Annie Cresta (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oceanborne) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
checkingout2015-03-17 06:09 pm
oceanborne) wrote in checkingout2015-03-17 06:09 pm
Entry tags:
i'm just a man, but i know that i'm damned (open)
Who: Annie Cresta and OPEN
Where: All over
When: March 17-28
What: It’s a lot harder to deal with ghosts when they aren’t figments of your imagination, who knew?
Warnings/Notes: THG is in no way a nice canon -- kids fought to the death, so assume mentions of violence, blood, death/murder, and psychological trauma. Will match either prose or brackets, whichever!
Lobby/hallways/breakfast room, 17th-23rd
For the first few days, they’re easy to avoid.
...Well, less “avoid” than “ignore,” as best as she can. She goes about things with a kind of determined normalcy, though anyone in the vicinity might notice how intently she avoids anything reflective. It’s simple to dismiss the faces she glimpses in her tablet or mirror or window as figments of her overworked imagination, when reflections are all they are. She’s not the first victor to be haunted by the other tributes whose deaths were the price of her own life, after all.
Annie just didn’t think she would ever literally be haunted by them.
She’s eating breakfast when she sees him, standing in the corner of the room. He looks just as he did when she last saw him -- no, that’s not quite true. His head is once again firmly attached to his body, though there’s a bloody line encircling his neck to mark where the sword made contact. Her district partner, the boy whose vicious death broke an irreparable something within her mind, with blood on his skin and accusation in his eyes. The sound of breaking glass startles Annie into looking down (she didn’t even realize she let go, but the hand that held her water glass is empty now), and when she looks up again, he’s gone.
Or was he even there to begin with? “Not real,” she whispers, bending to clean up the shattered glass. If she tells herself that enough times, maybe she’ll believe it.
Lobby/Stairwell, 24th-28th
Eventually, she starts to see them everywhere. Her district partner stands at the foot of her bed when she wakes from a fitful slumber. The Career pack waits outside her door. In the lobby, where she hopes that the company of flesh-and-blood people will take her mind off of her ghosts, she finds the tributes whose names she never even knew -- the ones who died at the Cornucopia, who drowned when the arena flooded, whose projections in the night sky had meant she was one step closer to going home.
Okay, so the lobby isn’t a good choice. Annie hurries from the room, glancing back over her shoulder and breathing a sigh of relief when it seems that none of the tributes have followed. She heads for the stairs and jogs up the first flight... and stops cold on the landing. This ghost is a tiny, frail old woman, her face devoid of its usual warmth and kindness.
She doesn’t speak, instead raising a hand to point at Annie and then at herself, but the motion strikes more deeply than any words could. “I didn’t ask for you to take my place!” Annie protests, voice echoing in the closed stairwell. “I never wanted that, Mags, please, you know I wouldn’t...”
When she turns to flee downstairs, her path is blocked by the tributes she thought she’d left behind. Rather than force her way through them or around Mags, Annie backs into a corner of the stairwell and sinks down, hands over her ears. “Not real, not real, not real.” It’s broken and desperate, more plea than determined statement now. Why couldn’t this all be a trick of her mind?
Where: All over
When: March 17-28
What: It’s a lot harder to deal with ghosts when they aren’t figments of your imagination, who knew?
Warnings/Notes: THG is in no way a nice canon -- kids fought to the death, so assume mentions of violence, blood, death/murder, and psychological trauma. Will match either prose or brackets, whichever!
Lobby/hallways/breakfast room, 17th-23rd
For the first few days, they’re easy to avoid.
...Well, less “avoid” than “ignore,” as best as she can. She goes about things with a kind of determined normalcy, though anyone in the vicinity might notice how intently she avoids anything reflective. It’s simple to dismiss the faces she glimpses in her tablet or mirror or window as figments of her overworked imagination, when reflections are all they are. She’s not the first victor to be haunted by the other tributes whose deaths were the price of her own life, after all.
