thecapitol | (no subject)

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Who | Fitz and YOU!
What | Fitz has been dragged away from his Extremely Vital Quest and dumped in a weird city. This does not please him.
Where | Around and about
When | A few days after the Crowning
Warnings/Notes | None yet; will update if needed

A: The District 11 Living Room

Fitz awakes aching and exhausted, and lies for a while in the darkness behind his eyes, feigning sleep as he pieces together what he knew. He had just come from the Elderling city, mired in the tug of the Skill, when suddenly he had awoken in a cold, bare room, foreign in its strangeness. Awareness of the severity of his situation had come in waves; no Skill river in which to reach, not a flicker of life showed to his Wit-sense, not even an awareness of the distant bond with his wolf. He had no weapons, and they had taken his clothes and his pack, and with them his elfbark and herbs. Locked up, alone and unarmed in a strange land, it's no surprise that when the Peacekeepers came for him, he hurled himself into them, trying to get past them and away. He had, he recalls with a flicker of pride, knocked the teeth loose in one’s mouth, and kicked in one’s knee with a force that would not soon heal, but in return he received a solid beating, and a blow to the head which sent him spiralling down into one of his seizures, to awake here. The bed is soft and silk-sheeted. There is blood in his mouth where he has bitten his tongue, and the area above his eye feels tight and bruised. At least one rib is bruised if not broken. But mostly, he felt wreathed in the unbelievable sore tiredness that followed a seizure. And mostly, he’s bone-tired, stiff and sore from his seizure, and cursing himself for showing that great weakness.

Without his Wit, he can’t tell if there are others in the room with him. Certainly, he’s no longer in the cell he woke up in before, but was he moved by his captor or rescued by someone else? Either way, it seems likely that as soon as his hosts know he’s awake, someone will come for him. And unarmed and disorientated, he has little chance of escaping this room if they do. Best to move fast. Cautiously, he cracks open his less-sore eye. The lights hurt his head something awful, brighter and harsher than firelight or daylight. The room is empty. He lies still a moment longer, gathering his thoughts, eyeing the room from under his lashes, then moves sharply.

He swings himself out of the low, soft bed, ignoring how the room swims around him, and, lurching slightly, makes for the door. To his surprise, it opens easily. The first door leads into an odd ceramic and silver anteroom, walled with mirrors; a dead end. The second leads into a hallway, and from there into a glass-walled room, laid out with low tables and soft chairs. He moves into the living room near-silently, warily, like a caged wolf. Distracted by a combination of concussion, Skill-headache and exhaustion making his vision blur, and lacking the familiar warning of his Wit-sense, he doesn’t notice there’s someone else sitting in there until he’s already moved out of the cover of the corridor.

B: The streets of the Capitol

Later, after having this place explained to him (however loosely) and after his test, he is surprised to find that he is free to leave the building. On the pretext of visiting the market, he has determined to find the edge of the city and plot his escape before they throw him into this deathmatch. But now he’s out in the city, he finds it almost distracts him from his plans. If the magical tower with its sourceless light and great glass walls and self-opening doors was strange, these streets are incomprehensible. He recognises not one in a thousand things that the huge glass-fronted stores display in glittering mounds, there are vehicles that make no sense, and even the people passing him, with their impossibly colourful hair and skin, and shimmering, shifting, oddly-cut clothes, are so alien as to be barely recognisable. They seem barely human. Elderlings? he wonders briefly, but puts the thought from his mind. If they are Elderlings, they seem hardly likely to come to the aid of the Six Duchies, when they are so venal and sick as to battle humans for sport. What’s important is to gather what information he can, then return to his friends and to Verity.

Admittedly, that currently mostly seems to take the form of standing, rather dumbstruck, in the street, looking very lost. This place is so confusing.

C: The Training Centre

There is one place in this odd city that seems almost familiar, and that’s the training centre in the building. The room itself is as strange as everything else, but the familiar weight of weapons in his hands is oddly comforting, especially when, bereft of his weapons, his Wit and his poisons, he feels much more vulnerable than he’d like in this strange and hostile place. And, having decided it best to present himself as a predictably aggressive soldier, he feels no qualms about being seen here. Not to mention, the more he sharpens his rusty skills, the better his chances of survival.

