blah blah void blah blah spiders blah blah science [open]

[youbarium]

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.

Comments

[youbarium]

"It's useful," replies Carlos, switching the tape recorder off and pocketing it. There's a lot of science on those tapes, he realizes uncomfortably. "It helps me keep a record of -- of what I've done, and what I've learned." He will do his best not to discuss it in scientific terms, but Carlos still feels a little like he's been caught with contraband.

"Uh -- should I take this off?" he asks, indicating his lab coat. "It's just -- I know how you are about...what I am." Most other people would say my job, Carlos.

[carnagecarnival]

The Initiate watches him struggle and squirm with the same faint amusement he used to watch lowerbloods fall over themselves the moment he was in uniform and not just some other troll. He lifts a brow real slow, keeping his face that nice middle of neutral-threatening, before snorting. He shakes his head and holds up a hand.

"KEEP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING CLOTHES ON, HEATHEN. You take it off, he'll just want to burn it more." A grand bonfire, with color, dance, and purefecation of si-- no, not now.

"SO THEN. A new tactic of willingly cooperating to prevent an inevitable doom. I'M TERRIBLY MOTHERFUCKING CURIOUS NOW."

[youbarium]

Carlos appreciated the warning, and therefore compliantly left his coat on.

"I wouldn't call it inevitable," he replied, leaning back easily in his seat and crossing one leg over the other, resting his ankle on one knee. "Actually, there are several events in my possible future that could be classified as 'doom.' For example, if I return to the dimension that I was taken from, at the point in time when I was taken from it, I'll die -- most likely within minutes. The Capitol's story about the meat grinder in my expose was just as fabricated as everything else in that broadcast, but they were right about one thing. If I hadn't come to the Capitol, I would be dead." Carlos said all this casually and easily, as though he were describing a bout of inclement weather or a narrowly avoided business mistake.

[carnagecarnival]

He points a finger at Carlos and his smug face. "You're fucking baiting him you up and are. ALL LEAVING HIM TO HANG SO HE'LL GET INQUIRY FURTHER. First, you're a goddamn bulge. NOW SPILL IT MOTHERFUCKER. I ain't got better things to do." His hands fall flat to the table and he mirrors Carlos in leaning back. He'll bite.

"YOU WOULD MAKE AS TO BE DEAD ANYWAY, EVEN WITH ALL DISREGARDING TIMES AND CIRCUMSTANCE DONE THE FUCK UP. What are you, ill? ALL AFFLICTED UP WITH HARSH NOISE TERMINAL? Regardless motherfucker, all dooms are inevitable. NO ONE RUNS FROM DEATH FOREVER. Some just last longer."

He peers at the tape recorder Carlos has, considering whether all he coould reach out to tap it with a claw of if he might get too carried away in destrucitve habit.

"HE SUPPOSES AS LIKE YOU'VE MADE MOTHERFUCKING DECISION ON THE STAYING HERE THEN? Like any of us fuckers even get choice to leave or stay, and yet we all choose."

[youbarium]

Maybe he is baiting the Initiate, but it wasn't for personal satisfaction. Really, Carlos is just dramatic, and this is the way he tells his stories.

"No, not an illness," he explains. Oh boy. Carlos supposes he'd better explain this completely: the Initiate prefers clarity. "Do you remember what they said in the broadcast?" Carlos asks. It's a rhetorical question. "They said I would die exploring an underground city by falling into a meat grinder. Well, the meat grinder part wasn't true, but the underground city was. When I died in the last Arena, I remembered more of my life in Night Vale. I remembered the underground city." For a moment, Carlos has to decide how much he's going to tell the Initiate about the city itself. "It wasn't what everyone thought it was. They thought it was a gigantic city, miles below the earth. But when I got close, I realized it was actually a very small city, about ten feet below the earth." Here, Carlos holds up a hand to illustrate how tall the buildings are -- they come up to about his knees. "The tiny people who lived there...well, they didn't understand that I had no intention of attacking them, so they attacked me first. With explosives, and projectiles, and...and then I fell backwards, and everything went dark. That's the last thing I remember."

He looks at the Initiate sideways, through his glasses. "I don't have a future in Night Vale. I can't go home. Knowing that...it's helped me make my peace with staying here."

[carnagecarnival]

The Initiate, all truth told, is mostly being purposefully resistant. Because he cannot resist a story, nor one told dramatically. He listens close, even despite all things between they and them. His eyes are focused and his ears flick to the noise.

The story sounds weirdly fantastical. Something from old fairytales he'd pick up from corpses and markets. And then it ends in death. Just like an Alternian fairytale would. He wonders about what all the others lives of this place. What sort of things they came from. He assumed, with all the humans, that they had mostly inane human things.

"DAMN, BROTHER," He remarks. "Well, you ain't the motherfucking only." Not at all.

Something occurs to him. Something important. He asks, very seriously, "YOUR MEMORY. What all was that like? THE WAY AND FUCKING FEEL OF IT? Did you still feel like who you was all to being before?"

[youbarium]

"You know, it's strange," says Carlos, leaning forward. "It doesn't feel like I went back to Night Vale. It's more like...like I had somehow forgotten everything that happened that week, and when I woke up in the Capitol last month, I could remember it again." He leans back once more, and takes a sip of his coffee. "I certainly didn't remember anything about the Capitol during that week," he goes on. "It was like I had never left. Time is strange, and so is the way we perceive it."

