thecapitol | (no subject)

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WHO| Don and OPEN
WHAT| Don has awoken, and...well, he doesn't take what happened too well.
WHEN| After the end of Arena 04
WHERE| Throughout the District 9 floor
WARNING/NOTES| Sadness. Lots of sadness. And stuff.

If Kevin Prentiss was the toast of the town, then at this moment, Donatello was probably the butter spread on top of it.

Of course, his incredible streak - and surprising transformation (what a plot twist! So wonderfully brutal!) had only enhanced his standing with watchers in the Capitol. Few Arenas had one person kill so many people. There was even talk about one party-goer who was going to do a "metamorphosis ball" in honor of Donatello's transformation in the Arena.

But if anyone in the Tribute building was expecting to see Donatello out and about after the end of the Arena, they would be sorely mistaken. He was in his room, on his bed, staring out the windows. In the common room, on the couch, looking at the floor. Barely touching his food or drink.

Donatello had flashes of what he might have done. They were faint, almost dream-like, sporadic flashes. He can remember running and tearing into...something fleshy. He didn't know what. Almost as quickly as they came, they were gone. It was enough for him to know that he didn't want to know anymore. Which, of course, he was filled in on anyways, by one of his Stylists (who also maintained a healthy distance from him as he was given the news, and then ran out of the room).

This just...killed him. The Gamemakers had to know. They had to know he was infected. The file they had on him - the brief glance of it he saw - had concise information on him. How could they let him into a place with radioactivity knowing-

Ha. Who am I kidding. Because it makes a good story...good TV. That's all it is...to the people in this city.

He was tired of this game.

He wanted to go home now.

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Lottie has seen what had happened. How could she have not?

She wasn't sure how it made her feel. But she wasn't going to avoid her. She had heard whispers of such, and the way they made her heart sink...she couldn't.

So here she was, trying to find her friend on 9's floor.

Lottie could find Donatello easily enough. He was in the common room, staring out the window, silent and still as a stone. His face is blank, but weary.

He doesn't notice Lottie coming, or hear her enter.

"Donatello?"

She doesn't want to surprise him. It's rude and, maybe, somewhere deeper than she wants to admit, the idea scares her a little bit.

But she pushes that away. This is a friend.

It took him a moment to quietly look up at Charlotte. Lottie, who practically died in his arms, covered in sores from radioactive sores.

"Hey..."

What is he supposed to say to her, after what happened? She had to have seen. The Capitol practically made it a requirement that felled Tributes watch what occurred after their deaths in the Arenas.

"Hey you, can I sit?"

That look broke her heart. She never thought before turtles could looks so darn sad.

"...Yeah, it's fine. I mean, if you're ok with it."

Forget looking sad. Donatello felt like his heart was ripped out of his body.

Neeshka was creeping around now that the rest of the Tributes were out of the arena, looking for somebody to make fun of, steal from, or maybe ask questions of. Donatello? Kind of high up on that list of people to ask questions of.

So as soon as she knew he was back, she poked her nose out of the elevator on the 9th District's floor. "Oh Doooonateeeellooooo," she sang out, looking left and right. She'd been warned not to hang out too much on rival Districts' floors, but since when did she pay attention to rules like that?

((so, sorry I never got a log up, but we can handwave that and do this instead? :: sheepish grin :: unless you still wanna log it! I'm game!))

((OOC: No problem! :D))

Don could pretty much tell when someone was coming. Mainly because when the elevator rotors slowed down, he could tell which floor they were going to stop at. Though, truthfully, the person coming out wasn't the person he was expecting.

"Come in."

He's in the common room, on one of the couches, staring down at the floor. ~~Sorry Neeshka. There's nothing to steal here if she was considering to get a bonus score out of the deal.~~

~~Too bad. She's kind of used to that in the Tributes' quarters, anyway.~~

Neeshka steps out of the elevator proper and pads quietly over to Donatello. Obviously, though, there's no hard feelings, because she leans over his shoulder and grins at him, head all sideways and hair sticking up (well, more than usual). "Hello! Welcome back to the land of the thinking."

"Haaa...thanks."

Donatello, meanwhile, was on the complete opposite spectrum of no hard feelings. Albeit, he was being hard on himself, and it showed in the circles under his eyes.

Vaulting herself neatly over the back of the couch, Neeshka bounced down to sit beside him, her tail flopped over the arm of the couch. "How're you feeling? Not so good, from the look of you. Did your radiation-sickness leave you feeling even worse than the rest of us?"

Not that he had gone monster and killed people, oh no. Just that it might have left him feeling sicker since it had affected him more. That was Neeshka's assumption, anyway. She'd been glad to learn just what had been behind the whole sickness thing, once she was out. Otherwise it had just been creepy.

Thanks for the reminder, Neeksha.

