Sansa Stark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thearena2015-10-20 01:40 am
porcelainandsteel) wrote in thearena2015-10-20 01:40 am
Entry tags:
if you could only see the beast you've made of me [OPEN]
Who| Sansa and OPEN, with a closed prompt for Luna and Arya
What| Catch-all for Arena 4 so farbecause my activity sucks
Where| Throughout the Arena (desert/city in week 1, Winterfell/medieval fantasy in weeks 2-3, forest in week 4)
When| ALL THE TIMES week 1-4, backdated like whoa
Warnings/Notes| TBC
i: desert, week 1
Sansa is woefully underequipped for the desert. She's a Northerner, more used to cold and damp than to the heat and dryness that the desert offers. By the second day, she's clearly struggling, as much from heat as from thirst. Besides that, she's not used to walking long distances, or sleeping outside, and her whole body aches.
You can find her hunting for water, stumbling and struggling over the dunes, looking desperately for anything that isn't dry, featureless sand. At night, innocent of the dangers, she lights a fire and sits close; in the wide unoccupied landscape, her fire is visible from some distance.
ii: city, week 1
She sticks less close to Luna in the city, leaving her friend to go and hunt for supplies in the houses. She can be found anywhere in the city, a slight, weary figure clutching a broken piece of timber without much hope of actually being able to fight with it. Whenever she sees someone else, she freezes, caught in a horrible indecision between fleeing a potential enemy and making a new ally. In most cases, though, she goes towards them, figuring that it's better to die in an entertaining way than be forgettable and have the Capitol decide she wasn't worth the effort.
About halfway through the week, she finds the pizza place, and when the lights go out and the animatronics have shifted, she screams loud enough to be heard for at least a block.
iii: fantasy area, week 2
Once she's found Winterfell, Sansa is a little more comfortable with roaming, confident that she can find her way home again and that there are allies nearby. Still, she's cautious, and although she ventures out every so often to look for food and water, she's far more circumspect than she was in the city. You may see a flutter of auburn hair in the sunlight, or a shadow shifting: when it comes to making herself unnoticeable, Sansa is better than she lets on. And now that she's found Arya, and something that looks like home, she's a lot less willing to die.
iv: the bombing of Winterfell
When the explosions start, Sansa freezes in terror for a good few minutes, struggling not to hyperventilate. Last time she heard anything like it was at the Blackwater, and then she was relatively safe under the keep; now it's close, and deafening, and light explodes in the corners of her vision, and then she's running. She seeks about for Luna or Arya, but can't find them through the smoke, the falling masonry, the haze of wild panic. I am a wolf, she tells herself, I fear nothing, but she is afraid, horribly afraid.
So she runs. Ash lightening her hair, masonry dust making her cough, she runs, and prays that she's running in the right direction, prays to the old gods and the new that Arya and Luna make it out alive. And as she runs, she cries, unable to stop the tears that mix the ash into mud on her face. This is the cruellest thing they could have devised, she thinks: to give her Winterfell and Arya, and to make her watch it all destroyed again. No matter how much she tells herself it's only a game, she can't convince herself, and her panicked, broken sobs are drowned out by the crash of the bombs.
v: the forest, week 4
Exhaustion stops her running, only a few minutes after the bombing ends. She thinks of seeking out Arya and Luna, but she's just too tired, worn out emotionally and physically. In the end, she crumples down and curls up under a tree, and cries herself to sleep. She can be found there well into the next day, thin and bruised and filthy, a far cry from the noble lady she tries to be.
After that, she'll wander, although not without purpose. She doesn't know how to track, but tries to remember what little she's read or heard or studied in the Training Center. If she were really a wolf, she thinks more than once, she could sniff the other girls out, and be reunited in the blink of an eye. If she were a wolf, she would revel in this place, with a thick fur to warm her and sharp teeth and claws to hold her own. If she were a wolf, and not a frightened girl.
But she isn't a wolf. She only has herself, thin and pale and ill-prepared for this place. To start with, she's careful in her search, trying not to draw attention to herself. But as time wears on, and weariness and desperation eat away at her, she starts to be bolder, calling their names and carving arrows into trees to show which way she went. To be alone, right now, seems worse than being dead.
CLOSED: Winterfell, week 2
Sansa is struggling, the week and a half they've spent travelling taking its toll. Her feet feel like they're nothing but blisters, and she's never been so exhausted in her life, not even in those long, horrible nights after her father's death. She feels like nothing can lift her spirits.
She's wrong.
She sees Winterfell and all her exhaustion, fear, and wariness falls away. The smile comes to her face like a dawn breaking, and she grabs for Luna's hand, pointing and breaking into a run she didn't think she still had in her. She doesn't pause for explanation, buoyed up by a hope and lightness she hasn't felt since the Arena first threatened.
