thecapitol | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Aunamee, Grey, Enjolras
What| Grey doesn't let rules stop him from murder.
Where| The library.
When| Between arenas.
Warnings/Notes| Violence.

The library was not Aunamee's usual scene. He preferred places with noise and crowds, places where the energy in the air was a pulse that rocked him from his head to his toes. This library reminded him of dead veins. Everything tasted stale and halted. Everything was trapped. The walls of books couldn't speak to him like a person would, and so he didn't bother to listen, instead scraping his fingernails down their spines as he aimlessly paced the aisles.

The library was not Aunamee's usual scene because he preferred places with noise and crowds, but today he arrived to escape from just those things. There was a fire building inside of him, a fire had that ignited after he awoke from his second arena. It twisted smiling faces into grotesque frowns. It transformed soft words into harsh whispers. It tattooed red rivers and black spiderwebs on the whites of other peoples' eyeballs.

It reminded him that he was losing.

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Someone else is pacing the aisles, but his movements are more purposeful. More defined. Predatory. He's gone the extra mile to blend in, the flash of white in his hair dyed to the same (or similar) dull brown as the rest. A brown contact covers the startling blue of his left eye. He's dressed unlike his usual attire.

There's a knife within a sheathe, strapped to his arm beneath a sleeve. Hidden.

He follows an aisle behind for a while, just watching Aunamee's movements, before he moves to the aisle ahead, there at the end of it where Aunamee should come around next. And waits.

Aunamee is nothing if not predictable. Order is important to him, and so order is something that he follows in his pacing, traveling from aisle to aisle to aisle. It is easy, then, for Grey to know where he is going next. He moves like an apple falling from a tree. He moves like gravity.

Footsteps mean nothing. He is lost in his own head when he turns into Grey's aisle.

Instantly he's moving, adrenaline pulsing through him like electricity. The movements are fluid and automatic, the result of having played them out in his head over, and over, and over.

Grasping the front of Aunamee's shirt with his right hand, he draws the knife from it with his left, pulling the other man in close as he angles the blade and shoves it up just beneath Aunamee's ribcage.

"Without your powers, you are nothing." He hisses, eyes wild and grin manic.

Injuries have a funny way of operating on a delay. First, there's the impact. Then the anticipation. Then the pain.

For Aunamee, the dull thud of impact reminds him of a fist hitting a melon, and at first, that's all he thinks about because Grey had moved so quickly, so precisely that he didn't even see the knife. His mind tells him I have been punched, not I have been stabbed.

For Aunamee, the anticipation rises first out of bewilderment because he doesn't recognize Grey, not immediately, and what has he ever done to this man? But then that smile and those eyes fill in the puzzle a split second later and the rest of the picture becomes that much clearer. His own eyes, just as wild, look down at the knife he already knows must be there. Without his powers, he is nothing.

For Aunamee, the pain is lightening and hits him the same moment as the fear, white and hot and just as physical. He gasps with breath that won't quite come (too thick, too wet, too much like trying to inhale a razor blade) and tries to shove himself backwards into the bookcase behind him, his feet slipping as his balance fails.

The altercation happens to fast for Enjolras to do anything but watch. For a moment, he's not even sure what he's seeing. One man lunging into another, and the metallic glint of a blade. He wonders, vaguely, irrelevantly, how the frightful figure managed to get the weapon passed the heavily armed security guards at the library's entrance. Then, as if to demonstrate just how useless such musings immediately are, he sees Aunamee stumble backward into the bookcase. There's the sound of a crash and of a woman's surprised scream from somewhere behind him.

He rushes forward into the fray because it's all he can do. Like his superfluous musings, it's instinctual. He has to help this man, break up this fight. His jaw is set firmly, even as he winces slightly from the roar of the voices which have also begun to notice the altercation. He's weaponless, but that doesn't matter when he grabs Grey's shoulder, bodily pulling him away from Aunamee. Enjolras' arm raises and he aims a blow for the assailant's face. Shortly before following through, the reverberation of the noise surrounding them changes and he thinks he can hear the sound of grapeshot above it all, but it's nothing. The ghost of nothing. Eyes closing, he braces for the impact, or more practically, the retaliation to his intervention.

