thecapitol | I will never die

Entry tags:

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?"

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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?"

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"What, me?" Stephen asks, raising his hands. "No, no, no. I'm just looking for one of my Tributes, that's all."

His clothes are just as outrageous as they've been all month: it's a business suit, but made of translucent rose-tinted material, with a nude-illusion bodysuit underneath.

"Have you seen her? Tall, red hair, eyepatch?"

Of course I understand. It was scarcely a complicated request. But, having decided to play nice, Éowyn is more than capable of keeping a straight face, smiling a little - rather blandly - and nodding. "Of course," she says, reaching back to smooth her hair, which is pulled back into a ponytail for the time being. "Where would you like me to start?"

He hears a voice and he words aren't addressed to him but he pays attention anyway. They're directed to another Tribute nearby, one who turns down the offer and moves on from the requester, but Bucky looks, curious as to who it is looking for a partner.

It's a woman, one he recognises as a member of staff who recently appeared on the network. Dark hair, dark eyes and an intelligent gaze. Something about her makes him want to stand up straighter, like he's in front of a commanding officer. He shakes his head a little, putting it down to the fact she had a powerful bearing about her and nothing more.

Still, he watches her, considering. It's unusual to see staff, even mentors, come into the training centre to use it for the same purpose as the Tributes.

"You need a partner?"

"Let's try plant identification." Peggy points towards the station, one with screens with pictures of the herbs as well as physical examples of them to be matched to names and lists where one can fill in the uses of the plant to be evaluated by the computer. "I want to see how many you can accurately recognize."

No matter how good she was in her home, it's possible that the plants native to Panem are different from what she's used to.

"The woman with the heart eyepatch, you mean?" Molotov Cocktease? The woman whose name is so ridiculous that it must be made up?

Peggy slowly looks Stephen up and down, because wow, that is over the top for a casual setting even by Capitol standards, but she doesn't comment. "I'm afraid I haven't seen her."

That voice. She knows it.

Her heart thuds. She has to breathe. It reminds her of the smell of pastures and hay, stupid games children play where they chase and push and hit (but gently, always gently, because Steve was always so fragile), and dancing in fields until all the dancers collapsed and laughed on the ground. Good days. Days of hardship, but still full of love nonetheless. All of the sudden, she feels her heart beginning to crack all over again.

It's not him, though. She knows who it is.

She forces her face to be neutral and turns to face him, and--damn it, they look more alike in person than on the screen. Same striking blue eyes, same broad shoulders, same everything--except the arm. And the demeanor. And the hair. He even looks just a few years older than hers, now that she could see him closely.

It makes her heart ache to see him and remember how much she misses her Bucky. This was why she didn't want to be near the tributes. This was why she had avoided meeting him, because he looked everything like the last person she loves and yet is not him at all.

But if she focuses on the differences, on the gleaming metal arm and the long hair and the withdrawn demeanor, she can remind herself that this is a different man.

"Yes, I do." Through many, many years of Capitol interviews and suffering, she has learned how to keep her face and voice perfectly steady even when she wants to cry. "Do you have a preferred weapon, or would you like to stick with hand to hand?"

It's a valid concern. Éowyn has tried this station once or twice before, with limited success. A combination of Healer studies and spending time around rangers has left her with a pretty solid understanding of plants - but only those which are native to Gondor and Rohan. The vast majority of the plants at this station are ones she has never seen before.

Still, she nods agreement, striding over to the station in question and looking down at it, readying herself. After a moment - breath in, breath out - she starts, without further preamble, her brow creased in concentration. She moves quickly at first, dealing with the plants she's sure of, then slows to a snail's pace as she begins to struggle.

The feeling doesn't go away as she turns to regard him directly, if anything it grows stronger and he's bewildered by it, even as his posture changes to something almost like parade rest. Legs apart but his arms hanging down by his sides rather than behind his back.

