thecapitol | you've always loved the strange birds

Entry tags:

you've always loved the strange birds

Who| Sansa and OPEN
What| Sansa arrives in the Capitol
Where| Around the Tribute Center and the Capitol
When| ...Now?
Warnings/Notes| TBC

She feels lost and unmoored, but that's nothing new. Since her father's death, through all the long protracted nightmare of King's Landing, she's felt that way, out of her depth and swept up in things beyond her control. In that sense, it hardly comes as a surprise for Ser Dontos' boat to become a dream, and to wake up somewhere else entirely.

It's the place itself that shocks her, therefore, at least as much as the fact that she's here. She's never seen or even dreamed of anything like this land, all glass and steel and blinding white, even the guards dressed in something glossy and clean and hard that certainly isn't steel armour. She lets herself be guided without argument, meek and mild as any girl could ever be, and feels oddly bereft when they leave her in her new room without even that dubious company.

When it comes down to it, though, she doesn't stay in the room long - but still long enough to wonder at a few of the strange objects scattered around it: the black mirror on the wall that barely reflects, the lights in the ceiling that have no clear flame. Then, feeling the strangeness of it all well up inside her, she knows she ought to get moving. She has to find out where she is, for one thing, and what the allegiances are of its lords. The Lannisters will be looking for her, she thinks, and if she ends up back in King's Landing, what she endured before will seem like tender mercy.

For the rest of the day, Sansa can be found wandering - first out into District 6's common area, then around the rest of the strange building, and at last out into the streets themselves. Her wonder is written on her face, along with a growing unease; she is so caught up in staring up at the sweeping buildings and foreign towers and strange lights that she may well bump into several people, her ladylike grace and manners momentarily forgotten.

If she does drag her eyes away from the city long enough to focus on its people, she will approach anyone who looks as though they might be friendly, bobbing a curtsey and asking politely if she might have a word.

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The only give is the funny lurch of starting movement, but Karkat's so well-used to it that he doesn't think to mention it. From there the trip is smooth and easy, mercifully free of any untimely stops or door jams that he most certainly has never caused by mashing the buttons like a panicked monkey.

"What are the Wall and Eyrie?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at her. Mules and wheels are telling of the technology, though, more than just her ignorance of electricity.

"The lights are electric too," he goes on. "And yeah, the Capitol's filthy with its own riches. If they can slap sparkle and glamour onto it, they do, most likely with a heaping load extra on top of it. They would have to just to throw these games so often--though we have to earn our own sponsors or find jobs to pay for our keep now." He'd have to let her know about that sooner or later.

With a soft ding the elevator hits ground floor, and the doors slide smoothly open. Karkat steps out with a motion for her to follow. "Come on, and don't let the reporters stop you. They'll get more than enough time to chat at you later."

Sansa jolts a little when the elevator starts, steadying herself against the wall, but then relaxes again. "The Eyrie is where my Aunt Lysa lives," she says, and then, as if reciting by rote, "Her son is Lord Arryn, and he rules the Vale since his lord father's death. I could give you the house words and everything, but I don't suppose it matters. I've only heard about it, really. And the Wall is where the world ends. It's this great wall of ice, a thousand feet high, and beyond it there's only wildlings and worse. My brother is at the Wall." She purses her lips. "Well, he's my half-brother, really."

Then they're at the ground floor, and her chattering is cut off - probably a mercy, she thinks in Septa Mordane's voice, and has to hide a smile. She hesitates just a moment (largely because "reporter" is another word that's unfamiliar, and takes her a moment to puzzle out), then follows him. All her time in King's Landing has, if nothing else, taught her to ignore people, something she could never do when she was a child; she raises her chin and steels her stance and walks as if nothing in the world could touch her. People don't bother you when you walk like that, as if you have somewhere more important to be and someone more important to talk with. It's not her strongest skill, but it seems to work.

"If they're so rich," she says after a moment, to Karkat, "I suppose it makes sense that they'd want to make sure people knew it. Why shouldn't they?"

A great number of words tumble out of Sansa's mouth, and with them go much of what he cared for the subject. What the hell are house words? But if she doesn't think it matters, then it's even less important to him. Nearer the end his attention does catch, but what he might have asked is put on hold for the trip through the lobby - and then for the question she asks.

He glances at her, and stepping out through the doors he says, "Fuck if I know." Anything else wouldn't be safe, and he's not here to lecture her on the frustrations of class disparity.

"So what are wildlings, and how the hell do half-brothers work? Your human family structures are complicated enough without adding halves in."