The panic starts slow, most seeing what appears to be a simple fist fight. Then the word 'knife' appears.

And chaos erupts.

Amidst the screaming and the fleeing, a brave few take pictures with their cell phones, gossiping urgently amongst themselves about the two tributes.

From a safe distance, of course.

The knife slides free as Aunamee shoves himself back, and Grey is about to descend upon him to finish the job when he's suddenly pulled back. Surprised, there's no time for him to deflect the blow, and it lands solidly, causing him to stumble. Looking up, he catches sight of Enjolras. "You fool!" He snarls, making a quick slash for the other man.

As soon as his back hits the bookcase, his legs buckle underneath him. He tries to catch himself on the shelf, but his reflexes are slowed and so he fumbles, stumbles, misses, knocking books down around him as he crumples to the floor. He lands on his hands and knees, but it seems like so much effort to stay up with the way the world is pulsing around him, crushing his breath in degrees. He curls his hand under his chest. He feels the blood, sticky and wet like warm soap.

Topher was his name. This was how he killed Topher. This was how he killed Howard. Daniel. So many others.

('It makes you feel like one of your victims, doesn’t it?' Aunamee said to Grey under the watchful gaze of Mickey Mouse.)

He's vaguely aware of someone else, some vague grey shape that has slipped into the scene, but it's nowhere near as important as the brown spots and striations forming in his vision. He thinks he hears people yelling. Or is it only the ringing in his ears? Is it a train? Is it an airplane? Is it his parents, kicking the bottom of their chairs with their convulsing legs, their mouths foaming, their voices rattling?

He rolls over to his side, gasping and whining. There are few things more animalistic, more comforting than the fetal position.

Edited 2013-05-22 22:30 (UTC)

Enjolras feels the pull of his jacket as it tears, or more accurately, is sliced. He can't immediately tell if he's been injured; there's a compartmentalization of emotions and impulses involved in combat to which he's rapidly becoming accustomed. The most important thing on his mind as the cacophony of voices continues to swirl around them is the man on the ground, twisting and contorting as his blood stains pages, distorting the words they contain.

He has to stop the blood, he has to find help. There's the practical impossibility doing both and once, and the danger of the attacker who he'd honestly lost track of in the fleeting moments where he tries to ascertain the situation and cope. His normally quick reflexes seem to be on a delay as he drops to his knees, ignoring the sanguine stains that he's sure will manifest in minutes. His hands find Aunamee's chest, pulling him out from himself as he tries to curl in, and searching for the wound. Pressure will help stem it, it has to. Enjolras hears himself call out for help, first in French ("Au secours! Police!" in a choked and fried bark that he doesn't particularly recognize.), then in English, which is probably more practical.

Finally, after moments that seem to stretch on for far too long, he feels the thick wetness of blood under his fingers and he presses down, hard. Pressure will help, it has to.

The ripple of chaos that had spread throughout the library now had the attention of authorities. Perhaps it says much about the freedoms of the Capitol, that there is always someone nearby to not only put out in fires that start, but discipline those that may have started them. But in this case, the omnipresence of Capitol authority may very well save Aunamee's life.

It's only a pair of Peacekeepers that arrive at first. All in pale grey-white, and reflective masks over their faces, silver batons at the ready. Still over twenty feet away from the scene, already they are calling for back up. One of them - the higher ranking of the two - can even be heard, talking to his superiors. Words like; Multiple Tributes, Containment, Press, Trauma, and all three of their names can be picked out of the garble of chatter from the two Peacekeepers: Aunemee, Grey, Enjolras.

