The Gamemakers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thecapitol2015-04-21 09:17 pm
gamemakers) wrote in thecapitol2015-04-21 09:17 pm
Entry tags:
The Binding, Part 3
Who| Karkat (possibly Ruffnut, Darcy, Harley, Aragorn, and/or Haruto later) + a surprise guest or two...
What| Rebels must be punished. Here is but a little sample of what some of them have experienced.
Where| A prison in the capitol.
When| Three days after the break-in.
WARNINGS| Police brutality, brainwashing.
It’s been three days since they were arrested. Three days in private cells wondering what might happen to them. They've been given nothing more than bread and water by the rather furious peacekeepers working there. There’s a definite impression that the chaos caused is coming down on them more than it is on those apprehended. And they are not happy about it. The peacekeepers look for any excuse to brandish their taser wands. Occasionally the guards talk to one another, complaining in hushed tones being denied justice, how if it were up to them, well, it wouldn't be pretty.
The cells are bright and there are no windows, making it difficult to keep track of the time. There’s no word in or out of what’s happening to anyone. But time does pass and eventually the cell door opens. Peacekeepers drag you roughly with tight bruising grip, regardless of whether or not you are resistant.
What| Rebels must be punished. Here is but a little sample of what some of them have experienced.
Where| A prison in the capitol.
When| Three days after the break-in.
WARNINGS| Police brutality, brainwashing.
It’s been three days since they were arrested. Three days in private cells wondering what might happen to them. They've been given nothing more than bread and water by the rather furious peacekeepers working there. There’s a definite impression that the chaos caused is coming down on them more than it is on those apprehended. And they are not happy about it. The peacekeepers look for any excuse to brandish their taser wands. Occasionally the guards talk to one another, complaining in hushed tones being denied justice, how if it were up to them, well, it wouldn't be pretty.
The cells are bright and there are no windows, making it difficult to keep track of the time. There’s no word in or out of what’s happening to anyone. But time does pass and eventually the cell door opens. Peacekeepers drag you roughly with tight bruising grip, regardless of whether or not you are resistant.
no subject
Of course that troll had caused them far more trouble than he was worth.
When the leg injury is pointed out, the peacekeepers are not afraid to pull at awkward angles just to make the pain flair.
Part way along, one of them speaks, "Leg? You got something wrong with your leg, troll?" The other snorts. "Can't imagine how that would have happened."
no subject
They shut him up quick like that, save for sounds of pain. His gut aches and heaves, and it's only for this that he's glad he's only had bread now and then to eat: he doesn't need vomit making his condition worse, and his one small scrap of pride clings to that. But still, he hisses as they drag him one way or another, and dares angle up a glare for the taunt the one makes. It's stupid, probably--more than probably--but that hiss takes the edge of something angry and hurt. Can't imagine his fucking ass. But his teeth are clenched as much in pain as defiance, and his fear hasn't gone.
It hasn't escaped him how much this is like the end he feared. They see him as less-than, not real, not like actual people. A troll would do the same if they saw it: like grey skin and horn through a broken disguise, they'd take his red blood and take away all worth, which he never deserved in the first place. Just cullbait, just gutterblood, and that sick feeling chokes him as much as the fear.
He doesn't dare argue with them. He might know what he is, but he won't give them reason to say it.
no subject
The other Peacekeeper isn't laughing now. The bitterness than hangs in the air is tangible. The Peacekeeper on the right gives one last jerk.
"Far as I'm concerned, neither did your leg. You're lucky you're not being taken out and shot, let them call that nothing."
Finally, they make it to a door, flat white and foreboding. They wait silently for just a minute before the door slides open. Karkat's forced inside, bright blinding lights coming on at once as he's forced into a chair.
no subject
The one on the right gets another pain sound out of him for the jerk.
The rest filters in too damn slow. He's not going to be shot? And if it's "nothing" then where are they taking him? What for? He can barely tell whether to be glad or not that he's going to live before they come up on the white door, and the wait does nothing to reassure him. All he does is try to get his good leg under him better to take the pain off the right.
Are they going to hurt him? Are they going to torture him? Is he going to be interrogated for answers, or made an Avox, or threatened, or--?
The door opens, and they force him again to step inside and sit, dragging up another curse before he can settle, sweaty and breathing hard from fear and exertion. He can't see well with how bright the lights are - he's nocturnal, you bastards - and he squints to fight against it and try to make out what else is in this room with him.
no subject
It's been three days.
