thecapitol | I'm Down Shouting Names at the Flickering Screen [Open]

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I'm Down Shouting Names at the Flickering Screen [Open]

WHO| Howard and anyone!
WHAT| Howard decides to get serious about the Games.
WHERE| Tribute Lounge
WHEN| Post-Arena
WARNINGS| Swearing.

There's been enough hiding. There's been enough moping. Howard knows that this feeling of motivation is fleeting, and that just means he has to cling to his productivity for as long as he can before it slips back into despair. Before he thinks about how he's going to die again. Before he wonders where Eponine is. Before he thinks about how she left him like his parents did. Before he cries.

So instead of feeling that, he's going to feel something else. He's going to feel entertained. And possibly, he'll learn something along the way; it's about time he forces himself to study. About time he moves past the squeamish feelings of seeing people he knows bleed and scream on the screen and actually starts taking notes on who to ally with and who to stab in the back, or, potentially, in the front.

He sits in a Tribute lounge with snacks, feet propped up on a glass coffee table, starving body covered in comfy clothes his stylists won't let him wear outside, a fluffy blue bathrobe and canvas cargo pants. His hand periodically moves from its path between bowl of snacks and his mouth to grab a cup of melted butter.

He doesn't care how tacky or unhealthy is it. He covers that bowl of popcorn in butter and plops down on the couch, munching away at it as he watches Wesker and Maximus attack each other.

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She wasn't going to make a comment on that, though she very noticeably rolled her eyes at him. It always made her feel like a teenager, acting with one. She got to use all of the habits she saw kids today do. Not that she was looking old, of course. But she was a girl who could do whatever she wanted to.

So she rolled her eyes, flopping back onto the couch and watching him. "Pulling a knife on someone who was taking one, maybe two pieces of popcorn? Right, I forgot, that's not 'flipping out', that's more 'taking things in stride', right? Might want to work a little harder on it."

"Fuck off." Howard huddles over on his edge of the couch, perched on the armrest. "Maybe you shouldn't take people's food without asking."

Which is hypocritical, given his own larcenous tendencies, and also somewhat dishonest, because he wouldn't have given it to her anyway.

"So who're you?"

Another eye roll, and she waved her hand for one of the Avoxes to come over. "Could I have a bowl of popcorn, please? This guy over here's being stingy about his." She gave a smile to him as he scurried away, and then turned her gaze back at Howard.

"Fuck off yourself. I'm not apologizing again, and now I'm going to get my own bowl from some guy who I heard has gotten his tongue cut out, because I'm sure he loves doing what he does," She stretched out her arms and legs with a yawn, using the motion so she could run her fingers through her hair.

"Cindy. Who're you?"

"Supposedly he knew what risk he was running when he betrayed the government, and he's lucky not to be dead." Howard isn't sure he believes that, but he's not about to stick his neck on the line defending the humanity of the servants. He's got his own skin to worry about, and at least they only cut out the guy's tongue; where Howard's from, the Avox would be a pretty red splatter on the ground.

Fucking kids and their telekinesis.

"Howard. District One."

"Please, if I had to choose between death and being maimed? I'd choose death every time." Ah, there we go, just in time, and she takes the bowl from the Avox with a shrug. "No offense." That was directed as he handed the bowl over without, well. Without a sound, as awful as it was to say.

"Right, we're supposed to say our districts. Totally forgot. I'm in eleven," Cindy ate some popcorn. "So what's the plan, here, are you trying to brush up on the history, or pick up some ideas of what to do next time?"

"I wouldn't. Death or torture, maybe, but just missing your tongue? Whatever." He shrugs, not bothering to care that the Avox knows he's being talked about. Howard's already starting to see them as furniture or robots; the way Capitol citizens treat them does nothing to dispel this belief.

He always assumes they just surgically remove the tongues while the Avoxes are anesthetized. He doesn't know why. Maybe it's just that the idea of violence existing in the Capitol, instead of the Arena, seems off to him.

"Pretty much. Ideas, patterns, familiar faces. I been avoiding it too long."

Having your tongue cut out wasn't torture? That's what she would like to say, but then again, she didn't really want to get into an argument with this kid about what was considered torture and what wasn't. But it still gnawed at her, that torture was so very easily dismissed, here. Just in a general sense, of course, but people who made themselves look crazy and have people fight to the death for their entertainment probably thought torture was some cool new fad.

