thecapitol | I'm not paralyzed [closed]

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I'm not paralyzed [closed]

WHO| Cecil -- just the one from the Capitol, this time -- and Carlos
WHAT| The visitors are gone, but life marches on, and they have an appointment to keep
WHEN| The afternoon of the visitors' arrest, the day before the Arena
WHERE| Cecil's apartment
WARNINGS| Mentions of torture, slight body horror, more to be added

Carlos had seen a lot of people led away in handcuffs in his time. A lot. They were mostly reporters and journalists, but there were others too. Stacey Nguyen, for one, after that unfortunate incident with the ATV. And then there were the Joneses, who had been difficult to handcuff thanks to their status as a tentacled psychic gestalt, but the end result had been the same. They had all disappeared, and only some of them had been seen again.

Carlos had never seen it happen to Cecil.

He knew it could, of course -- no one was really safe, everyone was in some measure of danger from the government -- but he had never really expected it to. Seeing it happen had been surreal. Seeing it happen had also been terrifying, since Carlos knew secondhand what this government was capable of, and firsthand what it considered a slap on the wrist. He still had the burns on his shoulder and neck, bandaged up under his shirt.

Was Cecil alive or dead? Carlos didn't know. If he had been sent back to Night Vale, there was a chance Cecil was dead anyway, if the Capitol had been correct. The worry gnawed at Carlos like a dull ache: he knew there was very little he could do for Cecil now, knew that trying to find out would only make the situation worse, but the fear for Cecil still crept under his skin like persistent skin parasites.

But he knew he had to go on. Paralysis was not an option. Even if Carlos could neither act or react, he could not come to rest. The momentum -- of ordinary Capitol life, of old plans -- would carry him forward, and that momentum took him to Cecil's apartment, where he and Cecil had arranged to meet a week ago.

He rang the doorbell, a horrible mess of carefully hidden, very personal feelings.

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A nod, slow but resolute.

"If we win," said Carlos, openly admitting for the first time in the conversation that he had taken a side, "and you're captured, I'll -- I'll do what I can." It was a promise: Carlos did not expect that Cecil would act against the Capitol, and even if he did, he wouldn't advise it. But Carlos meant it -- he did not want to see Cecil taken down with the rest of the Capitol. It was another strange moment of feeling: disassociating Cecil from the dystopian government he lived in and spoke for only reinforced the sense of humanity that Carlos felt from Cecil right now. What would that be like? he wondered. To know Cecil, separate from the terrible system that did terrible things... Carlos found himself wanting that, more personally than he had expected to.

"You'll probably be okay," he went on, "as long as you survive the actual conflict."

Cecil's stomach dropped unpleasantly. Not only at the thought of being captured by the rebellion, or of not surviving whatever conflict was coming, though neither of these were by any means pleasant thoughts-- it was more that he had never thought of the rebellion in terms of a side that he was not on. He'd never considered his loyalty to the Capitol (either the part of it inspired by fear, or the part that had come coded into his upbringing) to be something that put him on a side.

It was strange, to think that, even with all he now knew, Carlos did not see them as being on the same side.

"Right," he said, in the tone of one who really, really did want this to be true. "You're right. So long as I survive the actual conflict-- and so long as it does not come to the attention of anyone in authority that we have had this conversation before such time as that conflict is resolved-- I'll probably be okay."

And then: "...Thank you." He paused-- he'd just said that, and he needed to make clear how this thank you was different from the one that had preceded it. It felt natural, somehow, to lean in a little closer; to curl his fingers under Carlos' hand; to reach out with his other hand and grip Carlos' shoulder. "Thank you for... for trusting me."

Cecil's last words were lost in a sudden lance of pain. Carlos let out a sharp hiss, flinched, and recoiled -- a quick and reflexive movement that made it impossible to deny that something was wrong. It was obviously a reaction to pain.

"Sorry," he breathed, pulling his hand away from Cecil's and curling it around his upper arm. "Sorry--"

Carlos's mind raced, trying to come up with an explanation. Damn -- he had managed to hide this completely up until now, and with good reason. Carlos knew Cecil did stupid things sometimes when Carlos's wellbeing was concerned. If Cecil got a Stylist taken into police custody over a haircut, who knew what he would do if he found out Carlos had been tortured.

It wasn't the torturers Carlos wanted to protect. It was Cecil.

"--Carlos?"

