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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Clara lets out a small, bitter laugh. "I'm sure they'd like to think of themselves as gods." She hopes that isn't enough to get the Gamemakers to turn a more focused eye on her. "No, they're humans, like you and me. They just happen to be from here and control the Arenas." And, by extension, them, which horrifies her in ways she can't fully describe.

"Oh, I see," Sansa says, as if it all makes perfect sense. "They are the lords of this place, then? And these Games, are they a kind of tourney, for the people here to watch?" That part does make sense. Tourneys, feasts, and festivals are a potent tool to a ruler, and one she's come to appreciate the value of: to distract the people, to make them feel at ease, to give them a safe place to put their angers and fears and joys.

So long as she forgets the part about dying and coming back, it all makes perfect sense.

That is...surprisingly on the nose. "Something like that." How she wishes Sansa's guess wasn't so accurate, because it's yet another reminder how the people of the Capitol see this as fun and games. "Only the people here like their cont...tourneys to have much higher stakes than the ones they had where I'm from."

Though, knowing what she knows about Arya (and, by connection, Sansa's) home, she wouldn't be too surprised to hear that they had entertainment like the arena.

"Like the Mereenese," Sansa says, nodding understanding (though still with a wide-eyed blitheness that comes all too easily after all her time in King's Landing). "They have fighting pits there. Only there they aren't so wise. Sometimes the red priests talk about bringing people back, but nobody's ever actually done it. This place must be truly wonderful, if they can do that!"

There's one small plus side for having been in Panem for over a year, and that's being able to roll with mentions of unknown places off of context alone. When she had first arrived, mentions of places that she didn't recognize got an eyebrow raise and a line of questioning, which Sansa doesn't get. Though, she has to admit, her stomach twists slightly at how in awe Sansa is of the Capitol and what they can do. "It's truly something," she says, not quite agreeing, but trying not to bring a suspicious eye upon them. Instead, she figures it's best to veer the conversation on a (hopefully) slightly safer path, "Who are the red priests?"

Sansa doesn't want to talk about the red priests. They belong to her world, and she's more interested in this new land, in its glittering edifices and shining lights - even in the blood and battle underlying them, if she can't avoid being involved in it. But here, not there. Not home. There's nothing left there for her to care about.

But she's too polite to refuse information, especially from someone older than her, so she sighs quietly, folds her hands in front of her like she did in her lessons at Winterfell, and answers: "They come from over the sea, and they worship... I forget what they call him. A god of fire. They renounce the Seven as false gods. Some of them are violent, especially across the sea, but mostly they just shout a lot in the streets. And they all wear red robes."

Clara listens with rapt attention, engrossed in Sansa's description of the religious order. She's heard a little of the world the Stark sisters come from, but nothing like this. That being said, she's somewhat accustomed to hearing about religions that are wildly different from the ones from her own world after spending time around the Initiate. "The Seven, is that what you were raised with?" There's not a hint of scorn or anything like it in her voice, just curiosity, before she realizes how painful this might be to talk about. "I'm sorry if I sound like I'm probing too much. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

Sansa hesitates for a moment. But what she's about to say is common knowledge, not something that can be used against her, and it may win her some favour to be polite and forthcoming. So she smiles, nodding.

"The Seven are the new gods. But in the North, we pay some service to the Old Gods, as well. My father went to the weirwood to pray, my mother to the sept. Father used to say that a lord is tied to his land and his people, and to put aside the old gods would be to scorn them both. But it's the Seven who are the gods of the realm. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Crone, the Smith, and the Maiden." If Clara's listening closely, she may notice that's only six, but Sansa doesn't pause. "Some of the Northern lords hate them. Call them intruders. But I pray to them."

While it may be common knowledge that the Gamemakers can reap information for their own purposes whenever they want, it isn't something that the average resident of Panem can do on their own. And, if she's perfectly honest, she can't help but feel slightly awkward asking Arya about these things since Tom's laid claim on her.

So Sansa talking about the world they come from is fascinating.

While the terminology is foreign, Clara's pretty sure she still understands for the most part. But that doesn't mean that she isn't trying to digest this information and misses things in the process, such as the one skipped god. "If the Seven are the new gods, who are the Old Gods?"

"They are..." Here she trips up a little. It's hard to explain the Old Gods. Where she's from, they're simply known, and it's only now, trying to describe it to a stranger, that she realises how abstract and formless her understanding of the old ways is. "That is, when they die, they become the weirwood trees. Or the weirwood trees become them. Um. They're the gods of the Children, who lived in Westeros before the First Men came. The smallfolk say they have power wherever the heart trees can see-- that's the weirwood trees, only the ones that have faces carved in them..."

She's going bright pink, clashing with her auburn hair. She doesn't like showing her ignorance like this, especially not of something she really ought to know. But the septas only taught her the faith of the Seven, and while Old Nan used to tell them stories of the old gods, Sansa never really listened, preferring the stories about knights and princesses.