Bucky tries to push it aside but it's the strangest reaction he's ever had to a Capitolite thus far. It might be something to worry about but until he knows more he decides it's better just to roll with it rather than give anything away by trying to back out of the situation, or openly question it. She's agreed to spar with him, he better follow through.

"Hand to hand is fine." he doesn't like to use knives in sparring against another person, holding back isn't his strong suit. HYDRA didn't mind if he occasionally broke the people they assigned him to train with but the Capitol certainly would.

"Excellent. Let's go to the mat, then."

She slowly pulls off her scarf--it'd be a hazard in a fight--and puts it in her pocket. Underneath the scarf, there's a big, ugly scar goin all the way around her throat. Bucky may recognize a wound from a wire garrote that wasn't very expertly handled.

"My name is Peggy Carter, by the way," she says as she walks to the mat, taking a defensive stance. She's not sure if she has to introduce herself, but she feels the need to keep up appearances. The Capitol knows she was friends with her Bucky, but this man may not.

Between Jason talking to Peggy on the network, phone calls have been taken, a focus group had to be organized, some budgetary discretion had to be signed off to the District Seven Stylist, and, of course, Cyrus' big news broke. Jason sent a text to Peggy to say he was running late, although not a specific time, and when he finally makes his way up to District Ten she must have given up on tea with him and gone to exercise, because she only just back to the District Suite sweaty and red-faced with exertion.

"I'll bet you're curious what that was about," Jason says, taking a seat on the leather couch - everything in District Ten cattle-themed, rustic, cowhide and carved wood - and putting his feet up on the table with that same sort of casual-cum-disrespectful attitude he's had since well before his teenage years, that nearly got him fired from his Escortship at least five times and yet never quite was enough to get him ousted. It's strangely familiar, like years haven't passed between the last time he and Peggy worked together. He's older now, and that harried look to his face like he's always chasing something has stamped itself deeper in his features over the years, but he greets her like they're about to discuss tactics for a mutual Tribute, like he's about to make some crude joke about teens to the slaughterhouse and she's about to glare at him and they're about to work together to secure another packet of food for some starving child from her homeland.

"You got coffee? I want something harder than tea, and I don't get near enough sleep with five Tributes to wrangle."

Peggy stands over her, taking notes and keeping time. She sees how quickly Éowyn can recognize some, but not others. Maybe Peggy could find a book on the uses of Panem plants. She needs to become familiar with the flora native to her new place of residence.

"You can move on to the firemaking station if you feel you can make no more progress."

Éowyn nods her acknowledgement, but continues working for a minute or two more, until she's absolutely certain that there's no more progress she can make. Then, straightening up, she turns to head to the firemaking station.

"I have been meaning to work on that," she observes, as she walks. It's true. It's just also true that she mostly gets sidetracked by the much more satisfying training in weapons.

The firemaking station, on the other hand, she needs absolutely no help with. Even without flints, this is something she's known how to do since she was a little girl; in less than a minute, she has a bright little flame crackling away, and she stands back in some satisfaction.

His eyes track her movement, noting the scar with little visible reaction. Inside he's surprised, both at the severity of the wound that caused it and the fact that the Capitol hasn't wiped it away. But then Mentor's have a little more freedom than Tribute's, perhaps even the freedom to choose what marks they leave on their bodies.

It seems obvious to him that the wound would have been made during her games but given that he has his own scars it seems better that he doesn't make mention of it. Bucky doesn't know her at all to gauge her reaction if he were inclined to ask.

"James Buchanan Barnes." he replies, giving his full name rather the abbreviated version with his nickname. The by now mundane sensation of having forgotten something is pushed aside as he takes his own stance. "Parameters?" he asks, because he needs to know his limits before they begin.

"My goodness, no." The old man looks frankly horrified at the very idea. He is, after all, only here because he's vaguely hoping to find a library somewhere. And out of sheer academic curiosity, of course. Now, though, he harrumphs and looks down his hooked nose at her, his eyebrows drawing together. "Just because we find ourselves in a place so determined to push us into barbarism, young lady, is no reason to succumb to it. Why, even the most troglodytic ought to know better. But I suppose that mob mentalities do have a certain hold on one. When in Rome, and all that."

