thecapitol | Animals, Things and Elements possess a soul which man does not yet know.

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Animals, Things and Elements possess a soul which man does not yet know.

Who| Luna and friends, open
What| Luna's been reborn thanks to the Capitol, and now she's seeking out familiar faces.
Where| Detention Center
When| Backdated to after the D7 battles, before the power chip event
Warnings/Notes| Brainwashing/control talk.

Do not attempt escape. Do not cause trouble. Do not aid any rebels you see. Those few simple commands are enough to close the cage around what might be Luna's soul, if she even has one.

When she wakes up in the Capitol she knows her body and mind are different instinctively once again. It's not long before she's informed that the Capitol has deigned to return her original mechanical body to her, generously adapted to allow her to function independently on Earth. The catch, of course, is that they want loyalty in return. In fact, one of the extra modifications they've made to her design is the absolute rule that she must follow orders, to ensure that loyalty. Luna feels it: extra threads monitoring her decision-making processes, too clumsily integrated to be Sigma's work (although he surely must have been involved in the work on her body) but functional all the same. She's aware of the processes that govern her behavior but she can't change them, so the change is here to stay.

Detainment Center Infirmary
GAULEMs are good for many things in the Rhizome 9 facility, but in Panem without a larger system to interact with Luna isn't much more useful than she was with an organic body. Medical and technical capability remain her foremost skills in the Capitol's eyes, and so Luna's assigned to around-the-clock duty in the infirmary - less risky than allowing her increased access to tech, obedience or not. It's a count for the Capitol in a manner, because she's aware that they could very well order her to enter combat as a soldier and she'd do it for all she'd hate herself. Luna doesn't care if it's probably less mercy and more lack of bothering. At least she can still pretend that she can follow her own rules this way.

She's not the only one there, of course. Security takes issue with giving an offworlder, robotic or not, free reign of the place. There's always another doctor or nurse on hand to give her orders and make sure she doesn't go haywire and tear up the place (as if that were possible to begin with) but for mundane tasks and grunt work, Luna's free to attend to patients like any other staff on hand. Most of the time, that means greeting any ailing inhabitants of the detainment center with a soft voice and an attitude far too meek for any normal nurse.

Detainment Center Visiting Room
Once in a while when a staff member feels bad for her or (more likely) gets tired of her presence, Luna's let go to do as she wants for a few hours as long as she doesn't cause trouble. The time off work is a relief at first, but Luna quickly finds that as soon as the relief passes she doesn't really know what to do with herself. She's allowed to leave the detainment center but doesn't feel much like enjoying herself in the city, and even just sitting quietly gives her too much room to stew in her thoughts. She can't even take a little solace in her music box these days, having left it in District Thirteen before the battle that got her killed. She wonders if it will get thrown away anyway in her absence despite her efforts to keep it safe. She won't blame anybody if they do.

Free time more than anything leaves her feeling aimless and alien like the early days after her creation, and like those days the end result is a crushing sense of loneliness - the kind that creates a brittle, permeating ache that comes from no external stimulus. Eventually she starts visiting the detainment center, inquiring after every name she can think of save Sigma's (he wouldn't be here, of course). Some people aren't here, and whatever reasons behind each of their cases she's glad. Too many names still are, and she can't help but request an audience with them. She needs the company; maybe they will too.

Detainment Center Visiting Room; for Sansa Stark
Luna's surprised to hear that Sansa's living out in the Capitol rather than being detained, but she's glad. Sansa deserves more than this, and Luna had feared the worst for her when Sansa remained the only District Six Tribute unaccounted for during her time in Thirteen. She dithers for a little while on whether to contact her, not wanting to drag her down by association, but ultimately goes for it: Sansa would probably have wanted the same if their positions had been reversed. She asks for a message to be sent, and a meeting time is arranged. When the time comes Luna tries to look more presentable than she feels before she comes into the visiting room, so as not to worry Sansa too much.

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Luna shakes her head insistently, eyes wide. That's definitely not the reaction she expected, and she doesn't see how Firo's claim fits her at all. She's a robot, meant to protect and serve humans; she has fantasies of human life, sure, but it's nothing that could ever be real. Even Sigma had never tried to suggest that in the Nonary Game, citing her very nature as a robot as the reason he trusted her instead. So the fact that Firo insists that she's the same as a human - it's so alien, she barely knows how to respond.

