WELP [open]

[lasttosail]

Who | Samwise Gamgee and anyone willing to put up with a concussed and bleeding hobbit! ayyyy
What | Sam's recently been mortally wounded, and will spend his first and last week in the Cornucopia trying, with less and less success, to survive on his own. (Hit me up on plurk or over PM if you'd like to talk out a specific piece of the timeline, but I'm willing to keep it very loose!)
Where | Around the Arena, but not too terribly far from the Cornucopia and the surrounding area, unless someone is planning to carry him.
When | The first week, post-Cornucopia, but no later than Wednesday!
Warnings | Head trauma and description thereof; injury, blood, death, etc.; will warn for specifics as they appear.

He makes it out of the Cornucopia, and doesn't know how. Not in the sense that he thinks it should have been impossible, but in the sense that he looks around him a few hours after it happens, and can't remember what path he took to get to where he is. Trees loom up around him on every side, and he puts his back to one for a minute, long enough to tug off his boots and drop them on the earth beside him. He puts a hand to his aching head, sees blood on his fingers when he pulls it away, and takes off the socks, too, to tie around it. It's sloppy, done with clumsy fingers, but it's all he can do.

His movement's not as quiet as it ordinarily would be. He moves through the woods carefully, putting his hands against every tree he passes, but he stumbles frequently, and his breathing comes loud and ragged. Spaces between hours are strange. Some minutes feel years long, especially when his head begins to pound and he has to curl up under a tree and wait for it to pass, blind and deaf with pain; sometimes he wonders if he's been here weeks already, and just not noticed.

At night, he pulls his windbreaker over his head and curls up in the darkest shadows he can find. Sometimes he sleeps; sometimes he just shivers, and waits, glassy-eyed, for the sun to rise. Days pass this way, and he doesn't know how many.

He stumbles his way, at one point, to a riverbank; squints up at the mountains on the other side, their tops hazy in the distance, and briefly considers fording it; and understands, even through the haze of his pain, that this is beyond him. He sits there on the stony bank a minute or an hour, his head in his hands and his eyes squeezed shut, trying to stop the sickening spinning of the world when he moves too suddenly; and then he gets up, drinks from it, and goes.

He carries nothing but the little wooden box they shoved into his pocket as they pushed him onto his platform, with a tablespoon of salt still in it.

If approached, he'll do his best to hide, to curl up in the nearest hollow in the ground and hope that he goes unnoticed, but it's difficult when every downward movement starts to feel like falling. Those who find him when a few days have passed might find him too disoriented to hide-- his face flushed and his eyes dry with fever, sitting with his back against whatever surface is nearest to hand, and calling out with a small, hoarse, "--Hullo?" (And later, when time starts to get really strange, an even smaller, "...Mister Frodo?")

Comments

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy had been moving with extra caution since her arrival into the arena. The setting was much less modern then the last few arenas and that was a good and bad thing for her.

On the one side she felt completely out of her element in such a natural environment.

On the other hand she had done a lot of training regarding trees, plant life and wilderness survival that hadn't had time to be tested. So this would have to do.

Her backpack is light on her shoulders with only a few items inside. The bottles with different liquids and a can of fish. She hadn't done more then sample the dark colored sauce to see what it was like. It wasn't bad but she didn't want to indulge till she had to. As such her stomach growled betraying her soft quiet pace through the trees.

Freezing in place when her stomach growled was the only reason she heard the weak call.

"Who said that?" She whispered cautiously bending her knees in case she needed to dart away. Her eyes scanned her surroundings seeking out the speaker.

[lasttosail]

Were he not too injured to appreciate it, Sam might have been glad about this Arena. The last had been so unfamiliar that forward progress had been nothing but luck; a vast wilderness in which to hide from a crowd of enemies at all costs, though! That's something he's more accustomed to.

He hears Sandy's voice, and it seems to him to be familiar-- but not in the way he wants it to be. "Sam, you fool," he mutters, and he isn't sure if he meant it to be out loud, but so it comes out all the same. "It's dangerous here." Too dangerous to be calling out to strangers, though why that didn't occur to him before--!

There's nothing at hand with which to defend himself; he hauls himself painfully more upright, gropes vaguely in the dirt beside him for something, and only succeeds in making a racket of rustling pine needles.

"I said it," he adds, and it starts bold but by the last word has gone quiet again, a verbal wince of pain. "I... Who's there?"

[justoutrunyou]

She winces when she sees the state Sam is in. So much for the little man having a healthy run this go around.