He looks rather distant for a moment, as if he might at that very moment be composing a treatise on the subject. Perhaps something in the vein of a critique on Neo-Classical pretensions? After a moment, though, he appears to remember that he was talking to someone, and snaps his attention back to Peggy.

"No, no. I shall most assuredly not be sparring with anyone. And nor should you, although I suppose it is at least a great step up from taking real fighting as a game."

"I'll find a book on local plants for you and we'll work studying that into the regime," Peggy notes before standing over Éowyn while she works the fire. Seeing her work so quickly makes Peggy smile, but she covers it strategically with a hand before she can wipe it off her face again. She tries to stay professional while mentoring, and smiling isn't very professional in her mind.

"Good. Within the arena, you should be wise about when you set a fire. The smoke will attract people to you in the day, and the light will attract people at night. Luckily, with the new format, tributes are far less desperate than they used to be and they're likely to leave you alone if you're far away or in a group." Peggy looks down at her clipboard and makes a few notes. "Next, let's see what you can do in the camouflage station."

"If I light a fire," Éowyn says seriously, "it will be because I want to be found. That much, I know. As for what I can do with camouflage..." Her grimace is unfeigned. "Very little, I fear. Such things have never been my strongest suite. Still, I will try."

And try she does, taking a few moments to examine the tools at her disposal before she even begins. What she knows about camouflage is second-hand, and isn't particularly applicable to this station in any case; she knows how to move quietly and to stay downwind, and she knows that a well-chosen cloak and hood can go a long way to helping you disappear, but beyond that, she's lost. It doesn't help that her bright gold hair is as obvious a flag as you could hope to find.

The best she can do, after due consideration, is to darken the roots of her hair and break up the lines of her face with muddy-coloured paint. It's not particularly impressive, though, and she knows it. Stealth is not her best weapon, in any case.

Unfortunately, the mentors did not get to choose what marks were left. It was only still there because the Capitol decided it should be.

He gave her a full name. That might make it easier to detach him from Bucky, actually. She can just call him James or Mr. Barnes. It makes it easier if she doesn't have to call someone else by Bucky's name. "First one to pin the other wins. No strikes at the throat, back of the neck, eyes, or genital region. Let's try to avoid any damage that would require a doctor's assistance." Usually that goes without saying, but that means he'll probably have to be more careful than people normally have to be in a spar. He has a metal arm, and even without other enhancements, it could probably break her bones relatively easily--and she's seen how he fights in the arena. He's trained to kill.

"Any other ground rules you would like to add?" Her ground rules are usually pretty bare bones for sparring, and she's aware of it. Her strategies are usually dirty--going for the backs of the knee, dazing opponents with clocks to the head, twisting their leg until they fall over, that sort of thing. The arena taught her to fight dirty. But she can clean up her style a little for the sake of her sparring partner, if that's what he wants.

It's like they're back in time for a moment. Back to the comfort but horror of Peggy's days as a mentor, when it was day in and day out of struggling to save children with varying chances of survival. She never knew which was worse: having a twelve-year-old child and knowing off the bat that nothing they can do will save their life, or having a seventeen-year-old they could work to save and then have all their efforts be for naught all over again. It was harder on her than it was on Jason. She had grown up with many of the tributes they had shared.

"Yes, it seems rather cruel to get us used to two tributes and then heave several more on us." She stands to go get the coffee, still hot from when some of her tributes were drinking it. She hands him a mug before sitting down on one of the couches, crossing one leg over the other and feigning somewhat more respect than Jason ever bothered to. "So, what's all this business about the... changing office culture?"

Maybe it's just the shift in age group and survival rate of tributes, but she had never heard of there being fraternization problems before she left mentoring.

"And I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a single raise for the increased work." He actually does know about Peggy, knows that the Mentors still receive the same compensation they always have, just like the Escorts; investigating other people's financials is just something Jason does as a matter of habit, like checking the weather before he chooses a coat for work.

