[to be quiet like I should]

[vox_tacenda]

Who | Atlas Fairweather and the Initiate; Atlas Fairweather and YOU
What | Come and socialize with your friendly neighborhood Avox wrangler!
Where | Around the Training Center; in the Avox quarters.
When | Following the changes in Tributes' finances, but flexible otherwise! Just, between Arenas. In the Capitol. Around. u know.
Warnings | There will be a lot of talk about Avoxes, and there might be mention of the conditioning process, meaning torture, brainwashing, slavery, etc. There will be no abuse of any kind in this log, but Atlas will not speak to or about them as though they're human beings. Just a heads-up, if that's something you'd prefer to avoid!

I. Ground floor common area
Atlas works in the Training Center. He's got a sparsely-furnished set of quarters not far from the Avoxes down below, even, so he can keep closer guard over his charges in case of some emergency. You'd think he'd get sick of spending time between the wall of the Tower, that he'd take his free hours in the day to walk the city, to change up the scenery - but he doesn't.

Not today, anyway. He's come up here on break, where all the walls are banks of glass and the afternoon sunlight streams in. It's nice after a morning down in the Avox quarters to remember that sun shines on the rest of the Capitol, and people go out of their way to be too loud, to draw attention to themselves. Atlas lounges on a chic green couch not far from the bar, his stiff left leg propped up on a provided footrest and a half-empty beer in one hand. He's out of uniform and everything. An Avox handler in repose.

It's a good vantage point: He can see everyone who comes in or goes out through the front doors. He's become a good observer in his years working with Avoxes. He remembers faces well; he recognizes near every Tribute who walks by, can call their District affiliation to mind just by looking.

Any Tribute who passes too close (or anyone, really, whom he's seen on a screen recently) will hear a friendly, booming "Hey!" from him, and get a wide one-armed beckoning motion if they turn to look - Here. Sit down right here. Maybe you know him by sight - have seen him in his Peacekeeper's uniform, walking the halls with an Avox or two following docilely behind him. Maybe you recognize his face, but can't place it. Maybe you have no idea who he is, beyond some Capitolite. Either way: It's clearly you he's talking to.


II. Suites - all Districts
Among the more important of Atlas' duties is making sure, in all circumstances, that Avoxes act like Avoxes. He's well known in his own employment circles for his ability to tell the moment when conditioning begins to slip. When an Avox has forgotten its place. When they are no longer afraid enough.

He's here in your District Suites to make sure their duties are all being done according to the Traning Center's standard, as laid out in the Properties Manager's Handbook he carries in tablet form in one hand. He's here to ensure that there are no marks left by shoddy cleaning, no linens left unchanged, no food left out to attract flies, no signs that any Avox has been anywhere it's forbidden to them to be. He makes a round of every suite, slowed by a desire for precision as much as by his limp, knocking politely on Tribute's doors before he leans into their rooms to make his quick inspection, marking his tablet with an air of satisfaction at the end of every round.

He approaches the Avoxes as well, while they move about the room doing their mandated tasks. He follows them closely, watching them for illicit reactions; leans down to catch their eyes and nods with approval when their glances skitter away from his face; tugs lightly at their arms to see whether they pull away (the test is passed if they don't). None of it is painful, but there's a casual indifference in his movements. Like he's running a program to check for error. Like he's giving a table a shake to make sure none of the legs wobble.

...Though if you catch him making an inspection in an unoccupied Suite, you might come in to find him standing in the middle of the room, turning in a slow circle and looking around him at the luxury laid out for the District residents. Keep silent a second, and you might even hear a low, envious whistle.

Comments

[vox_tacenda]

The nicknaming started a couple years into his time here, once he stopped moving around between contracts and got a more permanent position in the Training Center. There was no way to address individual Avoxes in a large group, unless you wanted to do a lot of emphatic pointing, or wade in among them to pull at their sleeves. It was a time-saver, because they'd pretend not to know what you meant if you yelled Patch to the front!, or pressed a pill bottle into their hand and said Look to Red's infection before you sleep, but they'd obey all the same-- move aside for the one named, and let the fact that Atlas had started it assuage their fear of being so singled out.

Anyway, Atlas always figured-- so long as nobody else with a tongue knew what their nicknames were, so long as they didn't leave this floor, what was the harm? It wasn't like he called them by their real names.

It was important, in a way, that the Initiate have a nickname, because Atlas remembers that he used to be a Tribute. He remembers his Arenas, and can still picture the sound of his voice. Damn shame, that he's come down here - damn shame he didn't seem to understand what he had to expect, doing what he did. Waste of a damn good Tribute, in Atlas' opinion.

He has to stand up to do this examination, tall as he is, and that makes him grin; there's something funny in having someone meant to go unnoticed, being so tall and broad. "Evening, Titan," he says, and bends a little to look into his face-- watching him for reaction, seeing if he looks back into his eyes. "Long day, huh? You were out on the first shift this morning. Bet you're looking forward to that bed. --Lean down for me a second. Open your mouth."

