thecapitol | here lies the abyss; open;

Entry tags:

here lies the abyss; open;

Who| Cullen and YOU
What| After a truly horrific death in the arena, Cullen wakes up back in the Capitol. Time to regain his bearings and find his allies again!
Where| Around~ (Let me know if you want a specific prompt and I'll write one up!)
When| After his death, probably Wednesday or Thursday
Warnings/Notes| Descriptions of nasty psychological torture probably.

[District 2 suite]

He wakes with a start, ready for battle. That had been the last thing he remembers doing, after all. A monster, or demon, some sort of creature that had taken Adella's likeness and twisted it into something corrupted and horrific had appeared. His rage and grief had overcome him at the sight of the terrible thing, like his worst fear made diseased flesh, and he'd attacked, as unprepared for it as he was.

The thing had ripped into him viciously, and he remembers nothing more until - this.

The room is white and pristine and too, too bright, and he's groping for a sword that isn't there for a few moments until he recalls where he must be. The Capitol. One dies in the arena, and wakes up in the Capitol. Or so he's been told.

That brings him to his senses. He needs to find the others, if they're here as promised. He needs to find Adella. Maker, if she's here, if she's alive, he'll build a shrine to Andraste with his own two hands.

With a determined set to his mouth, his jaw, strides through the district suite, towards the elevator. He does remember how these work, thanks to Ser Sam Wilson's guidance, all those weeks ago.

[Tribute Tower common area]

He very quickly realizes that he has no real idea where to find many of his companions and allies. Many of them arrived in the arena itself, and so he doesn't know which district they are assigned to, and even if he did, the chances of finding them in their respective suites he thinks are low. Eventually, he makes his way to the main common area on the ground floor. It sees a lot of traffic, it's a natural place to congregate and wait for one's companions. He hopes.

And he tries to avoid looking at the brightly flashing screens everywhere. Maker, does he try.

[The roof]

As evening settles over the city, Cullen finds his way to the quiet and (relative) darkness of the rooftop garden. Even this place is utterly alien to him in a lot of ways, but it's slightly easier to stomach than most of the rest of the building or the city beyond. There is so much light from the city that it's almost impossible to get a good look at the stars, something which Cullen finds baffling, but he attempts it anyway, taking deep, calming breaths as he turns his face up.

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It's enough that Shepard is considering relocating her perennial pillow fort to the Roof. She just... Can't stay inside, anymore. But then she can't stay outside, can't stay anywhere; she wants to keep moving. Shepard begins to hope that the upcoming crowning will lead into another arena as swiftly as the last, if only so that she can do something.

Leave it to the Capitol to ruin the only thing that made it bearable-- she doesn't even feel safe drinking here, anymore. Which is one of the infamous excesses to which this place was meant to be dedicated, goddammit. The speed with which her liver had purged the after-effects was disgusting. Is disgusting. Whatever.

"Hey," She shoots across, when Cullen doesn't break the silence, "So. Had your first arena. Ready for round two?"

She's not naturally cruel, no. It had to be trained into her over the course of a lifetime. But she could be worse.

He frankly didn't even notice her presence until she makes herself known. He's been so caught up in his own thoughts, he hasn't given much attention to other things. Maybe that's not the wisest thing, but Cullen is preoccupied.

If she intends to get a rise out of him, she'll be disappointed. She looks tired, worn down - well, don't they all? She has, by her own admission, been here for a long time. She's done this many times over. It would wear anyone down after a while.

"Technically, this was my second," he points out after a moment. "But I'm not sure anyone can ever be ready for more."

"Right, sorry. Forgot about that one. They start to kinda..." She waved a hand, to indicate the vagueness of her own vision, "They blur together, after a while."

Did she used to be this pathetic? Shepard has fond memories of looking over the burning corpses of entire nations and not feeling a damn thing aside from anger, and determination. She remembers being tougher than this, stronger. Or maybe she's just drinking her own Alliance propaganda kool-aid, who knows?

"I am. At this point, I'm starting to prefer the arenas to the Capitol, sick as that sounds. At least, in there, you know where you stand," A heavy sigh, "Look, don't listen to me, I'm just tired. Can I ask you something?"

Quite frankly, Cullen isn't sure where he stands in or out of the arenas. He could almost envy Shepard any kind of assurance. But he doesn't voice that aloud, it's a pointless train of thought.

"Ask away," he says instead, a little dubious. He's not uncertain of her motives, simply her - vocabulary.

