thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Everyone!
WHAT| A Halloween Ball
WHEN| Halloween night
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WARNING/NOTES| None atm. Please tag in your subject lines if anything comes up.

The Capitol had been winding up to this for weeks. More and more extravagant decorations had begun to appear all over the city. Gruesome alleys dripping with gore, houses transformed into creaking, ancient cobweb covered dwellings, flickering ghosts haunting windows and doorways. The citizens themselves had becomes more and more extravagant as the days crept closer, dripping in glitters spiderwebs, hair teased to coil around pumpkins and crows, and decked out in meticulous costumes, often celebrating past victors, and even current tributes.

The ball at the Tribute Training Center wasn't anywhere near the only party that night, but it was the most extravagant, and the most sought after. The decorations had gone towards the classic (perhaps the goverment realizing other areas might move too close to home.) The building had been transformed into a spooky, ancient looking mansion, over taken by spiders and lit with flickering candles everywhere. The tables were spread with unimaginable heaping of treats, from grotesqueness mock organs to sparkling jewel colored sugar covered candies. Avoxs move about, for once literally ghosts, covered in their own shrouds of spider webs and sheer gauze, holding plates of smoking drinks.

Attendance for the Tributes was mandatory. As were costumes. And oh boy did their stylists go all out for this one. It was a parade and a party all rolled into ones and they weren't going to slack on that.

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Eliot sighed almost inaudibly. "Get easier?" he breathed. "It doesn't. But it will get worse if you don't play along. And not just for you. They'll target your allies and your friends here. At least they didn't bring your family."

"My family's all dead," Alex replied flatly.

Then again, he'd died... hadn't he? Or had they somehow brought him back from the brink of death? He was pretty sure he'd died, but it was possible to survive getting snacked on by a shark. Maybe that was the explanation. Because there simply wasn't a way to take someone who was long dead and bring them back. That was just impossible.

Alex fought to bring himself under control. His last moments in the Arena had shaken him, but he needed to get his act together. Time to pull everything in and be the innocent school boy again.

"So were you," Eliot replied quietly. And Lindsey claimed to have died before they pulled him here. "And you'll meet people here. People you'll learn to care about. And the less you give them to work with, the safer your friends here's will be."

"But only for a little bit." Only a little bit. If at all. Alex knew he was slightly in denial, but it was easier that way. "Even with all of the crazy things here I can't say I believe they're capable of bringing back those who're already dust."

Alex squared his shoulders and glanced over at the older man.

"Then I won't make friends."

Because just seeing them die in the Arena would be bad enough. Why go down that path in the first place?

The argument of whether or not they really died in the Arena wasn't important enough to answer. It'd answer itself fairly soon. What mattered was preparing the kid, helping him avoid the worst dangers here. "That won't keep you from caring," Eliot pointed out. "You're still human, after all."

For a moment, he thought of Razim, and he almost laughed. "Humans are perfectly capable of not caring," he replied, his voice flat. Certainly Blunt hadn't cared about him personally, just about his usefulness.

"Only at the cost of their humanity," the man said calmly. He knew too well what he was talking about. He'd seen it with Moreau and Chapman. And men like Guttman. He'd skated way too close to that line himself for a few years.