"No, I'm fine now." Don let out a deep, long sigh. "I'm surprised anyone is visiting me, actually..."

"Why?" Neeshka blinked at him. She wasn't holding grudges. Well, mostly wasn't holding grudges, anyway. "It wasn't like you did that whole crazy-monster-turtle thing on purpose, right?"

She paused, narrowed her eyes at him in mock-suspicion, and asked, "Or did you?"

"Wh-no!" Sorry, Neeshka, even mock-suspicion felt like complete condemnation. He brought his head into his hands. "I wouldn't! I didn't! I didn't even realize the Arena was irradiated, I only had a feeling! And if I'd known it would react to the virus like that, I...I'd have killed myself before it got that far!"

"Whoah, whoah, calm down, gods," Neeshka exclaimed, holding up her hands and looking mildly alarmed. She hadn't expected that kind of a reaction! "I didn't honestly think that you did! I was just teasing you! Besides, it's not like any of it took." Hence why she didn't hold any grudges, and was more fascinated than annoyed. "I'm back alive and healthy again, right? Not even any scars!"

"But...still." Deep breath. "That's not me. That thing...I don't like that...I can turn into that thing and...its just entertainment to everyone! Its not! And...and even if I didn't do it on purpose, I still did it."

"Donatello, calm down," Neeshka reiterated firmly, still looking a bit alarmed, but at least glad was slowing down a little. Not much, but a little. "It wasn't your fault. Remember? The whole games-people doing all this toe mess with us? You said it yourself, it's not you. So if it's not you, then it's them, and so there's no point beating yourself up for something they did."

Neeshka is very good at rationalizing, Don, can't you tell?

For a while, Howard spent time in his sweet, taking in all the luxury that he was deprived of for the last fourteen months. Showers, hot showers with soap. As much food as he could ask for. Lights he could keep on when he went to sleep. Toothbrushes with actual toothpaste, although he found out the hard way that trying to brush the holes where his back teeth were is a painful, bloody ordeal. Maybe the people at the Capitol will fix that for him if he asks nicely.

But paradise is only engaging for so long, so soon enough he's exploring the other suites. Some of it's to see if there's anything worth nicking in the other rooms. Some of it's an attempt to see who his competition will be in the next arena. So far, everyone but one guy here has the advantage of knowing their enemies over him.

He was not expecting that one of his competitors was a big turtle. When he say Donatello on the TVs, he assumed it was some monster the Capitol worked up.

Donatello's not really touching the food in front of him, so Howard hovers by the door and stares at it. "You going to finish that?"

There was a silence at this. It was him, technically. But then again, Neeshka was right. He had no doubt that they were aware of his illness, but sent him into that Arena anyhow. It unnerved him. Not that the Games didn't unnerve him, but this did the job even moreso.

"I'm a ninja. I follow bushidō. I'm supposed to do things honorably. That includes allowing a dignified death for my opponents if such a battle is unavoidable." Death. How many people had he killed in this place. How many times. What would his father, his brothers, say? "This...this isn't even dignified. This is..."

Cruel? Evil? Other adjectives he wished to say but couldn't because the walls had ears?

Edited 2012-12-13 01:28 (UTC)

It was some great food, too. Succulent seafood and vegetables and delicious truffles. And not one bit of it bitten into. At Howard's question, Don slowly looked up, eyes weary.

"...No. You can have it."

"Sweet, thanks." Howard walks over and snatches it as if certain Donatello's going to take back the offer, and takes a few steps back. He's not sure what Don's deal is, but the dude did off a bunch of other tributes.

"Bet your appetite's filled for a long time, now."

She needed to find Don. After all that she had seen on the screens - Ariadne was impossibly grateful that she hadn't had to face that in reality, where he would have been close enough to touch - she needed to know that he was back to normal, that he was all right. They'd been allies through too much for her to not be at least somewhat concerned.

So that was that, and then she was making her way to his floor of the building, making sure she got in without fail. People knew her, at any rate, letting her in simply because of that; it made it considerably easier to find Don, and for that, she was glad.

Neeshka didn't have a clue what a ninja was, but that did sound kind of like what she knew of as a monk, so she went with that. "Yeah, I know guys like that. There's this dwarf back home who's very into that kind of thing. But think of it this way: would you totally say it was your fault if these Games guys just out and out shot the people you killed? It's the same thing, completely. They just turned you into a weapon to do it with, that's all, and it's not the arrow's fault when it kills someone."

Don didn't even make a move to stop Howard; he was more than welcome to have it. Though that last quip did cause Don's eyes to narrow ever so slightly.

"Ha ha."

"Dude, no one's dead for real." Thank goodness. Howard doesn't like to think how he'd feel if the last of Lottie's existence was getting her brains beat out by a rock. "Relax."

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Sneaking in here....

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