(Untitled)
[oom: Sometime after this, Annie tries to escape. She opens a door.]
There is a girl huddled on the floor, bound hand and foot in iron chains. She is barefoot, wearing a purple hospital shift and bruises up and down her body. Most noticeably, three tight rings mottle her upper arms in blue and green (the color of her eyes, if you care to make the ( Read more... )
There is a girl huddled on the floor, bound hand and foot in iron chains. She is barefoot, wearing a purple hospital shift and bruises up and down her body. Most noticeably, three tight rings mottle her upper arms in blue and green (the color of her eyes, if you care to make the ( Read more... )
The voice is hoarse and husky; for once, Karkat is making an effort not to be so goddamn loud. "Okay. I'm going to cut these chains. Hold still, this thing is fucking sharp."
A sickle appears in a grey hand out of thin air.
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The weapon is primitive (not the capitol's style at all), but it looks sharp enough to do... whatever it is they want to do.
Not kill - she's too valuable - but certainly maim.
She trips over her anklets and sprawls full-length on the hard floor.
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It is very primitive, really; wood and bone and chips of flint. But there is a blue-black haze around the edges that implies it really is as sharp as he says. If you can trust your eyes, of course.
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She squeezes her eyes shut.
(wake up wake up wake up)
She'd rather not be dismembered, even if this is a dream.
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"LOOK, THE FACT THAT I AM A SCARY-LOOKING MOTHERFUCKER IS AN IMMUTABLE FACT WE CAN ALL ENTER IN THE RECORD. THAT DOESN'T MEAN ASSISTANCE ISN'T WHAT'S TAKING PLACE HERE."
"STOP GRUBBING AROUND ON THE FLOOR AND LET ME HELP YOU, I AM WORKING MY ASS OFF TO BE MULTICULTURAL HERE."
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Sometimes, when the drugs are too strong, she gets this: the nonsense words and images that don't go with anything she remembers. They float like seaweed, scrabbling for purchase on the fear centers in her dreaming mind.
Whatever this is, it strikes her as hilarious (and/or terrifying - but she's locking that thought away, for now).
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"YES, OKAY, NOW WE ARE GIGGLING LIKE WE ARE HIGH ON DRUGS. MAYBE IN A MINUTE WE CAN GO PUT JELLY ON A HOT GOD AND FALL DOWN SOME STAIRS, GOOD TIMES FOR EVERYONE NOW HOLD STILL."
> FRAYMOTIF: CAESURA SERRATA
It's a brief, blurred motion that throws up sparks from the unresisting chains; iron is no real obstacle to the Void power of the Be?est, especially in the hands of Knight at the top of his echeladder.
"YOU MAY NOW COMMENCE FREAKING THE FUCK OUT."
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Annie shrieks and throws her hands over her ears. The loose chains rattle at the end of the handcuffs, whipping around her wrists.
She sits, after her voice runs out, in a small puddle of sweat and shock.
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He is definitely a dangerous alien, but provisionally on her side. He kneels in front of her again, the sickle back in its extradimensional storage space. "Okay, it is just now occurring to me that you might have been in chains because you're a dangerous lunatic or something. If so I am going to ask you to skip me when you start murdering everyone because I am up to my bulge in dangerous lunatics already."
What the fuck are you even talking about, Karkat.
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"Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not."
She shakes her chains at him.
"I got these for a reason, didn't I?"
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He offers an arm; it's thin, but stronger than it looks. "AND LIKE I SAID, I COME FROM PLANET DANGEROUS LUNATIC, I AM JUST ASKING YOU FOR THE COURTESY OF KILLING ME LAST."
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Annie's face goes rigid; her mind goes somewhere else.
She's thinking about the slow, methodical murders of everyone Finnick loved. They'd razed his affection to the ground, and left her alive to keep him in line.
It's pretty clear: the Capitol is going to kill her last. But dead is dead, and going last just means you have to see all the others die first.
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"LOOK. THE FACT THAT I WAS MAKING A MORBID JOKE ABOUT IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT I AM NOT MYSELF IN HERE HIDING OUT FROM A GRUBFUCKING AWFUL SITUATION. THE FACT IS THAT A COUPLE DAYS AGO I WAS THE ONE SITTING ON THE FLOOR LIKE A WRIGGLER WITH TILT FLASHING IN MY SIGHTGLOBES. I'M JUST SAYING THIS STUPID SHIT BECAUSE I'M A MORON AND APPARENTLY I DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER. I AM GOING TO CLAMP MY IGNORANCE CHUTE CLOSED AND WE ARE GOING TO DO A BUNCH OF TEDIOUS SHIT TO MAKE YOU FEEL LESS COMPLETELY LIKE GARBAGE, IS THAT A DEAL?"
He offers his hand again, cautiously.
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The 'tedious' part sounds discouraging, but her chains jangle and she remembers that he's only trying to help, in spite of his nightmare eyes and sharp weapons.
She puts a pale hand in his. (Lack of sunlight - the doctors examined her by steady incandescent lamps.)
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(There, there, you goddamn blubbering pansy.)
He stands and helps her up, letting her lean on his shoulder although she's taller than he is. As advertised, though, he's stronger than he looks. (He looks like he's only thirteen or so, and thin and gawky.) At her elevation the nubby candy corn-colored horns buried in his raddled hair are visible. Silently--almost all of his experience with tenderness is silent, anyway--he brings her to one of the couches, where there's a fire despite the heat outside.
"I'M GOING TO GO GET SOME SH--THINGS FOR YOU. STAY PUT."
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