[carnagecarnival]

That's... he's not sure if that's a relief or not. It's hard to tell the effect of someone gone only a week. The idea he simply remembered without alterance is nice but does one really become so altered in a week? What about a perigee? What about a Season? What about a sweep? Or many, many sweeps.

He breathes. Deep in, then out. He's not going to know. He's not going to know if the overlap of his future would crush him. He just has to pray he never goes back, never remembers.

"HE'S NEVER BEEN NO GOOD FOR TIME. But he would figure that what all with our being here defying rules of space, time would be no different. NOR LIFE."

It brings to mind the other idea. If they go back when they die. More importantly, if Mituna did. If he did, he remembered nothing, lost all they'd had. But also felt no betrayal, if inevitable, his future self peered upon him.

"Did it feel any motherfucking different? DYING THERE AS ALL OPPOSING TO THE HERES AND NOWS WHAT BE OF US."

[youbarium]

Carlos shakes his head. "No, dying felt pretty much the same," he replies. "Just as painful, just as frightening -- really there's been very little discernible difference between the three experiences of death I've had," Carlos explains. "What the Capitol does...if it's not the real thing, it's an almost perfect imitation."

[carnagecarnival]

"And each time we are pulled before reaching our shangri-la afters," He muses, more to himself. It's not as though he regrets that part. If he saw Shangri-la he sure as shit wouldn't want to leave. But it's how they do it. How can they be dead and brought back, how do they do so sufficiently that paradise slips through fingers unnoticed.

It conflicts with him. This urge for them to investigate this further. Asking a scientist to investigate went against his beliefs. But seeking this out meant further ruining the Capitol. He decides this dilemma is in fact another reason to hate the Capitol.

"HE HAD IMAGINED THAT THE CASE. Gets all to confirm it then," He says. "WHICH UP AND REMINDS. Cecil will be joining us shortly in our death rounds." He lifts his brows at Carlos. Of course, the motherfucker couldn't say much here, with Capitol always watching and listening but, well, he wasn't going to leave this loose end completely unchecked and unexamined.

[youbarium]

Carlos's strong and handsome jaw tightens, and his expression goes flat.

"I know," he says. "It's really a shame. He was the best sponsor I could have asked for, and I took a real risk in the Arena. I don't like letting all that work go to waste, but..." A sigh, a shake of the head. "I don't have a choice. He's an Avox, now, and associating with him is dangerous."

Carlos hates lying. He hates saying this. It's forced, yes; Carlos's act is not perfect yet. But he's working on it.

[carnagecarnival]

"IT IS," He agrees. He wonders to himself, to Carlos, do you still fear him? Or do you fear something else now as well? But he ain't likely to get answer to it here, where his sense is cut off, like a lost limb.

Well, this tells him one thing; Carlos isn't going to let this interfere with no goals. And he knows for fact he ain't given up and sold their lot for they are speaking still right now. So would he just give up on Cecil like that? No more use for their goal and so no more use at all? Carlos told him a lot of things. He made sure to find out so that there wouldn't be no loose end there. He's not sure how much he believes Carlos just don't care none about this no more.

"Both for it being a waste and as all it being dangerous." And then he asks something what he knows may cut. He knows if might throw Carlos off but he must know. "SO YOU AIN'T THINK HE'S BETRAYED YOU?" He asks. To the Capitol; 'Has he betrayed you by choosing to be contentious over staying with you?' But to him? 'Do you think all, the rebellion, is still safe with him?'

[youbarium]

Oh Goddard, how is he supposed to respond to that? Panic flickers in Carlos's eyes as he tries to think.

"It doesn't matter now," Carlos says. How does he get across no, I don't, without it sounding suspicious? "It was never personal from my end, so I wouldn't classify it as an emotional betrayal." So far so good. "I think that as long as I can show the Capitol that I didn't know anything about what he was trying to do, the consequences should be minimal."

Please, please understand. Speaking isn't Carlos's forte.

[carnagecarnival]

Carlos needn't worry. He is perfectly clear. Double meaning hoofbeastshit is sort of his motherfucking slam.

The Initiate nods, taking that answer in. It's a good answer, he's got every little bit clear without giving nothing to Capitol. He makes sure to hold Carlos's eyes.

"May Messiahs forgive you and your blasphemy to grant you such then, brother," He says. "SOME SHIT LOSING A... A MATEPSRIT, MOIRAIL, WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WERE, ALL LIKE THAT. But if there ain't no betrayal, all the motherfucking better for moving along."

[youbarium]

"Like I said, it wasn't personal," repeats Carlos, and it comes easier this time. He doesn't like how it feels, and briefly pulls a face, like he's just realized there's something slimy in his mouth. "It was an Arena strategy. And it backfired."

He doesn't have the heart to go into more detail, so Carlos leaves it at that.

[carnagecarnival]

He's quiet, watching Carlos's face. Then he starts to rise.

"UNDERSTOOD," He says, as he stretches up. He's got what he came for. Confirmation. And a little bit more as well.

He gives a dismissing wave as he leaves, "You can get on resumation to your motherfucking heresy now."

[youbarium]

Carlos never really knows what to say to that.

An awkward, "Uh...okay," is what he settles for. "...goodbye."