thecapitol | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Roland and the Signless
What| a reunion
Where| the Detainment Center in the Capitol
When| backdated to a few days after Signless died in the District 1 battle
Warnings/Notes| none

He keeps thinking of Firo. Thinking of the boy without thinking of him, his mind landing on the thought and flitting away from it. He remembers the sight of the boy torn apart, remembers seeing him in the halls of this building not so long after. He hadn't thought any of the offworlders would be brought back from war, wasn't sure whether the fools running this Capitol cared about their value as symbols to the people enough to try and keep them living, not now that the elaborate, idiotic plays that were the arenas are done with. Apparently they're worth something to those fools. Some of them, anyway. Gods know what.

Roland feels himself balancing on the edge of something, and doesn't like to think on what it might be. He doesn't like to think on the detachment he feels when he wonders if he's waiting, when he wonders just how much the life of an enemy footsoldier might be worth.

He'd rather think, instead, on the tools in his hand. Tools, at least, because he can't quite call them anything else. Brittle, breakable, dull on every side and much shorter than they ought to be, they're miles away from what he needs and all he is allowed if he wants to fix his hand.

It'd happened in that battle. He doesn't know when. He should, but he doesn't. It's taken this long to convince the peacekeepers to give him even this much. He tries one, two, three times to fit this stupid dull thing into the very tiny notch on the end of a very tiny screw and it should be no trouble, not for him. He leans forward, starting very carefully to turn the damned tool, turn the screw...

His necklace slips out from his shirt, knocks into the tool, and nudges it out of the very tiny slot of the very tiny screw.

"Damn it!" his hand is, at least, working well enough that when he moves to sweep the rest of the little tools, and the few parts of these fingers he's managed to disassemble, off the table, they go. They make a dull, small, and utterly unsatisfying sound as they hit the floor, and he holds a palm up in the direction of the peacekeeper just now passing near the open wall of his cell.

"It's alright. I only made a mistake. I cry your pardon. Shouldn't have raised my voice." He keeps his tone and posture submissive. It's a great effort but he does it, which is all that matters, and the man, after a second, keeps walking. Once he's out of sight Roland swallows, bows his head, sets an elbow on one knee and sets the fingers of his good hand to tugging at his hair. He swallows again, takes stock of himself, and wonders, vaguely, if he is about to weep.

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Another peacekeeper passes by. This one has someone else with him, someone a lot shorter and grayer than peacekeepers usually are, someone who was just revived and is still processing the fact that he's alive at all. He thought for certain that his death in District 1 would be the end of things. No matter how well he tried to behave, surely the Capitol would see a known past rebel on the forces of District 13 as cause to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt?

And yet here he is, very much alive and being manhandled down a hallway to his assigned cell. He'd heard the shout but had assumed running off down the hall to the room it came from wouldn't be taken well. It's actually seeing Roland hunched over and so pathetic that overrides his resolve to be good and makes him pause. He can't pass that by. He can't.

"Wait -- wait. Please, let me talk to him."

The peacekeeper grunts and nudges him with an elbow.

"Please. I can find my cell on my own, I --"

He'd heard the steps come closer and then stop, but hadn't looked up. Hadn't cared. But at the first sound of that voice, that voice, his head snaps up and shock spreads over his face. Shock and something else, something that creeps over his expression as slow as a rising sun.

"Please," he says, rough, and tries to control his voice but that is controlled. It's as polite and submissive, or close to, as he's going to get. He doesn't look away, either. His words may be for one of those men who chain and hold them here, but his voice, his eyes, those are for someone else entirely. "I'll- show him the way. To his cell. Once we're done. We'll cause no trouble. No reason for you to waste your time here on us anyway."

He raises his hand. He'd raised the right one, unthinkingly, but it looks fine enough, its first two fingers only stripped of their rubber covering and hanging at a bit of an odd angle. The hand's close to Signless, though, that's what matters, rising and stopping at the place where the invisible walls of these cells rise at night and close them in. It hangs there, palm up, not touching Signless yet but close, so close, and waiting. It must be less than a second, but it's an eternity of waiting.

There's another breathless moment of waiting while the guard appears to weigh the pros and cons. Apparently he decides he has better thing to do than walk twenty more feet down a hallway, because he grunts out what Signless assumes is a room number, turns, and tromps away.

