open;

[onlyimmune]

Who| Ellie and OPEN
What| Ellie has a bit of a good yell, and tries to take her mind off things around the capitol
Where| District 1 suite, Common room, and some places around town
When| Any time after Ellie's death (end week four) to the end of the arena
Warnings/Notes| Language



[Option 1: District One Suites]

Ellie awoke with a choking gasp, her eyes flying open and she sat bolt upright in bed. She was sweating, flushed with adrenaline, her heart hammering away in its chest as if it had just relearned how to beat.

In a way, it had.

It took her a few minutes to remember where she was, the cool dark of her room broken only by the faint glow of the city lights outside her window... screen... thing. Finally, silently, she pulled herself from the sheets and stumbled into the room, clutching her pajammas around her. She raised a shaking hand and scrubbed the tears from her eyes before they had a chance to fall. She was fine. She was fine, and she was alive, and she was back in the city. No matter how very, very fucked up that concept was.

"Shit," She muttered to herself, her voice cracking slightly before she drew in a breath and slipped out into the suite common room in the dead of night.

She needed to find a television.


[Option 2: Common Room]

She was quieter than she usually was. Most of her friends were still in the arena (in fact, nearly all of them), so she kept to herself and tended to watch a lot of it on the television. She hoarded popcorn, building a little fort up around her of blankets and pillows as if she could build herself a cocoon and keep the world away.

When the television flipped to yet another commercial for tribute action figures, she groaned loudly and threw popcorn. "You fucking stole mine, you bastards!"

[Option 3: Out on the streets]

She was still a bit wary, around so many people. Even in the quarantine zone, the sheer population of the place had never been this high, and after weeks in the arena she'd gotten used to people being a thread, and scarce. So she kept to the sidelines, weaving in and out quietly, though she did slip into the pastry shop (and actually bought one, rather than stealing it), coming back out of the shopping and nibbling on it as she looked over the crowd. God, but the capitolites were a strange bunch. At least it made the tributes fairly easy to spot....

[Option 4: In the Park]

When she found the park, she could help but feel her heart lift again. It was one of the things she had really loved about the outside, beyond the walls of the quarantine. Despite the infection, despite the nearly constant danger, being able to actually see natural rather than endless drab concrete was something she relished. So she didn't bother to hide her pleasure as she strolled through the park, knowing she was completely safe (or as safe as possible). She ran her fingers over the bark of the trees, slipping deeper and deeper into the forest. All sense of civilization around her was lost, as if she was entering another world.

Only then she realised she wasn't alone, and that sense of security was shattered.

"Who's there?"

Comments

4!

[youbarium]

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

Carlos, with his lab coat and thick-rimmed glasses in place to signify that he was a scientist, was in the middle of scraping a piece of bark off of one of the trees. There were similar one-inch marks on a couple of the trees around him where the bark had been stripped away, and at Carlos's feet lay a box with clear, corked test tubes inside.

"I was just taking samples from the trees. I thought I should run some tests on them, see if they're like the trees from home. They look like they are, but you can never really tell without proper scientific equipment."

[onlyimmune]

She stepped back - she was still wary of strangers, especially men, especially alone, and she kept her distance. That didn't mean she was scared, exactly, just cautious. And someone fiddling with trees was weird enough to be wary of.

"Uh... They're trees. What possible difference are you hoping to find?"

[youbarium]

"I have encountered very unusual trees before," Carlos said with gravity. "Trees that are made of metal, trees that bleed, trees that don't actually exist, trees that talk to you until you grow roots and become a tree yourself..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Where I came from, you could never be sure a tree was normal. You could never be sure anything was normal, really."

He dropped the strip of bark into a clear vial, then corked it deftly and placed it in the box.

[onlyimmune]

She looked at him like he was clearly, clearly insane. (Hey. Beautiful people could be insane.)

And she'd met a dragon.

"... Right. Hokay. Well, I can probably assure you that these trees are pretty much grade fucking A normal. Think if they were about to kill us all, I would have seen them do something before now."

[youbarium]

He looked at her sideways.

"How long have you been here?"

[onlyimmune]

"Uh, long fucking enough, thank you very much," Ellie said, bristling on the defensive. Like some asshole scientist could tell her how much her opinion was worth based on how long she'd been there!

"Long enough to see a fucking alien attack in the city and fucking die more times than I'd fucking want. Dude, there is actual fucked up shit here, I think maybe you can lay off the trees."

Woops. Hadn't meant to get so hostile.

[youbarium]

He took a step back, raising his hands. "Whoa, take it easy, it was just a question." Carlos hadn't meant for his tone to be hostile, but his voice wasn't nearly so emotionally expressive as a radio host he could name, and often what he had to say came out more abrasive than he intended. "It's not that I don't believe you. I just wanted to know.

"...now, you said there's been an alien attack? Can you tell me what happened?"