He was too loud, Cecil realized, and dropped his voice to a hoarse, frantic whisper. "Carlos-- are you all right? I'm so sorry--" His hands hovered between them, afraid to touch again, for fear of-- of that happening again. What was he sorry for? Was it something he'd done? When had Carlos been injured? Should he call someone? No, he couldn't call someone, not in the middle of this conversation.

He leaned in close, afraid to touch still but looking for the source of the injury, for something he hadn't noticed before. The worry that had hung in his voice all afternoon, the exhausted fear of a heavy and distant danger, was replaced by something sharper, more immediate. "Carlos-- please-- what happened?"

Carlos wasn't touching the burn, not quite -- his hand was just to the side of it, his arm protectively crossed over his chest, his shoulder angled away from Cecil. His eyes were wide, startled, defensive; Carlos was clearly searching for a way to explain this.

He could lie, he knew. But he didn't want to. Perhaps with just enough truth, Carlos could get Cecil to stop asking.

"I -- I made a mistake," admitted Carlos, possibly loud enough for the cameras to hear. "Cecil, this is just a consequence of a decision I made. A really, really bad decision." Please, his eyes said from behind his glasses. Don't ask.

Cecil had no intention of obeying Carlos' eyes. Had he been told it was an accident, he might have been able to let it go; if Carlos hadn't made it sound so much like a punishment...

Cecil knew that Carlos was capable of making extremely poor decisions. They had had a conversation not long ago, with an invisible Peacekeeper, that had made that clear to him. But he'd been under the impression that that had been Carlos' only recent mistake; that Carlos' agreement to follow the rules had kept him clear of any consequence.

"Uh-huh," he said, slowly. His voice was soft-- softer than strictly necessary. Soft enough not to be overheard. His tone was not that of a person who was considering letting this go; it was the tone of a person who knew very well that there was something important that he was not being told. It was the tone of a person who had every intention of finding out what that was. "What mistake, Carlos?"

For a long moment, Carlos looked at Cecil in helpless panic. He didn't want to go on, didn't want to elaborate on what had happened -- but if he didn't explain, Cecil knew enough that an accurate guess could be made.

There was nothing to do but tell him.

Carlos closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again. "Do you remember when I broke into that government building?" Carlos asked. "Well...I wasn't completely honest with you about why. I didn't want to tell you over the phone where the Peacekeepers could hear. Given the nature of the operation, it...it just wasn't a good idea."

Edited 2014-07-25 16:24 (UTC)

Cecil remembered that conversation well. He remembered that it had been terrible-- worrying and discouraging and frightening. He wasn't surprised that this - whatever it was - should be related to that; but he didn't like the words Carlos was using. Words like operation. Words that implied something bigger than just Carlos.

Carlos had made clear that he had taken a side in the conflict that Cecil had only just learned existed. Cecil didn't yet feel ready to contemplate how many other people were on that same side.

"You told me that you were acting out from frustration with the Capitol's restrictions on your activity," he said, and his voice was still soft and slow. But not gentle. "But if that was not the case-- then why did you break into that government building, Carlos?"

Carlos gave a short, sharp sigh. He clearly didn't like talking about this. "A short while ago, I don't know if you remember, but Ian Chesterton refused to participate in the Games. He lit himself on fire so that he wouldn't have to kill anyone. Well, the Capitol didn't like it. The Peacekeepers took one of his acquaintances, Ian -- you know, the other Ian -- and tortured him, to send a message to Ian Chesterton."

Here Carlos paused a moment, getting ready to go on.

"...when I saw the broadcast, I...I decided that what the Capitol was doing was unacceptable. The science restrictions were part of it, but seeing a friend of a friend tortured was the last straw. I couldn't sit there and do nothing, Cecil." A hopeless note came into Carlos's voice there. "I had to help. We even had a plan for getting him out. It's just...we got caught."

For a moment, Cecil was silent.

Then: "Oh," he said. It indicated that he had seen where this was going. He knew enough about the way the Capitol worked to understand what the next part of the story had to be. His voice was very quiet, and very heavy.

"And when you were caught," he said, as though he did not even want to be saying the words, as though someone were dragging them one by one out of his mouth, "When you were caught-- they--"

--did something to you that makes you recoil at a light touch, about which you were too frightened to tell me. He couldn't make himself say it aloud.

Carlos didn't want to talk about what had happened. Not really. He was certainly not going to give Cecil details, but in the interest of discouraging further inquiry...