Given he doesn't look like much of a threat she moves into his line of sight speaking up again, "It's Sandy, what happened to you? Who got you?"

She shrugs off her backpack and slips a hand inside producing half a bottle of Gin. It's hardly going to help him heal but maybe he'll at least feel a little better.

[lasttosail]

"I dunno," Sam replies, and his look goes distant (and a little bewildered) as he tries to call a concrete memory to mind. It's not that he doesn't remember the blow happening; it's that he can't seem to remember the order in which the past few days have been happening. Was it yesterday he was by the river, or the day before? Was it before he was even struck?

"It was-- a Man," he says. "We grabbed at the same bag, and I--" A shake of his head, which he immediately regrets. "I wasn't quick enough."

He looks at the bottle of gin, squints at what he can see of the label, and frowns at Sandy. He's dizzily mistrusting, reluctant to trust what he can't even properly focus his eyes on without sending another stab of pain through his head. "What's that?"

[rediscover]

Having made it past the Cornucopia unharmed for once, Anna finds herself running. Across the meadow, into the trees, never stopping, never looking back until she's sure she's alone. This is her sixth Arena, and by now she knows enough to try and find food, water, a weapon, and shelter. The weapon, she takes care of first--she fashions herself a makeshift spear, then spends some time by the river, drinking her fill of water. It's as she's wandering along the riverbank that she comes across the first person she's seen since the Cornucopia.

She draws a bit nearer, eyes wide, weapon half-raised. Not menacingly, but in the manner of someone who's expecting attack at any moment.

"Excuse me," she calls from a few yards away. "I--I won't hurt you. Do you have any food?"

[lasttosail]

Her voice cuts through the pain, which has come to feel like a wall around him in recent hours, a layer that exists between him and the world around him. Sam lifts his head, too quickly, and winces. It takes a second to focus on her, and his expression turns wary when he sees the spear in her hand. He gets to his feet, and it's clear his spatial relationship with the ground is not the most secure at the moment - he sways, and doesn't seem to notice he's doing it.

"No," he says. "No, I-- I haven't got anything." He spreads his hands, to show that they're empty - he's wearing only what he came into the Arena with, and his feet are bare. ...And then he sits again, heavily, on the stones of the bank, his point made, and the world feeling altogether too much to deal with from a standing position.

He's barely sat down when he starts, as though he's just remembered something. His eyes turn suddenly brighter. "Wait! Tell me," he says, looking right at Anna, "Have you seen--?"

And then he loses the thought. He stops; looks puzzled; tries to call the thought back; and finally shakes his head.

"No," he repeats. "I haven't got any food. I've not eaten since... since the Crowning." How many days that is, he doesn't know.

[rediscover]

"Oh," Anna intones softly, drawing a little nearer--her spear lowering purposefully. Unless he's an excellent faker, she can see that this little man is no threat. He looks ill, actually, feverish and not at all well. The princess takes pity on him; how could she not?

"Seen...?" Her brow knits first in confusion, and then in concern, and she stops beside him, kneeling down and setting her spear off to the side.

"Me either," she admits. "I'm so hungry." It seems foolish to say, but it's true. She looks around, looks in the stream--wondering if she should try her hand at catching a fish.

"My name's Anna," she offers. Maybe if she can keep him talking, he'll stay lucid. "What's yours?"

[lasttosail]

Is he hungry? Sam thinks he is. He should be, anyhow. But it seems to him he's gone swiftly between feeling absolutely faint with hunger, and feeling too ill to think of food in the past few days.

It takes him a second to register he's being spoken to, occupied as he is with that thought. He blinks, considers the question (not focusing entirely successfully on Anna's face), and replies, "--Samwise." With a courteous duck of his head-- "Samwise Gamgee. Of the Shi-- of. Of District Twelve." That seems to him, on reflection, a complete introduction, and he accepts it as sufficient.

"...A Hobbit," he adds, as an afterthought, with the idea that this is something that has required some explanation before. He only means to be helpful.

[carsassian]

Garak hadn't run for the Cornucopia. He'd taken one look at the terrain as it had been presented, weighed his options after several of these little Arena Adventures, and decided against the inconvenience of it all. It was a hassle, nothing more. Anything he needed, he had reason, he could steal off of the fallen once they began to fall.

That had been all well and good until shelter became an obstacle and night had finally fell. Through the darkness, he could see forests clearly. That was not the issue. Rather, it was the chill of the night, the brisk air that burned in his lungs, that bothered him. Any number of hardships he could take, it was the mild discomforts, the irritations that never failed to perplex him.

