they keep calling out

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Who| Sam Wilson and YOU
What| adjusting to the detainment center after being shot down by the Capitol
Where| the detainment center
When| after the power chip liberation mission
Warnings/Notes| talk of death, torture, violence; will update as needed


It could be worse.

Sam doesn’t exactly want to think on the specifics of how it could be worse right now, but he keeps reminding himself of that anyway. He’s still alive, and as long as he’s still going, he’s got hope.

He keeps reminding himself of that even when it becomes obvious that Jet isn’t with him. That Sam didn’t just save Jet’s life only for both of them to get shot down and captured by the Capitol - he saved it only for them to get shot down and separated, and Jet’s being held somewhere else. Somewhere terrible, if the threats they make and the tapes they show him are true - Sam isn’t convinced they are, but there’s always a chance.

And Sam knows - he knows - that it’s not because of him, that he’s not important enough for this, that wherever they’ve got Jet it’s for reasons beyond him and they’re only using it to get to him, he knows their bullshit enough to know that it wouldn’t matter whether he was here or not and that doing what they say isn’t going to win Jet his freedom.

But the part of him that’d do anything to keep his brother safe is a little easier to convince.

When they let him out, to mingle with the other Tributes turned Capitol soldiers, he tries not to let it replay in his mind. Instead he focuses on trying to find a couple of familiar faces, ones he hasn’t seen in too long - at least not without being in the middle of a battlefield.

He’s not exactly too careful about who he might be bumping into as he hunts.

Comments

whoops, finally tagging this

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi has been in the Detainment Center long enough that she basically has free rein of it again. It was slow going at first, but she's been cooperative enough, and that's really all they can ask of her.

She doesn't expect any new faces to be cropping up. There haven't been any skirmishes lately--unless they decided not to invite her to one. There was trouble with the Peacekeepers, though, and she knows from Initiate's messages that it reached further than just the city. But if anyone new died, she doesn't smell them here.

Not until she suddenly comes across Sam one day and stops dead in her tracks. Her eyes go wide and round, dismay clear on her face. "Sam?" It's the first word that makes it out of her mouth, and a few more tumble after it with the silence broken. "What are you doing here? What happened?"

[sizeofyourbaggage]

There may be dismay on Terezi's face, but some of the tension in Sam's eases a little when he sees her. He doesn't light up the way he did when he'd run into her out on the battlefield after they'd thought she was dead, but he'd been looking for her. And it's good to see a familiar face, even if him being here is far from a good thing.

He gives her a small, humorless smile when she says his name.

"Got shot down," he says simply, unwilling to go into too much detail when the sight of the missile heading for Jet and the feel of it hitting him instead is still playing over and over in his mind. "Flying a mission."

[pythianjudgment]

It takes her a moment to process that. Shot down. A thousand different thoughts run through her mind, and she's not sure how to voice them all. At the very least, he seems okay for however much that counts while they're stuck here in the Capitol.

"Was there anyone else with you?" She has to know. Even if she doesn't want to hear it, she needs to know if there was anyone else, just to put her fears to rest.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

For all that he doesn't really want to talk about it, he'd been expecting that question. Still, he runs a hand over his jaw, clearly unhappy.

"Jet. I don't know if they got him, too, I haven't seen him." In person, anyway, and he doesn't want to bring up the videos they keep showing him. If they're true, there's nothing either of them can do about it, and if they're not - well, either way, there's no point in freaking her out.

[pythianjudgment]

Jet. Terezi frowns deeper at the name, but if she notices Sam lying to her, she doesn't remark on it. It's more liking that she's too preoccupied with what it means for Jet to be missing--both for him and for their people back in District 13.

She almost asks why they were out on a mission with just the two of them--but it occurs to her that maybe he shouldn't answer a question like that in the middle of the Detainment Center. There are likely to be ears all over the place, and if they don't already know what that mission was for, Terezi doesn't want to put Sam on the spot.

But she doesn't really know what to say. They're both stuck here now, and possibly Jet, too. And who knows how the others are taking it... That worries her almost as much as being trapped here.

Lacking any kind of words to express herself with, Terezi steps forward and hugs Sam around the middle instead. She holds on tightly, whether he wants her to or not. Her muffled words drift up towards him. "We have to get out of here. We have to get back to Thirteen."