thecapitol | (no subject)

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Who| Mentors, stylist, escorts, and anyone else keeping up with tributes in an official aspect.
What| The green room
Where| The tribute training center
When| start of the arena
Warnings/Notes| none inherent, tags thread subjects as needed.

The green room this round has been decorated with the sensibility of what would be, in our era, a turn of the century sitting room. Dark wood paneling, thick rich red velvet furniture, and plush red curtains drawn back over various monitors with heavy gold cords. Although the room is quiet large to contain so many people, it gives the impression of being intimate. The Avoxes, decked out in vaguely militaristic attire, serve food and drink in silver and crystal dishes, gold alcohol catching the light of the stained glass lamps around the room.

In the center of the room is a holographic projection of the arena, highlighting in flickering lights where each tribute is. Panels hidden discretely in the wood paneling can change the view of any of the screens so a mentor or stylist can pull up their own tribute, or one whom they would like to observe.

The projection can easily be shifted, with the flick of a hand, on to the person's own tablet, or even to be projected on one of the sitting tables placed around the room. On their screens other various information can be easily accessed: current odds, gossip, and even communication from potential bidders.

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Cecil is very skilled at putting on a face. However, his enthusiasm is entirely genuine. There is not a trace of a lie in his grin.

"That," he repeats, emphatically, with a glowing glance at where the central hologram displays a jumble of names over the abstractly-rendered jumble of bodies. "I mean, wow. Now, I hesitate to judge too quickly-- but that might have been the best Cornucopia I've ever seen." A slightly self-deprecating chuckle-- "And I've seen my share of Cornucopias!"

His opinion hanging safely in the air between them, he takes the opportunity to get a proper look at the person whose attention he's caught. He's still not used to the fact that practically every other person in this room is really, seriously famous - even the stylists carry the glow of celebrity with them, it seems to him. And he is not disappointed to see-- Enjolras.

Cecil's smile wavers. On the one hand-- a Victor. A real, recent Victor, and a Tribute from another world besides. On the other hand-- A Victor whose disdain for the Capitol is a bigger part of his interviews than his victory. You are a professional, Cecil. It is not your job to judge. It is your job to know, and to report, and this is not the time for unjournalistic partiality!

He props up his grin. "--Not, of course, that your Cornucopia was in any way disappointing. I mean, a good Cornucopia can really make or break an Arena, right?"

"I suppose," the response is accompanied by a bow of the head that would seem submissive on anyone else, but on Enjolras appears almost haughtily dismissive. "It would depend on how much support a given Tribute might expect from his sponsors. Those who know that they will receive supplies have no need to risk the tumult of the Cornucopia, and given the system of resurrection which the Capitol has inflicted upon us, we have the opportunity here to build up a far more devoted cult of personality."

The analysis of the Games and its strategies doesn't suit him, and thus is delivered in a flat, clinical tone. For all the excitement Cecil has for the games, Enjolras is completely lacking in it, and can still barely bring himself to glance up at the screen running behind them. It's following a man whose name he doesn't know, and he abruptly feels guilty for that. "I have been fortunate in that my Cornucopias never ended badly. I wish the same could be said for everyone in the Arena now."

It sounds to Cecil like Enjolras' heart isn't really in his analysis. He feels a stab of-- not annoyance, exactly, but come on! Enjolras doesn't have to deal with the Cornucopia anymore, so what's the point in being a buzzkill?

"What does it really mean, a Cornucopia ending badly?" Cecil's tone starts out warm; maybe he can brighten up that depressing final note. "We used to call a Cornucopia bad when too many died. When the first night showed us only a patchwork of lights with miles between them-- too much distance to promise detection-- and the days were long and fruitless hunts in which the little numbers on the screen orbited each other and never collided, caught in the gravity of their fear. When we had to watch them starve, and by the time of the Crowning could not differentiate in our memories all their small and quiet deaths."