"Obliged." He takes the mug and sets it on his knee, resting his head on one hand. "And the office culture. Well. I don't know if Cyrus would have been quite so diplomatic if the new rules didn't implicate his own little brother."

There's disgust on his face that goes deeper than disdain for a lack of professionalism - obviously, that's never mattered much to Jason. It's a bit of envy and genuine repulsion and frustration, like he's watching Stephen get away with something.

Did he just call her a barbarian? It's hard to tell between the grousing and old man grumping.

"I'm afraid it's rather late for me to avoid violence. I won my arena years before tributes were brought from off world." She was sort of born on this world, actually. Not that she's offended by the implication that their system is barbaric--it is, not that she'll ever say that with the threat of Capitol surveillance hanging over her shoulder. "I'm a mentor. You only came here recently, correct?"

She's pretty sure he did, at least. She doesn't remember seeing him in any arena footage. It would explain how brazenly he talks against the games.

"Sometimes I forget we're even paid." Admittedly, that's partially because she already has more money than she really knows what to do with. Having grown up in poverty, she'd never developed expensive tastes. She spends just enough to keep up appearances in Capitol society with pretty clothes and makeup.

"Stephen Reagan is sleeping with tributes?"

Oooh, the scandal. Not that it's really surprising, considering Stephen's reputation. He picks up on Jason's disgust, but to be fair, Jason is disdainful of many people. Just perhaps not this much usually. "And Cyrus hasn't tried to have him pulled from his post?" She's sure the Reagan brothers love each other, but Cyrus Reagan, being a very important man, has to think of image and family prestige. The younger Reagan sleeping with tributes isn't good for either of those things.

"My dear girl, it is never too late to avoid violence. It is precisely this kind of assumption of inevitability which plagues mankind in all attempts at peace. One might as well say that, having once eaten meat, it's rather late to attempt vegetarianism. I mean, really." And yes, he is now wagging a finger at her, as if he were lecturing a rather slow pupil.

After a moment, he considers his position, clears his throat, and clasps his hands behind his back again. "In point of fact, yes, I am a stranger here. I only arrived this morning, as it happens, and I must say, I am far from impressed. All of this provision for bashing one another with sticks, but I still cannot find the library."

Bucky shakes his head. "No."

More than fine, more than he might have suggested himself. Sometimes he forgets he's not as resistant or quick to heal from damage as he is supposed to be, that he should be careful with what he puts his body through on a daily basis. There's routine bruises and split skin on the knuckles of his right hand to prove this.

Rules set he waits for her signal to begin, then doesn't hesitate to strike forward, using his right hand to strike at her shoulder. Just as she surmised he has to hold back with the metal arm under these circumstances, as it has the potential to cause grievous damage even if he pulls his punches with it.

Easy for you to say, old man, she thinks, but out loud, she simply says, "I see." Humor the old man and don't get into any conversations that could be heard by surveillance and lead to someone being dragged off with a bag over their head.

"Well, that is because you're in the Tribute Center. It's designed to accommodate basic living and preparation for tributes in the Hunger Games. Reading in the library isn't considered a requirement for either of those." She gestures towards the door. "If you would like, I could take you out and show you the nearest library. You could always ask an Avox to find would you are looking for, but it might be best for you to know where it is if you prefer spending time there."

"Ah, yes. Avoces. The voiceless ones. I suppose our hosts think that's very clever." His tone says very clearly that he doesn't think it very clever at all. Cheap Latin jokes are two-a-penny, but he finds them extremely trying when his own attempts at Latin are consistently stymied by whatever they've done to his linguistic skills. "I certainly do not intend to use their services where I can possibly avoid it. But I would appreciate being shown this library. Thank you very much." He clears his throat, and, after a moment's thought, offers his hand. "I," he says, rather grandly, "am Merlyn. In case you were wondering. You'll have to forgive me for forgetting to introduce myself earlier. It's damnably hard to get used to time running in this direction."

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I will never die

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D10 Suite

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