Signless lets out the breath he hadn't entirely realized he'd been holding. There's a moment where he just looks at Roland and then his arms are around Roland's shoulders and he's half-kneeling next to his chair and he has no idea what happened in between point A and point B. It doesn't matter. This is where he ought to be right now. Roland's still-outstretched arm is now threaded over his shoulder, in prime position to bend inward into a hug if he so chooses to go that route.

"I am so, so sorry," he murmurs. His voice and shoulders both shake. If the last time he died in a lover's arms is any indication then he can't imagine what Roland's been going through in the time between his death and his revival. "I'm here now. I'm here."

Roland pulls Signless close instantly, unthinkingly. Signless' skin is against his, and the last time he'd felt the heat of that skin was as the heat began to go out of it. Signless' hair scratches against Roland's face and the last time he'd felt that he hadn't been able to feel it for long before he'd been pulled away. He remembers watching the way the breeze ruffled that hair, blowing it over those empty red eyes.

Roland draws back, needs to draw back and study those eyes, watch them move and think and see. It's not enough. He runs his free hand over Signless' face. The skin is warm, warm with life, and it's not enough. That free hand digs under Signless' collar then, looking for a certain necklace, wanting to grip the little charm on the end of it. Whether or not it's there, though, Signless' heart is here right under his hand, beating, and he lays his closed fist over it and sobs.

He tries to move the hand around Signless' shoulders, realizes those mechanical fingers have have caught a bit of Signless' hair in their gears, uncovered as they are. In that very same moment Roland realizes, too, that the sob was only a sound and nothing more. He'd been wondering, before, if he'd been about to weep. Seems he isn't.

Ought to be untangling that hand from Signless' hair, ought to have fixed it already, and he sobs again and it's still nothing more than a sound, his stomach clenches at it. "Not enough, Signless, tell me you're here. Tell me again."

Edited 2016-01-26 06:09 (UTC)

The necklace, thank any god who'll listen, they've let him keep. He's lost so much -- all his other charms, hidden secret in his Capitol room; the wooden cat that the Disciple gave to him, the of her he had to hold onto; his miniature lusus that Karkat loved so much. The necklace is the only material possession he has and the familiar weight of it has kept him going. It makes his heart ache to see the little water wheel dangling next to the stone he gave Roland, and he lets out an echoing sound that might be a sob or might be a laugh. Hard to tell.

"I'm here, I'm alive." He presses a kiss to Roland's temple, a quick chaste thing more to assure himself that the man in his arms is real and solid and not going anywhere. "We're both alive."

Roland leans in to kiss Signless' lips then, the motion hard and desperate not for the kiss itself but for the feeling, the gesture they've given one another so many times. His cheeks are still dry, his eyes are dry, but maybe all isn't lost just yet. He shifts the grip of his free hand, letting go of the little wheel and feeling it bounce against his hand as he flattens his palm against Signless' chest, takes a breath, feels that chest just as solid and warm as it ever was against him.

"You'll stay," he says, and the tone is rough and strained and Roland does not stop to consider whether or not it is a question. He tries to shift his position, get both arms around, but the bare metal and gears of him are still caught in all that thick hair and so he settles for curling the one hand he does have the use of, his fingers pulling at the Signless' shirt. "You'll stay this time, won't you, with me."

That's a hard question to answer and they both must know it. Signless at least is acutely aware that whatever answer he gives can't be a certain one. There's no way to know what the next day will bring. Maybe another battle. Maybe another death, permanent this time. Maybe nothing at all.

For a moment he doesn't answer, he just breathes in the dusty non-scent of rain and tobacco and something sterile and metallic that might be the fingers and might be the room.

"I'll stay. For as long as I can, I'll stay. Here. Let's get your hand free."

It frightens him exactly how broken-down Roland seems, but he knows better than to remark on it. Anything that could even be construed as negative toward the Capitol must be kept inside; anything less and they both risk being separated, being tortured, losing each other for real and for permanent.

Roland knows, too. Somewhere in him he knows that his was a question that can't be answered. He knows that he can see Signless' hand moving against his. He watches it, and he is silent, and his mind is silent. His head leans against Signless. Once his hand is free, his fingers flex. The movement isn't quite smooth.

