For Sherlock of some flavor or another

[tofightinjustice]

There's a heavy bag hung up on one of the trees at the edge of the Milliways forest. It's a little off the beaten path, which is nice, and Bryce finds that working in the cool not-Scottish air is a lot less dehydrating than working in the California sun.

For her size (she's middling tall but not very bulky), she's giving the bag a fairly thorough beating.

Comments

[sicaria]

"They're called the Hunger Games. Twenty-four teenagers, chosen initially by random selection and then replaced by volunteers if any, are taken to a remote location with minimal supplies and left there until only one of them is still alive. Every year. We count our calendar by it."

[tofightinjustice]

"Why?"

[sicaria]

"To remind us of the price of rebellion," she murmurs.

[tofightinjustice]

"And they televise it."

[sicaria]

"Yes. In detail."

[tofightinjustice]

She swallows, because otherwise she'll be too nauseated to talk.

"How can they enforce that? Don't people try to get away?"

(She remembers a short story they had to read in English class last year, about a village and a black spot and a woman screaming It isn't fair and the matter-of-fact way the other villagers stoned her to death. She remembers sitting there feeling cold as her classmates talked casually about death happening at random and man's inhumanity to man.)

[sicaria]

"The tributes? Rarely. First because it's supposedly an honour, second because they are watched at nearly all times between being chosen and being sent out. The rest of the country, yes, once in a while. They get caught. Nothing pleasant happens to them."

[tofightinjustice]

"God."

[sicaria]

"A fascinating concept. We don't have one."

[tofightinjustice]

"You mean you don't worship one."

She's pretty sure there is no God in her world, either, but that doesn't stop most of America from worshiping something.

[sicaria]

"I mean we don't have the concept," Sherlock clarifies.

[tofightinjustice]

"I'm not surprised."

[sicaria]

She snorts.

"Yes."

[tofightinjustice]

"You were the last person alive in the Games. You won."

[sicaria]

"Yes," she agrees.

[tofightinjustice]

"Why would you still be worrying about assassination?"

[sicaria]

"Because I annoyed the president of Panem a few too many times."

[tofightinjustice]

"Before or after you won?"

Putting someone into a deathmatch would be a good way of getting rid of an annoyance.

[sicaria]

"After."

[tofightinjustice]

She nods.

"You think they could follow you here?"

[sicaria]

"Unlikely. And someone from home would stand out to me here if they did."

[tofightinjustice]

"What do people from your world look like? What makes them stand out?"

[sicaria]

"...It's more what they don't look like," she says slowly.

"At home I can tell at a glance whether someone is District or Capitol, and often which District or how prosperous. Here everyone looks—different. Strange. In-between. Too consistently well-fed for District but not outlandish or pampered enough for Capitol. The moment I saw someone who didn't give me pause trying to sort them out, I'd know."

[tofightinjustice]

She makes a face. "That won't help me spot them."

[sicaria]

"Yes, I know. Pitfalls of such a widely differing context. Hmm, give me a moment."

She has all these memories of what it's like to be from a world more or less resembling Bryce's. Surely she can figure out how to use them to understand the differences in reverse.

"The first thing's the accent, of course," she says absently, still thinking. "I can talk Capitol at you for a while to give you a sample, if you have a good ear for those. And then District Three for good measure. Apart from that..."

Sherlock taps her fingertips together thoughtfully.

"People from the Districts are going to look malnourished by your standards. The style of dress will seem more primitive in some respects, more advanced in others, because by my estimate we're from at least 2100 AD but District people don't have access to all the resources that implies. So clothing manufactured better than yours, but mended and patched together more haphazardly for longer. The Capitol, on the other hand—they're all rich. Never missed a meal in their lives. Cosmetic body alteration is very fashionable there. They dye their skin or hair casually, sometimes to match a particular outfit or the theme of a party, and have minor surgeries not much less casually than that—those can be very subtle, though, so they won't always make a good marker."