By the time he's done, he's looking off somewhere over Enjolras's shoulder, less nostalgic than pensive. When he comes back to reality, it is swift and easy, and his smile returns as though it had never left.

"Crazy how things change, isn't it? Nowadays, it's kind of disappointing when there are too many left alive!" A laugh-- "I mean, how are you even supposed to decide who to root for?"

Edited 2014-01-24 18:32 (UTC)

"Ending badly for me would be for it to end at the Cornucopia, I suppose." To die was the implication, but he couldn't bring himself to say it in so many words, not with a conversation partner so obviously preoccupied by the festivities of the Games. From the dreaminess of the other man, Enjolras could easily tell that the conversation was not to end in a particularly satisfactory manner.

He cleared his throat lightly before responding. Cecil's demeanor was as troubling when he bothered to engage as it was when he seemed as if in another world altogether. "I would suggest picking the one you like the best. Many go by whichever Tribute they find most attractive, some have loyalties to a particular District. I would like to see my friends looked after. We all have our methods and priorities."

"Your friends?" Of all Enjolras' words, those are the only ones that catch Cecil's attention. He's been watching the Hunger Games for more than thirty years - he thinks he knows how to pick a favorite Tribute by now! And he's not here to talk about himself. Gosh, how ridiculous would that be, managing to swing a one-on-one conversation with a Victor and making it all about him?

He pulls his tablet closer, switching it to a room-by-room view of the Arena with a few expert sweeps of his fingers and flicking swiftly past the deserted-but-for-corpses parking garage. It's positioned so that Enjolras can see it clearly as he flips between rooms. "Well-- with things quieting down in there, they shouldn't be too hard to find! I'm sure at least one of them made it out of the..."

His voice falters. His fingers falter. His heart falters.

He zooms in on the face that has caught his attention - the face of a new and unfamiliar Tribute, difficult to make out at first in the dim light of the cafeteria, where he is hard at work raiding a box of pastries. He has tied his shirt into a makeshift bag. His hair is dark and long enough to curl. His face is intent. Everything about him, Cecil realizes, as the seconds continue not to reveal a single flaw, is perfect. He must be new. He has not seen this Tribute before. He would have remembered.

It takes him too many seconds to remember how his tongue functions. He intends to turn back to Enjolras, to apologize for breaking off so abruptly, but all that he can make come out of his mouth as he stares at the screen is a low, disbelieving, almost reverent, "...Who is that?"

With a mild curiosity, Enjolras peers over Cecil's shoulder at the handheld display. Such things are still difficult for him to look at and under most other circumstances he'd settle for a verbal account of whatever is transpiring on the screen. Cecil's words hit a cord though, and while the journalist busies himself moving his hands across the screen, darting them from room to room, Enjolras is eagerly watching for any sign of Marius, Cosette, Courfeyrac, Venus, Pruna, and anyone else he might know or have an interest in.

At the drama so evident in Cecil's tone he looks up, studying the man's face. Such enthusiasm was usually, he knew, spared for a particularly bloody death, or something else as depravedly interesting. He looks from Cecil to the blue and ghostly image of Carlos on the screen, studying the man's gait and appearance before concluding simply, "I do not know him."

With fingers almost trembling, Cecil moves to pull up the Tribute profiles on the tablet. Enjolras' friends have left his mind entirely. He scrolls through the photographs almost too quickly to catch individual faces, but somehow brings it to an abrupt halt in just the right place - it has been only thirty seconds since he first saw him, but Cecil would know that face anywhere.

"His name is Carlos," he reports, without looking away from the screen. His voice is surprisingly level, considering that the headshot's eyes appear to be gazing directly into the depths of his soul. "He is from District Ten. He is a scientist."

Only now does he turn to Enjolras, proffering the screen for him to observe. His expression is rapturous. He wishes he had an audience for this; he wishes he could tell everyone, the entire Capitol, right now, what has just happened. This might be the most important thing that has happened in the Games since their inception. But he is not on the network, so Enjolras will have to do.

