sixthiterationlogs | you know the rules and so do I

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you know the rules and so do I

WHO: Marian Hawke
WHERE: Multiple places!
WHEN: Anywhere between December 10-19thish
OPEN TO: Filters to Iron Bull, Frank Castle, Finnick Odair, Elektra Natchios, and then OTA!
WARNINGS: Swearing. Updated: Sex in the Connor thread.

FOR BULL

Hawke likes a lot of things about being there. For one, she always feels useful. For two, she doesn't have to be in charge. For three, she gets to meet all kinds of people. For four, some of them are people she already wanted to get to know better. It's very easy to volunteer to partner up with Bull during patrols, as he is simply marvelous company and it is occasionally nice to spend time with someone from her own world. Less people to question phrases or terms she says. Varric was right about Bull being someone their group would have liked.

"So I got Wicked Grace decks out of no where the other day, I was thinking of teaching people how to play." She has her bow slung over her shoulder. "Also my official bow, but it was broken up into a set. It shouldn't be that hard to put it together with some help."

FOR FINNICK

Hawke gets it in her head to go check in on Annie, the first person she met in this odd place, after seeing some of the native birds and thinking of those adorable little geese. Also to let her know a bit about the extra meat just brought in, in case she wanted any. It wasn't too hard to ask around and describe the woman enough to get directions, and that's how she ended up at the Windemere house.

Her dark hair is braided and her bow is left behind for now, peering around. "Oi, Annie, you around here, love?" She didn't know that she'd be meeting a different member of the family altogether.

FOR FRANK

Hawke found a reasonable set of gloves that worked with her bow, although they would never be as good as gloves that were specifically designed for an archer. But they were tolerable. Which is good, because Hawke goes out in the field enough to need it for when everything is colder. She picked up some other warm things to get by, but she found that they're simply not cutting it on her latest patrols and scouting. She heard around that Frank was the man to see about getting some warmer things without having to share them with everyone else, so she got directions to his place.

It was day time and cold, but sunny at least. She was sans bow and arrows since that was only necessary when she planned on using them. Hawke knocks on the door.

FOR ELEKTRA

Hawke is delighted to find several gifts waiting for her one morning, including beloved daggers and decks of Wicked Grace. The daggers however she simply has to immediately show off, even if it'll take a bit before she can come up with a good harness or set of sheaths for her back. She has a particularly chipper skip to her step today, wandering into the village to see who she could catch. She spots a familiar dark head from not too far away.

"Elektra!" Hawke gets warm fuzzies whenever she sees people she has good memories with. She has this gut feeling that Elektra would approve of these finely crafted matching daggers. "Look at what was randomly delivered to me over night!"

OPEN TO ALL

Hawke is someone easy to spot and meet around the village. She has lunch at the inn every day and will chatter at anyone there. She as usual can be found at the fountain here and there in case someone shows up, but she is now working on her sewing instead of creating arrows. She sometimes has some mischief and bathes nude in the hot springs. It gets cold out there! She's shameless. Finally she just generally scouts around the perimeter of the village, especially at night, with her knives and bow. She is very friendly. Just say hi. Or run while you can.

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Finnick and Annie share information. They'd learned it as part of how to be a good ally in the Career Academy, and it had developed between them along with first his mentorship, then their friendship and their relationship, and they'd kept it up in this place, because by then it was simply part of who they were together. And intelligence and information have always been important aspects of surviving in any dangerous situation.

Annie's description of the dark-haired woman had been enough for him to know who she was, but that was a mystery he was content to allow to remain so.

Finnick tips his head towards the enclosure where the birds are huddled together, except Star the peacock who's off scratching the ground by the house.

"Turns out geese don't like having their tails frozen to the ground," he quips. "Better to stop the mice getting too close than deal with cranky birds."

"What? Imagine that. How finicky of the geese." Hawke smiles and affectionately glances their way. "You know, for someone who often gets named after a bird, I can't say that I know much about them." The city wasn't much of a place for them outside of the odd chicken or sea bird. "We were in a port city though so I got very used to the sea birds. Vicious little things, but scrappy, I like that." It made sense, them having to survive out in terrible weather and situations. It wasn't a commentary of the sweetness of the geese of course. Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses.