If she were a gambler, she'd lay money on Arya being inside Winterfell. But that isn't what spurs her on, makes her forget her blistered feet and aching joints. It's something much more visceral, much less considered: the same thing that made her draw the North over and over again in the Youth Programme, that in another world would make her build castles in the snow. It's home, something she never thought she'd see again, and even knowing that it's only a pretty trick doesn't quell the sudden leaping of her heart.
What| Catch-all for Arena 4 so far
Where| Throughout the Arena (desert/city in week 1, Winterfell/medieval fantasy in weeks 2-3, forest in week 4)
When| ALL THE TIMES week 1-4, backdated like whoa
Warnings/Notes| TBC
i: desert, week 1
Sansa is woefully underequipped for the desert. She's a Northerner, more used to cold and damp than to the heat and dryness that the desert offers. By the second day, she's clearly struggling, as much from heat as from thirst. Besides that, she's not used to walking long distances, or sleeping outside, and her whole body aches.
You can find her hunting for water, stumbling and struggling over the dunes, looking desperately for anything that isn't dry, featureless sand. At night, innocent of the dangers, she lights a fire and sits close; in the wide unoccupied landscape, her fire is visible from some distance.
ii: city, week 1
She sticks less close to Luna in the city, leaving her friend to go and hunt for supplies in the houses. She can be found anywhere in the city, a slight, weary figure clutching a broken piece of timber without much hope of actually being able to fight with it. Whenever she sees someone else, she freezes, caught in a horrible indecision between fleeing a potential enemy and making a new ally. In most cases, though, she goes towards them, figuring that it's better to die in an entertaining way than be forgettable and have the Capitol decide she wasn't worth the effort.
About halfway through the week, she finds the pizza place, and when the lights go out and the animatronics have shifted, she screams loud enough to be heard for at least a block.
iii: fantasy area, week 2
Once she's found Winterfell, Sansa is a little more comfortable with roaming, confident that she can find her way home again and that there are allies nearby. Still, she's cautious, and although she ventures out every so often to look for food and water, she's far more circumspect than she was in the city. You may see a flutter of auburn hair in the sunlight, or a shadow shifting: when it comes to making herself unnoticeable, Sansa is better than she lets on. And now that she's found Arya, and something that looks like home, she's a lot less willing to die.
iv: the bombing of Winterfell
When the explosions start, Sansa freezes in terror for a good few minutes, struggling not to hyperventilate. Last time she heard anything like it was at the Blackwater, and then she was relatively safe under the keep; now it's close, and deafening, and light explodes in the corners of her vision, and then she's running. She seeks about for Luna or Arya, but can't find them through the smoke, the falling masonry, the haze of wild panic. I am a wolf, she tells herself, I fear nothing, but she is afraid, horribly afraid.
So she runs. Ash lightening her hair, masonry dust making her cough, she runs, and prays that she's running in the right direction, prays to the old gods and the new that Arya and Luna make it out alive. And as she runs, she cries, unable to stop the tears that mix the ash into mud on her face. This is the cruellest thing they could have devised, she thinks: to give her Winterfell and Arya, and to make her watch it all destroyed again. No matter how much she tells herself it's only a game, she can't convince herself, and her panicked, broken sobs are drowned out by the crash of the bombs.
v: the forest, week 4
Exhaustion stops her running, only a few minutes after the bombing ends. She thinks of seeking out Arya and Luna, but she's just too tired, worn out emotionally and physically. In the end, she crumples down and curls up under a tree, and cries herself to sleep. She can be found there well into the next day, thin and bruised and filthy, a far cry from the noble lady she tries to be.
After that, she'll wander, although not without purpose. She doesn't know how to track, but tries to remember what little she's read or heard or studied in the Training Center. If she were really a wolf, she thinks more than once, she could sniff the other girls out, and be reunited in the blink of an eye. If she were a wolf, she would revel in this place, with a thick fur to warm her and sharp teeth and claws to hold her own. If she were a wolf, and not a frightened girl.
But she isn't a wolf. She only has herself, thin and pale and ill-prepared for this place. To start with, she's careful in her search, trying not to draw attention to herself. But as time wears on, and weariness and desperation eat away at her, she starts to be bolder, calling their names and carving arrows into trees to show which way she went. To be alone, right now, seems worse than being dead.
CLOSED: Winterfell, week 2
Sansa is struggling, the week and a half they've spent travelling taking its toll. Her feet feel like they're nothing but blisters, and she's never been so exhausted in her life, not even in those long, horrible nights after her father's death. She feels like nothing can lift her spirits.
She's wrong.
