03 ▒ EVENT: STRELA OUTPOST ▒ ASSIMILATION

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Strela Outpost.
WARNINGS: Mind horror, hivemindery, etc.
SUMMARY: Communal brainwashing.
NOTES: Divided by locations; players are free to indicate which day/stage, and to begin new subthreads wherever they'd like!

Looks like the authorities have apprehended you and have brought you in for processing. After being forced to wait in the waiting room, you're brought to the assimilation room - a terrible white cell, where you're trapped for hours, sentenced to be slowly stripped of your individuality.

Comments

[unsoldiered]

He takes one of her wrists gently from firmly, closing his eyes.

"... Annie... Stop..." Said with all the uncertainty in the world, because maybe she was right. Maybe he should let her kill him quickly--because it's such a better alternative than turning into a patient again: mindlessly unknown, united prisoners, people who had no future or past. He couldn't do that. Couldn't be like that. At the same time... Wasn't there some sliver of hope? Something? Were they just going to die here, not knowing if there was a better choice?

He shakes his head. No.

It'd be wrong. If this was how it was supposed to be, shouldn't he face it headstrong?

"When I was home, something awful happened. The whole town vanished. They took everyone I knew, and I was stuck in a nightmare world I couldn't break out of... There were so many times I thought it'd be easier to just die... because the outcome looked so hopeless."

But then he'd thought of his brother. He always did.

"If I hadn't kept going, I would've never learned the truth. I wouldn't have been able to protect Elle. I wouldn't have been able to start making up for my mistakes." What a situation. What an awful situation. He can't sound determined or sure of himself, no matter how much he wants to believe it. He can't pretend acting like it'll work it will do jackshit. So he just bows his head and denies fate for as long as he can.

"We can't die right here. Goddammit, we just can't."

[maredementis]

His story will stay with her, even if she's in no place to process it now. He soothes--like Finnick, even if he's not Finnick. He's tall and lean and warm, like Finnick, and he cares. He says true things. Annie doesn't want to die and maybe it's better to think she can't even though she knows she can. To beat back terror and persist.

She has to fight to get out of the water, because she's so afraid of what they'll do to her. Not these guards and drones, no. All the people she killed. The dead guards are crowded around them and Annie closes her eyes and hides miserably against Alex's chest.

"I'm scared," she whispers, shaking in his embrace with horrible ripples of terror that run razors up and down under her skin. "I'm so scared, Niall."

That's not his name, but he could be him. Because Annie realizes he doesn't soothe like Finnick. He soothes like Niall, who knew that one or both of them were going to die and that if he did live it meant she was dead, who had cared anyway and taught Annie more about goodness in those days than she'd ever learned before.

"I don't want to watch you die again. I see you--I see you every day. I see you and I don't know why you saved me, you could have--you could've won. If you tried. But you died for me and I've never been good enough to earn it, and I killed Colt and I let the little kids die, I didn't even stay to protect them, I ran away. I'm not a good person. You thought I was a good person but I'm not. It should've been you."

[unsoldiered]

"I know. It's okay, to be scared." He looks up, sees a guard shifting to move, looks back down at her. "You wouldn't be human if you weren't scared; you'd be like the rest of these bastards. Hang onto that, okay? Even if they try to change that, remember everything you're telling me. Don't let them change that."

Someone's walking up behind him, and he hugs her closer, heartbeat rapid despite the calmness he's trying to mask his face with.

"I'm not a good person, either. I'll remember that. We'll both remember, right? Remember your family and what you like doing--all the stuff that makes you you. All the stuff that connects you to other people, like your sister, or Finnick."

They're going to take him soon. Possibly her next, after him, like a series of cruel gun spray. He can tell--knows. One of them is already crossing the room in a beeline, his cold blank eyes locked on him.

[maredementis]

Annie didn't survive on luck. She hears what she hears in his voice, trying to tie hope to her spine, but she remembers Peeta and what they can do to your memories--to all that you're supposed to be, all that makes you you, and suddenly Annie is calm.

"I'm a shapeshifter," she says, "No one ever understood that."

"Let go of me." Annie doesn't wait for him to answer, because she can suddenly see clearly where to strike with her elbows, and she drives them hard into Alex's pressure points and snaps out of his embrace like a switchblade. She stands on her sprained ankle, it's only sprained, and curls her hands into fists. Wearing Alex's rough bandages, at her tiny height, she looks insubstantial.

Stares at the guard, who stares back, not seeing.

"But I remember." She looks over her shoulder at Alex. "I remember everything."

The guard puts a hand on her to move her aside. Annie whips around and all by rips his arm out of its socket, forcing him towards the ground, and hisses: "I'm a fucking dolphin."

[unsoldiered]

Nothing like seeing stars again, and he crumples over at the blaring pain her elbows deliver. She really is good at fighting--but that's not going to do shit for her right now, and he knows it. What are you doing? You idiot, what are you doing? He looks up, eyes squinting against the lights above, vision spiking in and out for a moment.

"Ann..." Breathe. He drags himself to his knees and elbows. "Stop... W-wait..."

It's pointless. All that'll happen is she'll get herself hurt even worse. More guards will come, she'll be shoved to the floor, and then it'll happen anyway. He just. Needs to collect himself, ignore the ache in his limbs and sides, and he can do something-

[maredementis]

Annie snaps the guard's neck with two hands and snaps a kick into the solar plexus of the next, and she really is beautiful like this in the most monstrous of ways. This is what people wanted to see in her Games, another beautiful and deadly District 4, but she'd disappointed. Now it's wasted on these eyes as an aesthetic, but as a weapon she's almost peerless. She has trained harder and longer than Finnick in the past five years, if only because she had more time, and she tears a cattle prod from the kicked guard and slams it with lethal force into his eye socket.

They take her down after that, a cattle prod, then another, another, in the small of her back, and Annie crumples like a broken doll, slumping to the floor and cracking her head. She's out instantly, sprawled with half-curled hands. Good night, Alex.

[unsoldiered]

At the sight of her crumpling he drops his forehead into the ground, a wave of pain clawing its fingers into his skull. All he can do his repeat no, verbally, mentally, as they leave Annie there on the floor and start toward him, all the while unresponsive to the corpses that litter the area around them. Alex panics. He moves his arms backward, crawls backward, the burns and marks on his legs and body gnawed with pain.

"Get away from me..."

At least Annie's alive still. Maybe there's hope for her. A rescue. Anything.

"Stay away from me--!"

He shoves but it's weak and heavy, slow like a dying animal; not anything that bothers the guards, because they latch onto his arms with full curling fingers, sliding him against his will across the smooth floor. His head hangs low. He's so fucking tired... He can't...

"I'm sorry... couldn't help..."

He glances blindly, blankly, toward the body resting nearby, before they yank him out of the room by the elbows and wrists, leaving just a few sad smears of blood.

Goodnight.