Little girl, don't lie to me. Tell me where did you sleep last night?

[silencedriot]

Who| Bacopa and AU Steve Rogers, Bacopa and open
What| Bacopa is determined to live. The small issue with that is that she is tiny and this is a big, big arena.
Where| Everywhere you don't need to travel over water to go to.
When| Weeks 1 - 2
Warnings/Notes| I think violence against children is a given.

Everyone

She decides early on to stay away from the water. She can only tread water at best, and it's too easy for her to get stuck in a bad situation without any way to escape. When she sees the sea, she walks near the shore, but far enough away that she can easily escape if something climbs out of the water. She scavenges for anything that could be eaten--seaweed, washed up fish, and so on. They don't have readily available seafood in her District, but she watched the chefs in the Capitol cooking it.

She tries the bunker. Once. After wandering desperately trying to find a way out for two days, she bursts out of one of the exits and just leaves as fast as possible.

She doesn't spend too much time in the desert, either. It's not terrain she's familiar with and there's very little cover she can use.

The City looks promising. She spends one day exploring and then holes up in an apartment building--but then the screaming starts and things move in the dark. She locks all the doors and windows and spends all night staring at them, waiting for something to attack her. She leaves the area once the screams stop in the morning.

She prefers the mountains and the forest. The forest offers shelter and easy access to trees to climb and use to run from limb to limb like Rue once did. The mountains also have shelter, and they have the added bonus of being difficult to get to, so people won't bother her there. The only issue is that it's hard for her to get to it too, so she can't explore too far in.

Whenever she sees people, no matter where she is, she immediately tries to disappear, whether by hiding behind something or under something or climbing up something out of range.

For Steve for Week 2, Alternian Forest

Frankly, she didn't expect to survive this long. The fact that she has makes her simultaneously proud and very nervous. Rue, after all, lasted pretty far in her games, but she eventually died.

These new games can last for months. She can't get comfortable, because even if the other Tributes don't get her, game events can.

Like this one.

She had just been staring at the night sky from her commandeered when the meteors started hitting. She only managed to half-climb, half-fall to the ground before the forest started burning. She let out one piercing scream, but she shuts her mouth, conserving all her energy so she can sprint as fast as she can away from the fire, her feet stumbling and threatening to make her fall on her face in the dark, but she has to keep running because the fire is right at her heels.

Comments

[decommission]

The girl from the Training Center lounge. He stares back at her for a moment, equally tense in his indecision - he doesn't want to frighten her off, but she has no reason to trust him. Plenty of children are already dead.

But she's still standing here, staring at him.

He breathes in through his nose, working his jaw (it's been a week since he's spoken to anyone).

"Did you see what started the fire?"

[silencedriot]

Bacopa thinks back to Katniss and Rue. Rue had had reason to trust Katniss--after all, Rue was the same age as Katniss' sister, and Katniss had been ready to die for her. Rue saved Katniss' life, and Katniss tried to save hers in turn.

"The Gamemakers dropped flaming rocks from the sky. They looked like shooting stars first."

(Bacopa remembers the image of her dead sister wreathed in flowers as if it were yesterday. It had been a better funeral rite than anyone could have hoped for. All of the District proudly scraped together as much money as it could and sent Katniss bread in thanks.)

Bacopa is still tense, but she starts chewing her lip, struggling to not think too hard about Rue but finding herself inexorably driven to think about her. It is possible for people to care for others in the arena. That's what Katniss did.

"You just saved my life." She's not sure what to think of it, but it wouldn't make sense for him to kill her now. She starts chewing the inside of her cheek along with her lip, keeping her eyes on him. "...Sorry I bit you." She's lucky he didn't just drop her in the inferno for it.

[decommission]

He tries not to grimace. All the survival training in the world won't help much if the arena decides to toss flaming projectiles at them - that's the thought he's stuck in when she thanks him for saving her life and apologizes. His brow starts to furrow, but then he lets out a huff, as though he just thought of something vaguely funny, and the tension in his expression begins to fade.

"Sorry for startling you." The jumpsuit sleeves took most of the bites and scratches, even with his immune system dampened he's not likely to end up with an infection. A pause, then in a more serious tone - "You should aim to hit higher, if you need to."

He presses a finger into a soft spot on his throat. Sensitive places.

[silencedriot]

She instinctively moves her hand to mirror his, gently prodding the soft underside of her throat. "I don't know if I could hit it." She has small arms, hasn't even had the chance to hit puberty yet.

