entrancelogs | ( closed ) say it isn't

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( closed ) say it isn't

Who: Claire Saunders + Steve Rogers
Where: Seventh floor
When: February 5, early hours
Rating: PG
Summary: You can be rescued from fear but you're still trapped in the place
The Story:

She'd been hiding. Waking up in an unfamiliar room, to noise and voices that you didn't usually hear - or had never heard before - didn't leave you with the most comfortable feeling. The room was bare, minus the odd item of furniture in it, and by the looks of it it certainly wasn't any room in the Dollhouse.

Claire had chanced a brief look out of the door before retreating back into the room. Although she hadn't been able to see anyone there was still the large resounding fear that this wasn't anything good. Although that wasn't really a fear but a truth - how could waking up somewhere unknown be anything good? It couldn't be and for some reason she'd been kidnapped. Claire could actually think of a pretty good reason without having to think but it didn't really explain why her. She wasn't worth anything to them - she was just a doctor.

She didn't know how many hours had passed, a clock being one of the things lacking from the room, but when Claire looked out into the hallway again things looked a little dimmer, and were just as quiet again. There'd been people walking up and down the corridor throughout the day, and voices that were just audible to go with them. The one thing that Claire had expected was that someone would have come to get her by now, something that surprised her when it had yet to happen.

It was the only reason why she was chancing moving now. Hopefully moving from that room - a room that someone knew she was in - would give her a better chance. Or at least no one would find her quite as quickly. As much as trying to make an escape was still frightening - she didn't know what would happen outside of the room - she had to try. Maybe she'd surprisingly get lucky and be able to call someone.

After looking out of her door, giving it possibly a little longer than was wise, she started moving down the hall. There were a lot of other doors there, and hopefully were all just empty rooms. Although with the voices she'd heard she doubted that any close to the room she'd been in would be empty. She kept moving down the hall, checking over her shoulder as much as she was looking in front of her, before finally stopping to check one of the doors. Locked. Instead of checking the next immediate door she walked a little further and then stopped at a door again. Locked. It was getting easy to believe that every door could be locked but she had to keep trying - at least one more. One more door before someone found her.

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It might seem odd to stick to anything like a schedule in a place like Wonderland, which didn't function on any rules, but Steve found comfort in it. If that meant that he went out on a jog when there was only the barest of light showing in the sky, then so be it. It had been a while since Sam had left this place, and yet Steve still missed starting off his day by lapping him over and over.

The jog was uneventful. Steve didn't run into any muppets or puppets in the process, which he would count as a win. He didn't yet know if the event was over with, so he took care as he made his way through the entrance hall and then back up the stairs to the seventh floor.

Very few people were ever awake at this hour, so just the sound of footsteps as Steve made his way back to his room was enough to give him pause. He spotted a figure up ahead, a woman who was trying out random doors as if looking for something. She looked pretty lost, and given that new arrivals tended to show up on the tail end of events, Steve had a pretty good idea of what was going on here.

So he moved toward her, speaking up (though not too loud) to announce himself as he drew closer. "You keep that up, you're going to give someone a pretty rude awakening." Probably not the best idea.

The voice took Claire completely off guard. It was the first thing that she had heard other than her own footsteps and attempts to open any of the doors and at first she freezes. Surprisingly it's just one voice, one rather quiet at that, and someone with the appearance of giving her advice rather than moving to capture her.

Or at least that's what the words sound like.

After listening, and making sure what she knows what he has said, Claire slowly turns, not sure whether or not the completely casual dress was something she'd expected. No, nothing right now is what she expected, including being brought here. If she'd honest.

It takes a few more seconds before Claire speaks, caught between her fear and broken expectations. She wanted to be careful here, and not hope too much that he might help her. It was hard to see a good end out of the situation.

"That wasn't my intention." No, her intention had been running and hiding. She hadn't known whether anyone would be in any of the rooms - or what the rooms were for - but she'd had to try something just in case.

Despite Steve's burly build and the fact that he has arms that could probably rip a tree in half, there's nothing that intimidating about him right now. He's got a thin sheen of sweat on his face and neck from the run, and he's wearing a white shirt that clings to him, along with a pair of striped jogging pants.

Not exactly the image of an evil captor.

This new arrival looks more skittish than most, and so Steve eases back a step to give her some space. "Let me guess. You showed up in this place with no idea of how you got here?" And with no memory of how it happened, either. It's always the same story.