Hefting a suitable sword, he goes through familiar drills swiftly and neatly, one by one. The physical exertion frees his mind, takes him back to a time before everything went so wrong, running the same drills again and again out in the yards before Hod the Weaponsmaster’s sharp eye and critical tongue. By the time he pauses, panting, and notices that he isn’t alone, he feels almost cheerful despite his situation. The exercise is good, and he is feeling the benefits of relief from the constant guard he has had to keep on his Skill for the last few weeks on the Skill-road.

He throws the newcomer a wolfish smile, tossing his sword from hand to hand. “Looking for a sparring partner?”

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Éowyn is still deep in the frustration and depression that has dogged her since the Arena. Her time with Firo and Arya lately has dulled the worst edges of the pain, but she's still a bundle of pent-up energy and half-hidden grief, spending a lot of time with the horses and a good seven or eight hours a day in hard training. The old callouses on her hands have blistered, healed, blistered again. Her bad arm is giving her constant pain, a dull ache that demands rest she never gives it.

She barely looks at the stranger until he speaks to her. By that time, she's picking through the sword rack, shield buckled to her arm, back to the room. Her long hair is braided back, but messily, and her loose tunic and trousers are crumpled. She doesn't answer his smile, but only nods, selecting a longsword from the rack and turning to face him.

"Better a partner than a straw man," she agrees, dropping back into a defensive stance, handling the longsword with ease. "Whenever you will, I am ready."

Fitz looks her over, tucking back a lock of dark hair that's escaped his warrior's tail and rolling his shoulders as he settles into a similar stance. She looks hard and confident, and he almost laughs thinking about how utterly outclassed he probably is. After all, the sword was never his best weapon - it tends to end up on the ground as he brawls, and his fighting method consists mostly of hurling himself as hard as possible at his opponent and taking less harm than he deals - and it has been a good year or so since he did regular drills and sparring. This has the potential to be very embarrassing and rather painful.

He smiles crookedly. "My lady, you'll forgive me if I make a poor showing. I have been on the road for some months, and not practising as I should."

The sword in his hand is well-balanced and weighted, though not a patch on Hod's workmanship. He adjusts his grip, lowers his stance, takes another moment, then more or less experimentally feints to her left and brings his sword up into her right, keeping his guard tight.

"I will forgive you, my lord," Éowyn agrees, and flashes her teeth for a moment in a smile that doesn't touch her eyes, "but not spare you."

She is relieved, however, to see that he knows the basics. She is not opposed to teaching - has been doing just that with Firo, Gary, and Bayard - but it isn't what she wants to be doing just now. Teaching takes patience, steadiness and gentleness. All her patience, just now, is tied up in not waging open war on the Capitol.

So she attacks fast and hard, not pulling her punches; her shield comes up to counter his feint, her sword to match the second blow, and she presses the attack, trying to catch his sword with her own and striking out at his gut with the edge of her shield. There's a vicious kind of satisfaction in being able to fight - really fight, against an enemy standing solid in front of her, even if he isn't the one she's angry at. She fights with skill, but not finesse, like a soldier rather than a knight, nothing flashy or impractical about it. She looks, from her fighting style, less like a lady of the court and more like someone who would kick you in the crotch and cut you while you were doubled over.

"You are new-come, then?" she asks, pivoting away and slashing low at his knees with the blunted practice sword.

This suits Fitz fine; he's much better at fighting like a soldier than fighting like a lord, and it's a relief to feel that she's tough enough that he doesn't need to reign in and stick to formal swordplay. He catches her sword with his as he dodges back, trying to push her swing further to the floor as he slashes upwards towards her belly.

"Difficult to tell, in this place. The lights are so bright there seems no day or night. And I was unconscious for a time." He breaks off to focus on warding off her attacks, and continues after a moment, "No more than a day or two. I suppose I am new enough."

Éowyn brings her shield down to meet his sword, side-stepping as the wooden edge crashes against his blade. Her longsword kisses the floor, then it's back up to fortify her guard, and she presses the attack with both sword and shield: quick, sharp slashes and thrusts, using her shield as a weapon no less than the sword.

"It is difficult," she agrees, her tone sympathetic even as she aims a vicious blow at his gut. "The light here is strange, too bright and too sharp, just as you say. But the Sun and the Moon yet hang in the sky, though you may have to go up to the roof to tell time by them." Now it is her turn to fall quiet and focus on fighting for a moment, before she says, "Welcome, then." Welcome to prison, and to gaolers with even the scraps of humanity gone for them, and to being ground down into nothing every day that passes without you fighting back. She cannot say that, of course, not with the cameras watching. She would not admit to such weakness to a stranger anyway. Yet there's something of it in her eyes.