Hawke returns her attention to him. "I'm not sure I know your name." It is always possible Annie mentioned him in passing but she forgot. She met a lot of people in this place. She'd probably say she knew almost everyone by face, if not by name. It was from being out and about so frequently and making a name for herself as a meat provider.

Finnick has to laugh at her description of seabirds, because he's lived around ports all his life, in the parts of District Four where the fishing is done: the fishery he'd lived in as a child before he'd become a Career, the main city where the Academy and the Victors' Village are. This place is the furthest he's ever lived from a port and the attendant fishing fleet and seabirds in his life.

"I've mostly learned about geese by necessity. But I'm a sailor, been around docks all my life until this place, so I know what you mean."

It's an elided personal history, but there's nothing untrue in it, except perhaps the suggestion that he'd have called himself a sailor when he was a new victor, drunk on everything his new money could buy and the fame that came with it.

"Finnick Odair," he offers. "Annie's husband and sometime goose-sitter."

"Ooo a sailor!" Hawke gives him an extra once over, as if she's simply adding it to a list of other details about him. She can see it though. Not in his build or anything, just that he'd probably look very nice on a ship. "One of my best friends is a sailor. Technically she's a pirate, but her love for the sea in general is one of the things that defines her." Isabela would probably hate being there, that was Hawke's fear for hoping to see her again. Although maybe she would want to explore the area. She didn't want to wish people to a place they'd hate.

"Have you gone out on the water here? I keep wondering where that lake leads to." Hawke might not be Isabela's level of intrigue when it came to looking everywhere, but she was still generally interested in this place that would be her permanent home as far as she was concerned.

But that piece of information made her forget the rest and she clapped her hands in excitement. "Annie's husband! Oh, you sweet thing. That's so lovely. She's a darling." Hawke feels relieved too. Annie clearly is doing fine and all that, but she may have worried just a tad because she seemed too sweet and vulnerable to be completely safe there. Hawke has a natural instinct for protecting others, often without thinking about it. But she has a young strapping lad to balance her out. "So good to meet you."

"That's something we have in common then." His eyes are as green as the sea, and that's led to countless jokes about him as a sailor and fisher, because that's the sort of thing the Capitol loves and they never let go of a conceit. But they weren't wrong. The ocean gives him life, and he misses the reassuring sound of waves, the call of gulls and the taste of salt on the air. He can't say he has the piracy in common, but he smiles anyway.

He smiles even wider when Hawke expresses her delight that Annie is married to him. He loves Annie, loves her so much it makes him feel crazy, but he's not used to other people saying such nice things about her, after so many years of the crazy one whispered behind her back and sometimes to her face.

"Haven't got a decent boat here yet," he says. "We went down the river in a canoe, found the southern coast of the island, but we don't have anything that could go far out on the lake. We're working on it, though. Bet there's good fishing out on the lake."

"She was much like the ocean herself. Untamed, beautiful, and always moving." Hawke loves her dearly, that much is true, they were very close. She knows Isabela's likely out there now, having her adventures. Letting the others have a freer life was one of the reasons she broke away from them. Too much heat on the name of the champion then, they were better off untethered. "She would hate it here. Hopefully you don't mind it as much, despite being a sailor." He seems at ease.

"Hmmm. Maybe we should get everyone's brains together in the spring and put together a boat of some kind. I bet you there's a how-to guide in the schoolhouse, how to build a boat." Those books were helpful, for certain. They needed all wood for heat at the moment, and the water was too cold to go out on. In a few months? It might be possible. "Some of those engineers need projects to keep from going mad, I think." The watchtowers were being done now. It was only a matter of time before the next step.

"So we do know it's an island, then?" She hasn't been far enough to judge.

Finnick's had to spend a lot of time in the Capitol. He could hate no place as much as that one, even though it's been so long since he was in a boat with the wind to his back and the feel of spray on his face. There's a level of freedom here that he hadn't known since his victory over ten years ago. It may not be the apparent freedom of the open sea (if you could forget the Peacekeepers' surveillance), but it's almost enough.

"I miss it, but this place has its benefits."

