VIII.

Meris Loucare, 17
Applicant #15

All in all, she gets a better night sleep than she anticipated.

They could hear bickering through the walls for about an hour after they had closed the door, apparently paper thin and certainly not up to code. For the most part they had sat around and listened. They had all been laughing along with it at one point or another.

The long day had won over, eventually. The second all of them had laid down she hadn't heard a single peep.

No one's come to get them when she wakes up, bleary and disoriented, blinking heavily at the unfamiliar walls and the railings above her head. Railings, right. Bunk-bed. She had been preparing herself to climb up there but Jupiter had seemed content to do so, all with a smile on their face. It hadn't been the most graceful landing she had ever seen, not with the way the frame shook when they flopped down, but it had settled. And Jupiter had look quite pleased with themselves.

There was no way to make it easier for them to climb up there, not that she could think of. She would keep thinking on it.

She blinks up at the railings a few more times before she realizes the door is cracked open and someone is slipping through the open gap. Someone much taller and broader than anyone sleeping in this room, and all the beds are filled anyway.

Why would one of the Instructors be creeping in here like this?

She sits up and nearly bashes her head into the railing, holding up a hand to stop her forward progress. The figure slips in and closes the door shut behind them with hardly a click. The room plunges back into darkness, but her eyes are well-adjusted enough already.

Meliodas turns around and slaps his hand over his mouth, cutting off the yelp. "Why the fuck are you just sitting there like that staring at me?"

"Why the fuck are you in here?" she asks.

Instead of answering he makes his way closer, fumbling around slowly in the dark until his hand closes around the edge of the bed frame. He edges down on the floor to the right of her bed carefully, waving his arms like a blind fool until he's certain there's nothing in his path.

"What are you doing?" she repeats.

"Trojan snores like a dragon," he says, by way of answering. "Percy's been up for like, two fucking hours and he woke Icarus up and now the two of them are arguing and I don't know whether Soran's encouraging it or participating in it—"

"Both," she guesses. "What's Nicator doing?"

"Both," he agrees. "Nic was in Percy's bed when I woke up, so he's probably not on the path of doing anything useful."

"So you're sleeping in here?" she asks.

He's finished spreading himself out on the floor, draping the lone blanket he tugged across the hallway with him. "Do you mind?"

"Well, you're kind of already laying there."

"True," he says. "But you could kick me out."

True. She could. She also doesn't think she cares enough to do so. She can't see much of him, certainly not his eyes, but he sounds tired enough. They're probably going to get their wake-up call soon anyway. Best to let him sleep for a few minutes. If anyone has a problem with it, then they'll just need to get over it. That, or change the way the sleeping arrangements are, if they want it to get any better.

"Just go to sleep," she sighs. At least someone can. She's probably awake for good now, a by-product of the bustling house she lives in now. Once she's up, she's up for good. Usually she's put on Tekla duty while everyone else gets ready for the day.

It feels weird, not to be responsible for anything or anyone.

Besides Meliodas, apparently.

"You wouldn't happen to have an extra pillow, would you?" he murmurs a minute later, and she tugs her only, very important pillow out from under her head and drops it on him. Like she said, she's not going back to sleep. Clearly he needs it more than she does.

She readjusts and rolls over onto her stomach, resting her head on her folded arms. Lyan always used to steal her pillow when they were younger. Something about how the older sibling should get the most comfortable things to sleep with. If anything she's more used to this than most of the things going on here. That and the volume of people spread around - those are consistencies.

"The floor's really uncomfortable," Mel whispers.

"I'm not Percy," she informs him. "I'm not inviting you to sleep in my bed."

"But you're not sleeping!"

"No," she hisses. He rolls over to look at her, only slightly more clear now. Now that the edges of him aren't so fuzzy she can't imagine why she was worried about someone walking in here. He's nothing to be frightened by.

He stares, for a moment. She buries her head back in her arms and resolves herself to ignoring him until someone tells her otherwise. She doesn't hear him lay back down - doesn't hear him do much of anything, really. Whether or not he hears the approaching footsteps, she's not sure, but she braces herself all the same as they get closer and closer to the door.

Clack clack clack. It's happening.

The door opens. All the lights are flicked on at once, and she flinches back into the darkness of her arms. Mel groans as Aelia pops her head in the door.

"Rise and shine!" she asks, pausing. "Do you have an explanation for why you're in here?"

"Nope," he concedes. "I definitely wasn't sleeping."

No. He definitely wasn't.

Gideon Mallory, 16
Applicant #20

He wasn't expecting much.

Breakfast wasn't a lackluster affair but it wasn't anything to write home about, either. Not that he would even if it had been. He busies himself with getting an even spread across the bagel he chose and sips his juice without looking up.

