thecapitol | (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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The corners of his eyes tightened at that, at the idea of her - of anyone really - being left to die. He'd even made sure Aunamee, as little as he'd deserved it, was dead, before he'd left him.

"No," he shook his head again, "I ain't met a lot of the old mentors. Not outside my district."

But he'd be sure to keep an eye out for her now.

"Lucky then," Mindy said. "I thin you could take her though. She's a good fighter, seen her in the training rooms a few times. But I still go more than she does. Kinda lives to talk down to you. Talk to her a few minutes and you can see the face and the words of the Capitol like a mirror."

Wyatt snorted, weight shifting on his heels.

"Sounds like a peach."

He could understand the old tributes wanting to protect themselves by playing along. They'd been children once, forced into these games when death was far more permanent. They'd had a lot more to loose....

But that didn't mean he had to enjoy having the Capitol's lies rubbed in his face.

"I'll keep that in mind, if an' when I bump into her."

"Yeah, one that sat and rotted in the sun," she said. "I owe her a beat down I can't even do though, since she's a goddamn mentor. Which she loves reminding me of, and apparently wonders why I took it so personal."

She got it was the games, it was still how she did it that pissed her off. She'd at least have more respect for her if she'd killed her face to face.

"That propaganda goes a long way, and probably brings out the worse in people."

"Some of 'em believe it," Wyatt mused, brow furrowed into a thoughtful wrinkle. "Some of 'em are jus' scared. Used to be a whole different game for them."

He sighed a breath through his nose.

"But that don't make it pleasant, any way ya slice it."

"Still learning," she reminded him. "The only thing that I know for sure about the games before was that it was more of a district thing, with only the children. Technically, shouldn't people be more relieved their own children aren't being offered up for the Games?"

He'd been here so long now, he forgot sometimes, that others hadn't. Just how new everything could really be.

"Two kids, from each of the twelve districts," he clarified. "A boy an' a girl. Used to be a yearly thing, the kids chosen at random by lot. Not long after I got here, they gave us all a lesson on what the games were 'sposed to mean. 'Parently there was civil war some time ago an' the districts lost. The Games were the Capitol's way of remindin' 'em."

Of never letting them forget where the power was. That there was nothin' they could do, but watch their children be snatched year after year.

"They were more permanent then. Before us, nobody came back."

Mindy actually did know all this, but it didn't answer her question.

"So...here's what I wonder. How attached are the Districts even anymore if they don't have to send their own kids to die and no one ever really dies anyway? Does the Game even mean anything to them anymore?"

He couldn't help but think of the Crowning, what he'd told Max and Joan. The rebellion, and the part he'd played in it.

But even if he'd known this girl well enough to trust her, this would hardly be the place. This wasn't some dream world, outside the Capitol's reach. Who knew who was watching, listening.

"Hard to say," he said instead. "The winning's are still in place, er so they say. But nobody's been out there. Victors used to go back to their districts when the games were done, but everybody stays here now."