winced despite himself. His fingers were knotted together at his front. Hidden from view, his thumbnail dug into his palm. Hard.

Grounding pain.

"Maybe it's finally happened," he said. "Someone's finally fucking snapped."

"Who cares if it's illegal? I hardly think that comes into play at all." He rolled his eyes, shoulders tensing slightly. He'd never been involved in something like this, so like a war; he'd only ever heard about them, and that gave him just enough detachment that he could loudly remark on it. This? Considerably harder to detach from.

"Maybe you should just shut your trap before you get the rest of us killed," Draco quickly stated, voice lifting a little in mild hysteria.

He heard that anxiety, that hysteria, and it caught him off guard. He turned to look at Draco, his eyes widening, his back straightening. The truth was that he had meant to unsettle Draco, if only slightly, the earlier criticism of his stories (and morbidness) pushing him towards a subtle, spiteful revenge. But did he really intend to panic a teenager?

"What?"

It wasn't very eloquent, but it poured out effortlessly, the surprise.

"I told you to shut your trap," he replied, putting as much emphasis into the three words as he could. Some of the hysteria had dwindled, turning into anger, but Draco was by no means any less anxious. Too many of his unrealistic-world-view bubbles being broken at one time.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, his voice pitching upwards in confusion. He folded his arms over his chest, a tight hug, as he looked over the boy.

He shot Katurian a dark look, sneering his disapproval at the insinuation. "There's nothing the matter with me. You're the one who needs his head checked here."

He had heard it all before. Accusations of insanity, calls of depravity. It hurt, but it was a resigned sort of hurt, one that manifested in flickering blinks and downcast eyes. He laughed, the sound more like a gasp than anything pleasant. He raised his shoulders in a shrug. He was noncommittal. Silent.

But there was one thing he couldn't let go. He was quiet for maybe ten, fifteen seconds before the next words poured out.

"I'm not going to get anyone killed," he said. The words were confident, but his voice wasn't.

Edited 2013-03-08 22:20 (UTC)

"Really? Are you sure about that? How can you be sure about it? It's not like anything around here is a given or anything," he warily stated, eyeing Katurian. He didn't trust that silence, nor the shrug, nor that gasp of a laugh, nor any of it. Not the noises above them, or the empty parade area, or the fact that they'd been so unceremoniously dumped there.

"I'm not sure about anything," he said. It was one of the many things that kept him awake each night, every night. "But I'm following the rules in this place and I'm not making a fuss. I'm not making a fuss."

This was how he operated back home, too. He kept his head down. He cried in bathrooms where no one could see him. He swallowed rebellion in his tea.

"It's frightening," he said after a beat. Quiet. "I know it's frightening."

For all of that, Katurian and Draco were more similar than they expected. Draco would never admit it, especially not to the bit about crying in bathrooms, though he'd been on the verge time and again. It was hardly his fault things wore down on him - he had a mission, and he bore it like Atlas upon his shoulders. If that involved crying in an abandoned bathroom or two, then so be it.

"Then why are you talking about it like that?" He asked, voice a low, almost desperate hiss. As he went on, his voice began to rise again into nervous hysteria. "Suggesting someone's gone round the twist on us all. If that's the case, who's to say they won't make it down here eventually? They're not going to bring us back from something like this."

They wouldn't, would they? Dying in front of the cameras was nothing like dying in a dark room lit only by emergency lights. He trailed his eyes up to the ceiling. The noise.

"Because," he said, "I know there's no point in lying to yourself."

There were no exits. There were no happy endings.

"It's not good news." The shudder slipped into his voice once more, a quiet vibrato underneath the words. "The things we're hearing up there, it's not good news. We'll die now or we'll die later, again and again, and there's no way to dress that up and make it look fucking pretty."

"That doesn't mean I'm just going to roll over and take it," Draco replied, more than catching that vibrato. It did nothing to quell his nerves; if anything, it made it all worse, sending his imagination into fits of hysteria. Like it hadn't been there before. "I'm not just going to hang out down here and wait."

Wasn't that what it came down to in the end? Every one of them was marked for death. Every one of them was doomed. The only thing that mattered, the only thing they could control, was how much they fought as they went down. Katurian wasn't about to fight the Capitol -- if they could bring him here, then they could bring Michal here. But he could fight within the rules.

He could fight within the rules.

He offered a hand, his palm exposed.

"We don't have a choice about waiting," he said. He forced himself to meet Draco's eyes. "But if they get here, we don't need to roll over and take it."

The blond's eyes flicked from the ground to Katurian's hand, then up to his face, studying him in confusion. None of this made sense, not even when he wracked his brain rolling it over. And now, to go from their previous animosity to... He didn't even know. But that was a proffered hand.

"What are you suggesting?"

His hand trembled while he spoke. He gestured with it in an attempt to hide it, meaningless little circles and bobs.

"I know," he said, his words running together, "that you think I'm weird or fucked up or creepy or w-whatever, I know that, but I'm not a bad person and I don't want anyone to die."

(In the interrogation chamber, the detectives shined a flashlight in his eyes and beat him with their fists and called him a sick, child-murdering freak.)

"A-And maybe we're all fucked and there's nothing we can do, but if someone comes down here to kill all of us -- if someone actually does that -- I'll try to protect you."

"It would probably help me not think you were weird or fucked up or creepy if you didn't act like it," Draco replied, managing to force the words out with too much of a waver or a stutter. He continued to warily eye the other man, remembering quite well that time he thought posting that horrid story was entertaining. It had hardly been the best first impression, working instead to colour every interaction thereafter.

"Why in the world would you try to protect me? You don't even like me."

"You're right," he said. "I don't like you. I think you're a prick."

His eyes flickered downward and he swallowed, somehow aware of every muscle in his throat.

"Or at least I think you sometimes do things that make you seem like a prick, but anyway, that's no reason for me to want you to suffer, and besides, you're still just a kid and this isn't something you're supposed to deal with when you're only a kid, and I've seen some bad fucking things already and so I'm used to it. I'm used to it, and I will be fine."

It was all terribly noble of Katurian, and more than a little strange; Draco was, at first, more inclined to believe that he was just taking the piss, but the longer he listened, and the longer he just gaped at the other man, the more he was willing to believe it. Or pretend that he believed it.

Still: "Just because I'm younger than you are doesn't mean I'm not just as capable," Draco bit back, his voice still strained and trying. There was one thing to be said for the Arenas - they were making Draco start to second-guess his previous bravado; they were making him start to wonder if maybe he couldn't use a little bit of help every now and then. "I've seen things, too! You're not the only one here."

This was good. This was the kind of fighting Katurian was used to, not the kind with barbed sticks and harpoons. Before the cops came to pick him up, before Panem sucked him away and ruined everything, he had been raising Michal, his sweet brother. He raised him since he was fourteen years old. As such, he wore his patience as a badge of honor.

"Then you can protect me," he says, his words no longer pouring out like water from a dam. "It's an offer for help. It's not an insinuation."

He hesitated at that, the open invitation. Almost as though Katurian was offering him some kind of alliance.

Well, Effie would certainly approve of the pair of them getting on; it would make her job easier.

Draco nibbled on his lower lip at that, frowning over at the older man before curtly nodding. "All right. Fine," he swallowed, "I'll protect you. But you're not getting out of protecting me right back."

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