"Need to break those down," he murmurs, tonelessly. "Response time's bad. Might be standing on some of the parts. Your hands are still steady, aren't they? Might need you to help me."

"I can do that," he says, nudging their noses together. The only way he really knows to comfort when he can't in good conscience fall back on meaningless lies is to stay as physically close as possible. It's going to have to be enough.

"You'll have to tell me how, but I'll do my best." He looks down, sees the glint of delicate pieces of metal on the floor exactly where Roland said they'd be. "Here. I'll gather all the pieces up and then we can go from there."

Roland knows he's being handled with a light touch. He stares at the dear face in front of him a moment, thinking about that, and thinking about the Signless' people and their pale romance, the fact that it exists seemingly for the sole purpose of treating a lover in that way. He can not deny to himself that he needs that light touch just now. He will never deny to anyone that Signless has the right to offer it.

But it doesn't mean that he is helpless. He grunts and draws away from Signless himself, hunkering near the floor to try and pick some of the pieces up. There might be a better way to do that than trying to use the very fingers those pieces came from, though. Might be. He frowns at his hand, as if it's the hand's fault he'd forgotten not to use it, and then looks up past the legs in front of him, up at Signless' face. His expression is more worried than he realizes; Roland may not need to check whether he's still here, alive and here with him, but Roland's heart doesn't know that. His mind isn't too sure, either.

"You've never worked with tools like this? It's much like my guns. My old guns. Smaller. I wonder if the guns they've had me using look the same when you open them. Which doesn't matter, of course," he adds, because it is habit to share with Signless these things and he falls back into it gratefully. "My mouth's gone moving without my mind to guide it a couple times, lately. That was always Cuthbert's way, never thought it'd be mine. His reaction to everything was to talk."

He looks up from where his look had wandered, gazing across the floor at the little bits of metal scattered over it and back up to Signless' face. You're still there, aren't you? Yes, he sees that you are. Good. That's good.

"I don't mind if it matters or not," Signless says, less because he thinks Roland really needs that reassurance and more because he thinks just hearing the sound of his voice at all might help. Any reminder he can give that he's still here, still okay, so Roland's heart can start learning it.

"I've never worked with anything like this before -- You'd want the Psiioniic for that." The Psiioniic who might be dead, just like everyone who's not in front of him right now and accounted for might be dead. He tries not to think too hard about that. Better to assume the best until he finds out the worst.

"I never really had an opportunity to learn; there wasn't much technology in the desert, and certainly nothing like this. The most advanced tool I've ever touched is a knife."

"You'll learn." He nods, acknowledging both his own statement and the fact that the Signless is here, he sees him here, and all is well. Roland looks back down, collects the scattered pieces successfully this time, and stands. "I'll teach you."

The cell is, of course, not large, but Roland sets a hand on Signless' back anyway to try and lead him over to its desk.

"You've steady hands and an alert mind, you'll pick it up. Here, take this one," and here he hands the dull, small tool over, "and fit the end into this. It's fairly small, but your eyes are good. See it here?"

Signless and his steady hand may not need Roland's own free hand cradling it and guiding its movements, but Roland isn't inclined to doubt his own urge to do so, and he does not for a second think that Signless might complain. "You may not have touched something like this, but what have you seen? There must be something similar on your world."

Just as Roland says, Signless picks it up quick enough. The hand cradling his -- well, he doesn't need it to do this task, but he needs it for other reasons. He needs it to anchor him, to provide just one more point of contact between him and this wonderful man he was so sure he'd lost.

Every moment they have together now he's going to think of as borrowed time, and on that logic he plans to make the most of them.

"Oh yes. Trolls have made marvels of technology - maybe not as impressive as the Capitol, but impressive enough." That's not even lipservice either. Trolls have their own claims to greatness but they haven't yet found a way to cheat death in the way Panem has made possible. "What I've seen has all been on a larger scale -- ships, something like the hovercraft that removes bodies from arenas. Things like that."

Roland is perhaps not so focused on teaching Signless how to do this as he ought. Or maybe he's focused on exactly what he needs to be, which is the feeling of the other man against him, focused on sitting on the desk in front of them so he can lean in and press his face against the Signless' hair. His voice comes out a little muffled, and he doesn't give a rat's ass.