And then, they are on them. One still calling for backup. (Medical attention: immediately!) The other, in pursuit of the assailant: Grey.

There is nothing kind in the way the Peacekeeper grabs for the doctor. He is a broad, imposing man, this Peacekeeper, with the build of a man who is mostly shoulder and head, because even the muscles of his neck are thick. Even though he is well trained in both defense and disarment, by the time he has a firm, solid grab on Grey, more Peacekeepers begin to arrive in spades. It makes no matter how skilled this Peacekeeper is, there is no getting away.

All three of them are completely surrounded. Thirteen in all; three of them marked with the distinctive medical symbol, who swarm in like locus around Aunamee. The rest attend to the task of obtaining and incapacitating the others.

Grey has nowhere to go, trapped up against the row of bookcases behind him. Though it's clearly a futile effort, he still doesn't make it easy for them, trying to wrench his knife hand out of the first Peacekeeper's grip and kick him away with a furious snarl. It's only a matter of seconds before he's subdued, grossly outnumbered, the knife removed from his possession as he's apprehended.

He hadn't really expected to get away. Not for long, if at all. He was surprised he'd even made it to his target with the concealed weapon. But it was enough. It was enough so long as Aunamee died. And he was fairly confident that he would.

The touch of his rescuer reminds Aunamee of a mother or a father, an angelic guardian who knows what is best for you even if it hurts. The pain that comes as Enjolras interrupts his tensing muscles and exposes his chest is the same kind of pain that comes from an immunization. Children cry and sob and beg, but in the end, the parents hold them down and say one day, you will thank me.

One day, Aunamee will thank this man.

-- but in this moment, his gratefulness is dwarfed by the pain. The way this stranger's fingers push against his freshly acquired wound could be a new attack in itself. He gargles and gasps and fights instinctually until that fight leaves him and he relaxes against Enjolras, his savior. His friend.

When the Peacekeepers arrive, he barely even notices. Even though the world around him seems quiet, so quiet, he thinks he can hear Grey's laughter ringing in his ears.

Edited 2013-06-06 00:01 (UTC)

By the time Enjolras takes notice of the Peacekeepers, his hands are covered in blood. It's caked under his nails and as soon as it begins to dry on one patch of skin, Aunamee struggles, or he shifts and there's a new wave of it. There's too much of it everywhere, the man is losing too much blood and Enjolras doesn't think his hands are going to do much for him a few minutes from now.

"He needs a doctor!" He shouts vaguely in the direction of the Peacekeepers circling them. It's hard to maintain his equilibrium as Aunamee rocks and struggles against his touch, and he can't move for risk of the bleeding getting worse.

They make a neat exit, eventually. A caravan of peacekeepers and medics and hover crafts to haul everyone away, twinkling lights and sirens and all. But it takes a while before that happens.

An apprehension of Grey does occur, though there were several scrapes and bumps earned along the way. Peacekeepers (and definitely more than one) bind and cuff Grey. Onlookers can clearly watch him being escorted through the hallways of bookshelves. The gathering crowds snap photographs and capture vids of the scene, but only because the Peacekeepers have yet to tell them not to.

Aunamee, on the other hand, is dealt with immediately. The medical technologies and advancement in the Capitol are state of the art, and are possibly the only thing that saves Aunamee's life. But he cannot get all the care that he needs, here. He must be evacuated immediately to a medical facility. Medics and Peacekeeper escorts make quick work of clearing a path from the scene of the incident, to the front door where a hovercraft will be waiting for them in less than a minute.

As for Enjolras, Peacekeepers and medics alike look him over. He's definitely bloodied up enough for concern. And for that same reason, he is also restrained. His involvement in the scuffle not fully detailed yet. But this is only a procedure and precaution until this mess can be properly sorted out.

Crowds follow the entourage out the door and into the street, but disburse from there, once the vehicles take them away. Off to where they will all be dealt with, accordingly.

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