He gives the commands in the same easy, conversational tone that he chats with them. Partly because he doesn't feel a need to make too much out of a routine inspection. Partly because a well-conditioned Avox will know which statements to react to.

[carnagecarnival]

He avoids Atlas's eyes. It's hard when he's always looking down and Atlas is looking straight up at him. He has to find other things to look at like the end of Atlas's tie, or his shoes. Over his head is a little too daring.

It was a long day. No matter the years, he's still nocturnal and some part of him longs for day-sleep. Getting up in the early hours is to a human deciding at four AM that then is the perfect time to head out for business after staying up all night. He wishes for sopor, a pile, not a bed. He hates the beds and he can never get to sleep. But he's not had sopor in a sweep and he won't be having no pile but the scrunched up blanket and pillow on the too small cot. Close enough.

He opens his mouth for Atlas, nice and wide so he can see past the rows and rows of fangs. His cut is still a clean one, just a line of mottled purple. He's always done well with physical recovery. One of the fuckin miracles making so he was alive.

And he is alive. That's something he still refuses to let go of. So many people considered him good as dead last time. He almost wonders what Atlas considers. Is he dead before this man? Or alive?

[vox_tacenda]

The medical training they give the Avox handlers is pretty minimal. Good enough to tell "infected" from "not infected;" good enough to know which of a few different kinds of pills to hand off. He nods approvingly at what he sees behind all those teeth (which they didn't take out, and which he's glad for; he always found that a little gratuitous, like an admission the conditioning itself wasn't good enough to render them harmless). No need to prescribe anything today.

"Well, you're healing up nicely," he murmurs, and as he speaks he's tipping the Titan's head back a little, looking at the line of his throat for bumps or bruises or mottled places that might indicate a bad reaction to the toxins that have paralyzed his vocal cords. "I bet that hardly hurts at all anymore. Bet you're eating fine and everything." That's always a steep learning curve, especially with an open wound at the back of one's mouth.

"Hold out your hands for me," he says. Big, clawed hands, harder to damage, maybe, than most Avoxes'; but protocols are protocols (and hands are the hardest thing to control, for an Avox about to slip-- hands and eyes give the first clues).

Atlas doesn't give too much conscious thought to personal philosophy; a debate about the liveliness or not of Avoxes would go right over his head. But maybe there's a place between life and death a thing like this Titan can occupy - separate from the life the Capitol will remember, with his victories and kills and so on, and separate as well from the death of the truly forgotten. Atlas can make of this troll a different thing from what it was when it lived, when he watched it on the screens and cheered for it, or didn't, with the rest of the Capitol. He bridges this mental gap neatly and without thinking directly of it. The Initiate and the Titan are, maybe, different kinds of alive in his mind.

[carnagecarnival]

No drugs today. Part of him thinks, thanks gods. Thanks gods he ain't to be having any more of that. Another part gives up into despair, willing himself ill again to have those things his body itches for, one the very few things these days. Both parts aren't big enough to be quantified in halves.

Atlas is right. It doesn't hurt so bad no more. He knew, from the moment they grabbed him back in that warehouse, he'd heal up just fine. He's done it once before in this life, twice in the stretching course of his soul. It's different, but it's close enough the same to count for something.

Atlas, he finds, is usually right about a lot of things. If he voiced what he thought of half-lives and half-deaths, he's not sure if he'd agree for certain, but Atlas, in some way or other, would probably be right. Half real. Half gone. His soul's been stripped of his face, no more paint for him, but he's alive despite. Which would mean all them other, older Avoxes might be further away than he. They could step through either door, if they wanted. He knows better than most, not a miracles are purely good, or even good at all. This is a miracle.

It will remain so as long as he stays set in this balance. Like the days of funambulism, of the grief trapeze. He needs a firm balance not to fall one way or the other. He needs a tight grip and control not to fall away from grief's grip to the ground below. He needs it now not to let his hands shake or give way to so much as twitch. He knows that the fact he's focusing this hard on it is a bad sign. He is terrified, but he learned well before his Avoxing how to hide his fear.

Too bad achieving it in full was impossible. There's a twitch in one finger, and a catch in his breath, all so small and fast it would be without notice all otherwise. But Atlas never misses a tell. The question is, will he be saved this round for the next? Or done all the sooner?

[vox_tacenda]

Atlas notices. The motion of his face, when he sees it, stills. His smile turns a little less warm. His look turns a little more clinical.

He has no moral compunctions whatsoever about sending Avoxes back for more conditioning. It's like turning your car in for a tune-up, like replacing the batteries in a worn-out clock. But it's also not a decision he makes lightly, because you can't just send an Avox back every two weeks and expect it to perform as it should. It's like washing your hands too much - maybe they stay clean, but then they dry out and peel and crack, and you bleed. There's only so much fear even an Avox can take before the mind doesn't just go silent, but starts to slip beyond the power of even the Capitol to mold.