"Did those have these types of small parts to them? Screws, gears, and the like? Learn as quickly as you can, if you don't mind; still need to take those fingers apart, find out what's wrong with 'em, put them back together. I can't touch you like this."

Edited 2016-02-24 02:20 (UTC)

"They must have -- I've never seen inside them."

Troll machines were all bio-mechanical to a degree but he couldn't begin to explain how that worked or imagine what it must have looked like inside. Sorry, Roland, he just really has almost no frame of reference for this. He's been around machines more since he came to Panem than he ever was on Alternia. There he only ever really saw them from a distance.

"But this isn't so difficult. We'll have it done as soon as possible."

"Good. Can you fit that thing in the screws well enough to turn it? I was having a hell of a time. Cort would have had my ass for using such tools on a machine so fine as this." He'll be counting on Signless' own judgement for this, because for the most part that thick hair of his is in Roland's line of sight, and he can't see most of what Signless' hands are doing.

"Something will've got into it when you- died, I reckon. Some time after I saw you. It must have been. Or maybe a piece is bent. Watch out for that, if something won't turn don't force it."

He turns his head just to feel the texture of Signless' hair against his face, and breathes. "I don't know what's wrong with it. I didn't notice when it happened. Either that, or I don't remember."

He has to admit that that's a possibility. That his mind might have failed again, even in that small way. That it, if it has, was out of grief, makes it no less difficult to to admit.

"You smell the same as you always did," he notes, simply because the thought occurs to him and because he does not question the impulse to share it. "I can remember that much, at least. And you feel the same."

It's such an earnest, disarmingly-sweet thing to say that Signless for a moment forgets the response to everything before it that was on the tip of his tongue. The urge to turn his head and nuzzle his face against Roland's, to kiss his brow and touch his hair and remind him of just how much he's loved, is very strong -- but there's work to be done and he can't look away from it or he'll risk making whatever's wrong with Roland's fingers worse.

He carefully turns and twists the pieces, managing with slow and deliberate movements to turn the screws. Nothing sticks like Roland worries it might, but he may simply not to be trying to move the right bits -- he can't tell what's bent because it's meant to be and what might be bent because it's broken.

"It's alright if you can't remember. You had a lot to be dealing with, then." He knows how much trouble Roland has with memory; he wants, in some small way, to reassure him that it's okay. That he's okay.

"Excuses. They're just as broken, now they'll take longer to fix." Speaking of, there is distasteful work that needs be done. That is, pulling away from Signless. He sighs as he does it. Look down at these pieces, figure this out, tend to the vital machinery that makes up his fingers now, and ignore the feeling which wants him to treat that as secondary, or maybe as not important at all. Signless is here, is right here, and that is all. Except in that it isn't. He's got no guns now, they're in thirteen with the old friend he may never see again, but he has these.

But now he's thought of that old friend who offered Roland back his guns, who offered Roland back his freedom, the thought picks at him. Thoughts of all of them, all those fighting while he's been here stuck in this place of bare and colorless emptiness. "Though it may pain you to think on them, I'd have news. News of anything. Anyone you can share."

Anyone else might have it the other way around - news of anyone, of anything the Signless can share. But Roland knows what he said. "Being in this place, it's been-"

Roland isn't avoiding answering, here, he only can not think how. The word which comes first to his mind is alone, although that isn't quite true.

"Pull it all apart now, gently," is what he says instead, because the work in front of him, that is something that Roland knows. His working hand, having loosened its grip a little to let Signless work, tightens again, guiding Signless' fingers. "Here, and here. It'll come open."

The Initiate is alive, he wants to say. The Psiioniic is alive. They're both alive and they're both safe and I love them both as much as ever.

He doesn't. To speak of anyone in District Thirteen in such a way is to condemn them, or at the very least to condemn himself for sympathizing with them. He has to play the part of an unwilling prisoner, not a rebel, and so he's quiet for a longer moment than is really necessary as he pulls the way Roland instructs.

"Mituna is still a prisoner there," he finally says. He doesn't speak of the Initiate. That subject is too dangerous here. "But he's alive at least, which is something to be grateful for."