"They burned us." His voice was flat, toneless, closed-off. "Probably because Ian set hismelf on fire last Arena." It was the smell that stuck out most in Carlos's mind -- burning human flesh. Was that what it had smelled like in the Arena, when Kevin had done something similar...?

But he pulled himself away from those thoughts. He was a scientist, and therefore as in-control of his own mind as anyone could be. And there was something important he had to get through to Cecil.

"Listen. Cecil. Please, don't do anything..." What was the word he was looking for? Rash? Stupid? "...dangerous. There's nothing you can do about it right now, and if you try, you'll only get yourself into trouble." He let out a sharp sigh, then looked up to meet Cecil's eyes. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

No, Cecil didn't need to ask anything else. He could infer whatever else he wanted to about the injury, about the process-- he had grown up knowing full well that it was best to be careful about how much you asked. About how much you allowed yourself to know.

Besides-- he'd heard enough.

"--But that is-- it is unjust." Keeping his voice down was difficult. "We of the Capitol do not treat Tributes that way!" This was nothing like the Hunger Games - this wasn't municipally established, this wasn't traditional, there was no reason he could point to for this, and that made it wrong. "I mean-- yes, you broke the law, Carlos, but surely no one in the Capitol could possibly believe that such severe corporeal punishment should be the penalty for your crime!"

It was a lot of atrocities to take in at once. Really, it wasn't such a huge logical leap, to say that the same society that could keep its entire population blind to an underground nuclear stalemate could burn a few Tributes for sedition; it wasn't so different, the mysterious disappearance of Cecil's mother and the kidnapping of Ian.

...Of course, cruel as they were, none of those things had happened to Carlos.

For a long moment, Carlos just stared at Cecil, disbelief etched into his face.

"Unjust?" he repeated. "Cecil, your government cuts out criminals' tongues." Each word was deliberate, underlining just how unjust the Capitol had been known to be. "Given the circumstances? I think I got off easy." Come on, his tone said, we're living in a dystopia. You can't have missed this.

"Yes, but that's--" --different. Cecil didn't know anyone who'd been Avoxed.

Something in him protested the words your government, as well. It made him feel... complicit, somehow. It drove home again that to Carlos, they were not on the same side; but honestly, Cecil couldn't in good conscience deny that that was, in several painfully unavoidable ways, the truth.

It took him a moment to gain back his train of thought. He had to look at his own hands, at the tabletop, at the untouched bottle of wine (anywhere but at Carlos) as he pulled his reply together.

"That's--" he tried again, and pushed ahead. "--You are not a criminal, Carlos. I mean, kind of. But-- you just made a mistake! You chose the wrong outlet for your entirely justifiable frustrations with the Capitol. It wasn't-- technically rebellious. The Capitol's response was completely unreasonable."

Of course, there was also a part of Cecil that wanted to hear Carlos say that it hadn't been rebellious. That it had been a one-time mistake that he had no intention of repeating.

"It wasn't because I was frustrated." Carlos looked Cecil in the face -- Cecil would make eye contact if he looked up. "Well, maybe it was, a little, but more than anything, it was to help someone who was being imprisoned and tortured. Cecil, I disobeyed direct Capitol instructions, acquired forbidden technology, broke into a holding cell, and tried to sneak a prisoner out to District 13. If that doesn't qualify as rebellious? I'd like to know what does."

Edited 2014-08-20 02:20 (UTC)

Cecil made eye contact-- but it was reluctant, hesitant, and his expression grew more fearful as Carlos went on. At the last sentence-- at If that doesn't qualify as rebellious-- he had to look away, throwing a glance over his shoulder as though there could be someone standing in the bushes listening to this. Listening to Carlos say this outright.

When he turned slowly back to Carlos, it was with something... hopeless in his expression. "...You're right," he said quietly. "You're right, Carlos. It does."

He took a deep breath. "It is-- difficult. For me to accept that you are right, however. This isn't usually the case-- you are a scientist, and that means that you're usually right about things!" This was, in Cecil's estimation, a prerequisite for being a scientist. "But in this instance-- in this case--" He made a helpless gesture, with his palms up and his shoulders hunched. "I have seen the consequences for rebellion, Carlos. I have seen what happens to those who choose to express their frustration in ways that directly conflict with municipal policy. I have seen what municipal policy is wielded against them, as well-- I mean, I told you. About my..."

My mother. He dropped his hands, and his shoulders, and his gaze. "...I... I don't know what I would do, if you disappeared."