As such, Garak was distracted when he happened upon Samwise, huddling near the ground. Distracted enough to have nearly missed the shape, barely moving in the darkness. The little thing was clever, and he would admit that, but not clever enough not to be found all the same. Garak contemplated for a moment killing the hobbit outright. It wouldn't really matter, but it would require a certain amount of exertion and frankly, his teeth were chattering. He didn't trust his hands not to tremble in the weather. This would require thought, perhaps a little well-place diplomacy and/or intimidation.

"Hello there," he called, eyes as wide as possible in the night, cursing the cold air he could feel against them. He damned the wind. It stung. "Lovely weather, wouldn't you say?"

[lasttosail]

Sam wasn't asleep when Garak found him, but nor could he have been said to be properly awake - he was in some dark in-between place, blanketed in pain. The hollow he'd curled up in was in the side of-- not a hill, nothing so big, but a rise in the earth large enough that this side of it was somewhat out of the wind, when one kept one's head down. It was Garak's voice that roused him, made him blink glassy eyes into focus (or the nearest he could come to it, anyhow) and turn, startled, even as he shrank deeper into the hollow in which he lay.

He was pale-faced in the dim light, and his movements were halting, like he wasn't quite sure where his limbs were in space, as he drew his windbreaker closer about him (as though it could act as any defense). "I wouldn't," he said in reply, and his voice was small and hoarse in a throat dry with fever. "It's bitter cold--! I can't well feel my hands."

He squinted up into the dark-- froze-- and his eyes went momentarily wide with fear. "...Oh," he said, a soft, frightened sound. "You're-- a beast of this place. As in the last-- the monsters--"

Turning revelation into action seemed rather beyond him - he looked miserable with terror, but his attempt at escape consisted at a brief scrabbling of his legs at the earth around him, and a trembling wince that took him nowhere.

[carsassian]

"And you," Garak said, leveling Sam with an expression of cartoonish reproach, "Are an exceptionally rude... Whatever it is that you are." His eyes were wide in the dark, pale, glassy, and inhuman feeding off the minimal light of the forest around them. He inhaled yet another lungful of chilly air that somehow managed to burn as it filtered through his system. "A monster!"

The huffing was a mostly for show, and truthfully, if he had been of his right might to analyze it, Garak wouldn't have minded being mistaken for part of the Arena. Theoretically, it would mean that most of his fellow Tributes would leave him be. It was an appealing avenue to consider.

"You aren't human. I can tell from here. What, do you suppose, makes you so much less monstrous?"

[lasttosail]

Sam might have managed some chagrin at his mistake, were he not having trouble putting Garak's sentences together in his head as they came into his ears. It'd been like this with the trolls, too - he'd said monster, and then they'd gone and not acted at all like monsters, and he'd had to apologize. But in this moment, all it was was baffling - Sam's mind still wanted to see and hear monster, and couldn't quite wrap itself around the fact that that didn't seem to be what was happening.

"I'm a Hobbit," he said, as though this explained everything. "Which ain't monstrous. Don't you know any stories--?" There were monsters in stories, from which one could get a pretty good picture of monsters, generally. "Of men, as look like beasts, and the like..."

He trailed off. Perhaps that had been rude. "...Which, begging your pardon, but-- there is something beast-like about you, and your face in particular." This with a vague sort of all-encompassing gesture in Garak's direction.

He took a second, then, to pause and go back over what he'd just said, and what he'd heard, and what was happening. He had to do that more and more often, he found, put in greater effort just to remember where he was, and how he'd got there. But he put together all his wherewithal to ask, after a second's dazed pause, what seemed to him the most important question at hand: "--Are you going to kill me?"

[weaintashes]

Having been raised since early childhood to track, to snare, to hunt in woods not so unlike these — the terrain does put him in mind of his own backyard in the mountains of Georgia — an environment like this is one in which Daryl thrives. As he methodically scouts the areas surrounding where he's set up base with Beth and Rick, his worries are few; he can read where others have tread, and his ear is attuned to the nuances which exist between the sounds of a person moving and those of wildlife. It will be difficult to catch him unawares.

This arena has already provided a veritable feast for him and his group thus far, with the geese from the meadow. Water has likewise been easy to come by, courtesy of the nearby river. It's while on a run to the river that he becomes aware of the rather erratic trail leading to and from it — made by someone small and relatively light, possibly a child. Clearly alone. And it's hard not to feel pity at the last part. He's fully capable of surviving on his own here, but not even he'd want to be alone in this situation.