Fitz doesn't respond for a moment, because he's being driven back by her onslaught and it is taking all his attention to guard against her blows. He throws in a few attacks, but she deflects them easily and it takes him a moment to get back on balance and return her attack with equal ferocity. He slashes and parries for a solid minute or so in silence, the only sound the clashing of their weapons and the shuffle of their feet.

As they fight, he considers. He recognises the look in her eyes, and the bitter edge to her words. It's fairly worrying that she thinks him deserving of sympathy. "I could be better come," he admits half-jokingly, and ducks past her shield blow and swings up towards her arm. "I've aquitted myself pretty poorly since arriving."

Éowyn snatches her shield-arm back, but a sharp jolt of agony awakened in her old injury slows her, and the blow connects. She reels back in clear pain, her shoulder and upper arm hurting more even than where the blow actually struck, and her shield sags, though she falters only a moment before raising her guard again with her sword.

Now it's her turn to be put on the defensive, and to fall silent while she fends off his attacks, her shield-arm clutched close to her chest. "Did you fight them?" she asks, as she pivots and ducks under his sword. "When they brought you from the cell?" She had, but with even less effect than him, and had quickly learnt her lesson. That wasn't to say she didn't relish the idea of someone landing a few blows, however minor, however misdirected, on the regime that had trapped her here and mocked her pain.

He slows his attack for a moment, concerned by her pain, but decides she'll tell him if she needs quarter, and redoubles his efforts, though focusing his attacks more on her sword side now.

"For all the good it did me," he says, rather bitterly, as he brings his guard back in a little too slowly and catches his arm a glancing blow on her shield. His ego has been pretty bruised by his experience. As has his face and ribs. But he smiles suddenly, savagely. "I took down three men before they took me. One won't be walking on that leg again. Another may miss eating solid food for a while." A slash down, around her knees, opens up his guard for a second because he isn't as paying much attention as he should. "I was unarmed and unprepared, and they were many. If they come again, I'll not be so easily bested."

Éowyn darts aside, her face taut with pain, and catches his sword with her own, twisting the blade. For a moment, she smiles - a smile as hard and vicious at his own - at the news. She bears no love for the Peacekeepers. Any enemy of theirs, until proven otherwise, is a friend of hers. But her smile fades almost as soon as it comes, and she shakes her head, striking out at his chest with the pommel of her sword.

"If they come again," she says in a low voice, "you will be more easily bested. They treat dissent gently, when it comes from new arrivals. Keep fighting, and you will find a fate worse that imprisonment awaits." She swallows, her hesitation momentary but obvious before she drives home the attack again. "Keep your eye for the Avoxes. You will see them here. And if you do not bridle your tongue and your fists, you will join them."

The Fitz of a year or so ago would have laughed that off, and paid for his rashness. But he's learnt a lot from the suffering of the past year. He sets his jaw and nods, his mouth a thin line, then turns his attention to her attack.

He twists partially out of the way, but her blow catches him right in the rib he currently suspects may be broken, and he stumbles back, gasping, doing his best to keep his guard up while spots dance in front of his eyes. Given that both of them are in some pain, and he would very much like to focus on what she's saying, he lowers his sword and raises his hand. "A moment."

Fairly pathetic, he tells himself, and both Burrich and Hod would have little patience for it, but it has been a long, confusing and most of all painful day, on the tail of weeks of hard travel and little sleep. He can hardly qualify anything he's done since coming here as sleep - it's been almost exclusively unconsciousness of the knocked-out variety. So perhaps he's justified in needing to catch his breath.

As he leans on the weapon rack, panting, he adds quietly, "The Avoxes are their silent servants? What do they do to them, to make them so compliant?"

"Cut out their tongues." Éowyn lowers her longsword, not without some relief, and moves to unbuckle her shield - her arm, sore as it is, can't bear that weight usefully for very long. Besides, it gives her a reason to look away, and thus stop him from seeing the haunted look in her eyes. "They do something else to them, as well. To their minds. I know not what it may be, but they seem unable to fight, to even contemplate disobedience."

She manages to keep her voice steady and matter-of-fact, but it's an effort. The Avoxes represent everything she fears becoming. Trapped in their own bodies, unable to fight, unable even to speak out - the ultimate imprisonment. She would rather die a thousand torturous deaths than face a day in such a state.

