thecapitol | We're Damaged People Drawn Together

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We're Damaged People Drawn Together

Who| Rochelle and Luke
What| Rochelle tries training, Luke comes over. Zombros chill and talk about zombro stuff
Where| The training room
When| Now?
Warnings/Notes| None yet

She isn't sure what she's going to face in the arena. She's tried watching videos of the old ones, but it's not quite the same, and she knows that each one is going to be different. So, she figures, it's time to try training. There's not likely to be guns in the next one--She knows that Nick had one, but she couldn't bring herself to watch him shoot anyone with it. And it seems like it's, in general, not common.

Luckily, she has some experience in melee, anyway.

She takes an axe, and mumbles to herself something she had aggravated her teammates with so long ago whenever she grabbed that weapon. "Axe me a question, I dare you." Giggling to herself, she went to one of the dummies, and began to practice. It was different, after all, with zombies. They had one goal, to get to you, and didn't bother dodging, or avoiding attacks. They were single-minded in their goal.

It'd be trickier to fight a real human, she knew that. She didn't like thinking about it, she didn't like thinking that these skills could go to killing someone in that arena. But if Rochelle had learned anything, it was that life wasn't fair, and you rarely got what you want. You had to take what you were given, and make the best of it.

So, that's what she's doing. Making the best of it. With each swing of that axe, trying to correct her posture, and figure out how to put more power into that swing, she tries to make her situation a little better.

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He blinks back at the slight edge to her tone, jerked from his thoughts, his gaze sharper and clearer and focused. The last thing he means to do is give her any reason to turn her aggression from the dummy onto him. There’s no knowing what might be enough to provoke her and he doesn’t want to find out, more so seeing as she looks comfortable enough with an axe. Familiar in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s the result of years of formal training if he had to guess, which made her no less dangerous to him still if that’s the case. She looked to have been visibly thinking her way between axe-swings rather than moving in a smooth, automatic way - because there’s more than one way of getting a job done. Though a few are much more efficient than others in a situation, a trainer would argue. Back home it had been enough just to be able to lift it and gouge a chunk of flesh out of a walker before it could do to the same to you.

It’s either them or you. No compromises, no mercy.

“Sorry.” He shakes his head. It’s the first word he’s spoken in hours. “I was jus’… wonderin' if you had any trainin’ with that." There's a pause as he reflexively rubs at the sweat-damp nape of his neck. "...Didn’t mean to make it weird.” He had, hadn't he?

Edited 2015-05-03 01:01 (UTC)

He looks skittish. She knows that look, trying to figure out if someone can hurt you, or not. Being wary. It's the way that you had to be. Doesn't mean she likes it any more when it's focused on her. But he doesn't seem threatening himself, so she relaxes slightly, letting the axe hang limp. She doesn't know what the arena is like, but she does know that there's no reason to be mad at anyone when they're here.

"Not real training. Just bashing zombie's heads in. Didn't take a lot of training, really." She shrugs, lowering the axe to the ground. "As long as it gets the job done. Sorry if I got prickly at you--This place is weird. I'm not used to being around so many people." She tried to explain. She hadn't wanted to come off as overly aggressive, but...eyes made her nervous, now. Things she'd have to work out, if she wanted to stay here.

There’s a slow, partial unwinding of muscles in his core when her stance relaxes some. But not even the people closest to him get to see him completely at ease, not often. Hard to be when someone is always watching and listening, intruding on moments meant only for the people involved.

The word ‘zombie’ changes everything, stiffening up the line of his shoulders again, his gaze sharp with fresh awareness. It’s only because of Clementine that it means anything to him and it’s no secret that it does, his eyebrows lifting high enough to wrinkle his forehead before his expression sinks into something grimly sympathetic.

“I…" It comes out more as a sigh. "I know what you mean.”

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that more and more of them – survivors of encounters with the living dead – keep trickling into Panem. They must make for entertaining tributes, trauma-scarred and resourceful and desperate to live, whetted by hardship.

Edited 2015-05-12 02:11 (UTC)

His response to the word 'zombies' catches her attention. Most people were in disbelief when she mentioned them--Raised an eyebrow, shook their head. At best they gave a 'better you than me' kind of look. This was a look that said that he knew just what she meant.

Well.

That was unexpected.

She stared at him for a few moments, glancing around at the other people in the room, before sitting down across from him, leaning forward. When she speaks, it's a kind tone, but matter of fact.

"You've dealt with them before, haven't you."

It's not a question. But the idea that this man was from her own world--Or similar enough--was comforting. No one but Ellis and Nick understood, she thought. They didn't know what it was like. But there could be other people who did. Who knew what it was like.