His tone, when he speaks, is disbelieving; this moment must be shared, because in so doing it will become real. That Enjolras might not agree with him doesn't cross his mind. He is speaking objective fact. "Everything about him is... is perfect."

The man seems distinctly unimpressive to Enjolras. In the photo, his hair was dark as it obviously was in the Arena. Curled slightly, perhaps slightly shaggy or overgrown, but not utterly unkempt. He was handsome, but not remarkably so, and frankly, while Enjolras is rapidly become accustomed to the rather odd (and often, frankly, degenerate) proclivities of the Capitol citizenry, Carlos' appearance does nothing for him personally. Nevertheless, he doesn't see the use in arguing and takes Cecil's transfixed state in complete stride. This man is no more or less unbearable than anyone else likely to be found at a viewing party, he tells himself.

"Perhaps you have found your favorite, monsieur." There's a passivity to his tone. It's polite, but utterly disinterested in both Carlos and the happenings of the Arena over all. A moment ago, he had been intrigued, looking for glimpses of Courfeyrac and Marius between the rooms of the museum. Now, Enjolras is courteously disengaged. He casts his gaze blandly from the screen to the drink in his hand and back again. "Of, not from. We are of the Districts, none of us are from them."

Cecil, with a sigh that is disproportionately long-suffering, tears his eyes from the tablet to give Enjolras a look that is almost pitying (and clearly not pleased with the distraction from further observation of Carlos, who has retrieved his shirtful of pastries and is now watching for intruders from behind an overturned table).

"Look," he says-- firmly, he hopes, but not unkindly-- "we all know you aren't technically from the Districts, okay? But District involvement is the foundation upon which our beloved Hunger Games are built - if we didn't have contestants from the Districts, what would that give those citizens to rally behind, huh? Why should they feel any pride for Tributes who are only of their homes, and not from them? I know I sure wouldn't! You know. If I were from the Districts."

He leans over to give Enjolras' shoulder a sympathetic pat. "Don't worry-- I wouldn't expect you to be an expert in the history of Panem," he says, more warmly. "But now that you're out of the Arena, maybe you should pick up a b-- Carlos!"

Movement on the tablet has caught his eye, and he does not pick the sentence back up. "...He's leaving the cafeteria!"

And so he was, Enjolras noted, his eyes moving from Cecil and his enigmatic tirade back to the washed out images on the screen. The man who seemed to have captured his... Acquaintance's attention was leaving the room, disappearing from the view of the camera.

"It would be dangerous for him to wait in a room that logically contains supplies," he supplies easily. "Better to take them and find shelter elsewhere."

The hide and wait strategy isn't a particularly popular one, but for obvious reasons, he can't fault it. "And without the forced District associations your beloved Hunger Games would lose what little meaning they have. That is why they persist in considering us from our respective Districts, even if it is obviously a fiction. Better subjugation than heedless bloodsport, I suppose."

"Yes, exactly!" Cecil gives Enjolras his attention again, allowing Carlos some privacy to creep to the elevator with his payload of stale pastries. "Why, can you imagine the backlash in the Capitol, if we found out our government were spending our hard-earned tax assi on heedless bloodsport?" He shakes his head. "No one would support it! We would lose both our most valuable source of entertainment revenue and our most valuable tool of District subjugation at a stroke!"

His tone is earnest. He feels like he and Enjolras fundamentally agree, here-- they're simply not connecting on the right points. "Sometimes, Enjolras," he says, "A simple change in preposition can have disastrous consequences. And I, for one, will gladly take the not-strictly-accurate preposition over national political and economic chaos. It's the responsible thing to do."