"You haven't seen what I really am." Her words are halting, unsure. "I have a different purpose, and different needs. I might act human, but in the end I'm something else. That's just what I am." The nature of code and programs, Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics on robots' relation to humans - those are how Luna's made sense of herself since the day Kyle rejected having a machine for a mother. Equating herself to a human just doesn't make sense on those terms.

Firo's not sure if he even wants to ask about different needs. Already the phrase reminds him of Ennis's calm acceptance when she mentioned how Szilard essentially starved her her whole life. The way Luna talks about these things--like it's cut and dried--is unsettling in a very similar way. Firo doesn't pity easily, but he's feeling it now.

He tilts his head to one side. He's almost afraid of the answer to the next question too. "What's your purpose then, huh?"

Who even needs a purpose? That already sounds rather silly to him.

"To help people...to help humans, or anyone else like them. I take care of people, and do what needs to be done." There are a lot of ways to answer the question, but this one comes easily to her right now. "There were...many reasons I was created. Not all of them worked out very well. But that's what I decided felt right. That's what I believe is right."

Luna's voice is still quiet, but her conviction is clear enough and her words flow more smoothly now. It doesn't really matter to her that she takes her morals from how a human science fiction author thinks robots ought to behave. It felt right when she first discovered the Three Laws, and it feels right now. If the laws happen to place robots as humans' tools - well, that fact only dawned long after the point was internalized.

He’s surprised to hear her say that these are what she’s decided on. It’s a comfort, in a way, to hear that she’s been allowed that much agency. Firo’s pretty sure he’d be a whole lot more selfish with it in her situation. “So you can believe things, but you still think you’re different from a human?”

He would’ve thought the implication of choosing to believe something is enough to put her solidly in the camp of humanity.

He sighs. “Any human who’d let somebody say her whole purpose is to serve humans is pretty damn selfish. Why would you wanna help someone like that anyway?” Let them pick up after themselves.

"How do you--" For a moment Luna thinks he means Sigma, since even after everything that's happened Sigma is the one administrator she has who's still alive. But there's no way for Firo to know that her creator is in the Capitol right now, let alone the complications of their history.

She shakes her head, trying to dismiss her exclamation, and then turns her head to the side thinking of the past. "Whether or not someone's selfish doesn't change the fact that they're alive. Everyone is worth protecting." She's still looking away so her expression isn't as clear, but Luna doesn't make too much effort to mask the tired droop in her body. Sixteen years spent in the Rhizome, four spent watching a family grow where there hadn't been one before. It still breaks her heart to know that Kyle and Akane are dead twice over. "The people I worked for...they did things I thought were wrong. But I still cared about them."

Absent the rest of her question, he assumes that she’s just going to ask some rhetorical question about how he could make his assertions. As such, he doesn’t think to ask what she meant.

He lets his eyes wander around the room. “I’m the last guy to tell anybody to abandon their people for doin’ something wrong…” He has to concede that much, considering he knows very well that everything his Family is involved in is criminal and potentially harmful to others.

Looking up, he finally notices how slack her body seems. A couple years ago, he likely wouldn’t have paid much mind to the observation—or maybe he would’ve seen it as a slackening of her resolve and a sign to try pushing his argument harder. Now he may not yet be a gentle enough person to back off because of it, but he does have the presence of mind to soften his tone. “But just because they’re alive? How far are you gonna go with that? Everybody can't be worth it--what if it's somebody you don't even know?”

He thinks back to their first meeting in the Arena and how she seemed like she was about to charge back into the carnage of the Cornucopia. He’d initially thought that maybe she just didn’t understand how dangerous it was, being new and all, but perhaps she really just didn’t care. Risking your life for your friends is one thing, he thinks, but for anyone who’s breathing? It seems a bit messed up to him. It’s precisely the sort of thing Szilard wanted in his homunculi, which is enough for Firo to decide that it’s absolutely wrong.

"Why should that matter?" To Luna it doesn't make sense to pick and choose. That would be selfish, and she wasn't built to be selfish. But if Firo disagrees she doesn't really want to argue with him either, nor does she want to dump all her life woes on him - so she gives a little instead. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to say you're wrong. But I don't think it's right, either, to say other people don't matter because I don't know them. Isn't there a saying? 'A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet'?" Certainly it's been true for Luna and a few other people she's met here. Everyone from her district, of course, and Firo himself counts too.