Sansa frowns a little at that, but her confusion is short-lived. He's from another world, after all. It's hardly surprising if even something so fundamental is strange to him. "He's my father's son, but not my mother's. He's a Snow. A bastard," she adds helpfully, because after all, if he hasn't heard of Winterfell he probably doesn't know Northern naming conventions either. "And wildlings are... well, they're people, but wild people, if you know what I mean. They live out beyond the Wall, and they're half-feral, Old Nan said. They raid our farms and villages, but we have the Night's Watch and the Wall to keep them away. That's why Jon's at the Wall, he joined the Watch."

Helpfully, sure. He keeps an eyebrow cocked. "What do I care if he's a bastard? He's not in my life to piss me off."

The rest, frankly, goes right over his head. There's only so much he cares to learn the intricacies of human family trees, and the differences of whose parent is whose seems frankly too finicky from the standpoint of a species with incestuous slurry as a major reproductive component.

(It's probably for the better he has no intent to tell about that here and now.)

"I get the gist," he grants, moving on.

"But this is the Capitol. Take it all in: giant buildings, more glitter and chrome than anyone has any right to use, and the most thorough argument I never needed in the first place that fashion is absolutely bugnuts bananakers." He gestures wide at the spread all around them. "Just don't step out into the street, and keep near me. Smile at strangers, but remember, we're too busy to stop and chat with people."

Sansa laughs a little at his turn of phrase, hiding her giggle decorously behind her hand. "I understand," she says, but those giggles are still bubbling up just under the surface of her voice. They fade out soon, though, in favour of wonder. "It's beautiful. Don't you think it's beautiful?"

Beautiful, she asks. He looks up and around like he's never considered it before, but that's really not it. How can he call it beautiful? He's spent time enough looking at it all, gazing over the city on the nights he was under Tower arrest, walking out among it in times before and after. The people fill their city with spectacles and wonders, high-tech frippery and glitz. It catches the eye like a laser pointer telling you where to look. It's all show.

"It's different," is what he settles on. "It's nothing like Alternia, and even after a year I still don't think I'm used to it."

The thing is, he doesn't want to be.

Curling his hand in a follow-me, he sets off down a quieter side street, for however much that means in the Capitol. "This way. Less chance we'll get hassled by the mediannihilators."

For a time he lets things go quietly, for her to gawk and gaze at what she likes. This is, in part, to show her around, to make a show of where they are, and it's probably better for her sake if she does get the chance to fawn over it all. If she's impressed and enthusiastic, it can't look anything but good to the cameras. Still, it leaves him wondering.

"What kind of life did you come from before this?" he asks. "I'm not asking about the Wall or the Eyrie or things like that. Go on and tell me to fuck my lusus if I'm sticking my scent node where it's not wanted; it's just some of the stuff you've said makes me curious."

Sometimes she's seemed smart enough to catch his careful hints, seemed like she's been through something heavy enough, but others he's left wondering how she could be anything but the human equivalent of a prim little highblood girl.

Edited 2015-10-11 19:13 (UTC)

Sansa frowns a little, trying to figure out what angle to come at the question from, how much is safe to say and how much isn't. She wastes a few moments' thinking time in play-acted wonder - not that she isn't truly wonderstruck, but in her experience it rarely hurts to lay it on fairly thick - before she looks back at him and answers, as if she's only just processed his question through the haze of wonder.

"It's a long story," she says, and lowers her eyes. "Too long and too heavy for so fine a day. The simplest I can put it is... is that there was a war. And my family lost. I have spent a year or more as a prisoner in a gilded cage, betrothed to the monster who killed my father, then wedded to another of his ilk. I have been beaten and shamed and trapped for so, so long. And now, I have been delivered."

In any other context, Karkat would gladly read the plot of that story.

Here, however, it's her life she's telling him. He's given her the moment she needed to tell it, not begrudging, knowing well what a heavy thing the past can be. There were hints, and now that she's said it it makes a kind of sense.

He looks at her, sympathy on his face as he slows his path. "Consider my curiosity filled to the point of queasiness." Despite the phrasing, his tone is gentle, or as much as his shout-roughened voice gets. "I'll let you keep the details unless you feel the need to vent your bile someday down the line. My past isn't remotely the same as yours, but I'll put it this way: this is the only place I have, too."

He's certain now what he's going to do. There's alleys in the city, places stuck away where cameras aren't, marked with graffiti that would otherwise have been cleared away. Some he knows solidly, or did before; with that metric he can test what's still safe. She's proved well enough why she needs this place, which is reason for him to tell her how they're going to get it.

For now, though, they still have a facade to keep up.

"Do you like pastry? There's a place I've got a sponsorship deal with, so I get discounts, and I've got enough assi in my account that I can get you something until you've got your own deals worked out," he offers. Appearances aside, getting away from shit like what she's been through deserves some kind of celebratory sweet.