Against his better judgment, he begins to cautiously follow the trail.

It isn't long before he locates the source: someone who does indeed appear to be a child at first glance, attempting to hide from him and not doing a terribly effective job of it. And there's some kind of makeshift bandage secured around his head, with spots of blood. An injury caused by another tribute? He'd like to hope not, but he knows better. It's unavoidable that some tributes may in fact be out to "win" this gruesome affair by any means possible.

"Hey," he calls out quietly from a short distance away, sinking into a crouch in the grass, hoping it might make him appear less threatening. "Don't mean y'any harm. What happened to your head?"

[lasttosail]

The bleeding by now has mostly stopped, but of course there's not any bandage that Sam can use to replace the one he's got, unless he starts to tear at his own clothes. Bad as his situation is, he's not ready to face the cold with anything less than what he's got just yet. Sometimes he thinks he should discard the bandage; other times, he's convinced (rationally or not) that it's the only thing holding his head together.

It's hard to trust any promise of I don't mean you any harm in this place; Sam knows that well. He finds Daryl, crouched in the grass, and hauls himself up to something like a sitting position, and squints at him, suspicious through the haze of pain.

"Struck, wasn't it," he says, "at the Cornucopia. Yesterday..." That last more uncertainly; even as he says it, he thinks that he remembers at least three nights, unless they were all the same long, long night, in which he slept fitfully and never long enough to rest. "I don't know by who-- angry he was, but not with me, for I didn't know him." A pause-- "...But it hurts more than yesterday." Returning to what he said before as though nothing had come in between, because that's true no matter how much time has passed since the Cornucopia.

"I've nothing," he adds. All his sentences sound disconnected from each other, as though he's forgetting what he's said as he says it. "Nothing to trade, nor even to take."

[weaintashes]

"Ain't here to rob you," Daryl replies with a gruff scoff, but he can't exactly begrudge the assumption. Though he can clearly see now this isn't a child he's found, he still isn't inclined to do harm. They're all victims of the Capitol as far as he's concerned, and as long and no one threatens him or his people, he will extend the same courtesy, and in this case, even help where he can.

From the looks and sounds of it, the stranger's dealing with a concussion. For his sake, hopefully that's all it is, and will ease in time.

"You're alone out here?" It's more a question of whether or not he has anyone who might be looking for him, someone to help him. Daryl knows there's no one else in the immediate vicinity.

Shrugging off the pack he's carrying, he sorts through its contents and produces a repurposed container filled with water, still cool from the river, then a secondary container holding some leftovers from a recently cooked goose — a bit charred due to lack of proper cooking utensils, but perfectly edible. He'd intended to use the meat for a few snares, but there's still plenty back at camp for that; this can easily be spared.

He opens and carefully pushes the container of meat across the ground until it's within reach of the other tribute, and says, "Eat, if you're hungry. An' let me see those bandages, I'll rinse 'em out. The cold water'll prob'ly feel nice on your head."

[lasttosail]

Sam's distracted from any thought he might have had at the sight of that container, and the smells coming from it when it's opened - his eyes follow it, and go a little wider when the meat is laid in front of him. He can hardly tell the difference between the spells of nausea and the spells of ravenous hunger anymore, they go back and forth so quick-- but in this moment, that charred goose looks finer than anything prepared in any kitchen, and he leans forward to take it with eagerness that leaves him dizzy for a second.

He pauses, though, before he begins to dig into it - considers; puts it down, and gingerly goes to unwind the bandage from around his head.

It's clear the wound underneath hasn't healed cleanly. Though the bleeding has stopped, there's dried blood matted in Sam's hair, and it's visibly swollen, the skin around it hot and inflamed. He winces when the bandage sticks, but manages to get it off, and sets it down in front of the container of goose. And then he picks up the container, and begins to eat with the single-mindedness of the starving.

"There's-- no one here, if that's what you mean," he manages to say between bites, glancing between the food and Daryl (with an unfocused, bewildered kind of suspicion, that doesn't understand why he's being given this but can't make him refuse it). "Though I've been searching-- for Mister Bilbo, or Str-- Thorongil, or Mister Frodo..." He trails off uncertainly. There's something nagging at the back of his mind, about Frodo and the search for him. But he can't quite hold onto the thought, and he puts it aside for later. "Though I've not seen them." He reaches for the water. "--Have you? Seen 'em, I mean?"