"So long as it's not my tongue," She muttered, rolling her shoulders back. She'd like to ask when he got out of the arena, but that seemed sort of close to asking how you were killed.

Oh, screw it. "When did you get out of the arena?" She's curious, but her voice stays neutral.

"Few weeks ago. I killed myself." He doesn't sound shaken by that, because he isn't. In a way, it made him feel powerful, to be able to just cancel himself out like that and escape the awful situation Hyperion put him in.

Better dying by his own hand than someone else's.

He kicks his feet back up on the coffee table. "Been through three of these so far. I'm waiting to get totally desensitized."

"Ballsy," Cindy has to remark. There's something, oh, she doesn't know, honorable in killing yourself, rather then letting someone else do it. Or maybe not honorable, but something to be commended for. She really didn't know this kid, and his whole fight first ask questions later bothered her for a moment (but that was more likely because she'd done that before and knew how annoying it could be), but she liked him.

"Please. No one gets totally desensitized to this shit." Cindy got a sort of perverse pleasure at cursing. If only those Cinderella fans could see her now. "You lose another piece of yourself every time, sure, but you also gain a piece. A dead piece." She shrugged.

"Paranormal people say that the dead can still feel something. Never really bought into that, but hey, what do I know? I don't look for ghosts."

"Wow, that's like. Super morbid of you." He shrugs, then waves a hand. "I have a dead friend. He's like, legit dead, reanimated corpse dead."

He'd rather be desensitized. He knows it's a comfort to some people who don't want to lose their souls, but he'd be happy chucking his out the window if it meant relief from the nightmares, from the panic that comes out of nowhere, from the memories that bubble up.

"I'd give money not to feel anything."

"It must be all this dying stuff making me feel a little bit morbid. Not like you deal with anything like this back home," Cindy ate some more popcorn be looking over again. "Seriously? What the hell kind of world do you live in, people being dead and alive. It sounds like a bad B-list horror movie."

Sure, she knew of someone like that. Poor Franky, his head in a cage, but that was probably the by-product you got by being Frankenstein. "Yeah? I'd think being a robot wouldn't have as many perks as being human. Plus, isn't it that robots always want to be human, anyway?"

"You don't." Howard licks butter off his lower lip and eats another handful of popcorn. "And I live in this world. The dead guy's here. His name is R, but I call him Rob, because get it? Rob Zombie?"

He leans back in the couch and rests his head on his forearm. "That's only the stories humans write about robots. I'm sure robots write tons of stories about humans wanting to be androids."

Edited 2013-06-16 04:47 (UTC)

"True," She'd concede that point to him, but once again, she had to roll her eyes. "I meant more like what your world back home is like but-- seriously? Rob Zombie?" She cracked a grin. "I'll admit, that's a pretty good one. An awful good one, but a good one all the same."

She ate some more popcorn, musing on that one. Was that what robots did, or what he thought they did? Had to be the second one, but you couldn't be too sure, here. "Also pretty depressing." She paused, and then leaned a little closer to him. Not close to invade his space, but close so that it seemed like a conversation to each other, not just talking back and forth.

"Want to hear a story? It doesn't have robots in it, but it has people who are like robots."

He grins when she approves of the stupid joke, though it falters with what he says next. "My world back home's pretty shitty too. This place is a serious step up. There's at least food here."

Howard raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms, keeping his bowl of popcorn safely on the far side of her. "Are you going to offer to tuck me in afterwards?"

No, really, there was no food back home for him? The whole pulling a knife over some popcorn was definitely not a good enough indicator of that. "Good food at that." Maybe this place wasn't such a step up for her, but there were some perks.

That was not going to be a perk for anyone, though. "Fuck no, I'm not your mom," Cindy tossed some of her own popcorn at him. "Definitely not your mom or anyone's mom, but I can tell a good fairy tale if I'm in the mood."

"I can't really tell. All I care is that it's there."

He grabs the popcorn she throws at him and stuffs it in his mouth. "So what's the point of a fairy tale, then? I'm fifteen, I haven't believed in that shit since I was like, four."

"As much as you want, when you want, and no need to go shank someone over it." Really, she could dump the entire bowl of popcorn on the floor, right in front of one of those Avoxes, and they would bring her another. Even servants at the castle rarely did that. Not that she ever wanted to. She had enough cleaning up messes to worry about new ones.

"Believe it or don't, doesn't make it any less of a story. Real stories are boring, anyway. Fairy tales are so much more fun to talk about and listen to."