Enjolras could indeed imagine the backlash. Enjolras actually anticipated the backlash in the way one anticipates a hurricane or an explosion. There's a dread, certainly, but there's also an impressive eagerness for the destruction that will ensue. They do agree fundamentally, in a sense. They certainly have an equally astute view of the deception unfolding in front of them, and an equally fastidious dedication to the deeper meanings of grammatical structure. It's odd to agree with someone so much and yet disagree so intensely.

"I think, sir, that I prefer chaos and anarchy to fraud and despotism." He doesn't think, he knows. His tone is just as earnest, eyes just as intense. It isn't a competition between them, but it should be. They're both steadfast devotees of their ideologies, it seems, and there's a fanaticism in their souls. The manifestations of that trait simply vary differently. "The truth is nothing to fear so long as you have been acting in accordance with virtue. Of course, you can keep your Platonic lies all you like as there is no doubt of their convenience. Nevertheless, I feel it would be better if one had the ability to serve both justice and the state without having to sacrifice one for the other."

Cecil is not going to admit how much of that tirade went over his head. Sure, he makes a point of staying well abreast of the Capitol's political climate, and he considers himself a pretty well-informed guy, but Platonic lies? Anarchy and despotism? That seems just a little hyperbolic.

"And in a perfect world, maybe we wouldn't have to choose between them!" he says, with the air of one explaining something obvious to someone who, while maybe not malicious in their beliefs, is nonetheless tragically misinformed. "But you simply can't expect that kind of perfection from a fallible human government." He spreads his hands, as though to encompass the entire Capitol within the scope of his narrative. "I mean, think of all the wonderful things our government does for us-- look at our highly functional infrastructure! Our efficient public works! And, of course, the colorful local culture that these things allow to thrive."

These things, he thinks, are probably obvious to Enjolras. He's been in the Capitol for months, after all, and he certainly isn't stupid! But a little preaching to the choir is necessary when one is making a point. (His fervent gesticulation is in danger of upsetting his tablet.)

"Could they do all that if they spent any more of their limited time concentrating on serving justice? Of course not! Sure it means having to pit people against each other in monthly contests of murder against their will, but is that really such a high price to pay for the luxuries we enjoy here?" He shakes his head. "I think our government is doing an admirable job within the limitations that our system imposes on them. We simply need to take their actions within the context of those limitations, to avoid judging them unfairly."

Edited (SORRY FOR THIS EDITSPAM I'M DONE NOW I SWEAR) 2014-02-16 14:21 (UTC)

"No context justifies tyranny," Enjolras snaps back quickly, but it's without any real vitriol. His engagement is terrible, but almost clinical, as if Cecil is some rare creature, hideous and worthy of study. In a way, he is. The political animals of Panem are strangely nonexistent. Or perhaps it's simply that they avoid him.

... In either case, he easily reaches out to support the tablet. He'd already been leaning forward in his seat, actively listening to Cecil's talking points, flawed though they were. In a sudden motion --one that he hopes is not too forward-- Enjolras snatches the tablet away. He covers the indiscretion with a passive inquiry: "Is it not so that you are a journalist, sir?" Hands move deftly across the top of the screen, searching the rooms for his friends. He's no where near as quick with it as Cecil, but he is working and the system itself is more intuitive than he'd imagined. "As a journalist are you not always in pursuit of the truth?"

"I--" The flow of that sentence is lost in indecision, as Cecil decides both for and against grabbing for the tablet at the same time and ends up just making a frustrated sort of gesture in the air between them. He frowns.

"Well, of course!" he says, with a first hint of real impatience. He's leaning forward now, too, stuck between craning his neck to see what Enjolras is looking at and actually trying to answer his question. "And as a journalist, I have never strayed in my reporting from the municipally-approved truth. Nor would I!"

In Cecil's opinion, a little friendly debate over complicated political matters is a perfectly acceptable way to pass the time between bloody onscreen murders, but this is beginning to stray into territory he doesn't like. Everyone questions the actions of their government from time to time, of course, but to be told that Cecil's difference of opinion is a mark against his journalistic integrity--! He feels defensive, annoyed with Enjolras' seemingly willful misunderstanding of a system about which he, of the two of them, is certainly less informed.

