TERRACE Draft - Remaining Days

[lucetimods]

Who: All Draftees
What: All hell breaks loose
When: From the 27th to the 1st.
Where: TERRACE!
Summary: Information post here
Rating: Varies on thread, please mark explicit material.

This post covers the second to sixth day! Be sure to check the info post on the timeline to know what's up. At 2AM on the 27th, the attack will break out while most people are sleeping. Be sure to use the above info post for any plotting needs you might have. Enjoy!

Some random NPC quotes about the island itself.

Be sure to tag this post appropriately: [canon] character name

Comments

[greenjacketed]

Days Two & Three // T8 & T1

The rifleman was already awake when the alarm broke across the garrison. Such a call to arms invited a familiar and bitter taste to the back of his throat: what modern science would call adrenaline but what Sharpe merely thought of as duty. Until he could find higher ground, he was content to brawl his way through alleyways, sending his sword deep into bellies and cracking skulls with an unaccustomed ease. Turned out Ganondorf's sorcery had truly steeled the soldier, allowing him to fight with more strength and alacrity than he had ever before enjoyed. And -- damn it all -- if he didn't just relish every moment.

He filled his daily hours with slaughter, surprised at how he didn't tire. Sharpe often keened some unintelligible war cry as he thought of Gawilghur. Of Ciudad Rodrigo. Of Badajoz. And he no longer knew where his blood ended and his enemies' began. He stalked the streets of the contested garrisons, eager to put more Cultists to the sword.

But at night, he was a different man: "Poor old soldier, poor old soldier--" he sang, peaceful and measured as he took shelter in a barracks on the attack's first night and then in a gutted gymnasium on the second. Even in the garrison plagued with continual night, he made time to rest. If he managed to find an ally to share his space, then he would afford himself a few hours of sleep. Otherwise, he sat with his rifle on his lap. While he waited out the darkness, he continued to sing: "If ever I list as a soldier again, the devil will be me sergeant."

These days, Sharpe was certain he knew what the devil's face. And -- oh, how much he owed to that man!

Day Four & Five // T1

When not sniping from higher ground, Sharpe was troubled by Dream Shifters. Sharpe had never met with one before now, despite their tales. Given how poorly he had anticipated such magics, they find an easy target in the soldier. His Elysium took the shape of an army camp. Off-white tents pitched in orderly rows; camp wives hanging washing; smartly marching companies. And Sharpe, sharing a cuppa and a meal with his men.

Help break him free? Or else allow him to stumble into someone else's dream?

[ ooc; if something you want ain't available here, just lemme know and we can work it out! and -- brackets are also welcome, i just prose'd for the sake of nit-picky formatting. ]

Night 2

[shenevermisses]

Clove hears the singing. That's what draws her closer at night, when she's hunting any stragglers. During the day, she's been as vicious as anyone. Today, she was with Cato most of the day. Tomorrow, they're going their separate ways. Just for a time. The plan's to meet up again in after about eight hours. But she knows how those plans tend to work out for them.

But she knows Sharpe's voice, so she follows the sound until she finds him.

"Hey." Just a single, quiet word, so he doesn't take the approaching form for an enemy. What Clove doesn't know, of course, is that Sharpe knows more about her now than he did when last they spoke...

[greenjacketed]

The song died on his lips and the spoken word was enough to draw him to his feet, hauling back the rifle's heavy hammer. Its thud and click reverberated through the emptied fitness facility, and Sharpe slid smoothly behind a pile of blue mats. He had no idea what they were good for, but they made excellent cover.

Of course, the voice had sounded familiar. But it took Sharpe a moment or two before he matched it with the girl's face. And oh, how conflicted he felt when he realized who had walked in on his moment of solitude.

"Clove!" The name was almost snarled. But he stepped out from behind cover, holding his rifle at the ready but not yet raising it to his shoulder.

[shenevermisses]

If she'd known, Clove wouldn't have come over at all. Or, hell, if she could've figure it out even right then, she'd have slipped away, used the darkness as cover and ducked low. But she didn't have even the faintest idea. So, she stepped a bit closer, almost smiling. It wasn't quite there, not really, but she was more at ease than in Luceti.

Battle might not fill her with joy, not really, but it took everything else away. It gave her a sort of numbness that, to her, felt like it bordered on happiness. Because it made her useful.

Every knife was sheathed, and she held up her hands, just to reassure someone she took for an ally. "Just me." A few injuries on her and a lot of blood that wasn't hers. She hadn't really had time to sit down, find water to spare, and wash up. His tone of voice, she told herself, was just from the tension in the air, from the constant battles.