"Hey, old habits die hard. Let it go." He still hasn't really apologized and doesn't plan to. As far as he's concerned, she's being a dick by continuing to harp on it. He can't help that he still carries the wounds of his homeworld.

"How are fairy tales not boring? Spoilers, happily ever after. The end."

"I can see when I'm beaten," Cindy raised her hands in mock surrender, looking at the screen for a moment. Just in time to see some of the action. Did they really show this thing twenty-four/seven? That's something she might have a problem getting used to.

"Those endings suck. They never tell you what happened after the happily ever after. Or that no one ever gets a happily ever after. I don't tell stories where people get happily ever afters."

Howard purses his lips and furrows his brow slightly, before flopping back on the armrest of the couch.

"Okay, fine, my curiosity is picketed. Tell me a fairy-tale."

"Great!" Cindy grinned, beaming at him as she scooted back to the arm rest on her side, one leg up on the couch. She didn't get to tell too many stories. What she did was top secret, classified, after all, she couldn't go around telling stories of what she did day to day.

But no one knew her, here. And she could pass everything off as a fairy tale. She wasn't going to spill any big secrets. "Once upon a time, a fairy tale princess got her wish granted by a fairy godmother. But the fairy godmother didn't realize that when she granted wishes for people to live happily ever after, with whatever prince or king, or whatever they wanted, that her wishes always backfired. Everyone only got what the fairy godmother wished for them, not their actual wish."

Cindy grinned. "So, imagine all those poor people who got stuck with awful things happening to them, because they made the mistake of wishing for it. But years passed, and no one complained to her, but she wasn't around to complain to anyway. Now, that princess changed. Became someone who traveled the world, once she ditched the guy that came with that wish that fucked things up. She started working for this big, bad guy, you know, spying for him and things like that. It's all fun, and then she hears about regular people getting magic weapons." Cindy paused.

"Magic weapons would be awesome, right? I mean, you barely have to do anything. You just say a magic word and go."

Howard pays strangely rapt attention. Storytelling became something of an art in the FAYZ, without internet or videogames or music to pass the time. Many fifteen year-olds would only half pay attention, but Howard's mind doesn't wander. His eyes stay on Cinderella's face, his mind on filling in the unanswered blanks in her story.

"And obviously you can't keep control of people if they have as good of weapons as you."

Even little kids didn't pay this much attention to stories like this. Not that Cindy spent any time with little kids, so maybe she couldn't really compare the two. She did remember the rapt attention every kid had when she'd sat in the theater watching the Disney version of her story, but a moving picture was different then words you couldn't see.

"Bingo. And regular people can't handle magic. They just go crazy with it, and no one needs to deal with that. So the big, bad guy tells the spy to find out where these magic weapons are coming from. Someone has to be dealing in them, and the spy goes to find out. She travels halfway around the world in search of the dealers, but when she finds them, she's told that someone else is in charge. The dealers are working for someone, someone who has plenty of magic, enough to spread around, and who thinks that they're helping people."

Obvious enough to see who that was, right?

Howard sits back, resting his elbows behind him on the armrest of the couch, balancing the now-empty bowl of popcorn on his concave little stomach.

"Oh God. This isn't going to turn into 'Santa Claus is real and he's an weaponeer', is it?" If she weren't clearly going somewhere with this, he'd ask about the arms dealers - they're who interest him more, because he can see a bit of himself in the picture his active imagination is painting. Opportunists but not leaders. Facilitators but not creators.

"Santa Claus is definitely real, but he doesn't deal in weapons," Cindy laughed, crossing her ankles daintily. Her own bowl was in her lap, but she was too busy telling the story to actually eat any of the popcorn, now.

"So, our spy slips through a little portal between worlds. Obviously the magic world isn't going to also be the mundy world, so there has to be a way to get to both. She finds this gate, and goes through. What she finds is the scariest fucking thing she's ever seen." Maybe they weren't so different, after all. Cindy wasn't a leader, not by any means. She was the one who went in, did the dirty work, and got out. No fame or glory for her, and she didn't really want it, either. She liked what she did, though. Took pride in it.

"Everyone in this world is smiling. Not regular smiles." She smiles normally, to show him. "But big smiles, like their faces are stuck like that." She gives him the big creepy smile they had, like their faces were made of wax, and someone had forced it into this shape. She lets that go after a moment.

"Everyone. And if you don't have that smile on your face? They take you out. Shoot you right there in the middle of the street." Okay, she was taking some liberties with that one, but it was a story.

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