The door slams shut as the Peacekeepers vacate. There's another chair in the room with Karkat. There's someone seated upon it.
He's dressed still in a white patient's gown, clearly taken straight from his treatment to where he sits now (and clearly expected to return to said treatment), with his head bowed and his hands upon his knees. His cheeks are hollow and bruised, but not near as much as his eyes seem to be. They are completely and utterly blank. He looks a lot smaller than he really is.
The Initiate doesn't make a sound.
no subject
In his own way he can't look much better, with makeup smeared and rubbed off, his costume torn with bloody holes around where his leg was shot. His contacts are out and he lost his wig somewhere along the way, and he hasn't had a shower in three days. He's tired, bruised, scraped, sweating still for all his nerves won't calm.
He tries to swallow. He can't.
For all he looks like shit, the person sitting before him is worse off.
"M... Makara?"
His lids twitch around his eyes. White gown like in human hospitals, a hollow face, blank gaze: none of those say anything good. There is something coiling tight in his gut. The troll sitting before him means a cocked gun, but he can't tell where the shot's going to come from.
no subject
There's a static crackle in the air. It may take Karkat a minute to figure out what it is, for there is no visible source. But then the voice comes. It's not the Initiate's.
"You know your orders. You remember the details of your task. Fix this, all of it."
Only now does the Avox's head lift up, the voice of one of his many masters tugging at his puppet strings. Though he didn't respond to Karkat, he is not deaf. Though his eyes are blank and empty, he can still see.
He sees the look upon Karkat's face, the shock and growing horror. He knows when they flip switch, because suddenly, he can feel it.
The order comes; "Wipe him."
The Avox's eyes blink and all at once they are bright, flashing between pink and indigo at rapid speed. The fear that comes is nothing like Karkat's known, and yet made up all of old fears. It's a lifting of boards, wood whining as it's pried free, nails snapping off in all directions. He dodges artfully past them all, the thousand little details, and lifts the next pieces. All it takes is a simple switch. An erasing of this very moment right here. A placing down of a plot, a treachery, a manipulation and betrayal. It's all too easy, playing right upon fears the victim already has; painted faces and utter uselessness as it all comes apart. It makes perfect sense, with a looming figure of mythical daymare and the execution of another ancestor alike. It's simple as the flick of a switch. Even easier than the making of an obedient non-person that has been one already.
And then, for Karkat at least, there is nothing.
no subject
The Initiate looks up, and Karkat's gaze twitches back. He is scared, more than the worrying unease and fear for what happened to him. Then comes the last order, and he has no time to process before it's happening to him.
It's like the first time but not at all, a rumbling discourse of nerves and unease replaced with a torrent of horror. The rapid shift of color bleeds out into his own vision, eyes a mirror of those causing it, but the awareness lifts out of his brain as easily as picking off a speck of lint.
He can see it: the moments he went through, the very day Initiate sat him down and told him everything, each word laid like a promise to ruin but meant in terms he never knew. Every conversation made in lies, the start of a friendship knit together like a web, choking, entangling, snaring him up. It hurts, like seeing Gamzee covered in blood, like the sword through his chest, like the lava that finally burned him to death. A clown is a clown is a FUCKING CLOWN, from Gamzee on up to the great, looming terror of the Grand Highblood himself, the troll who ordered his ancestor's death, who brought pain and suffering and an end to any farcical hope that their society could be any different.
A scream has started up in his throat and played through the process. From soft little noises, the start of the real dread, on and up, louder, sharper, harsher until he shakes with it. His throat might taste like blood for how raw he screams it at the end, but his mind is all on what he sees.
It's him--
It was always him--
And following him would only mean the same.
Suddenly, easily, like the cutting of a puppet's strings, Karkat falls silent, unconscious, and off the side of his chair.
no subject
The doors open up again and he's ordered out, others going and taking his place for whatever purpose they had in mind. In short time, they would handle the waking Karkat and inform him of his freedom, his safety, and show all reason why he should give gratitude-- though he does not know this. It was not his place to ponder and he doesn't do so.
For now would be a return to the Avox conditioning center for further conditioning. There was to be a show and he would soon need to stand attendant. The victory of the Capitol was not something to stay seated for.