He thinks on that pendant the Psiioniic gave him, still tucked into his shirt. He'd expected it to be gone when he woke but in this too the Capitol was merciful.

"It is. It is, and I am." He reaches out to poke at the parts of what looks rather less like a finger, now. A part of his mind is paying attention to what he sees and feels, trying to see anything wrong with the pieces, but that's an effort. It still seems so unimportant. But Cort's voice speaks up in his head, break the machine, clean the machine, maggots, and so Roland makes his eyes move over the little screws and gears, forces his mind to pay real attention to them. Cort had always known where his priorities lay, hadn't he? To him, surely it'd all been very clear.

"It's good the two of you were together for a time. It is. But I can't be sorry you're with him no longer. I can't even be sorry you died." It's getting difficult to say this, enormously difficult, but Roland does not let that stop or slow him. He goes on. "Not if that's what it took to bring you back to me. It's selfish, but so am I; more so these days than any time else, I think."

He smiles, a small, bittersweet smile. There's something achingly sweet about such a confession, and once again he's hit with the overwhelming urge to just let the fingers sit as they are for now in favor of just holding Roland for as long as he's allowed before he's forced back to his own cell. He doesn't. He doesn't know if the state of them is causing Roland any pain, exactly, but he knows Roland well enough by now to know that he doesn't like not functioning at peak performance.

"When it comes down to it I'm not sorry either. Being with you and missing him is just as hard as being with him and missing you, but this way at least I know you're both still alive." He turns his head and presses a soft kiss to Roland's temple. "It isn't selfish to not want to be alone."

Roland grunts. He doesn't particularly agree, not in circumstances like these where coming back to him means risking so much, but he also knows that the Signless isn't feeding him well-meaning bullshit to try and smooth over his feelings. The man means it. And there's the matter of that kiss; Roland thinks this particular man could say whatever he liked, any kind of absurd or patronizing statement that might occur to him, and Roland still would not push him away just now.

He takes a slow breath in through his nose, focuses on what's laid out in front of him. He picks out a gear and holds it up, his eyes flicking over every part of it.

"I ought to be holding up better than this," he says, matter of fact, as he does it. "I've walked alone before, and for far longer than this. Even in this place, I've lost friends to thirteen before. At least this time I know they're alive." One of those sides of that gear is bent. Roland sees this but does not think to do anything about it, and his hand falls lower as his attention moves away from it. "I think they are. I saw Alain. I fought him. But that was some time ago."

He won't ask, at least, not directly. Can't, maybe.

It's alright that he can't. Signless gently sifts through all those words and finds the question Roland can't voice, and finds himself incredibly relieved to be able to pass along good news. Even if he has to cloak it in negatives, he has nothing truly bad to say.

"He's alive and fighting, last I saw." He knows that means very little with how quickly things happen here but he's determined to give Roland the reassurance he craves and won't admit he wants.

Luckily he sees the same bend that Roland does, following the path of his gaze. It takes him a little longer and he wouldn't know the first thing about how to un-bend it, but he knows it's there now.

"Is that it, that piece?"

Roland nods, but his attention's not on the thing in his hand. He's staring at the wall in front of him, breathing deep, working through a great deal of relief - and still, because in war nothing is certain and because he remembers Susannah very well, a good deal of fear. His lips press hard together, and he takes one deep breath. Another. "I fought him, and he bade me join him. He told me he's got my gun now, one of my old guns. The ones you've never seen. I told him to use it himself, and his face then, oh."

Oh, Alain.

"My last words to him as a d- di, di- leader-father. Leader." Dinh isn't a word he can say. It's a lesson he refuses to learn, still, after all this time, even though it wears at him every time he forgets. His hand twitches, wanting to press his fingers to the bridge of his nose, but the gesture doesn't get far at all, it only reminds him of his hands, of the work he ought to be doing. He focuses on the gear between his fingers, seeing it.

"And they were the words of a coward. These men, these men of the Capitol, they have many tools to turn me so. But it was my choice, in the end. I remembered their words, and well, and I turned my blade on my old friend. And his on me. Bite this."