If he had it his way, he wouldn't have been sleeping in that room at all. Jay had a lot of gall talking about sleeping with babies when he was in a room with two people older than him, though Sabre clearly wouldn't say it and Mal, frankly, didn't have the energy.

He still doesn't. Jay's annoying anyway, try as he may not to be. Maybe no one else shares those sentiments, but that doesn't matter.

Renette rounds them all up after breakfast and together the instructors herd them off towards the training room from last night. He wouldn't even remember Nyko's name if Damas didn't pick back up walking with him again. He definitely can't remember the other two. At least Aelia is easy enough - she finds a home in his brain where there's almost none for anyone else. Maybe it's the hair.

"Gideon?"

"Mal." It slips out of his mouth like it's an automated reply, like he's recording a message for a missed call.

"Oh," Jupiter says, and stifles an awkward laugh. "I thought you were joking about that, yesterday. Sorry."

He makes the conscious flip to the other side, the side of not quite being such an asshole without it being warranted. "I wasn't."

"Got it," they respond. "Do you mind if I walk with you?"

"Well, you already are."

They smile. "It usually works. Most people feel too bad to tell me to go away."

Their level in his brain ratchets up a little, inches closer to a level of respect that friendship demands. Connie's the only one that stays by his side, and sometimes he suspects even she only does because she'll be stuck if she needs a push. He knows it's not true. He knows it.

Sometimes it just feels that way. Making friends in Seven for him is virtually non-existent.

"Okay, I'll bite," he says. No point in beating around the bush. "What's with the legs?"

"Cancer," they respond. Another automated reply. "They had to amputate them both when I was fourteen."

"And the arm?"

"Birth defect. You know, the works."

Up ahead Emmi turns around and eyeballs them. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Someone nudges her back ahead, and although he can see the words in her eyes she turns around, stopping along with everyone else. Renette is side by side with another man, an unfamiliar one. Where everyone else looks at least halfway, vaguely professional he almost looks like the company leader. Certainly not someone befitting the entrance of a training facility.

"Ridge Oleary will be your de facto Head Trainer for the next three days. While in this room you report to him and any rules he sees fit. Much like the traditional regimen you are welcome to explore and learn as you please - or not. You will be supervised at all times."

They're not going to learn anything important in the hours they're supervised, that he knows. All the real ground-breaking stuff is going to happen once the eyes go away.

"He looks sort of intimidating," Jupiter says.

"Not intimidating. Just doesn't look like a fan of Capitol scum."

They frown. "Wrong person to get working here, then."

Or the exact right one. Aelia is here for them, and it doesn't appear the instructors have any issues with them, but Ridge is someone to keep them in line. There are a few other non-descript trainers spread out around the room, but none as intimidating as him. None that supposedly make the rules they must answer to.

Mal can only hope he lets them eat lunch. If he ever lets them out at all.

Ridge's voice isn't the thunderous boom you would expect it to be, but rather a low monotone. Now that, of all things, is an automated reply. "Freedom of choice is a privilege here, not a right. If anyone acts out of line your punishment will be determined by me."

"Punishment?" Jupiter whispers.

"Oh, ignore him," he mutters. "Scare tactics, that's all that is. He can't actually do anything to us."

They still look nervous, though. Mal hasn't been scared of something for years, not since his parents forced him into Seven in the first place.

"Hey," he says, quieter. "Of all the people to punish, they're not going to go after the person with cancer, remember?"

"Well, you never know," they say. "I don't have it anymore."

He didn't think so. Their hair is starting to grow in just enough, and he doubts they'd have let someone that sick in here in the first place. Jupiter may know how to keep up with someone after years of practice, but this is all unfamiliar territory. It's worse for them than it is for him. At least he knows how to handle people. At least he still has all four limbs intact.

Renette departs. Someone closes the door behind him, and there finally is the thunder.

They can leave anytime they want, he reminds himself. Damn whatever Ridge Oleary says.

"So," he says. "What do you want to do first?"

Jupiter looks up at him. "You want me to stay with you?"

There's surprise coloring their tone. He feels it in himself, too.

"Well, you're already here," he says, and shrugs it off. "Might as well stay."

They beam, though, as bright as Connie did when he first helped her plant tulip bulbs deep underground in the autumn, and something about that feels right. They came to him. Despite all their outward fear in every other area they weren't worried about him at all.

And that means something.

It has to.

Arwen Paoul, 18
Applicant #1

She doesn't feel surprised when Emmi follows her.

No, almost satisfied. Like a cat that just got the cream.

That is horrendously appropriate, in shortest terms, for referring to the beginning of a possible relationship. If anything it's very her, though. That's how she refers to most things that turn out better than expected.