He'd have given up a lot for the chance to be with Annie without the threat of Snow's punishment over them. Now that he's here, he knows that's all he really needs. Being able to sail would only be an added benefit.

He considers Hawke's suggestion, weighs the value of information against the possible advantage of using her idea, and decides to offer up something he hasn't told many people.

"Round the eastern side of the lake there's what looks like an old fishing spot from whoever was here before us. There's a few broken down old boats there. Annie and I have been working on some supplies to repair one once the weather clears and we can make the trip up there more often. Maybe the engineers could fix up some of the others."

He shakes his head, laughing a little wryly at himself.

"Not sure we do. People call it an island, but I don't know if anyone's been far enough north to know for sure."

"I'm alive here, so that's all the benefit I really need, honestly." It's all very simple for Hawke. If she has to help other people get home, fine, and if the only way for them to get home was for her to die again, she was fine with that too. She died to save people in the first place. But otherwise this is it for her. It's not a terrible last place. She's been in much worse. Her ease talking about it either says a lot about her ability to lie, or her genuine 'everyone dies eventually' sort of attitude. The latter was usually more true.

"Whoever was here before us? You have any ideas on that?" Hawke raises an eyebrow. "I don't actually care as much as everyone else, but I am generally a curious person." This village was clearly all set up and waiting for people to live in it, if not already had lived in it before. It's all very creepy and confusing. "I think that's a good idea. We have more than a few skilled individuals here that could use a little direction.

Hawke feels like that might very well be a challenge. She tilts her head thoughtfully. "Maybe in the spring I will have to challenge that idea. I've been on month long trips before, I'm quite good at traveling whatever distance I need to." But she moves quickly and probably couldn't have people bog her down. A problem for spring Hawke. "It makes a sort of sense, though. The lake goes to somewhere. It has a very island feel to it. But we'd need to see water on other sides to be certain." And it sounds fun.

"Not many," he admits, because he doesn't feel like he really knows enough to be able to say much about what the ruins might tell anyone. He's been around here long enough to be aware that some people have theories, and that ruins in general can reveal something about the people who came before, but only the ruined fishing boats touch close enough to anything he'd ever learned to let him make many guesses.

"First I thought we were just supposed to think there were people here before, but the old fishing boats look like they've been used and abandoned, like their owners never came back for them. The houses are a bit like that, too. But there are other ruins that seem a lot older than everything else here."

He's not sure if there actually have been several groups of people here, or if the ruins were placed there as some sort of trick to confuse them by the Gamemakers here. Ruins had been used in the arenas before, and Finnick hadn't gotten a good enough look at the ruins to be able to guess much about them when he'd gone on the expedition hunting for snakes.

Hawke's suggestion makes him look her up and down, his gaze both appraising and a little impressed. For all life was hard for a lot of people in Panem and many of them barely managed to get by with enough food for their families, the sort of trek she's talking about was unheard of, except perhaps for the occasional whispers of escapees who fled their districts and tried to make it to District Thirteen, beyond the Capitol's grasp.

"Do you travel a lot, then?" he says, aware that it doesn't wind up as casual a question as he'd intended. The people here are from such very different places that he's grown more used to openly asking about their experiences in a way that would have been unheard of in Panem.

"Hmm, that can happen in places. For instance, our world has been around for a long while. We have ruins on top of ruins and I don't think people even remember what each one represents, it's been so long." Hawke knows there are stories, over and over, trying to bring back the old days or remember them, but they get replaced with the new. "It's possible this place is older than it looks and it keeps renewing itself, like nature can do sometimes. Although of course with structures, it's different."

She shrugs. "Or there's versions of us that eventually die off after existing in this same space, and they replace all of us. I know that's one of the popular theories." Hawke doesn't know what clones are really or the purpose of them. She does get that it means they're grown from science instead of taken physically from one place to the other. "The timelines are what intrigue me. There are people here from my world who had the same figures in their life but it was different. Someone died or didn't die, someone was a human or dwarf, it's bizarre."

Hawke lifts an eyebrow at him and then smiles, nodding her dark head. "Oh yes. I was in a city for a time, but even then we went out frequently and explored. No rest for the wicked." Hawke was dragged into every bloody thing someone went through in her city, and sometimes that took her outside of Kirkwall. "You have to walk most places, so you get used to it. City to city, country to country."