Of course, she can't just see people in terms of whether they're friends or not. That just isn't right in her eyes. "And besides...here they're able to bring people back if they die, but in most cases that's not true for any human. But I can be rebuilt just as I am now, as long as my memories and personality are saved. So if things come to the worst...it should take more to hurt me seriously, than it should take for you."

Which is just a way of saying she's more expendable, even if what she's said is more or less true for most people (if not Firo himself). Luna figures it's one of the reasons they changed her body when bringing her back.

He smirks. “Or an enemy you haven’t met yet. You can’t tell if somebody’ll throw you to the wolves to save their own skin just when you first meet ‘em.”

Though it sounds like she may not really have a problem with that, so he figures he needs to beef up his argument.

“It’s a waste, that’s why. What if you go through all that for some guy who’s a creep or a murderer, huh? And it’s probably not very fun to fall apart and get rebuilt.”

Firo’s died several times and enjoyed none of them. Back home, when his revival took at most a couple minutes, usually his biggest concern was that his clothes would be ruined. But that doesn’t mean that experiencing the pain and helplessness was something he’d readily choose to do either. It’s hard for him to comprehend being “reassembled” as anything different.

Well, he's got her there. "It's not," Luna admits. She hasn't taken much physical damage in this form but she has lost her artificial skin, gotten shut down, been terminated and wiped...yeah. Not very fun.

As for the rest, she doesn't have to think too hard about it either. She already knows a murderer or two, and technically she works for another. She's never thought about it in Firo's exact terms, but thinking of Dio the logic is clear in her mind. "Murderers are still people. If they try to take life, then it's only right for me to help their victims. But even a murderer has a life of their own. I don't really."

Firo's looking about it wrong, she thinks. His homunculus friend - they're human, even if they were created like Kyle was. Luna's different from that. "I know I look like a human, but the truth is that I'm a machine. I'm what people made me to be. My body had to be modified, just so I could function on my own...so it's not the same thing, whatever kind of life I do have." And she wishes otherwise, so much - but that's only ever been fantasy, and nothing more.

“What exactly are you sayin’? You’re different so you don’t deserve the same things everybody else wants for themselves?” The question is decidedly rhetorical.

If anything, it's an oversimplification of what she's been saying; he's disheartened that she doesn't seem convinced, and he's looking for anything he can try to fashion into an argument. He realizes he’s getting into that mode where he turns an argument—or, in this case, something that should be more of a discussion between friends—into something of a dirty fight.

He sighs and drops his head. “…I guess it’s not really right for me to tell you what to think.” Isn’t that the kind of thing he hates? He’s about as bad as Szilard if he presumes to boss around people like Luna and Ennis.

But then there are some things that are just facts--he smiles, a bit of self-consciousness and a bit of ruefulness in it. “…Because you’re just as human as the rest of us. I still don't think it matters how you're made, what you're made of, or what you were made for.”

It's strange, it's really strange. Nobody's ever suggested that Luna is human before. Even Sigma's younger self, the one who comforted her and railed against her circumstances in the Nonary Game, had never tried to say she was. Everyone she's told in Panem hasn't cared about what she is and that in itself is new and unfamiliar, but Firo arguing that she's on the same level as a human is almost alien. Luna finds herself at a loss, unsure of how to respond. "Firo..."

It's touching, in a way, but the sentiment is bittersweet. She doesn't believe it; she's not really human. Sixteen years of belief is hard to challenge. Luna understands that it means Firo cares, though, so she can hardly hold it against him. "Thank you. Nobody's ever said that to me before. It's...nice." She smiles at him, gentle but reserved.

He half-smiles, slightly saddened by her response. The words are faultlessly polite and kind, and he wouldn't expect any different, but he thinks he can read between the lines to see what a certain absence means. "'Nice', but not enough to convince you?"

For now. He has no idea how much time the turmoil of war will give them, but he means to work on this with whatever time they do have left.

"I'm sorry. I really am." And Luna means it, because she knows Firo believes every word he says. She wishes she could too. "To be honest, I wish it were true. But I am what I am. I'm just a--a machine. I...they can't be the same thing."