It's not that she expected things to go badly, here. Just not so dramatically quick. She was a fan of the dramatically quick, after all. That was always the ideal. But in a single complex with twenty-three other strangers, a few days isn't enough. Not when you very well may never see each other ever again.

Emmi likes her. She likes Emmi. It's very simple, in an overwhelming sort of way.

She can see in Emmi what she knows no one sees in herself. A fabrication. A children's craft level mishmash of personality and clothing and face that changes you into something you once weren't.

No one sees it in her because no one asks. Everyone sees it in Emmi because of the missing arm.

A missing arm doesn't suddenly make you lesser. It doesn't suddenly make you more either, but somehow Emmi has managed to pull it off. An impressive feat, for someone with vaguely cotton candy hair.

Last night she let Emmi choose her bed first, although she still got the one she wanted regardless. A dose of pointing out all the non-existent faults in the one she secretly wanted had done the trick. This morning Emmi follows her.

It's the most natural push and pull she's ever felt. Like the ebbing of the tide.

"I know I don't really know-know you, but somehow you going immediately for the weapons isn't all that surprising," Emmi comments, and she smirks as she selects a spear off the whole rack of them. One of the trainers is eyeing her, looking her up and down, no doubt wondering what some lovely, dainty little Capitol girl wants with a weapon, so much like Marquis. They're all worthless.

"At least I went for something you can use one-handed," she points out.

"Is that supposed to give you bonus points?" Emmi asks, although there's a teasing glint in her eyes. She picks up a spear too, one that's smaller and lighter, and gives it a few experimental turns.

"Why, did it?"

"I'll consider it."

Here's the thing, too. She's wondering at this point if it's Emmi or nothing. Emmi wouldn't be her last choice anyway, far from it, but it doesn't appear that anyone else is as interested in sticking around, at least not from their room. Myra and Jahaira are off probably trying to figure out how to publish their combined best-seller from the middle of nowhere. Jupiter is off with Gideon, something she hasn't quite wrapped her brain around just yet. It looks like a match made in hell - maybe it's not.

She's not sure if Meris is actively trying to distance herself from them or if that's just how the day has begun. She certainly hasn't made any efforts to get on with them.

Emmi taps her on the arm with the spear. It's blunted, the edges dulled down, but she still feels the cold tap of the metal tip against her skin.

"What's in like living in a DEZ?"

"What's it like living in Eight? Horrendously drab?"

"Not as much as you'd think," she answers, tapping away Arwen's spear when she attempts to poke her back. "I think they're starting to pick up some of the old Capitol fashion now that they're doing so much manufacturing."

"So I'm sure you blend right in."

"I'm surprised you can even see me."

She finds herself smiling and nearly wipes it away. She lets it rest there. Like she said, it's Emmi or a new direction, and she's not sure she feels so inclined to do that just yet. She won't stand being alone. Not here.

"Alright, let's go, then," Emmi encourages. "You really think you can beat me?"

"More like know," she answers. The trainer standing by is looking increasingly more horrified by the second. Maybe they should have given them foam weapons to play with instead of real ones. She knows, despite herself, that she would never truly hit her. She doesn't think Emmi deserves that, not when she's been the only one around from the beginning. On the bus, here...

It's all she's got going for her. She almost expected everyone to flock around her. That's what happens normally. She stands up and draws attention with a wave of her arm and everyone just... comes running. That's how it is.

She should have known a bunch of Capitolites wouldn't behave the same.

It's exactly how she behaves so differently from everyone back home.

"You good?" Emmi asks. Neither of them have moved. Hell, Emmi could have ran her through right here with everyone watching and she wouldn't have even noticed.

She almost says no. She almost says I don't know, is that weird? She doesn't. The truth would hurt like swallowing a shard of glass.

It's been so long since she's been around people like this. Her kind.

It's almost enough to remind her that the outside of her isn't the only one that exists.

"Great," she answers, and gives her a toothy smile. Once again she goes from feeling less like a girl and more to a shark circling a bleeding carcass. "Now, are we getting on with this, or what?"

Sabre Hennedige, 15
Applicant #6

He's almost the last one to move.

He's not, which he knows, but it's the thought of being the last one standing there like a gawking, useless idiot that finally makes his feet move across the room. Not towards any weapons. He doesn't think he'll be good with those.

Mom said to get back out there. Dad said it the same, with lesser words and more encouraging, very fatherly pats on the back. He was still very fatherly for a man who's only child is (was) a dancer.

At first he's not even sure where it is that he ends up, a table with two benches and not much else on it except for a few stacks of books and diagrams, pictures of colorful, thorny greenery peeking out from the edges. Plants. Those are simple enough, or at least they should be. He doesn't know anyone in Two who's into botany. That should be reserved for the outer Districts, for the towns lying on their edges. For the people of Eleven who really need it.