Carlos wasn't going to address the 'fucked up shit' the girl was talking about, not yet. He knew perfectly well that this government was dystopian and did horrible things, but for him, coming from a place where the government was more dystopian and did worse things, being in the Capitol was practically a breather. Death lotteries were old hat. Alien attacks were news.

[onlyimmune]

Carlos was not the only one who could come off more abrasive than they intended, but Ellie did calm down a bit when he backed off a bit.

"Yeah. It was back before the Arena - not this one, but the one before that. Some fucking thing got loose and they used the tributes to track it down and kill it. I think there was more than one, but uh, you could understand that I didn't exactly want to volunteer to help them clean up their own fucking mess. But yeah it could like, spit acid and stuff. You know that big gladiator dude? The one that won a few arenas back and like rides a sabertooth tiger into battle or whatever? He lost his leg fighting it. That's why he's like an ancient roman cyborg."

[youbarium]

Carlos could not deny that, on a bone-deep level, he found the idea of an ancient roman cyborg riding a saber-tooth tiger really really cool, but he would be damned if he showed it. It would be disrespectful.

He cleared his throat. "So it was a muttation? I think that's what the Capitol calls its genetically-engineered creations." There had been an audio recording in one of the exhibits on the subject, he remembered.

[onlyimmune]

She shrugged.

"No idea. I would guess so, but if it was, it was more fucked up than anything I've seen. At least dinosaurs used to exist, you know? So that made sense. Acid spitting aliens? Not so much. Could be that it was something they brought in to compete in the games. They bring in aliens, you know? Like the trolls and stuff. So maybe they just brought in something they couldn't handle."

[youbarium]

It surprised Carlos, for a moment, to hear that there were limits to the Capitol's power. Of course there were limits, he had to remind himself, everything had limits, and President Snow was only human, but he still wasn't used to the fact that the totalitarian government he had found himself living under wasn't unassailable.

"That's also very possible," he muttered, stroking his chin. "Do you know if they choose us, specifically, when they bring us here? Or do they just open portals and take the first sapient life-form they can get?"

[onlyimmune]

She raised her hands in the universal gesture for 'who the fuck knows'.

"I have no idea why or how they do any of this shit," She admitted. "Though I have heard that in one of the arenas peoples bodies were left behind even when they were back in the Capitol."

[youbarium]

"That doesn't surprise me," said Carlos, uncomfortably. "I mean, it's possible for them to resurrect us without our bodies. I -- uh -- I know what happened to mine in the last Arena, and, well." He pulled a sharp breath, full of deep, deep discomfort. "It would have been impossible to reanimate."

Quickly, he added, "--but you said the bodies were left behind? Do you mean they're still there?"

[onlyimmune]

She shrugged. "Not anymore, I don't think. It was before I was here, but you can watch the footage on the screens. They left the bodies in so people thought that no one was coming back and I think people like, ate them or whatever."

Basically gross.

"So they could watch the game and then watch people eat their bodies. Which is weird as fuck, right?"

[youbarium]

Carlos only looked more uncomfortable as she went on.

"It's disgusting," he said, "but not entirely surprising, you know, given the behavior pattern of the Capitol so far. They want us to put on a show, and I suppose cannibalism makes for good television in Panem." There was a very bitter note in his voice.

[onlyimmune]

"Cannibalism doesn't make a good show anywhere," Ellie said, with a surety that implied that she knew this from personal experience.

And she did.

"It's just gross. Anyway uh, I'm Ellie, by the way."

[youbarium]

Carlos didn't disagree on that point, but he wasn't about to protest the change of subject.

"My name is Carlos," he replied. "As you've probably already guessed, I am a scientist."

[onlyimmune]

"Yeah, somehow I had that pegged," She said with a sideways smirk. She didn't offer a handshake or anything - it simply wasn't done, in her world.

"Between the whole trees and intense questions and shit. You uh-- you like a medical kind of scientist, at all?"

[youbarium]

He shook his head. "No, I don't specialize in medicine. Sorry. But I do know a couple of the Tributes who are also medical doctors, so if you have a concern, I can point you to someone who can help."

[onlyimmune]

"No it's fine," She said quickly, kicking herself for being so stupid. She didn't need a doctor, really, she needed a medical researcher.

She knew know one would just know how to treat her.

"I was just curious. I know a couple doctors, too, like Hawkeye. I think I'm probably okay." She offered a wry smile.

[youbarium]

He nodded. "Whatever it is, I won't pry into it. That's your business, not mine."

[onlyimmune]

She shrugged, dismissing it. That was easier than to make it into a big deal - if she didn't really care, then neither would he.

"Anyway I should like, let you go back to your tree... whatever."

[youbarium]

"Sampling," Carlos supplied helpfully. "It was nice meeting you, Ellie."

[onlyimmune]

She gave him a slightly ironic salute.

"See you around, Dr. Carlos," She said, half teasing, before turning on her heel and disappearing off into the woods.

[youbarium]

"Goodbye," he said after her.

Then, he turned back to his obviously very important sample collection, that was clearly scientifically significant and in no way a desperate sign of an addiction to science.