There's disbelief and denial mixed together in her words, but the end result is that Luna can't accept what he's saying. Truthfully she sometimes fantasizes about being human, with all the freedom it affords - like the ability to love others and have that loved returned, and a destiny beyond the walls of a single facility. It's her longest and deepest fantasy, but one she's afraid to admit for what it is. It's just fantasy, after all. It could never be real no matter what either she or Firo want to believe.

He wrinkles his nose. It may bother him more than he'd like to admit, but, ultimately, he's not the one being hurt by this kind of thinking. "Don't apologize to me."

"Who says they can't be the same?" Probably a poor wording on that rhetorical question, he realizes. "If that's what you want, then you can make it the same."

For Firo, the logical reaction to being told you can't do something is to do it. In this case, that only makes further sense to him considering she says it's something she wants.

Luna's stunned by the question for how impossible it seems, and she shakes her head mutely for a moment before finding her voice. "I can't. I can't make myself human any more than you can make yourself a robot. They're just not the same." She struggles to find the words, but how does anyone explain something so fundamental? "The people I took my orders from, the books I've read...none of them have ever even considered the idea. I've lived with humans my entire life. I know I can't be one of them."

It's shaky logic, relying on others' beliefs, and she's aware of it. Her hesitance shows in the way her voice becomes softer, less sure of herself, but still convinced enough. The difference between herself and other humans is the foundation upon which her understanding of herself is based, and Luna's not yet ready to consider what it means if that foundation isn't as steady as she thinks.

He raises an eyebrow, "You'd listen to a book?" Books are for stories and stories are for kids. Firo can't see the value in paying much attention to one of those things for anything, much less shaping your identity.

"And the people you take orders from--didn't you ever think that maybe they've got a reason to want you to think that way? It's a pretty sweet deal for them--they get to do whatever the hell they want to you and you don't even argue."

He shrugs. "I've lived with humans my whole life too. They're always out to use people, and they'll say whatever they have to to get you."

"Well..." Luna falters again, unsure of how to argue against it. It's true that Firo must know humans better than Luna does, and it's true that Luna's superiors prefer her to be obedient without question. Or at least, Akane did. Kyle had assumed that of her to start, but hadn't cared enough about her to try and use her. She's been back and forth with her own thoughts as to where Sigma falls in this matter, given how he's been towards her in Panem.

"That's not entirely true," she says at last, as both admission and defense. "If they really wanted control over me, there were other ways to do that. If my personality had been written differently, or if I'd been programmed to follow orders without question, there would have been no need to control what I do. There's a difference." And it's a difference she feels heavily right now, knowing what the Capitol has done to her.

"So they're not as terrible as they coulda' been?" He shakes his head. He'd be angry that she doesn't seem to think that she deserves any better if he didn't simply feel bad for her. As it is, he has plenty of anger to direct at these unknown creators. "Sorry, but I'm not gonna give 'em a pat on the back for that."

Ennis and the other homunculi had eventually developed free will, after all. Szilard not creating some measure to prevent that or remove it from them doesn't make him a saint.

Firo reflects that Szilard was probably limited in what he could do--thank goodness--but Luna makes it sound as if making her completely different were possible. He bites his cheek, wondering about that. "Why didn't they?"

Why indeed. It's a question Luna's never considered directly, assuming the procedure for handling disobedient GAULEMs was enough before she'd learned the truth about why Sigma had made her. That relates more to what she means to him, and their relationship...but in the end being programmed to love someone isn't all that different from being programmed to obey, is it? She still only has Sigma's word about his motives, but she trusts what he told her that night at the crowning. She does.

"I'm...special to my creator, in a number of ways. And he's special to me, too." There's a beat before Luna realizes the potential implications of that statement and then she waves her hands in embarrassment, backpedaling frantically. "N-not like that! What I mean is...when he was making me, he wanted me to be myself. To, um, choose what felt right for me." And if there's any contradiction between that statement and the rest of what Luna's said, it's lost on her right now.

At Luna's first words about her relationship with her creator, Ennis's words about her own relationship with Szilard come rushing back: I'm the closest thing he has to a daughter. A chill runs down his spine, but it's soon forgotten as Luna moves on.

It takes him a moment to catch up to what she's saying their relationship isn't. He's nearly as embarrassed, blushing slightly. "I-I wasn't gonna think that!" Geez, Luna, way to make it awkward.

He glances off to the side to recover. "What's he actually done to let you do that? The way you talk, it doesn't sound like he's helped you much."