"Believe me, you're not the only one." Steve gesture to himself and then to the rows of doors around them. Horrifying as it might seem, almost all of them house yet another captive, like the two of them.

With that explained, he decides to probe for some information. "What's your name?"

He might not have been doing anything to be intimidaring but Claire had learned once that even those that appeared to be innocent could be as dangerous. It helped make her weary of most situations, even those with people that were appearing to be trying to help her.

She would have nodded first at his question but his continued speech madw Claire listen, not saying or doing anything until he was finished. Until he'd given her another question.

It would be quite nice to believe that he knew what was happening without having been involved in anything - that maybe it had happened to him too, but how much could you know without that being suspicious? Instead Claire didn't answer his question, asking one of her own instead.

"How do I know it happened to you?" That anything could be believed.

Oh, it's a fair question for her to ask, but it's not that easy for Steve to prove. A lot of the new arrivals end up trusting those who are already here because they really have no other choice, and because hearing the same story corroborated by enough people is usually enough to convince someone.

Right now, though, this women only has Steve's words to go off of, and that's not a whole lot.

He reaches into the pocket of his workout pants and pulls out his phone, waking up the screen to show it to her. "You should have woken up with one of these. We're all given one when we first get here. You can use it to send out transmissions to everyone else in the mansion. Ask your questions, do it anonymously if you want, but everyone else will tell you the same story. We're all prisoners here."

Which makes it sound ominous, Steve knows, but it is the truth and he has no intention of sugarcoating that. This woman strikes him as someone who appreciates directness.

The device is vaguely familiar to Claire, something that she'd seen and then stuffed away in a drawer when she'd touched the screen, showing that it was on. She knew that simply locking it away wouldn't help that much - someone had given her it - but she wasn't going to use it.

At least that had been her plan. If this man could be believed then everyone here had one then they weren't so much a danger to them. Possibly. It seemed a little bit to easy, or at least she didn't want to believe it. She didn't even want to believe that this was happening, but it had been long enough now that Claire knew that at least that part was true. For some reason she had been kidnapped - and she wasn't the only one.

"Why are we prisoners?"

Was it all something affiliated with the Dollhouse? Would she find someone else she knew if she'd kept looking through the other rooms? Were their kidnappers with them? And where was here. There were a lot of questions that she had - things she'd rather know now. Even if she could use the device anonymously, and if all the prisoners had them, she wasn't certain if she wanted to. Not without knowing more first.

A worthwhile question, but not one that had a very good answer. Steve tucked his phone back into his pocket and looked up and down the hall, shaking his head in something that was like dismay. "We've never been given a very good reason. There are a few theories..."

The prominent one being that they were here to have their memories farmed. Steve didn't think he should tell her that right off the bat, though, since she already looked pretty shaken. "But for the most part, we're just expected to exist here. Events happen every few weeks that shake things up, but we've got all the food and shelter that we need."

Which counted for a lot. It was still a prison, Steve would never say otherwise, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

He didn't know if this was the best place to have this conversation, though, since there were mirrors lining the hallway. "We might want to move somewhere a little more private," he suggested, "and then I can explain the rest to you."

Expected to exist. It was an unpleasant thought all on its own, never mind the lack of answers and the new shiftiness that Steve had started to display. In honesty even with more answers Claire might have been weary about going somewhere else.

"Where?" Claire at least wanted to find out his idea, where he expected her to follow. It had just been a request, and he hadn't made any moves forward but it didn't settle any feelings.

"And why?" What was it that was making him suddenly want to move?

Paranoia was probably understandable in these circumstances, but this newcomer still took it to a whole new level. Steve remained patient with her, though. Maybe she was a civilian, or maybe she had just been tricked enough times to be this cautious.

The issue of where took him a moment to figure out. She wouldn't want to come to his room. It needed to be an area that was still fairly public. "Outside," he decided.

"You see those mirrors?" He nodded to the closest one. "There's another side of the mansion, behind the glass, and people can watch us through them."

Answers. Whilst the things that Steve was telling her felt fairly small it was something. There was a reason why he wanted to move their conversation and even though Claire could have asked who was on the other side she could accept his reason.

And really her first idea of who was on the other side of the glass would have been the people who'd brought them there - watching every move. Two way mirrors? It seemed likely.

"I'll let you lead the way." Outside couldn't be a bad place to go - it was spacious and open, making it harder for anything to happen if someone else was there. Hopefully. She didn't like people or open spaces - or at least that was why she didn't want to leave the Dollhouse but she'd already been pulled from there - her comfort. Staying inside wouldn't feel any better than going outside.