She sees Winterfell and all her exhaustion, fear, and wariness falls away. The smile comes to her face like a dawn breaking, and she grabs for Luna's hand, pointing and breaking into a run she didn't think she still had in her. She doesn't pause for explanation, buoyed up by a hope and lightness she hasn't felt since the Arena first threatened.
If she were a gambler, she'd lay money on Arya being inside Winterfell. But that isn't what spurs her on, makes her forget her blistered feet and aching joints. It's something much more visceral, much less considered: the same thing that made her draw the North over and over again in the Youth Programme, that in another world would make her build castles in the snow. It's home, something she never thought she'd see again, and even knowing that it's only a pretty trick doesn't quell the sudden leaping of her heart.
no subject
Tears are threatening. Tears, and a wild outflow of words she isn't sure she can afford. She clamps down on both of them, pressing her lips together, and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "I caught it on a spar," she says at last, when she's sure she has herself under control. "It isn't deep. I checked. But I don't have anything to sew with any more, so I couldn't sew it up."
no subject
"Shit," he utters, more to himself. For a moment he considers trying to treat it here, but with the way she was shouting...
His hand rubs over his face before he says, "I can help, but it's dangerous right here. If you can put up with the pain a little longer, we'll get somewhere safer. I'm pretty sure I have a needle and thread in the kit I got, and I have a little water saved. We'll need to find more if you want to wash your face and everything, but it's enough for that."
He thanks Phil mentally for sending him the water rations in earlier weeks; even if they ran out, the containers they came in helped for saving more.
no subject
no subject
From there he leads off through the trees, heading off the way water lies, but not anywhere specific so much as 'away'. He keeps slow for her sake, but he keeps his eyes and ears open for danger as they go. Fortunately, none yet finds them.
Once he feels they've moved far enough and they've found a good space to rest, he motions her over to a fallen log. "Sit there. Move the fabric out of the way, and I'll get stuff ready."
Karkat sets to unpacking his things. His makeshift pack reveals a collection of useful things as he does: a boiling pot, a desalination kit, the first-aid kit he mentioned, a couple bottles of water, and a red, jagged sickle. This last one is clean, but he barely touches it, only lifting it to set it out of the way before he starts checking his first aid supplies.
no subject
But she doesn't faint, which is something - not even when she tugs the fabric free and her leg starts bleeding all over again. She tastes bile in her mouth, and has to bite down on her tongue to keep herself present, but she manages to roll her jumpsuit up out of the way, wiping her bloody hands on her thighs.
"So... erm. What's happened to you, so far?" she asks. It isn't exactly a calculated plan, so much as a desperate attempt to take her mind off the blood. "Since you got here, I mean."
wandwaves over how the heck stitches work, idek
Crouching at her side, he sets to work. It's not that he missed her question; he paused when he heard it. But he takes gauze and water, wetting the former, to wipe away what he can of the blood around the wound. He pours a little water directly to try to flush out anything she might have picked up in the gouge. Last, he dabs around the perimeter with antiseptic, not poking the damaged flesh itself. Then he sets the flap as straight as he can.
"I ran from the Cornucopia," he starts once he goes for the needle and thread. The needle gets its own wipe with the antiseptic. "I didn't want to risk dying there again or getting injured."
How does he judge the length of thread for this kind of thing? He holds it up above the wound, pulling it, guessing, unraveling more. Once he's snipped and threaded it, he lines them up by the edge of her wound. "Stare at a tree if it's easier."
Then he starts. His work is slow, careful, compensating for his uncertainty and mixed with a desire to do no unnecessary harm. As he works he speaks slowly.
"I saw what looked like my planet, Alternia, and I went for that. If nothing else it would be more familiar than the rest. The trouble was that there was water between me and it, so I had to turn around, and through that I ran into this guy, Nitou. He had my sickle." The red one, still laying away from them. "I saw it at the Cornucopia earlier, but you already know I didn't risk it. Luckily I was able to convince him to hand it over, with the agreement that I'd help him out if we met up later. Which we did." It went fine enough.
"From there, I went along toward the desert, because I had zero patience for hauling myself across the water in a boat. There... I ran into Luna and--and Maglev. The District 6 girl that got reaped. Maglev had found this big... You know what cars are by now, right? This big stupid thing on wheels, covered in death spikes and looking like the most dangerous vehicle I'd ever laid ganderbulbs on. Somehow I gave up enough sanity to climb in, and we rode across the desert, into the Alternian desert, ran over a daywalker or two, and made it to the city.
"We explored some while we were there. I met other people and helped them, too, now and then. There was also this time I got completely waylaid--we had run into a Mother Grub, and then I heard an imperial drone... They're these giant bipedal things covered in a spiky carapace, and even one would have culled us on the spot if we stopped long enough to be found. So we ran, I got separated, and long story short I had one completely bugnuts crazypants adventure through the Carnival, the desert, a fucking cave, and through the desert again, with way too many dead things and a terrible headache to show for it."