"Two Inquisitors. And then there's the Warden-Commander," She leaned her elbows on the railing and looked down. She was hoping to see the slag from a bottlecap or a chip of glass caught on a ledge, but all evidence of any mess had been cleaned up with an enviable thoroughness, "When I offered my help, formally, I was under the impression that in the absence of any competition, everyone was considering Maxwell Trevelyan to be the uh... Default authority, more or less. What's the status, with you people?"

It's not as if she has anywhere else to turn, either-- the Avengers are too nebulous to call a fallback plan, and she can't even field a three-man squad. But there are still connections, information, something. She is not yet brought so low as to be considered tactically worthless.

Ah, well, that's something he at least can understand at a fundamental level. Of course, he doesn't necessarily have an answer for her that she'll like.

"As Maxwell and Adella both occupy the same position, I would assume they plan to, er, lead together, as it were. But you'd have to ask them that. Warden-Commander Tabris isn't officially affiliated with the Inquisition, though we consider her an ally. Still, what she does is her own business."

"Good to know," Tabris, Shepard felt, could be counted on-- to act rationally, if not anything else. Time would reveal the truth of it, "Well, in the absence of knowing who to tell, you're as good as anyone."

She pushed off from the railing and ran a hand through her hair. It was growing, enough to snag in her fingers and tickle her eyebrows. Much longer and she'd almost start to look a little soft, but she hadn't the heart to do anything about it.

"I feel obligated to inform you, this recent unpleasantness has brought my available personnel down to just one. So, if you want direct assistance, it's myself or Garrus Vakarian, for the forseeable future. Otherwise, I'll have to start calling in favors."

"I see," he says quietly. "I'm sorry for your loss. No doubt you've heard by now that we've lost a few of our own."

Lavellan, Josephine.

"Likewise," Duty therefore dispense with, Shepard cast for another topic. She wasn't interested in beating the dead horse-- or dead tribute, for that matter, "Let's not talk about it."

Ever.

"I don't want to be rude but, given the general air of--" she paused, thinking of the arena, Dorian's gift, and Cullen's arm in a sling, "...Sometimes literal deadly uncertainty hovering around your group, I have to ask. How are all of you holding up? I don't expect much of what you're seeing is familiar, day-to-day."

Cullen was more than happy not to talk about it - he wasn't terribly good at that sort of thing, anyway, though he had enough experience of it. Of needing to tell grieving families that their sons and daughters had died executing their duty - protecting innocents, trying to calm the chaos. It never got easier.

"I don't imagine we're any worse off than anyone else brought here from a radically different world," he said after a moment. "We're all, for the most part, used to the unfamiliar happening."

"Well don't let pride stop you. Tabris already has me playing twenty questions every time something comes up," Had she been teaching an elf how to troll people on the internet? "Gotta say, we are both learning a lot about human nature."

Of course she is, what else would she be doing?

Edited 2015-03-23 03:04 (UTC)

"She does seem the type," Cullen says easily. To pelt someone with questions, that is, whether or not they want to be asked.

"I've had some good help with the elevators from a Ser Sam Wilson," he says eventually. "I'm sure if I need help with anything else I'll ask."

He waves a hand vaguely at the city below them. "Does your world have so much... surveillance, I think they call it?"

"Well, yeah."

What must the world look like to him? Simpler, surely, the kind of place where no one watches you unless they're physically present. Where flesh and blood spies are as bad as it gets. Granted, they're still some of the best of what comes out of, say, Liara's information network. Just the same, it's... hard to reconcile. How can you be sure of any objective truth without real evidence to back it up?

"People can't always guard their property, so they install cameras to watch it for them. Then their governments claim the rights to that information, since the citizenry is technically their vassals," Or at least, that was the theory, "Whether or not they actually disclose it is at their discretion, as are the consequences. But, it's not really that simple anymore. Most of the time, the surveillance data also ends up in the hands of third parties, or sold for entertainment or advertising purposes. It's annoying, but it's also in everyone's best interests not to screw with people too much."

You don't find that most Asari are willing to screw over long term viability for the sake of short term profit spikes. And they write rules, they rule the galaxy-- or they did, once.

"Of course, that's assuming the government gives a damn about the people, instead of just... doing as they please. For the Tributes, it's kind of a moot point. We might as well be farm animals for all they care about our lives."

"It just seems like... an overwhelming amount of information to deal with," he points out after a moment's thought. "Certainly far more than one person, or even a handful of people, could deal with.