He follows suit and takes a seat, his body humming like a seething hornets’ nest with adrenaline jitters he feels to the tingling tips of his fingers. There’s a slouch to his shoulders as if they’re bowing under the weight of the world, his hand resting loosely over his knee. He has nothing to hide. His shuttered, unfocused gaze says everything, sleepless nights carved into his face.

“S’been a few years now...” He says lowly. Ears are everywhere and he knows that those who meant to listen in, would. It’s nothing he hasn’t shared before and it remains safer and easier to discuss than most other personal subjects. The sky is blue, grass is green, and the dead walk the earth. That's just the way it is.

“...Ain’t shown any signs a’ slowin’ down yet.” Then, his eyes sharpen, flitting up to meet hers. “What about you?”

She's a lot calmer than he is--But she's used to being the calm one. Trying to keep a cool head while chaos explodes around her. She's more fascinated than worried about this, leaning forward and tilting her head. Studying him. She can see the wear and tear. Things that she, and her crew suffered. Although...it'd been getting better, hadn't it? Being here? Eating fresh food and sleeping in a real bed?

"A few years...Lord, I couldn't imagine. But it's been going on for a good while for us. I can't rightly say how long, though. Months? Too long." She sighed, shaking her head. "It's hard to guess when it first started, really. We started calling it Green Flu. Thought it was some kind of...ordinary sickness, you know? Like Swine Flu, people freak out, some die, but in time it goes away." She looked down at her hands. Nicely manicured, now that she could get them done properly.

"It ain't showing signs of slowing down for us, either. The military has got some stuff set up in the Gulf of Mexico, but...They've also been gunning down the immune." She gestured at herself. "Those exposed--What about you? You lived in there for years, you must be an immune."

They all thought it'd pass. They've all heard of it before, sweeping sicknesses in distant parts of the world that come and go, taking hundreds of lives with them, and then steadily and stealthily dropping off the radar of public awareness. But not this. This infection, from unknown origins, had cut swathes through towns and cities and entire states, refusing to be downgraded to a lesser news story. Word of it had dominated the airwaves until the channels had gone dead one by one and blackouts spread like shadows cast by a thick, billowing mushroom clouds, the end of the civilized world in full swing.

Luke gives a shake of his head, the furrow between his brows deepening as he listens. If there had been military intervention he hadn't heard of it. No tanks rolling in and heavy firepower, no quarantine zones and food rations. No hope for a cure.

"Don' look like anybody's immune, far's we can tell." Nothing more clearly delineates the difference between their worlds than the idea of immunity existing and in great enough numbers to be recognized. If anyone survived a scratch or bite back home, they were either in hiding, being hidden, or didn't last long enough at the hands of bandits or cannibals to talk about it. "An' if someone is out there, well... walkers are the last thing they have to worry about."

"You don't have any immune...? What if they come after you? If they attack you?" She frowned, and offered an arm to Luke--To look at. Plenty of scars scattered across that arm, from the nails, and occasionally teeth, of the zombies. Of course, they were still carriers. They still had the virus inside of them. But they weren't affected. And that's what made them dangerous.

"Yeah...Like I said. We got a lot of problems. Still...they bothered to come for us, when we asked for help. Sent a military helicopter to pick us up. They probably weren't going to kill us...If they wanted us dead, they would have just sat there and let the zombies kill us." She shrugs, sighing. "Don't matter too much. This place grabbed me. And to be honest? I'm not real eager to return." She looked over at Luke, tilting her head.

"Do you think that's awful? I mean--I'm not happy, but...Well, you had the zombies for years. Weren't you glad to be in a place with running water?"

“Well, if that -- holy shit…” He breaks off to stare in wonder at the dotted lines of teeth and nails etched into her skin. His people don't have the hope of surviving this many close calls. You’re bit or scratched and from there it’s a mad race against the infection, if you’re lucky. There’s no bargaining or weaseling one’s way out of that death sentence unless you could hack off whatever part of you was torn up like wet napkin and manage not to bleed out or die of shock.

From what he’s hearing, Luke has a gut-stab suspicion that the military is going through the trouble of rounding up a handful of people like her in the hopes of better understanding the infection in a controlled environment and inviting others to attempt reverse-engineering a cure. But maybe he’s wrong. He’d like to hope that he is. Like to hope that people like her, who’ve already been paddling neck-deep up shit creek, could catch the break they all so sorely needed.

He considers her question for a while, his gaze slowly sliding away, heavy with more than tiredness. "Yeah," He says a little flatly, the joylessness in his eyes holding a different, more complicated answer. "It's great." A beat. "...Think I washed a couple pounds a' dirt off me when I steppin' into that shower the first time."

Then comes a breathless little chuckle despite himself. He rubs at the back of his neck.