It explains a lot about her particular set of skills. "I learned how to hunt partially because of that, my father encouraged me. We learned how to survive on our own, without others." IN case they had to run at any time from the Circle and Templars.

Finnick considers the wisdom of offering information about Panem unsolicited; after a moment he decides that it's safe enough, since the topic is hardly one that is a secret in Panem, or wouldn't be if anyone knew enough to be able to draw the comparison.

"There aren't any ruins that old where I'm from."

Whatever ruins there are, like the often-shown ruins of the Justice Building in District Thirteen, are far more recent, dating no earlier than the Dark Days.

His head tilts a little as Hawke continues speaking. He doesn't like thinking too hard about the uneasy suggestions that they've all been here before, that they're not really themselves, but there's something else in Hawke's speculation that's less unpalatable. "There were people here from my future for a while, that knew a few months further ahead than I did, and I could never even understand that. None of them remembered things differently to me."

He's reminded again of just how little he knows. He wouldn't have thought that was even possible, and he has no understanding of how it could be. Fortunately, Hawke goes on to something else, equally unlike Panem but much more approachable as a topic of conversation.

"That sounds incredible," he says, his voice a little wistful. "Where I'm from, people can't travel without permission. What were you doing, traveling so much?"

"I see. Well this place could be younger like yours or older like mine. I will say I lean toward younger because older places with ruins just have this feel to them. It's hard to describe. There's weight to them." Hawke's only been to a few ruins or old sites in her travels, but there's something about them. "It's possible there are spots here that have that. It's hard to tell and I expect that's intentional."

Hawke generally assumes she doesn't know what's going on. Not big picture. She's more interested in the here and now, the things she can change. She likes understanding things, so she asks questions and speculates, but on the whole if understanding doesn't change what they're going through, it's not really that important to her every day life here. "I don't think it happens often, that people have differences like that. I haven't heard it outside of ours, which makes me wonder why ours is odd like that, but." Hawke shrugs.

Her eyebrows go up. "Not allowed to travel without permission? Whose permission?" She does know there are some situations where that happens. "Most of the time the limitations for us are not being allowed in a place, whereas they'd rather us be out. That happened when a load of us tried to seek refuge in Kirkwall. We started camping out on the city outskirts." Hawke got around it by joining the mercenary guild and working for years, and that got her family inside. But being limited on the outside was less likely.

"Traveling was about missions or jobs, usually. And ...." She sighs. "Some things went very wrong in my city, and my most recent journey was because I wasn't welcome there anymore. And since my name was a bit contentious at the time, I avoided most other places too. So I lived on the road and did some missions and helped people out quietly." Hawke hates admitting her pariah status, but she's also a very truthful person.

There have been so many situations lately in which Finnick has found himself in conversations in which the other person treats something as completely normal that is unheard of or forbidden in Panem.

"Anything like that would have been destroyed where I'm from."

There probably are ruins, or were ruins, but none of them are left except in District Thirteen, and those are only seen in the Capitol's propaganda. There's no value given to things that happened before, except for what they could do to keep the districts in their place. It was always possible to find old reruns of the Hunger Games, but not information about life before the Dark Days.

Finnick shakes his head.

"Nobody can travel out of their district without special dispensation from the Capitol. Most people never get it. You only travel on the Capitol's business."

As a victor, of course, Finnick could travel on the Capitol's business.

"Did it work?" he asks, preferring to talk about Hawke's world than his own. It seems hopelessly free, to be able to just leave if you weren't wanted somewhere, to avoid people because things had gone wrong. There had been times when he'd have loved to be able to just leave, when the judging eyes of District Four felt heavy on him as a victor when their tributes had died under his mentorship.

"Getting away, when you were too notorious?"

Interesting, and also, odd. Controlling. Clearly a tense subject too. Hawke doesn't like it. She'd last all of ten minutes before intentionally causing a ruckus. "I'm not sure any of my people would be able to handle it, they didn't even like being landlocked to our city." Isabela in particular hate being stuck. She missed the sea and every ounce of freedom she found for herself. "If things hadn't gone sour though, I might never have left my city, outside of those little jaunts."