[greenjacketed]

Katniss had insisted he shouldn't blame Clove. Begged, nearly. Or as close as the girl ever got to begging. So Sharpe did nothing immediately foolish, choosing instead to lay his finger lightly across his rifle's dark brown wood. No need to touch the trigger unless he had a real desire to fire. Discipline was key. Besides, he could always leave the thing cocked.

His boots sounded on the gym floor and he stepped into a shaft of moonlight that streamed in from a skylight. Every muscle remained tense. Every nerve screamed out to remind him that this one killed the other. Or -- worse -- allowed the other to kill herself.

"You alone?"

[shenevermisses]

"Yeah. Cato and I decided to go our separate ways for a bit." She smiled a little more, approaching him by a few steps when he came into the moonlight. She saw the signs of tension, but they were mistaken for another cause. She had no idea that it was her presence making things at least a bit worse.

"Heard you, so I figured I'd check in. See how you were getting along so far."

And because the girl is a social creature. She can hunt and fight on her own, but she's used to the Career pack and to the Academy and to not really being alone, even if it was her idea to separate from her District partner.

[greenjacketed]

"Well enough," he answered -- brief. Clipped. "You shouldn't be travelling without him, lass. These streets are dangerous tonight."

Sharpe could not even honestly untangle where one warning ended and a threat began. Indeed, he felt foolish for even this much ill-will, given how beholden he was to Katniss and how little she wanted him to behave this way. But he'd been slicing open bellies all bloody day long and it was hard to wash away the mood it left on his very shoulders.

[shenevermisses]

Clove shrugged. "I can take care of myself."

She wouldn't admit she'd parted with Cato because then only she was to blame if something happened. Then she wouldn't be looking for him if she got cornered. She wouldn't be relying on him to save her.

She'd done that once. He hadn't come. Not in time.

So she'd prefer not to offer a second chance. Not to know that empty terror of screaming for someone who wasn't coming. Who couldn't help. Even though they'd promised.

[greenjacketed]

"So can I, lass. But I still fight with men I trust."

Of course, he was woefully on his own tonight. No Harper. No Hagman. No Harris. No Perkins. No Cooper. Lossow; Vicente; Chase. Some dead and some simply absent.

"You two didn't quarrel, did you?" He asked -- curious, in spite of all his distaste.

[shenevermisses]

"No," she replied. That was honest. She hadn't argued with Cato, for once. But the other part... She shrugged her shoulders. "But I don't trust him."

How could she? They were both from Panem, both understood the Games. They were Career tributes, ready to kill one another if it seemed in their best interests. She had no reason to doubt that.

[greenjacketed]

"...You don't, do you?"

His voice was cool and devoid of much emotion. He wondered -- darkly -- whether Cato trusted her.

[shenevermisses]

"Of course not."

She feels cold even as she says it. She's stated it a hundred times since her arrival here, but she feels the truth of it now, especially. In her mind especially, she is alone. She doesn't trust, and she isn't trusted. Because she's a Career, and trust either way is a dangerous, stupid thing.

[greenjacketed]

"I pity the trustless soldier. For she--" he altered the pronoun at the last second "--is defeated before she even begins."

Cruel words, he concluded, for a girl already dead. But it only angered him further that Clove could have killed Katniss while possessing whatever knowledge she already had of being dead.

Christ! He wondered whether he'd kill differently, should he ever die in this awful place. The thought gave him a shiver.

Night 3

[stillplaying]

She had told herself that she had was returning to the garrison that night to restock her arrows. Really, though, she had come to check on her friends. There had been so many familiar faces drafted alongside her. It had made her uncomfortable, unhappy. The chance was there that others may die. Others she had stupidly grown to care for. It didn't matter if death wasn't permanent. So many of them didn't deserve that.

As she passes by an empty gymnasium, a look of relief crosses her face when she hears a familiar voice singing a song that she's never heard before. The search for arrows and news forgotten, she enters the abandoned building instead and looks around until she sees him.

Still alive. Still, as far as she can tell, in one piece.

[greenjacketed]

"Tuppence I got fer sellin' me coat," Sharpe's voice looped back to the beginning of a song sang to drum dishonoured soldiers from their punishment detail. "Tuppence I got fer sellin' me blanket. If I ever list as a solider again--"

And then he paused, hearing footfalls at his door. He snugged his canteen up against the wall and pushed to his feet -- abandoning a perch he'd taken on what he didn't know was some sort of weight lifting contraption. Its cushioned seat made an excellent battlefield bed. And with a roof over his head, what more could he ask?