Behind his glasses, Carlos's eyes widened. Was that really true? He had always assumed that Cecil's feelings about him hadn't been much more than a particularly enthusiastic crush, an -- an infatuation, and that if he kept Cecil at arm's length, those feelings would never deepen.

But, he realized with a jolt, they did. They must have. Cecil was serious: he didn't want Carlos to disappear. Not because of his perfect hair or whatever ridiculous compliment Cecil was putting on the air this week, but because he cared. There was a vulnerability to Cecil's admission that cut right through all the defensive layers Carlos had built up of professionalism and carefully selective listening.

He was suddenly very conscious of his heartbeat.

Carlos looked down at Cecil's hands, too. He wanted to take them, to wrap them in his own and hold them, because they looked so unsure, so afraid, and belonged to someone who cared about him.

His fingers uncurled. One hand left his lap, fingers drifting in Cecil's direction, a hint of a gesture, a ghost of a movement -- but before they got more than a couple of inches, they retreated, curling back into a fist. Carlos looked away, down at the surface of the roof below them.

"...Cecil," he said finally, through a mouth significantly drier than normal, "I -- I can't promise that I won't. The future is always in motion and nothing is certain, even in a place like this. Even if I didn't do anything else that would get me in trouble, any Arena, I could die and not come back." Though the laws of physics were much more solid here, Carlos knew the municipal powers were just as capricious as Night Vale's.

The change in Cecil's feelings about Carlos had not been a conscious one. He couldn't have pinpointed an exact moment when the prospect of Carlos' disappearance had become a source of real fear. But wasn't that so often the way things were? If feelings could be changed consciously, after all-- if it were possible to allow people into one's heart on one's own carefully-chosen terms, rather than having to accept that people did not so much enter one's heart as grow beneath one's skin-- then Cecil was sure that by now he would have...

...Well. He probably would have kept his feelings from changing in this particular way, for this particular person. Right?

"I know," he said. He did. He had thought about the fact that Carlos might not come back more than once in recent days. "I know that, Carlos."

He sighed, and looked down at his hands, instead of at Carlos' face. He'd always thought looked particularly good in early-afternoon sunlight. Something about the way it caught the warm tones in his skin, he thought. "...I do not know why some Tributes return from the Arena and some do not; I'm not a Capitol scientist, or a Gamemaker, or in any way the kind of person whom the Capitol trusts to make those kinds of decisions." (If they were decisions at all. For the purposes of this conversation - for the purposes of allowing one small part of their shared universe not to be as cruel and arbitrary as it could be - he would allow himself to assume that they were.) "But-- I wonder, Carlos, on what grounds those decisions are made. Under what circumstances those people whom the capitol does trust to make those kinds of decisions would decide that... that a Tribute should not come back. I am wondering that... a lot, right now."

He hoped Carlos understood. He didn't quite have the guts to say it outright: I wonder if these are circumstances under which they might decide not to bring you back.

Cecil didn't have to say it outright. It had also been on Carlos's mind: what if they did decide not to bring him back? It was a very real possibility, one that had been on his mind since Cecil had made the argument against that second disastrous haircut.

How long ago had that been? Five months? It felt like longer. Carlos knew that this had nothing to do with the elastic nature time had in places like Night Vale and everything to do with how much had changed since January. So much had changed.

"I've been thinking about that, too. But I have a plan," he said. Carlos was a scientist, so he usually had a plan. "My chances of winning the Hunger Games are infinitesimally small, especially if I've turned the Gamemakers against me. That means that one way or another, I'm going to die in the next arena. That's not important. The important thing is to make sure that the Capitol wants to bring me back. If I survive long enough, if -- if what I do in the arena is interesting enough..."

It was a long shot. Carlos had no way of knowing whether popular opinion would affect the Gamemakers' decisions. But it was the only chance he had.

Cecil had seen a lot of Arenas. More than he usually cared to admit, in company. This was an option unique to the Never-ending Quell - in a way, he knew, they were fortunate that they even had this to turn to. That there was a chance Carlos might return, and the possibility that he might be able to turn the odds in his favor.

"Yes," he said, because he very much wanted this to be a viable possibility. "Yes-- I'm sure that must factor into their decision. It definitely does."

"I think you're a very interesting contestant," he added loyally. "And I've been watching very closely. So-- if you had enough sponsors, and if your inevitable death is sufficiently dramatic, and gets a lot of playback--"

It was cheering him up, in a desperate, hopeless kind of way, despite the fact that he'd not actually managed to say anything definitive. "...Then. Then maybe."