[tevintage]

Dorian was doing strangely well, all things considered - had come out alright in the cornucopia, mostly. Well. Had come out unscathed physically, at least. He wasn't even going to try to think about mentally for the moment. He'd found a large stick to use as a staff, which was much more helpful than the pocket knife he'd managed to get, though he had yet to use it for anything other than walking.

Samwise, on the other hand, was not doing so very well. Dorian stumbled upon him completely by accident, feverish with his back up against a tree, and he wouldn't have seen him at all save for the gentle called of 'Hullo' that startled him into turning around.

His heart fell, instantly, as he rushed over to the hobbit's side.

"Samwise!" He exclaimed, though his voice was strangely hushed as he crouched, setting the staff down beside him and reaching out instantly to press a hand to Sam's forehead, where it isn't covered in blood. Maker, but he was burning up-- "What have you done to yourself?"

[lasttosail]

The blood is mostly dried by now-- that which he hasn't sweated off, anyway. Between sleeping on the ground and the falls that come with more and more frequency, Sam's accumulated a fine layer of grime since his visit to the river two (was it two?) days before. Dorian's hand feels mercifully cool against his brow.

"Mister Dorian," he says, with obvious relief, and touches a hand to his forehead in place of a bow, though the gesture is vague and halting. He even manages a lopsided smile. "Well met, indeed."

His gaze meanders, for a moment, loses focus; he has to think a second about what he's just been asked. "I've done nothing to myself," he says, and sounds reasonably certain about it. "It was another-- at the Cornucopia." Another moment's consideration. "Now, there's none would call me graceful, sir, but I'd not have done this to myself."

Suspicion is beyond him. The Samwise of three days ago would have hid better, would have got some promise of goodwill out of Dorian before he allowed him this close; the Samwise of this moment cannot quite call to mind why that would be necessary.

I'm the worst, I'm sorry 8|

[tevintage]

"I fear you took my statement a touch more literally than I meant," Dorian said, a half-way apology, since most of his attention was on finding the wound in Sam's scalp, carefully, with the tips of his fingers.

The problem was, he thought he could smell it.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes, and wishes - reaches, as far as he can, to try and touch the Fade. The magic wouldn't come for Cole, but part of him won't give up, has to keep trying, even though it simply won't answer.

Where the magic once was, there's only empty darkness now. He curses, harshly, under his breath, before starting to go through his meager supplies, perhaps he had something--

"What did the graceless other do to you, then?" He asked, less because he needed the answer and more because he wanted to keep Sam talking.

Lemme know if I need to change anything

[silberfuchs]

It's not long after the Cornucopia but Albert's already been in the forest for long enough to make himself a makeshift spear by sharpening the end of a fallen branch. It's rough and chafes his hand for now, but until he's found someplace more defensible where he can shave the bark off with the sharp stone he has stored in his pocket, it will have to do.

His stomach rumbles and he suddenly regrets not attempting to eat something at the crowning, despite everything being covered in insects. Honestly he wonders if he may have to find insects to eat here in the Arena for all the game he's spotted so far, and these aren't even cooked. Disgusting, but survival is key at least until he can find Jet. Still, he hopes he doesn't have to resort to that just yet.

He winds his way south in a search pattern, knowing Jet will be doing similar as soon as he's able. They'd talked about it before, tired of losing each other in the Arenas early on, but things happen and for all Albert knows Jet's death could have been one of those announced by the canons in the first hour of the Arena.

Suddenly, the cyborg freezes, broken from his thoughts by the distinct sound of something living. At first he thinks it may be an animal, something small he could possibly eat or a predator he'll have to fight off, but at a second careful listen it sounds far more Human.

Carefully, Albert turns in a slow and silent circle, barely the rustle of ground cover sounding from the shuffle of his feet. After a moment he spots the shivering figure curled in a hollow of roots, poorly nested in leaves. Samwise Gamgee.

It only takes Albert three long strides to kneel at Sam's side, his spear left to lean against the tree beside them. "Sam, are you-"

He doesn't finish his question, the blood on the side of the Hobbit's face, even haphazardly staunched with socks, is clue enough. A head wound, brilliant. "Sam, it's Albert, I'm going to help you, alright?"

A++! :D

[lasttosail]

Sam's path has been winding - for someone able to follow it, it would appear completely directionless. It's been dictated partly by the vague thoughts of a moment (perhaps there's water in that direction), and partly by the minutes or hours in which he forgot where he'd been intending to go in the first place, and concentrated only on making it to the next tree to lean on.