Sharpe didn't yet haul back the hammer on his rifle, opting instead to peer 'round the structure. After all, the previous night had brought both allies and enemies. And an ally who might yet be an enemy, despite her young age and pitiable experience. Bloody hell, but he wished the damned Lucetian forces had come up with some kind of countersign to share in the dark. How could he ever know if...

"Katniss?" He caught her outline and spoke her name with such pleasant surprise. The rifle dropped readily to her side and -- after having it out with the Clove girl -- his dear housemate was a welcome sight indeed. "Get yerself in here. It's bloody dark out."

[stillplaying]

Though the bow had been in her hands, as it practically had been since the initial attack, she hadn't been aiming to shoot. Maybe it had been too trusting of her to forget to be on the defensive, but she had doubted that the voice had belong to anyone else. As far as she could tell, there were no mockingjays in Luceti. Nothing aside from electronics that could mimic a voice like that.

It had been a chance she was willing to make.

A chance confirmed when he spoke her name. Her smile grew and, without hesitation, she ran towards him to give the man a tight hug. "You're still alive."

[greenjacketed]

...And what a gratifying hug it was. Bless him, but he caught the girl in his arms and lifted her right off her feet -- giving the pair of them a little twirl. It was unadulterated joy at seeing her well, fed by the anxiety he'd tumbled upon while speaking to Clove just a day earlier.

"I'm a tough thing to kill, love. Uglier mugs than these Cultists have tried and failed."

[stillplaying]

Despite the circumstances, despite herself, she can't help but giggle a little when Richard twirls her around. To be welcomed like this, she's missed it. Missed having someone who cared about her this much. If the sound made her sound like an silly girl, who cared? There was no one recording this fight. She was free to do as she wished.

"Good," she murmured, resting her head against his chest once her feet touched the ground again. "I don't care if it's not permanent. Dying here isn't something anyone should have to go through."

[greenjacketed]

Sharpe wasn't certain he'd wrapped his head fully 'round the notion of impermanent death, although Katniss herself had assured him of its existence. And Clove's guilty flight was an all too recent reminder.

But it all reminded him of something else: "I've songs to teach you, lass, once you can sing again..."

[stillplaying]

It seemed like an abrupt change in topic to her. To go from death to singing, from something full of pan and sorrow to something she normally found full of joy. But with all the bloodshed she had recently seen, the distraction was more than welcomed. Maybe even necessary.

"Like the song you were just singing?" Katniss pulled back from the hug to look up at him. "What was that?"

[greenjacketed]

"The Rogue's March, darling."

He touched the edge of his thumb to her cheek -- a brief but affectionate touch -- and then he fell back to his little makeshift berth of gym mats and old towels. He reached town for the ox-hide pack and fished free a half a loaf of some hard bread and a hunk of cheese. He didn't much like cheese, to be honest. But it was an easy thing to take with you.

"It's played during punishment details, for dishonoured soldiers."

[stillplaying]

She followed him to the mats and dropped her quiver and bow carefully beside his pack. She was more tired than she cared to admit. There had been too many deaths and too many injuries and too much carnage. And she was tired of it. Tired of being a part of it.

But at the same time, she couldn't quit. Not right now. Not until she could be certain that the others she cared for were safe.

She collapsed on one of the mats and rested her head against the wall. Her eyes closed. "Why?"

[greenjacketed]

He crouched nearby and began sawing at the bread with his knife. He didn't need to ask the lass, he felt. Nor did he need to speak any offer. He'd build her up a little slab of bread with a thick slice of cheese and -- perhaps later -- he'd split his apple with her. It came as second nature, now.

"The drumline, Katniss. It's a steady beat. And that is exactly what's needed to measure out the lashes a man gets when he's flogged."

[stillplaying]

She accepted the food with quiet thanks and immediately, and ungracefully, began to stuff her mouth. Even if it had only been a few hours since she had last ate, in the middle of a fight, she wasn't certain if they'd get interrupted. Or when her next meal would even come. She wasn't going to savor the tastes. Not today.

"There was no song in District 12," she said in between large bites. "Not for flogging. It'd be too much like dissent."

[greenjacketed]

While she ate, he reached for his canteen and tipped cold tea down his throat. Even cold, it tasted better than brackish water.

"We had a few. For flogging and for marching. And for the cold mornings before battle. The sergeants see fit to allow some dissent, or else they'll lose control completely. The balance is delicate."