(Untitled)

[askwhatsreal]

[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

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[ohholyknight]

There's a tall man in his late fifties sitting by the bar, salt and pepper hair and a cane propped against his stool, but built like a linebacker.

He gets up hastily as she falls to the floor, grabbing his stick and hobbling over as fast as he can.

"Lord, child. What did they do to you?"

[askwhatsreal]

Annie scrambles back at the sound of the voice, but doesn't get too far before she hits the solid cold door.

Obviously he's a hallucination. (the capitol prefers drugs to guns)

He's not something out of the Capitol, though - his hair isn't dyed, nor his body.

That doesn't mean he won't hurt her.

She looks at him with the eyes of a hunted deer, face-to-face with the hunter.

[ohholyknight]

He extends his hands, palms up and empty, to show her, and speaks in an even, soothing tone.

"You're safe here. Is this your first time?"

[askwhatsreal]

She looks him over.

(He doesn't have the carnal viciousness of most Capitol creations, but that's no reason to relax. This is a new kind of nightmare.)

"Hardly," she says, into her hair.

"And not likely to be the last."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh, jeez-"

The girl won't hear the takka takka tak of approaching dog claws. She might catch the sound of feet; the human alongside the dog wears boots, and they're fairly heavy. Especially when she's moving quickly, which the situation pretty much demands.

"Miss? It's okay, you're safe now..."

[askwhatsreal]

Annie would be scared -

(mutt. mutt. she doesn't dare look into its eyes, in case she knows them)

- but the line is too funny. (escape from madness into laughter)

She laughs, wild and bright.

"That's original."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Well. Safer, anyway," Ellen concedes. "It can get a little weird around here sometimes... um."

She glances around, remembering what happened the first time she found herself here. Remembering Tyler, mostly.

"Hey," she says to one of the rats, digging a fistful of bottlecaps out of her pocket. "Can you take these and bring me some of that... that Ovaltine stuff? And-" She risks a glance at the girl's arms. "Well, antiseptic, anyway. I've got my own Med-X."

As the rat scurries off Ellen says, "I don't know where you were before, but you're not there now."

[askwhatsreal]

More mutts.

Annie's mouth quirks. "They trapped me in a nice little dream about running away, then put me in someone else's memory."

She sits back on her heels, chains clink-clinking gently.

"All the same, I'm still inside my head.

"The prison doesn't change just because the scenery does."

[crabbycustomer]

Black sneakers and grey pants.

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.

[askwhatsreal]

Understandably, Annie shrieks and tries to get away.

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.

[crabbycustomer]

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Look, numbsponge, let's compromise, let me cut the chains off and THEN you can run away, it'll work better."

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.

[askwhatsreal]

She's crawling away but he's quicker, and she knows she won't get far.

She squeezes her eyes shut.

(wake up wake up wake up)

She'd rather not be dismembered, even if this is a dream.

[trigger_man]

It comes on quickly; the clank of chains, the sound of sobbing. The table Jack's sitting at, the sounds of the bar; it all fades. A dark, damp cell, the smell of blood and sweat and urine and fear filling his nostrils until it feels as though he can hardly breathe.

Then, it fades; the bar returns, and Jack looks down at his hands to find them clutching the side of the table, white-knuckled. Just a flashback.

But then he hears those noises again: the sobbing, the chains. He turns around, freezing when he sees a woman--a girl--huddled on the floor, chained and weeping. He sees this before he sees the livid bruises against her skin, but only just barely.

Without even thinking, he stands and walks over to her, crouching a few feet away. For a moment he almost reaches out to touch her, before sense takes over. He knows, he knows that it isn't likely to help

[askwhatsreal]

And he's right: she doesn't believe him.

"Why not?"

Her voice is hoarse, from the crying.

"They hurt me everywhere else."

[trigger_man]

Even with those few words, he wants to hurt whoever did this to her and hurt them badly. He's careful to shove that feeling as far down inside him as he can, though, at least for the moment. He doesn't want to scare her.

"I know it's hard to believe, that the only way you're going to believe me is through time. But it's true."

There's a beat where he tries to think of what to say next, of anything that might help. "Can I help you get those chains off?"

[askwhatsreal]

His voice is soft, soothing (she can feel herself yearning to let it sooth her). She trembles; the metal responds with a soft chink.

"Got the key?" she asks, with a shaky smile.

In other words: "Can you find the way out?"

[v_accidentprone]

Oh, god. Alex drops everything the minute he sees her and rushes over to her with only a quick stop at the bar for a basic aid kit.

He drops down to his knees a little ways away from her, because if it was him on the ground, he wouldn't want to be crowded or touched. He'll try talking, first. "You're going to be okay," he says, quietly. "This place is safe."

[askwhatsreal]

"Compared to where?" she asks, low and anguished.

"It's all inside my head. All the same."

[v_accidentprone]

He's not really sure how to answer that - after all, it's not as if he can guarantee her safety, and she sounds a bit... well, drugged. (Though god knows he can try.) Instead, he decides that acknowledgement is unspoken permission to come closer and look over her chains for some lock or way to remove them.

"This isn't where you came from," he says, carefully. "My name's Alex. I'm going to try to help you."

[askwhatsreal]

They've been calling her 'Finnick's girl' or just 'crazy' since she arrived in the Capitol.

"Annie."

It feels good to say her name, her real name, out loud.