She frowns. "Don't like the sound of this Capitol, but I'm trying not to judge other people's worlds. They're all different, different rules." Unless he has things to talk about with the Capitol. It seems very limiting.

Hawke smiles faintly, without much mirth to it. "It did. The thing is, people know my name, but they don't really know what I look like. My friend Varric wrote tales of my life, and in it he describes me differently on purpose." He's smart that way, he's always been smart. "People in the city normally knew me on sight, but outside of it, they wouldn't look twice." So Hawke managed to sneak around and stay out of the way. "I don't really strike people visually as the Champion. I'm supposed to be six feet and imposing." It worked in her favor.

"You can judge it," Finnick says, his tone dark. It's hard, here, to explain just what it's like, and most of the time he doesn't try. People here don't know how it feels, how impossible causing any sort of trouble seems when the Capitol has the Hunger Games, the Peacekeepers and their public floggings and executions, and the districts have the tributes, the production quotas, and barely enough food.

He rarely speaks openly, even here, about the Capitol. The old habits of half-honest jokes and dark sarcasm are still imprinted deep on him.

"That must have been a relief, sometimes," he says, after a few moments of quiet thought, and he can't keep a hint of wistfulness from his voice. "If people didn't recognize you. I could never escape it, everyone knew me and my life story."

He laughs, though he, too, has little of actual humor in it. "I'd have done better to get someone to write about me, too."

"Oh good, I'll judge it openly then. That's bullshite and very controlling." Hawke knows there are any backwards parts of her world. Her country in particular, and each of the cities. There's hardly a place she would call perfect or even overly good. But some things were alright. "We have a lot of different races and nations, they all have their own laws and issues. Some you can't walk into for no good reason." Hawke herself stayed out of politics as much as she could. She is not a big picture type of woman, she's the medium sized picture where hopefully most people could get along.

"It was a relief, yes. I don't like people recognizing me." She didn't like it before, when she was still considered a hero. They got her into all kinds of trouble. She certainly didn't like it when she was being hunted down. Going to the Inquisition willingly was difficult enough, since that meant more people who know her on sight. But then she died, so all's well that ends well.

Dark eyes study him pensively. "So, what was your life story?" He did just put it out there, honestly. She had to ask.

Even after so long here, Finnick struggles with openly criticizing Panem. He'd lived his entire adult life knowing he was being surveilled, that more than any ordinary citizen of District Four, the Capitol cared what he was doing, and what he was saying. In the Capitol, people speak with care all the time, aware of how much more intense the scrutiny is there than in the districts. Wherever he was, he didn't feel safe to speak as frankly as Hawke does in public, and if his smile is dark, it's still amused.

"Everyone lives under the rule of the Capitol," he says, and his expression softens a little, a hint of wistfulness at the description of different peoples living in the same world in under different laws.

"This is the first place I've been since I was fourteen where everyone didn't know me." He doesn't dislike it the same way Hawke does, and his voice is matter-of-fact more than showing any displeasure at the fact. It was his life, and it was a life he'd chosen, though he'd had no idea of just what that choice would mean and the consequences it would have.

"I grew up in a poor fishing family, but I always wanted to be more than just a fisherman, and you can't do that in Panem. Kids from fishing villages in District Four have to grow up to be fishers. So I volunteered for the Hunger Games when I was fourteen, and nobody thought I was a threat because I was so young and so pretty. But I was so popular and such a good fighter that I won, and winning means fame and fortune. Everyone in Panem's known everything about me ever since."

It rolls off his tongue like it's a story he's told hundreds of times before and finds a little boring, but he's watching Hawke, his interest in her reaction showing in his bright green eyes. He's left out a lot of the story, including all the details of just what the Hunger Games are, but it's the basic outline of the story, in a few minutes.

Hawke listens with rapt interest. It isn't that different from a lot of tales she's heard, of people wanting to get out of the life forced on them, to become something more. She also understands well when you simply can't get outside of the role you were given. Hawke had the freedom to use her skills in various ways, but it didn't change that she was raised to kill and it continued into her profession. The idea of being something else, like a merchant or a politician or leader, never occurred to her.