Settling her shield against the rack, she rolls up her sleeve and prods experimentally at her arm, which is a little swollen. There's nothing to be done about it that she can see, though, so she pulls her sleeve back down and wipes a little sweat-damp hair out of her face. "How much did they tell you, ere you tried to beat them down?"

Fitz swallows, slicking loose hair back with one hand. He's heard of similar punishments meted out to slaves in Jamaillia and the Chalced states, but it has always been far-off barbarism. He curses himself for only now thinking about how awful it is, even as he realises that he will have to be even more careful than he thought. His jaw shifts, a combination of hate and fear naked on his face. What she describes, the way in which they enter people's heads, makes him think uncomfortably of the Skill-imprint he found on Burl and Carrod's minds, the way the magic had been used to push people into actions against their very nature. He had sworn once, and now inwardly swore again, that he would die before he let that happen to him.

He realises his knuckles are white on his sword. Carefully, he lays it back in its proper place, and sets his back to the wall as he answers her, probing his ribs as he tries to assess the damage. It really fucking hurts.

"Very little. They opened the door and I threw myself at them." He winces, comes to the conclusion that it's just quite bruised, and lays off. "But the escort for my District met me when I awoke from the beating they gave, and explained something of our situation. And then they returned for me, to take me to the show circle."

"Let me see that," Éowyn says briskly, noticing his probing, and slides her own sword back into the rack. "I was a Healer ere I came to this place. I may be able to do something to help, if I have hurt you." She strides closer to him, her businesslike attitude a good cover for the sick disgust that the discussion is twisting up in her gut. It also makes it easier to keep her sympathy in check. If she slides into a persona that lets her be useful, then she can push away the need to think. As if that hasn't been the exact process that's led to her blistered hands and damaged arm.

"Which District is it?" she asks, after a moment. "If I can ask."

"It wasn't from you," he hastens to reassure her. "I caught a boot with it when I arrived. I thought perhaps it was broken, but the pain isn't that bad."

Nevertheless, he peels up his shirt, both so she can look and so he can. He hasn't really taken the time to sit down and look himself over, beyond a cursory glance, and it looks a bit worse than he expected, now purpling and swollen up the left side of his chest. Other, smaller bruises have started to colour on his back and side, but he doesn't particularly mind those. He's had worse beatings, even excepting the ones dealt out with the intent to torture or kill. It's just annoying, more than anything else.

"District 11," he says after a second, realising he didn't answer. "Does it matter?"

Unwrapping the soiled bandages from one hand, Éowyn wipes the blistered palm on her shirt and starts to examine his bruises, slow and careful, watching his expression for signs of pain. "It matters in some ways," she says as she works. "Who takes responsibility for you in the Arena and out of it. Where you live, and with whom. Who profits from your success and suffers for your failures. Hold still, this will hurt." This as she drops to one knee, steadying herself on his side, and begins to press more firmly at the rib he was worried about, feeling for any irregularities or give that he, distracted by pain, may have missed.

When she's done, she straightens up, jerking her head towards the exit. "There are medicine boxes in the rooms, and I have been gathering what herbs I can. It may be we can do something to bring the bruising down." Still matter-of-fact, her training not forgotten but put aside for the moment. Her training has been working off nervous energy, but that is precisely because she hasn't been able to be useful. Which means Fitz is getting medical attention whether he likes it or not, for her own sake as much as his.

"I am in District 10," she tells him, starting for the stairs and beckoning him with her. "The floor below yours. Should you need a friend, you will be able to find me."

He stands still as she prods him, his face set. There isn't any give - if there's a break, it must be a hairline fracture, but it's mostly just puffy and tender.

"I looked through the medicine box in my rooms," he says, tugging his shirt down to cover his bruised and scarred torso and following her. "But I recognised little in it. I have some little knowledge of herbs-" which he is vastly understating, very deliberately, because it would be stupid to show his whole hand to his captors, but he suspects many of the herbs he's familiar with don't grow in this place anyway, just as elfbark is unknown in the Inner Duchies - "but the labels on these tinctures and pills show strange words, and I have little knowledge how the names of things differ here. I would welcome your help."

"I am no more a native," Éowyn says over her shoulder, "yet I have been here some time now, and may have a little more familiarity. Some of the tinctures and ointments they leave us are, by my estimation, but different ways of sharing the same - 'aspirin', to my best guess, has the same effect as powdered willow, and 'K-cream' as arnica. Others I know not, but I have asked after their effects."

She considers the elevator for a moment, weighing her hatred of the tiny metal boxes against convenience, and then starts up the stairs, looking back at him.