Two way mirrors would be a good guess, if it weren't for the fact that most of them were up against walls that had perfectly accessible rooms behind them. She hadn't explored enough of the mansion to get a lay of the land, but she'd get the idea sooner rather than later.

At least she took the explanation at face value and didn't ask any further questions. Anxiety over being watched appeared to win out over her distrust of him, and so Steve nodded and started down the hall.

"We're on the seventh floor right now," he explained, "so expect to go down a lot of stairs." And climb up a lot of them too, depending on where she decided she wanted her room to be, although that was something that they could discuss once they'd made it out of the mansion.

"How many floors is there?"

It was the first truly information seeking question that Claire had yet asked, and the least accusatory. When Steve had started walking she'd followed him a few steps behind, close enough to talk.

She was looking around as they moved, trying to see what there was other than row of room upon room. Was this mansion just full of housing or was there anything else to it? Maybe that was on a different floor entirely. Either way this was the biggest mansion she'd ever heard of - when did they ever have seven floors?

"Ten," Steve replies, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that she keeps up. "It feels big at first, but after a few weeks here the entire place shrinks a lot." Not literally, but more in the sense that by that point there are no new areas to explore. There are, however, always new faces trickling in.

He reaches the stairs and moves down them, making sure that he doesn't go too fast so that she can keep up.

At this point, he may as well continue with his explanation. "So, does a book or movie called Alice in Wonderland exist where you're from?" Not that this place really resembles the source material that much, but it's a good point to spring off from, and it will give her an idea of how crazy things can get here.

His question sounded a little funny without any context. A lot of books existed, but unless he was trying to bond over a children's story she had to know why he was asking specifically about that one.

"Why that book?" Although for a moment Claire was hoping that he was just trying to bond over a book. If there was a real reason for it it couldn't be strange - or good.

At least she knew the feeling about the place being big - especially if they were on the seventh floor. Although they were only walking down stairs and not seeing everywhere the amount of stairs that they had to traverse to go outside was numerous, and gave an indication to the size of everything else.

If only it was nothing more than casual conversation. Steve would have preferred that, though it wouldn't be like him to bring up small talk when there was still so much to explain.

"Because this place is called Wonderland," he replied without much delay. She would no doubt hear that from anyone she stumbled across today, so he might as well get it out of the way. "It borrows from some of the things you might remember from the book, but there's a lot that's different too."

She might make the connection between what he'd just told her and what he'd mentioned about the mirrors, depending on how familiar she was. Steve rounded another turn in the stairwell. "Here's another question -- where are you from? What year is it?"

Ominous things to ask, but the sooner she was grounded here, the better.

Whilst Steve might have had all of the answers and possibly even some expectations about how Claire might react to what he was telling her it was also possible that he'd be wrong in his assumptions. Hearing that it was called Wonderland and that there were things different from the book didn't immediately make Claire think that she'd been brought to Wonderland - just that someone had name this place after it. Their prison. They might have tried to make some things similar - maybe named themselves after a Queen there but her assumption was entirely human. Normal.

His question made her pause for thought - wondering why it was important. Asking where she was from seemed like a curiosity but when? No - that could be a curiosity too. For people at the Dollhouse five years passed in the blink of an eye, but she'd already ruled that out as a possibility. Unless something happened that was like that.

"It's 2009. Why?"

She wasn't refusing to tell him where she was from, more that she was curious about the reasoning for his question first. If something was like the Dollhouse that seemed like a very bad sign.

It's impossible to know if this place inspired the books somehow, or if it's merely based on them, a name and a theme to fit the situation, but Steve doesn't get too hung up on that usually. It's mainly just frills, and knowledge of the books won't help too much when it comes to adjusting to living here. Or rather, being imprisoned here.

They make it down to the entrance hall, which fits in with the rest of the lavish decor. All this space, and no real use for it. It's a waste, just like most of the mansion's rooms, but Steve doesn't pay it much mind. At this point it all fades into the background for him.

"Because I'm from 2014," he explains as he pauses in his steps, giving her a chance to take everything in. "People can be taken from any time here, and any place. You'll meet people here who are from worlds you've never heard of."

Which a lot of people chalk up to a mental break of some kind, but eventually everyone has to accept the facts, strange as they may be.

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( closed ) say it isn't

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