Annie just didn’t think she would ever literally be haunted by them.
She’s eating breakfast when she sees him, standing in the corner of the room. He looks just as he did when she last saw him -- no, that’s not quite true. His head is once again firmly attached to his body, though there’s a bloody line encircling his neck to mark where the sword made contact. Her district partner, the boy whose vicious death broke an irreparable something within her mind, with blood on his skin and accusation in his eyes. The sound of breaking glass startles Annie into looking down (she didn’t even realize she let go, but the hand that held her water glass is empty now), and when she looks up again, he’s gone.
Or was he even there to begin with? “Not real,” she whispers, bending to clean up the shattered glass. If she tells herself that enough times, maybe she’ll believe it.
Lobby/Stairwell, 24th-28th
Eventually, she starts to see them everywhere. Her district partner stands at the foot of her bed when she wakes from a fitful slumber. The Career pack waits outside her door. In the lobby, where she hopes that the company of flesh-and-blood people will take her mind off of her ghosts, she finds the tributes whose names she never even knew -- the ones who died at the Cornucopia, who drowned when the arena flooded, whose projections in the night sky had meant she was one step closer to going home.
Okay, so the lobby isn’t a good choice. Annie hurries from the room, glancing back over her shoulder and breathing a sigh of relief when it seems that none of the tributes have followed. She heads for the stairs and jogs up the first flight... and stops cold on the landing. This ghost is a tiny, frail old woman, her face devoid of its usual warmth and kindness.
She doesn’t speak, instead raising a hand to point at Annie and then at herself, but the motion strikes more deeply than any words could. “I didn’t ask for you to take my place!” Annie protests, voice echoing in the closed stairwell. “I never wanted that, Mags, please, you know I wouldn’t...”
When she turns to flee downstairs, her path is blocked by the tributes she thought she’d left behind. Rather than force her way through them or around Mags, Annie backs into a corner of the stairwell and sinks down, hands over her ears. “Not real, not real, not real.” It’s broken and desperate, more plea than determined statement now. Why couldn’t this all be a trick of her mind?
no subject
"Let's try the fire, shall we? My brother used to say a good fire made him forget all his troubles." Speaking, thinking of Liam always hurts, and yet to take control of the memory instead of being haunted by it is liberating. Liam is likely just behind him, if he closed his eyes and listened he'd likely hear his voice. . . it's just that he won't stop to listen, for once.
He offers an arm so they can walk together. If she can still see the crowd, then they'll go through them together.
no subject
"I hope your brother was right, about forgetting his troubles by a fire. I used to go out on the beach when I needed to forget, but..." She shrugs, because of course there's no going to the beach when they're still on lockdown in here. Who knows if they're even near a beach, or any kind of water, or what sort of terrain surrounds this place at all?
When he offers his arm she takes it with the smallest hint of a grateful smile. There's a distinct chance that she may end up with a white-knuckled grip on his sleeve when they pass through the still-present tributes, but other than that she doesn't directly acknowledge them at all. "Is it odd that I miss the cold? I mean, that I'd rather have it than... this?"
no subject
If her grip is strong, the pirate doesn't comment. He can be her anchor, for a little while. Emma had been his, and he knows how easy it is to get lost in the visages of ones dead. He can't stop seeing Milah, or Liam, but he can stop giving them power over him. They wouldn't haunt him, they weren't really there. They were a cruel trick, just another of many in the hotel, and he didn't intend to lose his head any more than he already had. "I've always favored the ocean myself," he agreed, leading her to the bottom landing. "You can lose nearly any trouble in the ocean. Or, at least, forget about it. For a little while."
If the ocean were an option he'd be there constantly. Sadly, there wasn't one, and they had to make do with what they did have. A warm fire was as good a place as any. It'd never be an ocean, but there was comfort to be had there. He laughs at her words, and for once it's more good tempered than strained or forced. "I bloody hate the chill and I'd take that without any complaint."