The thing is, something doesn't ring quite true, and Hawke has an ear for what sounds off. It's the tone he's had in their conversation, the way he speaks so carefully about where he's from and the restrictions, and how he's watching her now. She narrows her eyes at him.

"You're leaving out some holes, aren't you?" It's not a question although it's framed like one, so it doesn't come off as an accusation, as that's not the purpose. But she's curious what exactly she's missing in these terms that has him so tense. He volunteered for some kind of games to get fame and fortune, and then he won and got just that. But he regretted it, from his tone. Not just for the fame.

"What're the Hunger Games?"

Maybe he's gotten a little complacent after so long here and the feeling it's out of the Capitol's gaze, no matter how much they're manipulated. Or maybe he's just avoiding explaining every detail after so many explanations since he came here. He's usually good at skimming over things or outright deception, but he knows he hadn't really been trying very hard to lie.

"It's a little more complicated," he admits. "The Games, they're not just a competition. They're a fight. To the death. It's a punishment to the districts for rebelling against the Capitol. The names of a boy and a girl from each district are drawn at random and they're the ones who go to the arena, unless someone else volunteers. Twenty-four children go in, and only the victor comes out. The victor's district gets extra food for the next year, and the victor gets a mansion and enough money to be rich for the rest of their life."

His voice is heavily laced with bitterness as he finishes.

"It's supposed to make it all worthwhile, having a victor every year. The hope that next year, it could be someone from your district."

Hawke listens with growing horror. She is a brutal killer herself, and she was raised to fight, to kill, to survive. Because it was necessary, and it was still a choice. Perhaps she could have picked a different life, given the chance, there was a great deal Hawke was capable of that required less violence. But violence was in her blood. Still, the one thing she never messed around with was kids. If people hurt kids, if they got kids involved in their business, that was a one way ticket to the Champion chopping a head or a limb off. She knew the world was a cruel place, and that children unfortunately got drawn in to that, but it was still her mission to keep them out of it if possible.

This sort of bullshit wasn't exactly a surprise. Not from a twisted government. Not from people, because people were sometimes horrible pricks. It's not that Hawke is startled by the facts, but she is infuriated by them. "Fuck that," she spits out, anger rising up in her. Injustice is not a new thing, but this sort of control over the population just really hits all her bad buttons.

She has no where to aim her anger, so it's a living and breathing thing within her. Her jovial and charming persona has taken a backseat to Marian Hawke at her most righteous. "Those psychotic pricks." She doesn't know what to do with this, scowling. "That's it, we find a bloody way back to your world, I'm going with you, and I'm going to fucking slaughter every one of those bastards in charge." Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, does not make idle promises. "I've killed dragons and the finest of qunari warriors, cowards who kill children won't last a minute."

"You'd need to fight through an army first."

He's not defeatist when he says it, because before he'd come here, he'd been on the edge of maybe being a part of something that could take on that army, for the first time in his life, in anybody's life since the Dark Days. But the fact that Hawke would want to be a part of that fight if she were there stirs him to more than a simple refutation. She's furious, and she wants to destroy Snow and all his cronies just as much as Finnick does, just from his explanation.

It's the fury that makes Finnick go on. He watches her, sees the clear anger, hears the assessment of her own abilities and history. She's more than just someone who'd dropped by looking for Annie. She can be an ally.

"You know those lists on the computers in the bunker? Lists of names of people here, and other people, who aren't here? The President of Panem was on those lists. If he shows up here, Annie and I are going to kill him for what he's done to us. We could use your help."

"I've fought through an army before and I'll do it again." Hawke is not messing around. She sounds deadly serious when she says it, and she is. She's a one woman army all on her own, although it is always better to have friends along with her for the big ones. She was taking on a horrifically giant monster in the Fade all by herself before she came here, and she had a pretty good feeling she'd at least be able to kill it before she herself died. For all her smiles and kindness, she is a warrior first.

She listens and nods very seriously. "Oh, believe me, my darling, I will hold the bastard down for you if need be." Hawke knows who deserves final kills and therefore will support them in whatever they need. Vengeance does taste better when done personally.

[Maybe wrap? Murder buddies! lol]

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you know the rules and so do I

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