So when they said prison planet... [Open]

[hi_there_aliens]

Who| Daniel Jackson and you! [Open]
What| Daniel arrives at the Capitol, after thinking he and SG-1 were going to be sent off for "justice" after inadvertently aiding a criminal. This isn't what he expected. He begins to poke around.
Where| Close to the Tribute Training Center, wandering around outside.
When| Evening - he's arrived sometime after curfew is over.
Warnings/Notes| I'd like to avoid Daniel getting spoiled on the part where death isn't permanent in the Arena please.

It still hadn't quite set in. The horror that is, Daniel thought. He wandered out from the building that had been marked as a Training Center in a daze. The shock was probably stage one. Or was it denial? Both? He was definitely going for both right now.  Daniel was sure the sheer horror of it would eventually strike - it had to-  and hit him hard when it did, but he was still working on the part where the Taldor had made this their judgement for SG-1. Tributes, Districts, Hunger Games, gladiatorial combat. That's what you got for trespassing, carrying arms to defend yourself, and accidentally aiding a criminal. He hated to see what they did if you jaywalked. Maybe that was average prison material.

To think, all Daniel had been worried about this morning was whether Sha're would be on the other side of the gate this time, followed by getting Jack to see that the current planet might just have more to offer than trees and moss.

"And here I was expecting Botany Bay," he muttered under his breath. A woman strolled past Daniel. Her heels even gave that little click on the ground that seemed pretty universal; very classy, very smart it said. It was also the only familiarity about her. She was dressed to what he suspected was supposed to be to the nines in this place. It made his eyes want to tear up; orange, purple and green had no business mixing like that, topped off with a mix of feathers and fur.  Daniel looked around. No one else seemed to find it glaring; she looked as much at home as the other people wandering the pathways. She gave him a mildly interested look, but passed on. Certainly no criminal herself.

It was this that set off the chill that started to spread through his stomach.  This woman and people like her were going to  tune in and watch them die one by one. Only one could survive. He had no idea where the rest of SG-1 were; for all he knew, he'd ended up here alone.  Daniel licked at his lips nervously.  "I think I'd rather have the prison planet..."

Comments

Re: No problem!

[hi_there_aliens]

The rustle of clothing and the slight ting of glass being put down on metal was a sign that it was time to move on. Daniel got to his feet, glad that they wouldn't have to stay in the room much longer; waves and waves of tributes must have come through here, passing in on the way to the slaughterhouse. He'd been around death a lot. It sort of came as part of his job. But there was more dignity to mummified remains and the ceremonies involved than what they were looking at.

Daniel followed her, looking around the tower more carefully now that he didn't have a veritable entourage surrounding him. At the time, he could barely hear himself think at the time when he had his Escort and stylists speaking over each other the moment they got their first look at him. "Avoxes? What do those do?"

The room seemed to chill a good several degrees. Okay, so she was "out", and she preferred everyone else to keep out as well on that subject. Daniel had the sudden feeling he couldn't press this one; not if he wanted to get more information out of her on the Games and the culture. As one of the more blunt sources of information out there, he wasn't so willing to blow it just yet.

Daniel stepped into the elevator after her, moving aside so she could press whichever floor she had in mind.

"I read it years ago, but yes. I know of it," Daniel answered. His eyes drifted upwards for a moment, closed as he dredged his memory. "Twenty centuries of stony sleep/were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,/And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

He thought he understood what she was getting at. That the long history of the Games and the Capitol's supremecy were on shaky ground, that what had always been brewing had or was close to coming to a head. It secretly pleased him to no end that Eva was using literature to speak in a code of sorts. It almost made up for her earlier pot shots at him. Almost.

Now how did Panem have people signing the cross, an Earth religious gesture, and Yeats, if it was another planet? Humans displaced by Goa'uld brought old culture with them (1919 hardly fell under old culture or in Goa'uld timeframe), but generations later had a tendency to often change things, so they were close but not exactly the same. An ugly suspicion began in the back of his mind. Two different ones at least. One of them - time travel - sounded a little too far-fetched, too sci-fi movie for him, and anyway, he wasn't sure of the quantum physics needed for the Gate to function like that - Sam would, so the archaeologist put that one on the backburner. Daniel bit absently on his bottom lip, then went on. "I'm surprised you are, actually. It's an older, 1919 poem, from Earth."

Re: No problem!

[vissernone]

Eva just leaves the bottle of water and the glass there. The Avoxes will clean it up. That's what they're there for, and in some ways the Capitol has made Eva numb enough to not even notice the Avoxes if they aren't her son. He might still be among them, somewhere, and until she finds him or finds confirmation of his death, all the others may as well not exist.

In the elevator, she taps her foot and shifts her weight from side to side. It's clear she doesn't like being in an enclosed space. Even her breathing seems to pick up a little bit, and she knows it's because the elevator reminds her of the tube they used to lift her up into the Arena back when she fought, and she wonders why nearly four decades is hardly enough balm to take the bite off that burn.

"Avoxes are the non-dangerous traitors to the Capitol. They don't talk." Because their tongues are cut out. "They're here to serve you."

She looks pleased for a multitude of reasons that Daniel is familiar with the poem. For one thing, it means she might have someone to actually talk to about literature, something that's been missing for many years for her now. For another, it means that she can be much more open than she has been, coded or not.

"You don't have to recite it to me. I know it by heart. I've always rather liked the first stanza." But unlike him, she's not about to start saying it out loud. That would ruin the purpose of the code. She can trust that no one finds her suspicious enough to run her idle chitchat about books through to a library, but she doesn't want to lay out the topic of conversation for anyone listening.

"Of course it's from Earth. Where else would it be from?" She doesn't look as if she's calling him silly so much as genuinely perplexed by his statement.