He pauses here, frowning some, looking over what he's done so far. It's gone fine enough, not too hard once he got the rhythm of it.
"The second week... It went fine for a while, until the Gamemakers decided to royally screw me over. They started their mockup of the Reckoning, basically this rain of meteors that pulverized everything in the Alternian section to dust. The city, the forest, probably the desert section too. I ran, I helped some other girl escape, and by some lucky fluke and my sheer determination to not die to what I already escaped once, we survived.
"At... At one point, though..."
How does he even say it? His lips press tight.
"Maglev got separated from me again. I found her, but--" Quick blinks, a deep breath, a shake of his head. For a space he says no more, instead setting to finishing Sansa's stitches and trying them off. Snip the extra thread, rinse his hands, clean the needle again, put it away, and... "Maglev died. The--the guy who killed her is dead, too."
He snaps the first aid kit shut and rises.
"I spent last week in the forest. Not much happened then."
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"She stopped for me," she says at last, her voice thick, and frowns a little, as though she's trying to make sense of something. "At the Cornucopia. I never saw her when they came to the Center, but she must have seen my commercials, because she knew who I was and she stopped for me. I thought..." She's crying, she realises distantly, but she's not sure whether it's from the pain or from grief. Her arm feels strangely heavy as she raises it to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. "I thought if I went with her it would only slow her down. I didn't have a weapon and I knew I couldn't fight well. And I promised Luna, you see... I promised I would stick by her, I couldn't..." She swallows, and some alertness comes back into her face as she looks at Karkat. "At least you did something. Everything you could. All I did was pray for her."
no subject
He sees her crying and can't look at her anymore, but she follows it up with praise and talk of prayer.
"Don't." It comes out sharper than he meant, but he can't take it back now that it's out. "Just don't, Sansa. I panicked and got separated from her as soon as we all ran into--no, as soon as we heard something that happened to intimidate me. I got gifted a hunting knife and I failed to give it to her when I already had a perfectly deadly sickle in my hands. I heard her scream, and what fucking good did I do but show up in time for her to be dead?"
His head turns, finding her again, eyes wide and hurt and burning. "The only thing I did," he grits out, "was get so furious I completely snapped. I snapped, and I lost my pan with it, and I only realized what I had done once the tribute from District 1 was dead at my feet with his gut torn open. He won't come back, either, Sansa! So good job to me! I did it! I fucking did everything a mistake like me could, and all it turned out was a couple of dead kids!"
He pushed it off before, but now he's crying, thick pink streaks rolling down from his eyes even as he glares at her. There's no sympathy in it anymore. All he has in challenge, daring her to try to turn things around and tell him he's wrong.
no subject
She doesn't raise her voice, and the tears still flow down her face, carving tracks through the dirt. But she sounds sure, if not steady. "People die," she says, and her fingers tighten on the legs of her jumpsuit. "They suffer, and they die, and it isn't fair. And... and sometimes it's your fault. Sometimes it's your fault people die, even when they're the last people in the world you want to see hurt." Her tongue darts out, wetting her lips, and she sniffs back her tears. "But when they're gone, they're gone. Blaming yourself doesn't bring them back. Nor does revenge, nor does looking back and thinking what you should have done differently. If you trusted the wrong people, if you said the wrong thing, if you didn't act when you should have... You just have to swallow it down. You have to. The people who died for you, or because of you, the people who you killed, the people you might have saved... they're gone, Karkat. All you can do for them is pray for the Mother's mercy, and keep going, and let it go. You go mad, otherwise. And then you're lost, too." With a herculean effort, she pushes herself to her feet, and stands there, swaying unsteadily. "You can't tell me that's what she would have wanted."
Karkat Vantas: secretly a whiny baby who doesn't want to hear the obvious truth
It's not even the first time he's dealt with it Half his team is dead in Paradox Space, and more probably to come with the state things were in when he last died. But with those there were the dream bubbles, and there wasn't all this weight, this responsibility.
(He felt responsible then, anyway. Probably part of him always will.)
Part of him wants to leave her now just to keep from dealing with it all. But she's hurt, and she's weak, and where would it put him to leave a girl who needs help again? He wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand, then steps in to offer her support.
"Come on." He's not looking at her this time. "I'll take you to water so you can wash up, and I'll hunt something so you don't starve."
" "" "secretly" "" " :p
"Thank you," she says quietly. Then, because it doesn't feel like enough, "...I'm sorry."
shhh his personality is an enigmatic mystery. no one knows his true heart
"Don't worry about it," he answers as they set off. He doesn't have to feel happy about the rest to help keep her alive.