"Some herbs I have managed to grow on the roof, or beg from others. Others are nowhere to be found. Were I yet allowed to be a Healer, it would grate far more sorely. But they would have me be a warrior, so it is less my concern." She frowns a little. "I did not give my name, did I?"

He lopes after her, considering what he found in the box. He'll have to look for some sort of herbal, do some research into the plants they derive these medicines from. He'll look into that shortly, he decides, and then realises once again that an answer is required of him.

"No, my lady. Only the tip of your sword." As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he realises how rude he sounds - especially since it was him who had asked her to spar - and flushes hotly. "Not that I'm complaining! Sparring with you has done me a power of good." Smoothly covered, he tells himself sourly as he stammers to smooth over his thoughtlessness.

If Éowyn is insulted, she gives no sign of it. Weeks spent with people like Firo and Jack have dulled her expectations of manners, and in a way, she appreciates it. She'd rather have truth than manners, in any case. She does feel a little bad for how he stammers and blushes, though, and pats his arm in an attempt to silently tell him she doesn't mind.

"And me," she says, with a thin little smile. It's true, though the relief of sparring comes as much from his newness, and the distraction that offers, than from the fighting itself. "Éowyn they call me. Lady of Emyn Arnen, ere I came hence, and a daughter of the house of Éorl - yet such words and titles hold little meaning here, and Éowyn alone I am."

His smile is rather shy and awkward, and he sketches a bow. "Fitz. My name's Fitz. FitzChivalry Farseer, as was, but I'm not sure I've ever lived up to my father's name."

"I know many who fear the same," Éowyn tells him, not without warmth. "My own husband among them. I should lay such fears to rest, for it is my experience that those most fearful of failure in such regard are those least prone to it." She gives him a little smile. "But if Fitz is all of that name you would keep, then Fitz it shall be."

"One way or another, FitzChivalry Farseer died some time back," he tells her. It's partially that he instinctively trusts this woman who is so full of pain and anger, despite himself, and mostly that his name means nothing here. Nobody here knows about the legends springing up of the evil Witted bastard, who clawed his way out of the grave. It's liberating in a way he's never felt before, and certainly not in the tense fucitive life he's lived of late, to speak freely of his name and his birth without fear of the consequences. "I'm what's left. As soon call me Nameless, for all it's worth."

But please don't. Regal's jeering words never quite leave his mind - you have but to scratch yourself to find Nameless the dog boy. Well, here he is. Without purpose, without meaning, without identity. Here, then, is where he will find out if he's right to fear that Regal was right about him.

Éowyn is quiet for a moment, ascending the steps with a thoughtful expression drifting over her face. "Sometimes," she says quietly, with the air of one speaking from experience, "that is when we are most ourselves, and most worthy. When names and houses and family are stripped away." She's thinking, of course, of her time riding in the ranks as Dernhelm. But it doesn't go beyond notice that she's in much the same place here, where all that held meaning to her has been taken, and what she says is as much in reassurance to herself as to him.

Either way, she shakes it off quickly enough, pausing on one of the little landings. "It sounds as if hardship has dogged you. If I could, I would hope for you that it could end here."

She echoes his thoughts, and he shakes it off, laughing dryly. It isn't as though he made a particularly good showing when he was Cob, or Tom Badgerlock, why should things change now he's Fitz-away-from-the-Duchies? And he won't correct her, tell him he has no house and no family and now no name. Why explain it at all? It's meaningless here.

"From what I've been told, that seems unlikely. But I thank you for your courtesy, nonetheless."

She nods a little, agreeing with his assessment. "Unlikely indeed, I fear. Yet there are wonders in this place that may ease some hardship, at least. I have been here for some months now, and still stand amazed at some of what they take for granted in this land."

It isn't a lie. It is, in fact, the only good thing she can really bring herself to say about the place, and she feels that he may need that little reassurance, however slight it may be. That's also why she bites back some of the things she wants to warn him of: how nothing here is stable, nothing can be trusted, how they will offer you loved ones and take them away just as suddenly, how every word and move and tear must be watched, how after all that they expect gratitude.

A little digging brings up another rare bright side, memory reawoken by the smell of her clothes as much as anything else. "There is good horseflesh here, too," she says after a moment. "Their care is abyssmal, but if such things are to your interest, I could show you the stables later."

C

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Imagine I have a fighty icon (it's on my list)

I only have that one. to my shame.

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