She shifts her weight from side to side, still staring at the man. She remembers Rue's alliance with Katniss, the way the D12 Tribute invited Rue into her sleeping bag and Rue immediately fell asleep. Once she decided she trusted Katniss, she went all in, because there isn't any room for doubt in the Hunger Games.

She either decides she doesn't trust him and leave, or she decides to trust him for now and go all in. She can leave later if she decides she has to.

"Can you show me?" It would require that he grab her again and show him how to jab his throat, but if he wanted to kill her, he'd have done it by now.

[decommission]

"If you're low, aim for knees." His eyes follow her hand as she pokes at her own throat. He doubts that he needs to tell her that her best bet is to keep far away enough from her opponent that she doesn't need to aim anywhere.

Something like confusion flickers across his expression when she asks to be shown. She's unarmed (if she weren't, he'd be bleeding a lot worse already). There's a pause, then a slow nod. Yes, he'll show her. Like a well-trained pack beast he lowers himself down to one knee, allowing her to approach so that he can scoop her off of her feet a little more gently this time.

[silencedriot]

She waits for him to crouch. Once again, she considers running, but he hasn't killed her so far. Visibly steeling herself, she walks to him and turns her back, instinctively tensing when he gathers her up into her arms but not squirming like she had been before.

"Okay. So what do I do? Should I try to punch--" she reaches up one little fist and taps the underside of his throat gently, "--here?"

This isn't comfortable for her, but at the same time, there's something comforting about being in the strong arms of an adult that she doesn't think will hurt her. It reminds her of her dad, who liked to pick her up and swing her around back when Rue was alive and grief wasn't thick in the house.

[decommission]

"Yeah -" His brow furrows again, he only needs one arm to hold her so the other comes up to gently guide her wrist. If she'll allow it, he'll direct her hand to his nose, positioning her hand so that the heel of her palm presses upward.

"- or press here -" again, he shifts her hand (if she doesn't struggle) so that her thumb presses against one of his eyelids. "Or here, if you can reach."

He releases her hand, leaving it where it is, and waits.

[silencedriot]

Bacopa doesn't struggle. She allows him to guide her hand, gradually getting more comfortable the longer he goes without hurting her. "Okay."

When he releases her arm, she moves her fist to give the underside of his neck a gentle love tap. "Here." She then moves to lightly press the heel of her hand against the underside of his nose. "Here." Then, the lightest touch of all, she brushes her fingers against his eyelid. "Here. Got it."

Now that she thinks on it, it makes more sense than just mauling his arm. She hadn't really been thinking when he grabbed her, only panicking. "Should I try to kick you, too?"

[decommission]

Not even a twitch comes from him as she places her hand on each spot, his eye closing just as she brushes against his eyelid. Her hands are small, but she can learn to do the maximum amount of damage with them.

It's self defense, he reminds himself.

At the question he nods again. "Anywhere that hurts the most - but you wanna make them let you go, not make them mad." That'll only make things worse. Depending on her attacker, something like a kick to the groin might do the latter to someone well-trained.

[silencedriot]

"What kick makes them let you go?"

She has little brothers, so she knows what a kick in the groin does to boys, but it doesn't work so well with girls and she doesn't know if it'd make a grown man let her go.

When he's not moving around, this feels less like she's being restricted and more like she's being hugged. She tries not to get too comfortable with it.

[decommission]

If he has any memories of holding children before, he hasn't properly recalled them - though there was a photo. They'd been in one of the heavily edited files Peggy had given him to read. It'd been black and white, a man in a spandex costume kneeling down next to two children, the backdrop a stage.

With his free hand he points to his solar plexus. "Here, with your knee. Hard as you can to knock the air out of them."

[silencedriot]

"Okay." She pauses a beat. "Should I try to do it?"

She's not sure if she really has the strength to hurt a grown man and doesn't know how to properly take one down, and practice makes perfect. Yet somehow, she doubts that he would really appreciate her suddenly trying to kick his stomach, even if she's clasped in his arms.

[decommission]

He shakes his head, starting to lower her back to her feet.

"I need my air."

This time he almost smiles, as if he realizes he made a joke. A beat, then he points toward the mountains in the distance.

"That's where I'm going."

He can't make her follow him.

[silencedriot]

"Okay."

Even though it's kind of nice to be wrapped up in his arms like that, it's also very nice to be on the ground again. She pulls away from him, not letting herself get too comfortable. Rue had slept in Katniss' bag, but Bacopa is a little more slow to be cozy.

But even so, he's big and she's small and he saved her life once. Bacopa looks towards the mountains, then comes to her decision. "I'll go with you." She doesn't ask. She's afraid he'd tell her no if she asked.