She watched him stare in wonder at her arms. They irritated her occasionally, covered with these ugly scars, but he was...in wonder at that. What would it be like, being afraid of being scratched by a zombie? Being attacked by a horde? The amount of times that Rochelle had had to take an axe like the one she'd been using, and hack her way through a horde that kept clawing at her, grabbing at her, trying to drag her down...

She felt a chill go down her spine, even in the heat of the training area.

She needed to stop thinking about that. Stop worrying about zombies, about the military, what could've happened. The fact was, that she was here now. And she intended on staying, no matter what bullshit was going on.

She couldn't help but laugh at his comment about the dirt, though, reaching over and giving him a little nudge. "You'd better be careful about that, you don't look like you've got a lot of pounds to spare. But I understand. God, having a hot shower...I'd forgotten what it felt like. But, I mean...I guess we have an advantage here, huh? In the arenas? We're used to food being hard to find, to everything trying to kill us."

Survivor humour.

He looks back with something approaching a sheepish half-grin even when he draws a laugh from her. Sure, there’s little room for delicate sensibilities when you’ve been bumping shoulders with rotting corpses for weeks, but not everyone clawing their way out of a place of squalor and disease would care to have the mental image of him washing off the nastiest muck put into their heads.

~~Besides, they’ve only just met.~~

He blinks a bit at the nudge she gives and huffs a faint, easy laugh, his smile softening some until their conversation shifts to the arenas and erases it altogether.

“It helps.” He admits, looking less satisfied about it than he ought to, maybe. “…I seen some people in those arenas do things that’re jus’… mindblowin’. I’m talkin’ stuff straight outta a comic book. An’ maybe I can’t compete with that, I don' know. But what I do know is, the way I am now after all we been through an' what we learned, well… this all coulda been that much harder.”

Edited 2015-05-21 05:09 (UTC)

She knows that the arena isn't a pleasant topic, and she doesn't like the way that he opens up to her, only to close at the change in topic. But this is important. She's spoken to Ellis and Nick about it, but she needs to get other opinions. Luke has a point of view similar to hers, from being from such a similar environment, but he isn't one of her teammates. She can make it up to him later.

"You're not kidding. I mean...Look at our current victor. Talk about out of a comic book. Although...I guess he's more out of the movie, seeing what his face looks like..." She shook her head. Too confusing to think about for long. "Anyway. I guess that's a good point. How can they expect ordinary people like us to compete against superheroes?" She pressed her lips into a thin line. What was the point of that? Were they just canon fodder, the red shirt brigade to be picked off while the important people fought?

No, Nick had managed to get pretty close to winning. And Tony had just kind of...shanked him. Not very super powered.

"What do you think? Do you think any of us ordinary folks stand a chance?"

“That don' matter. S’all about puttin' on a good show. The unbalanced fights, they jus'… add to it." Carefully choosing of tamer words is just as much of a struggle while disgust curls hot in his gut. "People wanna see that kind a’ struggle.”

And then her question comes – ‘us’, she says, and he can’t tell if she uses it search of solidarity or only because it’s the appropriate pronoun – and he shrugs, a loose bob of a shoulder. Too casual for the subject at hand.

“Maybe.” It might not be reassuring, but it is what it is with so many variables at play every time they’re hurled into some new twisted playground. He can’t give her the answer they both want with any sense of certainty. “The last thing I expect is a fair fight even between people like us, but, the way I see it? Them ‘superpowers’ ain’t gonna help much if someone gets the jump on you. An’ out there, anythin’ can happen.”

All it takes is for a Gamemaker to get bored for the landscape to shift and new threats to be introduced.

"A good show, huh." She repeated, staring down at her hands. He sounds bitter--She doesn't blame him. A good show. Well, she's a reporter. She's been on TV. She can do a good show, right? "I guess that makes sense." Hopefully, a good show that's framed where she's the winner.

She listens to him speak, nodding along. It makes sense. But it means that they're going to have to work harder. Harder to be able to take advantage of the twisting landscape, to be able to get the drop on people who were no mere mortals. What were their abilities in the face of gods? They could survive, but they survived creatures that were little better than animals. Not things out of movies.

She kept her eyes cast down, thinking.

"Maybe. Well--I guess that's better than nothing, huh? And...even if we lose. We just end up back here. I think it'd be worse if they sent us back after we lost."

“Our wits are the best thing we got here.” He says. Some things haven’t changed between hopping worlds. “We jus' have to be fast an’ we have to be careful.”

We, he says, knowing sharing common ground doesn’t ever mean they were guaranteed allies or that he could assume as much. That’s the hardest part of trying stay alive, trying to find power in numbers. The person you met today could attempt to slice open your throat tomorrow. It really isn’t all too different, here and home.

