thecapitol | blah blah void blah blah spiders blah blah science [open]

Who| Carlos and anyone
What| Since Carlos's survival hinges on his ability to act like he doesn't care, he's going about his business as usual. Even though he and Cecil had a very short-lived but very public romantic relationship, he's acting like he doesn't care. Come make his life harder. Come ask him how he feels.
Where| The D10 rooms, a coffeeshop, and the Speakeasy
When| After Penny and Cruentus's classy, classy announcement.
Warnings/Notes Possible mention of torture, drinking in the last prompt. Also, the first two prompts will involve Carlos denying any real feelings for Cecil. If you want an honest discussion with him, it'll have to be in the Speakeasy.

PROMPT A: D10 common room

Carlos had known what to expect. Penny had announced that Cecil would be avoxed, after all. He had known this was coming.

That had not made keeping a straight face during the broadcast any easier.

He turned off his communicator and knew that if he was going to make this act convincing, he couldn't hide up in his room all day. Carlos hated this act. It was like he had told one lie in the Arena and hadn't been able to stop lying since. It disgusted him. However, he knew that at this point, he had no choice.

There was no need to fake the irritation on Carlos's face as he walked out into the D10 common area and sat down in one of the chairs. He pulled out a notebook and began to scribble in it. Was he writing or drawing? It would be hard to tell...

PROMPT B: TRIBUTE CENTER COMMONS: GENERIC CAPITOL COFFEESHOP

Here Carlos was, sitting in the very place Dave had brought his last words to Cecil, drinking something too hot for the midsummer weather and talking into his tape recorder. If you get close enough, you might hear snatches of what he was saying:

"--correct about my impending death--"

"--new tactic--"

"--willingly cooperate--"

This part of the Tribute center was open to the public: anyone might pass by and see him.

PROMPT C: THE SPEAKEASY

Carlos wasn't one to drink out of sadness. Not usually. He had been in and out of the Speakeasy these past few weeks, having important discussions about the rebellion.

This time, though, he was after some self-administered emotional numbing.

"I don't even know what's in this," he muttered to himself, staring at the half-empty glass in front of him, which was a mass of swirling colors.

PROMPT D: ELEVATORS

Being two floors from the top meant that Carlos stood a solid chance of sharing an elevator on the way two and from the D10 rooms. He was used to it, and usually, didn't mind it. Today, however, it was all but a guarantee that whoever he ended up in the elevator with would be awkward as hell, and Carlos was really tired of dealing with it. He shifted from foot to foot in his lab coat, trying not to sigh when the elevator stopped and the doors opened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At that, Mindy offered him a smile. "Likewise. I hate censoring myself with what I'm thinking, and this place is wearing down on me with everything its got. Good to have someone who feels it too to talk to."

A firm nod. "If it helps," Carlos offered, "all of this, all this secrecy and lies -- it won't go on forever, Mindy. I mean, of course it won't -- it is scientific fact that nothing lasts forever and everything we know is ephemeral and impermanent," he added, "but I think that our general, current situation is going to change soon." He thought. He hoped.

Mindy couldn't help cracking a little bit of a smile at Carlos's retraction. He was a good guy, handsome even, if you were looking at that. It sucked he had gotten dragged into all of this bullshit kicking and screaming, but no one really asked for this shit.

"Yeah, I think so too. Whether it'll be better or worse is yet to be seen though."

"I'm not even remotely qualified to say," Carlos sighed.

"Guess the next few weeks will be our experimentation days then," Mindy said, offering a wry smile. "I'll try to see you again if we're all in one piece later on. That's a promise."

"Thank you," he said, and meant it. "We'll see how the next Arenas go. I know luck isn't real and it's just humanity trying to impose meaning on random uncontrollable events, but I could use it anyway."

"Have you been watching?" Mindy laughed. "The Arena is fucking eighty percent luck! The rest of it is how good you can hide from the other shirt they throw at you and how good you are at surviving a person to person attack. Trust me, luck is not a bad thing to have in there."

"But how much of that is luck and how much is Gamemaker interference?" argued Carlos.

"The Gamemakers aren't trying to make anything easier, Carlos. If anything, they'll play it to their hand. The worse they make things for us, the more people stay focused and want more peril. Our pain is their pleasure. That's pretty much a guarantee."

"That's what I'm saying. 'Good luck' in the Arena means 'the Gamemakers aren't paying attention to you.'"

"Oh, you never want to give them enough rope to hang you with, sure. But you have to be a special kind of an ass to have them want to go after you specifically. You'd have to be that French fucking guy, Enjorales or whatever, to really raise their ire, you know?"

"Uh...that was me," Carlos said uncomfortably. "All through the last Arena. They were trying to kill me really hard."

"Jesus," she said, shaking her head. That was pretty damn fucked up. "What did you even do to piss them off that much?"

"I thought it was the rescue attempt," he explained. "But it wasn't that at all. Turns out, they were just trying to bring me back to the Capitol so they could put me to work on those diseases. But it was pretty scary. I thought I was going to die for good."

"Yeah, I guess they couldn't just, I don't know, grab you like an ordinary person, let's just messily kill him and put him back together insteady."

Come to think of it, that WAS peculiar, wasn't it? Why couldn't they just grab Carlos? Was something stopping them?

"They probably didn't want to set a precedent," Carlos suggested. "It would break the rules to just take me out of the Arena. It would look bad." His tone said exactly how much he cared about the Capitol looking bad.

"They're the Capitol. Since when did they care about playing fair? What's more, they have citizens, theirs, to protect, right? So why the hell would they even care, unless they had another reason?"

"I don't know," Carlos said with a shrug. "I'm not a political scientist. But, if they are unwilling to break their own rules, that's useful information, too."

"To be sure, yeah. Of course, we should also hope they're keeping us around too. They might want to cut their losses as a lesson to the other tributes."

"There's nothing we can do about that except hope it doesn't happen. I don't think they would, not at this point -- too much time has passed since the Ian incident and press coverage was minimal. But if they do decide to kill us, nothing we do will change their mind."

"Better make sure we don't incur another strike against us then," Mindy said, knowing how hollow those words were. Play it safe. Be good. Maybe Joel had always known better than her, but...fuck, she could never stay put in a place like this, that made her just a puppet.

He nodded. "That's the plan."

"Good luck then," she said. "I'll keep in touch. I'll try to be discreet."

He was glad to hear that. "Thanks. I'll be looking for it. Oh, and don't believe a word I say out there," Carlos warned. "I don't mean it."

"Oh I figured that out!" Mindy laughed, getting up. The bartender eyed her, just to see if she stumbled, but no such reaction came from her. "I'll see you later."

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youbarium - 2014-08-10 16:27 (UTC) - Expand