"Feeling all right there, Titan?" he asks, looking down at those hands, now still. His tone is distant. Neutral. He performs a quick check of the wrists and arms, looking for bruises, for sensitive places, for knots in the muscles. Quick, impersonal work.

--And then, simultaneously, he gives the left thumb a swift, sharp tug, and looks straight up into the Initiate's face. Two stimuli at once, the classic test, the one they teach them to administer in training. An Avox properly conditioned would let its hand go limp and drop its eyes at the same time. An Avox just beginning to slip would do one or the other-- pull back against the tug but drop its eyes, or look into his face but let its muscles go slack. An Avox dangerously close to independence would do neither.

[carnagecarnival]

No. Oh no, He thinks all too clearly.

The fear runs through him electric, like he's prepared already for what is most surely to come. Old fear instinct would tell him to be anything but still, tell him to take breaths fast and shallow.

He knows he's fucked up. He overcompensates on new instinct, trying too hard to be stone, to lack in breath at all, as Atlas looks over him. It's inevitable as death, yet he tries to avoid his reconditioning all the same. The wipe alone is something he's resistant to, but no matter how he signed himself up for this, no matter how he cares for those once close, the looming week of reconditioning in a hazy fog of agony and terror is more a press on his mind.

He expected every test come before, but this one catches him. There's a brief second of resistance in his hand, but that manages limpness. It's his eyes that damn him. They go wide with shock. With terror. With all too much expression and sense of being alive. He's not so strong that staring into Atlas's eyes doesn't halt his heart and bring sense like he's been cut clean. But he meets them, dark and indigo-grey colliding and Titan has never been so unprepared for the dark.

It's done. He's finished. All he can do is try and alleviate some of the fear that swells in him now, ducking his head down all too late.

[vox_tacenda]

Atlas looks right into those wide, frightened eyes. Holds the gaze as many milliseconds as the Avox will look back at him. Because even that's a gauge - not the fact of his fear, but how effectively it controls him. Fear is a thing he's been taught all the ways to quantify.

He drops the hand as soon as it goes limp. That split-second resistance, he felt that, but might have let it go if not for that stare. In combination, they tell him just what he needs to know, this man who understands the fear in front of him better than any Capitolite (except maybe those whose job it is to program it in)-- who knows it in all its forms and lives safe in the knowledge that he will never be forced to truly feel it.

"Well," he murmurs, soft enough for only the Avox to hear. "That didn't take long, did it." And he reaches down beside him to pick up a tablet lying on a nearby table. On the screen is a long, long list of numbers.

"Hey! Sixtus!" he calls as he scrolls, and now the Initiate might as well be invisible in front of him. Atlas' eyes go past him, seem to look through him, more in the manner of a Capitolite than a handler. "Mark this down - six-four-four-eight-two-four, set for reconditioning on... let's make it next week's shipment out. No need to drug it yet, but put it down for daily assessment. In four days, start administering sedatives." He waits for the faint Got it, sir from across the room, and only then glances back up at the Avox.

"Take a load off," he tells him. "And report to me tomorrow morning, before duty." He watches him a second longer than he otherwise might have - performing one last silent check. Watching for a tell that might suggest his Titan's even farther gone than he thought.

And then his eyes slide past the Avox, and he beckons the next one forward. "Come on up here, Birdie."

[carnagecarnival]

When Atlas ain't looking and he's been allowed invisibility once more, he still stands there shell-shocked. The words go through him. Next week. Four days from now the drugs will be back and he'll be both relieved in the sick part of him and wanting to yank his arm from the needle. He knows he won't. He won't fight for a moment. He won't even run. He'll report back to Atlas, just as he's told.

He feels stiff when he walks onward to his cot, leaving Birdie behind him. He's the horror story for them all. They'll be careful, now that he's done. Whether that will matter in the eyes of Atlas, he isn't sure.

He pulls his metal cot out and hates the whine it makes. His pillow and sheet are arranged in as much of a pile as he can manage of it, with a single feather at the top.

It had come from a pillow. He'd kept it. Avoxes weren't supposed to keep things, but he had and no one noticed it in the room's sterility. He put it with his too-small cot, and as he went to sleep, he held curled in his hand-- because everyone knows that Avoxes are only whole when they sleep, and maybe that's the truth in Atlas's sense of them being caught between alive and dead. It took him two more days to remember why it mattered, and even then it came in the most abstract sense, the most distant of logic. The feather is for Sigma. It's for Sigma the gamemaker whom he serves tea to every day. Sigma who means the world. He needs to give to Sigma. For a one day that has to do with his friends but he's not sure what it entails.

When the month passes and so comes his monthly reconditioning, he forgets what the feather is for but he finds it there and when he falls asleep, when he's closest by wherever it is the other part of his soul's gone to, he grips it tight in hand. It comes back later than before with each month, yet even still he clutches it tight in his sleep.

He curls himself up small on his pile and holds the feather in hand. In a week, he won't remember why it matters and when he forgets this time, he's not sure if the knowledge will come back. The one good thing is that he won't recall why that should hurt either.