He flips over one of the pages before he sits down. Atrichoseris - gravel ghost. Hardly any green to be seen, just thin, weedy looking spikes up and up and up, ending in simple little white flowers. Simple enough. Pretty enough, if you like weeds. He can appreciate something able to grow and survive without hardly any sustenance underneath it.

He takes a seat and pulls the book closer. Plants are good. Easy. It's something to focus on and learn about, and no one else is here. Perhaps it could teach him a thing or two, put him down a new path. He's not sure what use there is for plant-based knowledge in Two now that the Academy is gone. Anyone who retained such information has probably forgotten it by now.

He nearly gets back up, the practical versus the unpractical tipping the scales in his brain.

What real use was their for dancers in Two, either?

He doesn't get up because someone sits down next to him with a not-so-commanding thud. It would be hard. She's not very big, and thin to boot. If his presence is bothering her or making her think otherwise about her seating choice he can't tell. He might just be more bothered than she is. He didn't think anyone else would come this way so early, not when their were other things to do.

"Hey," she says, and smiles cheerfully. She reaches for his book and pulls it a hair closer to herself, rotating it. "What'cha doing?"

Well, he doesn't know anymore, but he thinks he's about to leave.

"Plants," he says stupidly and not so eloquently. She doesn't appear to notice.

"I love plants," she says instead. "There's all sorts of cool ones where I live. I try to keep track of them all when I go hiking but it's sorta hard, you know? There's a lot to look at. My dad bought me a book on bird-watching but I haven't really gotten into that yet. I'm trying, though."

He nods. He's not sure what else to do. There's no way he could have anticipated that much coming out of her mouth by way of an introduction.

"Anyway, I'm Caiman."

He stares. "Like the—"

"Yes, like that," she sighs. "And Sabre, like the sword. How would you feel if everyone asked you that?"

Perfectly normal, really. He does live in Two, after all. He hears it more than Caiman probably knows.

She's not giving him his book back. Should he chose another? Should he still be contemplating a getaway?

He doesn't. He hooks his feet round one of the supports on the benches instead, to anchor himself there. It'll be harder to run that away. Caiman flips through a few pages of his book, humming to herself. She doesn't seem that bad. Slightly intrepid in a very in your face sort of way, but he doesn't remember seeing much of her or her talking on the bus. Maybe she's just looking for a friend.

He wants to tell her that she would've done well to look elsewhere, but can't bring himself to.

"Anyway, you like plants?" she asks. "Or just curious?"

He shrugs. "I don't really know much about them. Just trying to figure it out."

"Aren't we all," she says under her breath. He doesn't say anything, but he can't exactly look away either. She flips through a few pages of the book again and back, hand twitching. Eventually she closes it and slides it back to him, letting out a breath through her teeth.

"You look pretty well put together," she says. "Snappy dresser. Level-headed. You chose this station really quickly. Must be nice."

"Yeah," he lies. If only she knew.

"I don't even know why I'm saying this," she says. "I don't even know you, I shouldn't—"

She really shouldn't.

"Some days I don't really feel like myself, you know?" she asks. "Some days I look in the mirror like you go, girl! and other days I can't even bring myself to say it because I don't feel that way. But I do. And then I don't."

It says a lot about the whole magnitude of issues he saw going on while he was dancing. He saw them all. A lot of people would misinterpret that, but not him. He looked at the way everyone was dressed on the bus, the way everyone's eyes lifted up.

Caiman is dressed differently today. More unsure.

"Like..." he says slowly, testing the words out. "Like Jupiter, you think?"

She swallows. He doesn't know if he should be calling her that, or something else. Whatever she wants him to call her, if she would tell him.

"Maybe," she surmises. "Maybe, yeah."

"Maybe," he says as well. "Maybe you should talk to them, then."

It's not exactly hurt in her eyes. She nods stiffly and gets up, shoving her hands back into her sleeves, and walks off without so much as a word. Not towards Jupiter, who's on the other side of the room. Towards another empty table, yet to be occupied. Yet to be deemed important.

He feels like a hypocrite, or maybe he is one. A lot of nerve he has, telling someone to talk about their identity issues when he won't do that himself. When he doesn't have a single ounce of it figured out. He knows how tough it is on your own, when there's no one around to hear or understand you. That's what he's been living. That's who came to him just now to figure it out.

He hopes for Caiman's sake that she can.

He hopes that it's possible for someone.

I realized like five minutes ago that I didn't have an author's note and I still have no idea what to say so this is just space filler, really.

Let me know what you thought! Give me sustenance.

Until next time.