Firo supposes he's not so great himself for pushing her so much, but surely a responsible friend to Luna--creator or not, but especially a creator--wouldn't let her ideas about her humanity go unchallenged.

Luna's still a little flustered because truthfully it is a little like she implied, except it's never going to happen and frankly never should. But that thought actually ties into what Firo's asking, because she'd had to wrestle with these questions right before the war for the same reason her love life is a lost cause. "He's helped me a great deal, actually." She smiles sadly, and just barely remembers that she can't look to her lost pendant for comfort. "He's done things that hurt me as well. But in the end...well, it's something very personal, to both him and me. It shouldn't be only my decision to tell you." She means it, too. Diana isn't her story to tell right now.

"What matters is that I know the worst that could have happened. This wasn't it. And he...looking back, I did have to choose when it mattered the most." Luna's very certain about her first point, thanks to the Capitol's modifications, but when talking about her need to choose she sounds almost surprised by that thought. She knows full well what happened, but the juxtaposition with her current situation is striking right now. "I had my orders...but there was always a choice, even when I didn't realize it."

He nods, a touch hasty. It sounds like it’d be better to just shove this specific uncomfortable topic. “Right.” He doesn’t want to press too much on that. Not if it’s tangled up in totally-not-but-maybe-romance things. It’s none of his business.

None of this is his business, but he ignores that fact when it comes to the rest of it.

He rests his chin on his palm and watches as she continues talking. Again, he can’t stop his mind from drawing the parallels to Ennis, parallels that only make his concern for Luna’s situation worse.

Ennis had a choice. She nearly wound up dead on the ground for making it, but she still had a choice. Suffer by killing her only friends or suffer by dying bit by bit due to her creator’s power. Some choice.

So he’s still skeptical. “Uh-huh. Come on, ‘not the worst’ doesn’t mean he’s anything special either." With the life he's lived, Firo's usually grateful for good enough. When it comes to his friend's important people, though? No way. That's the kind of thing that needs only the best. "So what if he let you have a choice? That's yours to begin with. If a guy steals something from you and gives it back, you're not gonna thank him. You're gonna cut his hand off.”

"Um..." Luna gives Firo a wary look - does he go around cutting off the hands of everyone who steals from him? Is that something that happens often? - but she opts not to comment on it in the end. She doesn't really want to go there. There's more important matters at hand anyway, like the fact that she's trying very hard to convince Firo (and maybe herself) that things aren't so bad as he claims. Luna feels like she's defending Sigma's honor as well as her own, and while Sigma is hardly a saint she's not going to blame him for things he doesn't deserve. "He didn't take anything away from me. He..." Luna has to pause, to find the words. Explain things the right way. Maybe then Firo will understand.

She settles on a slight tangent. "That was never something I had until he made his own choice. You've used before machines before, haven't you? A car, or an elevator at least. They don't get a choice in what they do. In the end, the only difference between them and me is what I look like, and that I was given the ability to decide."

Firo's fists clench at that analogy, the knuckles turning white. Damn, he really wants to hit someone now. Not Luna, of course, but someone. One of the people she lived with or one of the people who wrote those bullshit books she said she read. It takes effort not to yell, too, but he manages to keep his voice low and even. "No. You're wrong about that."

But what does he have to back that up besides his conviction? That's a little harder, but he just keeps his mouth moving and hopes his brain catches up. "You... You want things--you said so yourself. You talk to people, you make friends. That makes you completely different from something like that."

Luna doesn't have a response for that at first. He's right, she does do those things. And she feels something from it all, at least in terms of whatever kind of feelings a robot has. But it's not the same thing as being human, is it? Surely someone would have had to see it if so. Kyle had seen her as a pale imitation of a mother, or an extension of his father's will; Akane and Phi and the Capitol see her as a thing to carry out orders. Sigma knows her better than anyone, and if he sees her as human he's never mentioned it.

"It's not like that." She sounds less sure of herself this time, but that's the answer she sees. Luna can't seem to find the words to explain it, though; it feels like she's been going in circles this whole conversation, and she only halfway knows what to make of things anymore. She's made to follow orders, but she believes Sigma when he says he gave her a choice. Now she doesn't have a choice at all. None of that makes her human, but she can't figure out how to connect all the points for Firo now. "It's...not as different as you think."

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