↬ Cinderella (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
undercoverprincess) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-07-27 07:59 pm
undercoverprincess) wrote in thecapitol2014-07-27 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
Coming back was always difficult.
Who| Cindy and OPEN
What| Cindy is back after spending time "back home".
Where| District 11 lounge, the training room, and a cafe.
When| End of mini-arena and after.
Warnings/Notes| Brief mentions of experimentation and torture. Let me know if you don't want anything in tags, I'm completely okay with that!
[Lounge]
Cindy hated the new arrival uniform. The first thing she'd done after arriving back at her suite was to toss that thing in the trash. If she had been able to, she would have burned it, but taking the time to find a lighter was something she wasn't really in the mood for.
Plus, the idea of staying in her room for a long amount of time felt too confining. It reminded her of the thing she'd been placed in, some kind of super high-tech pod thing. It felt like what she imagined an alien would create to store people. In fact, the whole experience had felt like what she imagined being taken by aliens to be like, complete with the experimentation that went with it.
She tried not to think about it too much as she tried to get caught up on everything that had happened while she was gone. She had the remote control in her hand, dressed simply and comfortably as she sat on the couch with a plate of food at her side. No one was getting any of that from her.
[Training Room]
If Cindy had really been back home, she wouldn't have a problem with getting back into the training room. She would have been back up to her normal fighting speed and everything would be fine. Actually, she was up to the same fighting speed at this point, given how fast Fables seemed to heal at times with different injuries. Which had been the whole point of those damn experiments, and it was the idea of what happened that gave her justification on attacking any training dummy with a sword. Sometimes it was just nice to pretend to hack away at someone. Or throw enough knives at them that you could hang stuff from them when you were done.
But the major problem was not that she wasn't fast enough, or she wasn't as strong as she usually was. She was working on that other part, getting her strength back up to normal. What was the problem was that she wasn't sure how well she could control what she did. Usually, she could restrain herself, do what was necessary and no more. She didn't take pleasure from her kills, she just had to do them. But right now... she hoped she could get enough aggression out on a fake person.
[Cafe]
After being gone for so long, Cindy knew that while she needed to get stronger before the next arena, she also needed to work on her image. And that didn't mean just going with what her stylist needed from her, which thankfully wasn't much. She hadn't been in an arena and needed to get a complete beauty revamp because she'd lost so much weight and had more scars to hide. That didn't stop them from making sure she looked the way they wanted her to, and Cindy had never known that there would come a day that she didn't want to get her nails, make up, and hair done, but that day had somehow come on.
No, the thing she had to work on was her public image. She'd been gone for too long, and an unknown tribute is one of the worst things to be in this place. So, to boost her popularity back to what it was before, she was going out. A lot. She'd do what she had to, so by the time the next arena happened, she would be able to survive it, and hopefully win it. Maybe it wasn't as much clubbing like she used to do, but sitting out in a cafe and getting something to eat and drink was just as good, right?
What| Cindy is back after spending time "back home".
Where| District 11 lounge, the training room, and a cafe.
When| End of mini-arena and after.
Warnings/Notes| Brief mentions of experimentation and torture. Let me know if you don't want anything in tags, I'm completely okay with that!
[Lounge]
Cindy hated the new arrival uniform. The first thing she'd done after arriving back at her suite was to toss that thing in the trash. If she had been able to, she would have burned it, but taking the time to find a lighter was something she wasn't really in the mood for.
Plus, the idea of staying in her room for a long amount of time felt too confining. It reminded her of the thing she'd been placed in, some kind of super high-tech pod thing. It felt like what she imagined an alien would create to store people. In fact, the whole experience had felt like what she imagined being taken by aliens to be like, complete with the experimentation that went with it.
She tried not to think about it too much as she tried to get caught up on everything that had happened while she was gone. She had the remote control in her hand, dressed simply and comfortably as she sat on the couch with a plate of food at her side. No one was getting any of that from her.
[Training Room]
If Cindy had really been back home, she wouldn't have a problem with getting back into the training room. She would have been back up to her normal fighting speed and everything would be fine. Actually, she was up to the same fighting speed at this point, given how fast Fables seemed to heal at times with different injuries. Which had been the whole point of those damn experiments, and it was the idea of what happened that gave her justification on attacking any training dummy with a sword. Sometimes it was just nice to pretend to hack away at someone. Or throw enough knives at them that you could hang stuff from them when you were done.
But the major problem was not that she wasn't fast enough, or she wasn't as strong as she usually was. She was working on that other part, getting her strength back up to normal. What was the problem was that she wasn't sure how well she could control what she did. Usually, she could restrain herself, do what was necessary and no more. She didn't take pleasure from her kills, she just had to do them. But right now... she hoped she could get enough aggression out on a fake person.
[Cafe]
After being gone for so long, Cindy knew that while she needed to get stronger before the next arena, she also needed to work on her image. And that didn't mean just going with what her stylist needed from her, which thankfully wasn't much. She hadn't been in an arena and needed to get a complete beauty revamp because she'd lost so much weight and had more scars to hide. That didn't stop them from making sure she looked the way they wanted her to, and Cindy had never known that there would come a day that she didn't want to get her nails, make up, and hair done, but that day had somehow come on.
No, the thing she had to work on was her public image. She'd been gone for too long, and an unknown tribute is one of the worst things to be in this place. So, to boost her popularity back to what it was before, she was going out. A lot. She'd do what she had to, so by the time the next arena happened, she would be able to survive it, and hopefully win it. Maybe it wasn't as much clubbing like she used to do, but sitting out in a cafe and getting something to eat and drink was just as good, right?
Training hall
Clad in a shamelessly tight pair of shorts and a tank top Harley had denied the standard issue training uniform as she usually did and when Cindy had started up Harley's attention had been drawn from her daily yoga routine.
Untangling herself from a complicated pose she flipped forward and into a cartwheel to land only feet away from the blond.
"Cindy! Welcome home girl! I thought you were dead meat!"
Lounge
Working out with her served several purposes besides whipping him into shape. Firstly, it served as a distraction from his not-so-saintly thoughts about Max, the ones he'd desperately tried to suppress ever since her return to the Capitol in her new, very much adult body. And secondly, it kept his mind off of Cindy.
He finally left her alone to finish up her training, slinking into the elevator and pressing the call button of the 11th floor in a habitual, non-thinking way. He'd emerged from the lift and was slowly trudging to his bedroom, barely looking up to acknowledge the room at all. He was, in fact, content to disappear into his room and wait for Max and Combeferre to rouse him later, and would have done as much had he not caught sight of a familiar form nestled onto the sofa.
"Cindy?!"
Training Hall
She's taking a regimented thirty now, sitting on the sidelines with a metal water bottle that matches her gym clothes. She needs to stop this, she knows. It looks suspicious for her to be spending so much time by herself when she's made a reputation as everyone's friend or enemy.
She isn't sure which of those she is to the familiar woman beating the stuffing out of a tackling dummy. She takes a deep swig from her water bottle and imagines herself a casting director.
She wouldn't pick Cindy from an audition lineup with that performance. The aggression looks too real. Artificial aggression is invigorating to an audience; real aggression is a liability. It almost always leads to an inability to follow orders.
"They took their sweet time bringing you back, didn't they?"