"Not that there haven't been times I wished to have eyes and ears in places that were otherwise closed to me," he finishes.

"It's natural to be curious. Having the information isn't what's wrong here," She shrugs, and the curve of her smile twists wry, "Like any other form of power, it's what you do with it that matters."

And even bad governments were at least afraid of their people.

"You're right about one thing, though; it's too much for mere mortals to process. That's what we have VIs for, computers are just faster and more accurate than people are."

Edited 2015-03-23 03:42 (UTC)

"I know exactly what the problem is here," Cullen says with a snort. Or, well, a number of the problems with a place like this, most of them having to do with bad leadership.

He's a Fereldan. If your king is bad, he ought to be overthrown. Not that he's about to say that aloud here, but still.

"Computers," he says, slowly, the word utterly alien to him.

She coughs, and it could almost be a laugh.

"A man's got a strong back, but not strong enough to carry the load, so he invents a cart to carry it for him," She mimed lifting something up with one hand, as if gripping an invisible handle, "Artificial muscle. Teeth aren't sharp enough to cut your meat, invent a knife-- artificial teeth, and claws. We're soft, and we don't grow armor like a turtle, so we invent artificial armor. That's what sentient species do; we find a limitation, and use technology to overcome it. Computers are like that, but for thinking, and making decisions. Machines, that think."

A dangerous line to walk of course. You let something think for long enough, it started getting ideas.

"'Course, if you take it too far, they start to think for themselves. That's how you get from a VI to an AI. Let your reach exceed your grasp, and accidentally create life-- it's happened before."

Cullen just... stares at her for a few moments as though she's grown another head. Creating life?

"You know, in my world, there are lessons to be learned about not overextending," he finally says. "According to legend, a very long time ago the Magisters of the Tevinter Imperium tried to usurp the seat of the Maker, and entered the Fade physically - something no one was supposed to do. They became the first darkspawn, a hideous mockery of life, and began the first Blight."

"I'm sure there are Quarians who'd agree with that assessment. They created the Geth to be servants, and Geth killed or drove them all out of their own homeworld," She shrugged, amused at his shock, and then at his vehemence. Shepard didn't know what the Fade was, or why it should be unusual to enter it physically-- but she remembered what he'd tod her already about Darkspawn and Blights, "But Geth are people, not monsters. I think we've had more than enough war and loss of life on both sides to be damn sure of that."

That was an interesting thought; what would Cullen have made of EDI, or even Legion? She smirked, thinking of the look on his face when presented with the impassive optics of a Geth Prime.

"This isn't religious legend I'm talking about here, it's recent history. I've even got an AI in my crew."

Edited (omg why can't I remmeber punctuation) 2015-03-23 04:33 (UTC)

"It's not entirely legend," Cullen says with a shrug. He used to think it mostly was - a way to explain the darkspawn and the Blight because how could something so terrible just exist?

But that was before Corypheus revealed himself.

"Still, though - man playing Maker? I can't imagine much good coming of that."

Of course, Cullen is no stranger to disliking a concept but having no problem with individual representatives of that concept. See also: his relationship to magic and mages.

"Good or bad, the Geth exist, and they have to determine their own future, same any other species," And all the consequences that responsibility implied, "As for Mankind, it's illegal to create self-aware machines, for just that reason. But laws only matter if people intend to follow them; so far as I know, there's no reason to treat man-made intelligences any differently than any other form of life."

This time, her smile was more real; the first, in weeks.

"A lot of good has come from it. Maybe some bad too, but... everybody makes mistakes, when they're young."

Cullen watches her carefully. Interesting. "Well, I don't pretend to understand any of it."

He sighs, looking out over the city again. "What I really want to know is why there are so many shops which sell nothing but coffee."

"What, you don't like coffee?" Always knew you were some kind of heathen heretic, Commander Cullen, but she never knew just how bad, "You're kidding. The whole world runs on coffee, it's the only thing that keeps people sane, some mornings."

"I didn't say I don't like it," Cullen says with a shrug. "It just seems a bit excessive, all these shops devoted to selling it. Does no one make it themselves? Besides, I prefer tea."

Tea is better for his headaches.

"You better be careful who you voice that opinion to, could start some fights," She's teasing him, but it's funnier if he doesn't realize. Witness the poker face of one Commander Shepard, champion at Skyllian Five, "It's practically sacrilege in some circles."

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revocation - 2015-04-06 21:09 (UTC) - Expand

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