"Every castle in the Seven Kingdoms used to have a godswood with a heart-tree," she says, a little lamely. "But now most of them are gone. Winterfell still has one, though. Had." It's gone now, she thinks, and is abruptly close to tears. Burned, like the rest of the castle. Like Bran and Rickon.

Clara's sure that there's some religion back home that's similar, she isn't sure which one, but it definitely sounds like one of those things that she never really looked into. Which she now regrets, because it means that she can't try to find some sort of common ground with this girl who seems like she could use it.

The problem is, Clara can't find any common ground on that front, but she does see how she tears up as she speaks. She resists the urge to reach out and wrap her arms around the girl, instead giving her a sympathetic look. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. It's okay." It's a lie, of course, none of this is okay, but if she can keep the girl from breaking down too much, she'll consider it a win. "Talking about home can be difficult," she says softly, giving Sansa an out if she wants to take it.

Sansa takes it with some gratitude, biting back those tears before they can spill and giving Clara an innocent little smile instead. "I'm sure it doesn't matter much here, anyway," she says, as though it's all forgotten. She's become very good at forgetting - or, rather, at pretending to forget. "It's all so very different, after all. And marvellous, with all this... all this glass and steel. They must have master builders, to make all this."

It seems politic, right now, to steer away from the tricky subjects of religion and death matches - to focus, instead, on the place itself. If she's wide-eyed and wondering about it, she can probably find out quite a lot about the land she's found herself in before her questions start to make people suspicious.

Clara's someone who knows about hiding how much things hurt and blinking back tears for the sake of looking serene and composed. She doesn't say anything else on the subject, but she gives Sansa a look that just screams 'you're not alone, if you ever want to talk' though she doubts that she does. "The Capitol's very good at marvellous things," she says with complete honesty. Yes, the Capitol has brought her grief and heartbreak in ways she never believed she could feel, even after what her family had been through in Detroit, but even she has to admit that it isn't all bad, even if the good things are almost purely superficial. "You'd be amazed what they can do with clothing and makeup alone."

Sansa appreciates that look, although she doesn't trust it. It's kind of this woman to be so welcoming, but that doesn't mean she's about to tear down all the walls she's built up. It doesn't mean she's safe.

Still, she smiles, tucking a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. "I can imagine," she says, nodding. "I'm afraid you'll think me very stupid, but there's so much here that seems... well, magical. Like those lights." She points at one of the screens. "With such wonders, I can only think that everything must be so beyond me."

If Clara's learned one thing in her time here, it's that safe is relative. Safe here is not the same thing as safe at home, safe in the Capitol is not the same thing as safe in the Arena. She doesn't expect Sansa to feel safe, not in this place, but she does hope that she's more at ease.

"I don't think you're stupid at all," she says gently. "Maybe a little out of your comfort zone, but definitely not stupid." It didn't quite occur to her how much of this stuff was so foreign to Sansa. While she doesn't want to disrupt whoever may be watching something on some of the screens around the lobby, she can't help but want to show Sansa the joys of technology, if only to help the girl acclimate a little bit. She picks up the tablet she carries with her and closes out the news ticker and calendar she had pulled up previously, instead pulling up a video stream of a makeup artist showing off some 'glamorous beach looks inspired by District 4.' "And I don't think it's going to be beyond you for long," she says, passing the piece of technology to Sansa.

Sansa hesitates, looking horribly uncertain, before warily taking the tablet from Clara and looking down at it. That uncertainty, though, passes quickly; she's soon spellbound by the video, watching open-mouthed. It isn't just the technology (although that's wonderful, rather scarily so), but the video itself. Makeup where Sansa comes from is kohl and powder, for the most part, and she'd never have dreamt that so many colours and textures could exist on someone's face.

It's a long time before she looks up, going pink as she realises she's been staring at the screen for so long. "I... Do lots of people carry these?"

There's a deep, maternal streak in Clara that keeps considering taking the tablet away from her the longer she stares. It can't possibly be good for her eyes to watch as closely as she is, especially since she's not accustomed to screens. But Clara resists, instead watching her watch, waiting for any signs of eye strain.

The question makes Clara laugh a little bit. "A fair amount," she says warmly. "There are small versions of these that are a lot more common. I mainly have this because of my work." Despite the fact that it's for her work, she doesn't withdraw the tablet. "If you want, I can see if the manufacturer can deliver one to you." There are, after all, certain perks to doing ad campaigns for various companies around the Capitol.

Sansa's blush darkens a little, but she smiles, handing the tablet back and biting her lip. For a moment there, she looked like the child she is, but now she pulls the veil of respectability back over herself and becomes a lady again. "I couldn't ask you to do that," she demurs, shaking her head. It's not just manners that makes her say that; the last thing she wants, in a strange new place, is to end up in debt to someone, and she has no idea what Clara might want in return for that kindness. "Thank you, though. You're very kind, my lady."

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you've always loved the strange birds

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