"It's what I'm counting on."

Carlos remembered, in this moment, something his mentor had said to him -- a suggestion that she had made. He looked at Cecil quietly for a moment, indecisive, unsure.

Then he decided, no. No, he was not going to stoop that low. That was a trump card he was absolutely never going to play -- it would leave him in a position he was very uncomfortable with, and it would be incredibly unfair to ask Cecil to go along with it.

The line of his mouth tightened, firmed with resolve. Carlos would fight in this Arena on his own terms. There had to be a way to put on a good enough performance to make them keep him coming back. There had to.

"...I can't believe it's tomorrow," he admitted, quietly. "So much has happened since I came here. It's like...I know it's only been a few months, but it feels like forever since the last arena."

"It does," Cecil agreed. He paused a moment, and then went on, slowly-- "It feels... it feels, in some ways, like time is not moving the way it should. The way it used to." Carlos, he thought, might understand something about that.

"It used to be that we had an entire year in which to measure the extent to which we had changed between Hunger Games," he went on. "A year in which to examine the ways in which we had become both newer, and older since the last time we watched the same spectacle. We could imagine that we were like the Games themselves, in a way - much the same as always, but different enough still to be exciting to someone."

When the Neverending Quell had started, Cecil had been thirty-three Hunger Games old. Now, he is closer to forty, though his age, his real age, is still only thirty-five. It is a strange feeling, to reflect on that - to feel so out-of-synch with himself.

"It feels like years have passed since the last Arena," he said. "It feels like we are all so much newer - and like the Capitol is much, much older."

This time, he did not look away from Carlos while he spoke.

Carlos wondered if his heart was functioning properly, because right now it felt very much like it was overclocked. He was hyperaware of everything: of the springtime breeze that fluttered through his growing-in hair, of the sun heating the back of his neck, of the coursing of blood through his body. If there were any fan or other internal cooling system, it was clearly not working, because his skin felt too hot, too sensitive.

He knew he would remember this moment for a long, long time.

"Cecil, I--"

What should he say? Be careful? Cecil knew that. Thank you? That didn't even make sense. I understand? Trite. Not for the first time, Carlos felt acutely how much better with words Cecil was.

...he settled for practicality.

"--we'd better open that wine, or this will start to look suspicious."

Edited 2014-11-06 03:16 (UTC)

Cecil blinked, as though coming back to attention. He'd been looking at Carlos, which was usually pretty distracting - but this time, it seemed more like he'd been caught within himself, rather than stuck with his gaze tangled in the gentle curls of Carlos' hair, or something. Deep in his own sad, distant thoughts.

But he came back to himself, blinked once, and said, louder than before, with his false happiness scrambling to keep up with his voice, "--Right!"

He reached for the corkscrew and the bottle, and laughed. "Gosh-- we've been sitting out here, like, half an hour! It's amazing how easy it is to forget time exists on an afternoon as gorgeous as this one, right? We'll have to postpone lunch, I guess-- but it's fine, the reservation is pretty flexible. I made it mostly just in case, because sometimes on weekends that place fills up quickly, and-- well, obviously we can't reschedule for tomorrow..."

It got easier to keep talking as he went on, as he distracted himself with pouring the wine and pretending that the fact that this might be their last lunch date of all time did not matter to him in the slightest.

But he looked at Carlos less, before they went back downstairs. He looked out over the skyline instead, and glanced at him only sidelong. Afraid to look like he cared too much; afraid that every time he looked away might make the last glance the last, retroactively.

He'd run this kind of deception before, of course, and had for-- for a long time. But the weight of it felt different now; and he distracted himself from it with grim determination, because this was not the time or place to decide what that difference was.

He made small talk, too; Carlos took his cues from Cecil, explaining this thing or that thing, talking about life in the Tribute Center, saying nothing of any real importance.

The important things already hung in the air between them.

But, eventually, the wine would be drunk, and -- a little lightheaded, he would admit -- he would follow Cecil down from the roof, down to his apartment, down to the front door, where he would pause, knowing a goodbye was in order.

He just didn't know how long the goodbye would be for.

"Well," he said, more casually than he felt, "I'd better get going."

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void_whereprohibited - 2014-11-18 19:14 (UTC) - Expand

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youbarium - 2014-11-19 05:07 (UTC) - Expand

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I'm not paralyzed [closed]

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good to call it a wrap around here? c:

yep!

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