He'd been trying to sleep, and had almost managed it. Anyway, he felt sleepy, and maybe this time that would actually lead to something like sleep. He'd held out hope. As a result, it's something like disappointment he feels in the first second he hears Albert's voice, and knows he'll have to get up - irrational, of course, but present.

But he rolls over and takes the windbreaker down from over his head, to be presentable, and nods courteously in response to that declaration of help. (He seems much less troubled, in general, than Albert does; his expression is too glassy to hold proper fear.)

"That's kind of you," he says. "I'd wondered if I'd see you here." He shifts-- winces-- gets back his breath from that stab of pain. "If I'd've known it was you, I wouldn't have hid as I did."

[silberfuchs]

"Hiding is smarter," Albert negates the sentiment as he looks Sam over with some urgency, afraid to move the socks stemming whatever injury the Hobbit had sustained but not finding any other real cause for concern. Bumps, bruises, certainly, but the blood on him is all from under the makeshift bandages. The wound is old enough to be dried, but if the blood loss hadn't killed him, infection just might.

"We've got to get you up. The wound should be cleaned or you'll be in more dire straights." Unfortunately, Albert's not... exactly sure where to find fresh water, or if he might be too late as it is. Sam's gaze is unfocused and he seems complacent and content to huddle here in the underbrush. "Sam, this is important. Have you seen anything like a river or a stream?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Odd as it feels to Roland, it may not be so dangerous here to spend a night sleeping unprotected on the ground in the middle of the woods. He's slept so before, of course, but always lightly and ready to wake at any approach from man or animal. There are plenty of dangerous men - and women, of course - here but very few natural predators, at least not that he's seen sign of.

It is odd, and it is deeply suspicious, and he does not expect it to continue. Which is why, on this particular night, he stops looking for a good spot to sleep to follow a rustling noise not too far away. From the rustling he finds a raccoon, large and not terribly wary, more focused on pawing at whatever it's just found in that deep shadow under the tree than it is in paying attention to the tall, narrow figure wandering up behind it.

Huh. Can't see as much as he'd like in the dark but whatever it's poking at looks human-shaped. "Yah," he says to get the animal's attention and flicks his foot toward it. "Move along."

It scurries off and he hunkers, trying to make out the figure huddled in front of him. It's a fairly distinctive figure, and even in the shadows - even with what looks an awful lot like socks tied around its head - it doesn't take Roland long. He leans forward, frowning. "Samwise?"

[lasttosail]

Save a feeble kick, Sam's defense against the curious animal was nonexistent. Just the effort it took to pull the jacket off his head, to focus on what was in front of him, and to balance himself long enough to sit up took near all the energy he still had. In fact, it takes him a second to understand that one threat's been replaced with another - once the animal's gone, he drags himself upright, slow and painful, and only when his curly head's emerged from the deepest shadow of the hollow between roots does he look up and register that he's been found.

Instinctively, he shrinks down again, staring up wide-eyed at Roland in the dark - though his gaze drifts back and forth, as though Roland were moving in front of him. Sam's lips are dry and cracked, and his face pale and clammy. He stares up, fearful, bewildered, and uncomprehending.

Then, something like recognition comes into his face, and on its heels relief. Thoughts are hard to grab onto, at the moment - they flit about in his head and don't stick long - but it seems to him he'd know who this was, if it were a little brighter, perhaps, or if every small movement didn't set the whole world to spinning about him. But it seems to him he knows this tall, thin stranger.

He takes a sharp breath, and tries to pull himself up further-- though he doesn't get far before he sinks back down, his strength spent, and simply lets his back rest against the tree behind him. "...Strider?" he breathes, hoarse and still uncertain, but with vague hope. "Where've you been, then?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland waits patiently, watching Samwise while he pulls himself up. The signs are there, might be readable even if that makeshift bandage weren't there to point them out. That kind of injury's always the worst, far as Roland's concerned - take a wound to the gut or the leg or nearly anywhere else and you can at least predict what you may be dealing with. The head? With the head, all a man can do is wait and hope.

By the look of him, though, from the look of that weaving gaze, Roland thinks the time for hope has likely passed.

Is it worth correcting Samwise? Seeing the careful, reasoned mind Roland'd seen on their last meeting all muddled and turned around?

"Been around. Surviving," he says instead, moving slowly to see if Samwise will let 'Strider' lean next to him against the tree. "And you? What've you been doing?" Roland does not yet have a good grasp on what it is Capitolites find so interesting about their tributes, all the things that keep one alive for arena after arena while another dies and simply never wakes up again. But for Samwise's sake, Roland hopes whatever he's done since getting his brains all knocked around is interesting enough.