"Oh, would you? That would be so kind, Karkat." She smiles at him, clasping her hands. "I'll pay you back the moment I can, I promise. Oh, do they have lemon cakes? Lemon cakes were always my favourite."

She appreciates his sympathy, more than she could say even if she felt able to be entirely open and honest with anyone. It feels like an age since she could take someone even remotely at face value when they felt sorry for her. Even Ser Dontos had only helped her because she helped him first. She can't help but be suspicious, but she doesn't want to be, so she pushes that suspicion to the back of her mind and lets herself believe that he really does feel for her.

The corner of his mouth lifts, not really a smile, but positive enough for him. "Probably. They've got a lot of stuff."

They've got cookies shaped like his face and horn-colored cream horns and croissants, too, as she'll see when they get there. And indeed, they do have lemon cake.

From there, he leads her around, showing her one thing or another. There's enough to gawk at out in the Capitol, from the buildings themselves to the adornments they put up - statues, art, fountains - and flora here and there, like the park. It's fairly leisurely, though he dodges main streets via alley now and then, glad whenever a knot of citizens gives him reason to build up the ruse.

Eventually, one of these alleyways has what he wants: graffiti. It's unlike any murals they might have seen, imprecise in a way that's genuine rather than artsy, showing the outline of a bird. A mockingjay. It's a good spot, not too near the street, though the first thing out of his mouth is a hushed, "Keep your voice quiet here." There wouldn't be microphones in this spot, he's sure, but he doesn't want to risk anyone else overhearing them.

He turns to her, though he keeps his back toward the street, looking to block what he can of their faces. It's paranoid perhaps to think someone could lipread from that distance, but extra care is better than too little. He meets her eyes with his.

"I can't say this anywhere else, so listen up and engrave it the hardest stone in your memory. This place is all I've got left, and it sounds like it's better than anything you have to go back to. But if we're going to make it, we can't let the Capitol keep doing what it's doing. It sends us into the arenas again and again; it tortures and executes anyone who steps out of line. If they knew we were here right now, they would have us both dead for it, you understand?"

He holds her gaze, earnest, holding back on anything else until he can see she's on board with what he's saying.

"I understand." Sansa stands with her back to the alley's mouth, effectively blocking the view for anyone passing by, and her voice is conversational and casual, even though her expression falls into a look of ungodly tiredness. "But I don't want anything to do with it. I'm sorry, Karkat, truly I am. But the last thing I want, could want, is to be hunted here too."

His features don't fall so much as shift and lose their footing. This isn't what he hoped for or what he was thinking would come of this. He thought he could fold her into the rebellion. What her skills might be he doesn't know, but that doesn't mean she'd have none. This place has well taught him the value of allies. But here he's only given the first hint of things, and she's told him no.

For a moment he considers arguments he could make, what might bribe her, but he knows only the roughest outline of her past. He knows, too, how draining trying to fight everything can be. His expression finds something more solid, but it's more resignation than confidence.

"I'm going to tell you this much, and nothing else," he says, deciding it for himself. "There is a rebellion--people working against the Capitol, wanting to stop what they put us through so they can fix Panem. So long as you have the choice to stay out, I'm not going to force you into it. Just know that no matter how bad shit gets, there are people trying to make this place better. Keep that knowledge close and quiet. Okay?"

Despite everything, he hopes for her sake she won't get dragged in before she's ready.

She nods. "I can keep a secret," she assures him quietly, and takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry I can't help you, but I swear to the old gods and the new, they won't hear a word of it from my lips." She learnt that lesson long ago, in the hardest way she can imagine. Last time she told people in power something she oughtn't to have, her whole family and life were forfeit. She won't make that mistake again here, not when she has no reason to hate the rebels or wish them ill.

"Oughtn't we to move on?" she says after a moment, glancing back over her shoulder at the passers-by. They look innocent enough, but she knows not to underestimate the dangers of innocent passers-by. There's no sense in drawing out dangerous conversations, no matter how safe he thinks they ought to be here.

Old gods and new? Karkat's never been one for piety, but he keeps in whatever he might have to say, and keeps his eyebrow from raising like it wants. There's a time and a place for irreverence, and even he knows it isn't when she's swearing secrecy.

"Good. Thank you." And truly, he is relieved. It was dangerous enough to risk it, more dangerous still to tell someone who wants no part. But she's smart and good, and he values that. Right, too, with her suggestion, and Karkat nods before setting off again. They'll come out the other end of the alley and keep going, like nothing happened.

"Is there anywhere else you want to see before we turn back?" he asks with a glance. They could probably tour through one more, and it keeps up the ruse to ask, but returning to the tower would be just as welcome to him now.

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you've always loved the strange birds

he got caught in the elevator with Roland once

i think i remember that!

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