onlyimmune: (Default)
Ellie ([personal profile] onlyimmune) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2013-12-22 06:43 pm

(no subject)

WHO| SEMI-CLOSED - Ellie, Howard, Venus, Mindy, Orc, R, Wyatt, Hawkeye. (If you think your character has a good reason to be there, ping me and we'll see if we can work them in.)
WHAT| Ellie's birthday.
WHERE| The Laser Tag place.
WHEN| A couple days after the crowning.
Warnings| None!


The crowning had been weird as fuck, no lie about that, and Ellie was having a hard time really integrating into her new home, despite having been there since before the Arena had started. She was fairly cheerful - outwardly at least - but deep somewhere inside everything was still eating at her, slowly.

The idea of a birthday party was a welcome distraction.

She'd never had a birthday party - not a real one, anyway. She'd once gotten an extra ration card for her birthday from Riley, but that was about all she could think of. Birthdays were generally only marked with a 'oh, so you've survived this long' - kids were more mouths to feed and usually unwelcome ones, especially after her mother had died.

But this wasn't home, and no one had yet told her that dying in the arena meant that she wouldn't age - that though her birthday should have just passed, she was in fact back to herself a month or so <i>before</i> her birthday. Thankfully ignorant, however, she could celebrate. And she knew who she wanted.

Howard figured out most of the details and she had let the rest of them know where to meet - just in the lobby of the Laser Tag building, before they got all geared up. Ellie was brimming with a low-key excitement, she'd never played laser tag before but it sounded like something out of a science fiction comic so she liked it. She was there first - way too early - and waited for her friends to arrive.

Then, after everything, they'd have cake.
shambler: (132)

Re: CAKE

[personal profile] shambler 2013-12-23 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
R stood there like a lump for most of the laser tag: in his defense, they'd stopped doing laser tag years before he died. Now he was wobbling in front of the cake, staring down at it, wondering if the Cure that's running through his veins will allow him to taste it for a change. If it'll taste like fluff and sugar instead of ashes and emptiness. The candles are lit yet but he can imagine what they'd look like. The smell of candles being blown out. He remembers that, somehow.

His head comes up as he hears the birthday girl approaching. Ellie.

"Pretty...cake, Ellie," R groans. He's been careful not to get too close. He might be slightly less Dead than before, but he's been having problems with saliva production recently. One of its side effects.

Last thing he wants to do is drool on her cake.
shambler: (137)

[personal profile] shambler 2013-12-24 09:19 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, right, yeah, he forgot she'd been from a time where they stopped bothering with cakes. That she was young enough not to have the context. "Looks...like cakes...used to way back...when."

One of the better side effects of his Cure is his syllable limit seems to have gone up. The stumbling pauses are still there, sure. But he can feel the cobwebs that used to block his thoughts and sentences starting to corrode, pathways opening up. His mouth feels less stiff. (He should know - the smile he returns feels less stiff).

"Thank...you..." R shuffles to the side so Ellie can check it out. "I could...try."

As if to prove it, he reaches down. His fingers slip against the knife's handle but eventually he gets it in his hand. The question is if Ellie wants a zombie brandishing a knife on her birthday...
shambler: (120)

[personal profile] shambler 2013-12-26 10:04 am (UTC)(link)
Crap, he'd forgotten that was the tradition. R stares down at the knife as if he's wondering how it got into his hand, his head swinging toward Ellie's voice. "Oops."

He hands the knife back, a little annoyed he hadn't remembered a detail like that but at the same time relieved she's doing all the complicated work. She's less likely to stab someone on accident than he is.

"I'll...try." Shuffling back a step, R looms over Ellie, as if he's never seen anyone cut a birthday cake before and he doesn't want to miss a second of it.

No pressure, Ellie.
shambler: (138)

[personal profile] shambler 2013-12-30 08:23 am (UTC)(link)
He stares down at her face, the grin that lights it up and makes her look her age, then back at the cake. It sits there, beautifully curled frosting and everything. It's enough to make a human drool.

It's not doing much for him. "Here...goes..."

R fits a fork into his hand, shakily stabs it into the slice, and lifts it to his mouth. Chews as he stares at Ellie. To his surprise, it doesn't taste like ash or rot. It just takes like...nothing. He's had worse. Swallowing, he forces a feeble smile.

"Good," he tries to lie.
shambler: (075)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-02 09:01 am (UTC)(link)
R chews absently on the cake, more for something to do, maybe see if the act of chewing brings back any memories (doubtful). He nods, hoping Ellie's right. "Thank....you. Feel...better..."

If this works on him, who knows? Maybe the Cure could work on her brand of Infected?
shambler: (139)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-07 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
It's that amazing? R leans forward, fascinated, eager to know more. "What...taste...like?"

He can't tell if it's just that good or she's overacting. He thought he'd seen something flicker behind her face before she smiled, but he can't be entirely sure, either.
shambler: (080)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-13 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
This is the part where he should be drooling in anticipation because he doubts they had this stuff back in his day - or toward the end, really, when he was months off from his own death. R points to the cake. "Save...me...some. For later?"

He seems to have forgotten about silly things like mold and staleness taking away from the "amazing fucking clouds" aspect.
shambler: (138)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-16 10:17 am (UTC)(link)
That seems like a good idea, R having forgotten that with the Cure undoing all the damage to his body, he might have to actually worry about spoiled food. Easy to miss the details like that. "Works. Thank...you."

He's anything if not polite. Must've had his manners drilled into him at a young impressionable age.

"How...old?" He suddenly asks. He assumes those candles formed a number but they only reassemble shapes to him, no automatic clicking in place.
shambler: (061)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-17 08:23 am (UTC)(link)
He shakes his head, impressed. Fifteen, huh? Definitely not too shabby.

"Don't...know," R doesn't have the dexterity to do that hand thing Ellie just did at him even if he did know, his face going still as he retreats into his head. Age, age. He's youngish, he doesn't think he is (was?) as young as Ellie or an older zombie, like M, but it's hard to tell. Anyway, do you even count the years you were dead? "How old...think?"

He peers over at Ellie, curious to get her take on things.
shambler: (120)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-20 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
Older than her. That's basically what he thought, too. "Don't...know for...sure. Remember it...was slow. Years...months. Snuck...up until..."

He shrugged. Until you couldn't look the other way anymore. When countries were tossing missiles at each other and one day you realized holy crap, there's dead people in my front yard. That was the only memory he had, this gut feeling of dread closing in.
shambler: (141)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-26 07:30 am (UTC)(link)
R thought about it. It'd been like that back home, too. Not from his personal experience, but from all the people he'd killed and eaten and stolen their memories as if he deserved to survive more than they did. They'd remembered kids, toddlers. Tweens who were damn good at shooting moving targets and ammo conservation. One-shot, one-kill was the motto.

Probably safe to say if Ellie's world was like his, there wasn't anything like daycare and hop-scotch.

"Sorry...to hear. Maybe..." R pauses, thinking about the Cure they're testing on him, that bite on Ellie's arm. "They can...fix. Give you...new world."
shambler: (139)

[personal profile] shambler 2014-01-28 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
It was the kind of smile that would've made his heart sink, if it was still beating. She wasn't buying into the reassurances, was she?

"Keep on...." R thinks back to something he heard a Stylist say. "Keeping....on."