"Ah, but then we must get at the definition of what is municipally approved, and if something of that designation actually serves truth and justice, in its truest sense." It's again rapid fire, not unpleasant, but with a delicate sort of irony. The more time Enjolras spends in the Capitol, the more time he has to refine the Socratic techniques. Questions, ever more questions, until his opponents errors, or blatant excesses become abundantly clear. As he speaks, his hands fly across the touch-screen, searching for signs of Courfeyrac, Venus, Marius and Cosette, Cinderella, and Pruna. "Would you say that what benefits the people of Panem is what is then municipally approved? Would you not say that what is kept from the public is kept from them for their own protection?"

He's dividing his attention between Cecil and the screen, glancing up every so often to get a read on the man's expression before diving back into his search. At last, Enjolras lands on Courfeyrac. He has a girl with him, she seems young but looks hard. Abruptly he's reminded of Little Rock and his first Arena. With any luck, this girl will be as good an ally. "In that sense, there is a nobility to the deception, but it is still a deception. We can ignore it, if you would like, as I am more interested in how decisions are made about the public good than what is actually deemed good for the public."

All of Cecil's experience with debate has taken place in the context of interviews. One question, one answer, one pre-established agenda to which both host and interviewee understand they are to adhere. The word "Socratic" is not in his vocabulary. He opens his mouth to reply to Enjolras two or three times, and with every new question his irritation mounts. Really! This isn't even a conversation anymore! If Enjolras isn't interested in hearing an answer to any of his questions, then he might as well not even--

"...but it is still a deception."

Cecil's train of thought stops. He gropes for words, and his heartbeat picks up when he finds none.

There is a script that the Capitol follows, and that Cecil has always followed, and that he has spent twenty years trying to teach himself to forget he is following. The word deception brings with it an involuntary stab of guilty fear-- and, hard on its heels, a kind of defensive indignation. Where does Enjolras think he is? In what context is it appropriate to bring such personal self-deception up at a first introduction? It takes him too long to respond-- too long to settle back into the script he is following.

"Now, you listen here!" he says sharply, and hopes he has not come in too late to interrupt. "I don't know about you, but I came here to watch the Hunger Games-- not to discuss the many things that we know we do not know, or the equally many things that we know we are forbidden to know!" He lets that declaration sit for a second, and then adds, less sharply but no less decisively, "Besides-- I am a journalist. It is not my job to ask questions about the function of our government."

That finally gets a rise, albeit a small one, out of him. Enjolras' nostrils flare ever so slightly, and as he lifts his chin, his longish hair seems to billow around him, reflecting the gold in the room. The thing is that it's not just one part of what Cecil has said, but the entirely of it that fills him with a blazing disdain. The equally many things we know that we are forbidden to know, but why should anyone be forbidden to know anything? The gods of antiquity had seen fit to punish Prometheus but never to silence him.

"I came here because I was forced to do so, but that is a separate matter from the one which we were discussing." Diversions should be dealt with first and highlighted as such. It's a petty but effective tactic, picked up from years of studying Marat and Robespierre. "Why are you do you know of things you are forbidden to know? Why would things be forbidden to know at all? What does your government have to fear from the propagation of knowledge? Is not the purpose of human reasoning to examine his place in the world around him and that which he can do to further mankind? Is the unexamined life worth living at all, and how can we truly examine a life when we are certain subjects are entirely forbidden to us? And finally, monsieur, why call yourself a journalist at all if you do not record fact? Why not simply call yourself an actor reciting a dialog convenient for the state?"

As he spoke, the affability slipped question by question from his tone, replaced by cold and mildly vindictive analysis. A polite smile entirely disparate from the derisiveness of his questions paints itself across his face. He's being rude now, he realizes, perhaps negating anything previously said in the conversation, but he can't help it.

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