“I heard not everybody makes it back.” His brows push together in an apologetic frown as if he's feeling responsible. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of assuming you’d reunite with loved ones after the horrors of a bloodbath when you had that luxury once, twice. Too easy to be deluded by hope. One day he knows he’ll wake up and go to Nick's door and his room will have been emptied out, nothing left of his best friend other than cherished, fuzzy-edged memories. “Not all the time.”

"Wits. I think I can manage that. They've done me good so far." She nodded. He understood. You had to have certain skills to survive in their worlds. If those skills were necessary in the arena...Well, that's one up on the others, right?

She understands--She's not trying to make allies. She wants to make friends, she wants to present to the Capitol someone who is friendly, who is not seditious, who is perfectly safe. She knew better than to trust anyone here, except Ellis and Nick. They were the only people she could count on.

But, still. She missed having other people to talk to. She glanced at Luke speculatively, as he spoke. Her face was somber, for a somber topic, and she glanced down. Well. It was a possibility she'd have to deal with. That one day she'd wake up, and their group would be permanently one down, two down. Or she could be left alone.

She'd prefer death.

But she was ready to change the topic to something better. She glanced up at Luke, and shot him a smile. "Well, those are the odds we had to play with back home too, didn't we? I tell you what, we both pop out of this next arena, meet me for a few drinks. I've missed getting to go have drinks with people." How long has it even been, since she's asked someone out for a drink, like this? Lord, she didn't want to think about it.

Luke feels an unexpected flicker of warmth in his gut at the offer.

The last time he had had a drink with new faces, it had been on his birthday - or what he guessed was his birthday from the tally marks he scratched into a piece of paper out of a quiet determination to give structure and meaning to long and dreary days that threatened to bleed together. The few of them that remained had been warming their tired, aching bones by a bonfire at a long-dead power station, passing around a bottle. A little sip for the pain, rum dulling the razor-edge of sobriety and teasing hushed laughter out of them. Reminding them how to let go, at least for a little while.

Kindness is a rare commodity at home; few encounters with strangers having been peaceful ones. But it has been so long. Over half a year in Panem now, too, and he still hasn’t lived a single day of it. Maybe one day, he’d learn how to start. Maybe this is the first step.

“Sure... I'd like that.” He says, offering a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. But it's a start, too.

He doesn't look crazy pleased, but what is she supposed to expect? They're all but strangers, and she knows that she's pretty damn decent in the looks department, but she's no model. They're just two people who barely know each other. But damn, she needs to get out more, and so does this guy, by the look of him.

And it's nice, talking to someone else who understands what it's like. To live in a dead world.

She smiles at him, and reaches out her hand. "My name's Rochelle, by the way. Figure I should tell you, before we get too ahead of ourselves, yeah?" She'd been doing a lot of introductions lately, but she'd clean forgotten with this guy. Too busy talking, picking his brain and sharing and comparing tales.

“Heh, guess I got a li’l carried away…”

Something about the formality of the introduction has his smile deepening. Handshakes have fallen out of favour and have almost become a ritual of a bygone era in recent years. But they’re nothing he could ever begin to forget, not after sitting through dozens of interviews in a bid to land a more stimulating and better-paying job than working in a coffee shop. He never did, but damn if he hadn’t perfected his handshake trying. He dries his sweat-damp hand on his jeans before taking hers, his grip warm and comfortably firm.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Rochelle." It'd have been nicer if the circumstances were different but it is what it is. They could've been standing in each others' way in the middle of an arena, wired and white-knuckled, their weapons drawn. He can only hope it won't come to that. "I’m Luke.”

Edited 2015-05-30 04:46 (UTC)

She gave him a firm grip back, with her shake. A professional handshake, for a woman who'd once at a promising career. She'd had to do plenty of handshakes to get there, too. Not that she had done a lot of it recently, either. Not in her old world. Her world had been three other people.

Zombies didn't much want to shake your hand.

She gives him a soft smile, and nods. "It's nice to meet you too, Luke. Have you met Ellis, by chance? Sweet guy but a total honky tonk southern kid. Got a trucker hat, and a southern accent. He ought to be pretty noticeable. He's part of my crew." She figured Ellis would be safe to ask around for. He was a good guy, hard to dislike. Surely the opinions around here would be positive.

“Ellis?”

It comes back to him, a chatty, able-bodied guy with a Georgian accent. He had come off as friendly and eager – a bit too eager, Luke had felt at the time - to offer help, and all too willing to lay down his own knife at his feet in a gesture of good faith. Should’ve known better both as a survivor and as a tribute among wolves, Luke thinks. People have died for their kindness.

“Yeah, we met before. He came ‘round our camp last arena askin’ if we needed help. Put his knife down right in front a’ me.”

Neutral as his tone manages to be, there's no keeping his judgments off his face; it's in the knit of his brow, creeping into his eyes. Disapproval softened by flickers of sympathy.

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We're Damaged People Drawn Together

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