thecapitol | I will never die

Who| Peggy and D10 tributes; Peggy and Open
What| Peggy is evaluating her new tributes, and in between evaluations she bugs people to spar with her.
Where| Training Center
When| Soon after Peggy arrives
Warnings/Notes| Maybe from violence from sparring?

Closed to D10ers

"I want to evaluate each skill you may need in the arena." Peggy Carter is large and in charge, perfectly composed and stepping like an army woman with a clipboard at her side. Today, her scarf is black, and her clothes are suited for training. "I want you to sit at each station--not just the combat stations, but all of them--and complete whatever task it is set up to allow you to practice. I will time how fast it takes you to complete and take note of any particular problem areas, and we can work together from there to set up a training schedule that works for you. Do you understand?"

Open to All

She's put away her clipboard, but not the training clothes or the black scarf. She's doing a circuit around the training center herself, working at the survival stations, evaluating what she can learn and what she already knows, but most of all, she spends her time with the combat training equipment. Exercise, weights, axes, arrows--and even, though she spends some time staring at them with an inscrutable look in her eye, knives and swords. Work. Work. She goes through it with the methodical air of a woman who's been doing this for a very long time, even if she hasn't been in the arena for years.

But obsessive exercising can't take the edge of for her anymore. She's back in the tribute center, back where her life had been consistently destroyed year after year after year, back where she and Bucky and all of the tributes she had mentored before had scrambled to survive. She couldn't sleep here, and she had to force herself to eat. Not even destroying herself with exercise will remove the horror now fresh on her mind.

Eventually, she abandons the weights and weapons, instead approaching the nearest person. "Do you feel up for a spar?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Splendid." He keeps up with her easily, showing a spryness that's not readily obvious in him, and seems rather out of keeping with his obviously great age. She gains a moment of respite from his blathering, though, if only because all the questions that come to mind are of the kind which he's just promised to avoid. He may be cantankerous and even sometimes downright nasty, but he isn't about to go back on his word when it clearly concerns her so much.

At last he says, in a voice that shows just a little of his frustration at censoring himself, "So, Miss Carter, would you mind telling me just what District Ten is, when it's at home?"

"District Ten?"

Ah, there's a safe topic. She can talk about her home and no one has to have their tongue cut out.

"I'm afraid it's been a while since I've really been part of day to day life there. I'm not as in touch as I used to be." Partially because people get scared of you when they watch you murder children on TV and then stab yourself like a madwoman to kill someone else. Partially because you get scared of people when you're the person doing the killing and stabbing. "But it's really a beautiful place. Animals everywhere. Here, you drive where you need to go, but we have horses for that back home."

Sure, it's impoverished and she was always hungry and the conditions are terrible for workers, but there were open fields and friendly animals and honest faces and she misses the time she was able to be part of it.

"I have to admit, I didn't miss the advent of the motor vehicle," Merlyn says with a little sigh. "All that horn-honking and air pollution. It's so much nicer when the worst you have to worry about is a little manure." Even if horses have a tendency to try and eat his hat. He sighs nostalgically. "I shall miss being in a place without such things, you know. Peace and quiet and a little cottage of one's own. I'm sure you must miss it, too."

"Well, I certainly miss the horses. They're sweet animals." She's biased, though. Horses like her. "But I'm afraid I don't really have a peaceful cottage to miss. In District 10, we spend most of our time working, and there's not much peace to be had between that and all the animals."

She herself alternated between farming and butchering for the most part. She covered for her parents when they were sick or injured--which happened often enough, since worker safety isn't a priority there--so she could make sure they had enough food to eat.

"That's not to say I don't miss it, though. It's my home, and I'll always love it."

"Of course. Animals are no respectors of the working week," Merlyn agrees, nodding sagely. "Coming and going at all hours, demanding this and that. It's enough to make a body sick. Like having a child, although at least animals learn to talk sooner." Or is that just to him? He seems to have forgotten, not for the first time, that communicating with animals isn't a ubiquitous skill. In his defence, he's known how to speak to them for several centuries, so it's an easy mistake to make.

She just assumes that either animals talk in his world or it's another sign of his dementia, so it goes without comment. "Well, the animals have a limited time to demand, so I can't really blame them for demanding good treatment while they can. District 10 is the livestock district, so that's where any meat in the Capitol comes from."

Despite living in the livestock district, Peggy herself rarely had good meat to eat before being reaped. It was always meat that was deemed unfit for the Capitol, like offal or improperly butchered cuts. Even so, she never complained, because it was food and food could be hard to come by.

"How thoroughly inefficient," Merlyn comments wryly, but that's all. He isn't going to try and drag this out into a political debate. It's pretty obvious that it won't work if he does. Instead, he just walks alongside her in silence for a moment, then adds thoughtfully, "I wonder, how many of the people here even know what their meat looks like when it's on four legs?"

"There are zoos, but they usually have very pretty versions of the animals we actually raise. The ones in the Capitol are made to be ornamental, whereas the ones in District 10 are made to produce the most meat and dairy."

She gives a soft chuckle, more for herself than anyone else. "So I suppose none of them really know what the meat looks like, no."

I will never die

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