It's not a flood of words so much as a slow and steady rain which, now that Signless is here, seem to drop from Roland's mouth almost without consulting the rest of him. Maybe this is part of what being palemates means for Signless' people, hearing yourself be frank and honest even when you know there may be unfriendly ears, unable to care much about whether or not it's wise. Roland doesn't pause to wonder on it, simply moves on, his tone in that last blending right in with his tone in the rest of it.

"If your jaw's as strong as the rest of you," he goes on, holding the gear out toward the Signless' face, "you should be able to put this right better than I could."

He takes the gear, holding it in the palm of his hand but not yet making any move to do much more than that. His thoughts are on what Roland's just said -- on 'the words of a coward' specifically. Perhaps its his own ideals getting in the way or perhaps it's not having as thorough an understanding of the ideals of Roland's people as Roland himself, but that sticks in his ear, sounds wrong.

Then the rest of it catches up to him. Tools and words and oh. Of course. Of course that would be it, because that's what it always is. The Capitol's greatest tool is fear. Signless has always known this; that same fear is what's beaten him down, what took all the fight out of him and has reduced him to simply existing because refusing to give up living is as much fight as he has in him.

"What did they do to you?"

Roland's first reaction, thoughtless, is shame. How hard did Cort train them, all those gunslingers-that-were, mold them all hard and smooth 'till not one crack showed through? Because a weapon with a crack in it, Cort taught them well, made sure they all knew, a weapon with a crack in the wrong place is more like to take you to the clearing at the end of the path than anyone else.

But Firo, when the boy'd found him after the Capitol men had said their piece, Roland had felt this same shame, hadn't he? And he'd thought of Signless. Signless, who is no bondsman, no boy to crane his neck looking up to him and be shocked when Roland tumbles. He is a man, that's all, and the terms of their bond were spelled out not by his own people but by Signless'. Those terms mean that, though much is owed between them, though Roland has always had to stoop to look Signless in the eyes, neither of them looks up to the other.

He should not need to remind himself of this, but he does. The thought shakes him.

"You haven't been gone from me so long, have you? That I've forgotten how to open myself?" He's spoken to Firo on some matters, deep and painful ones. Not the same way he would have with Signless, but he has. So surely he isn't so far gone as that. Not so closed off yet. "Do you have time for a- A pile? No, what's the word. A feelings jam, in the manner of your people? Will you be able to stay so long?"

In all the time they've been together Roland has never asked him for a pile. Signless has held him and helped to soothe his hurts before but never in a way so overtly pale, so overtly troll. When Roland's needed him he's been content to give himself in a way more natural for a human -- it's worked well enough -- and so it does not escape him that this time something must be very different. Most of those times Roland hasn't asked at all. That he's doing so now worries Signless a lot more than anything else.

"I'll stay until they have to drag me away," he says, and perhaps it's a needless exaggeration but he means it all the same. He cares a lot more about this man than he cares about the Capitol and their rules, even if it's the Capitol that controls his life right now and the Capitol he ought to care about pleasing.

Roland nods, taking it not as exaggeration but simple fact. He looks down at his hand, wiggling his fingers and watching the space where the one now sitting broken down on the desk ought to be. He can feel it moving, though there's nothing there. It might've felt so, too, after he lost the fingers the first time, feeling something moving there, looking down and seeing nothing, but he can't quite recall. Can't, or shouldn't.

"Straighten that gear out, if you can," he decides, indicating the bent one that's been making the machine stick. "If you can't, leave it. I'll finish it later."

He walks to the bed - not a terribly long walk, a step or two, and tugs at the blankets a couple times before realizing that he doesn't need to. He's stalling. Roland takes a breath, turns around and sits on the bed, and holds his arm open, watching Signless and expecting that he'll step into it. "What they did to me..."

Roland watches his knees, feels shame on his face and tries to think on how to explain that part of it, that shame. Explaining that first and the rest later, that would be alright.

"What've I told you about gunslinging? What it means? What it meant to hold that office, in the long ago of my world? We've been close for quite a while, you and I." Here Roland's expression warms, less a smile than a suggestion of one, and brief, but the spirit behind it is real. It has been a long time, for Roland. Very long. Yet here they are, together. For a while. "So I don't quite recall. Not too much, I think."

He watches Roland toy uselessly with the bedsheets while he works at trying to bend that gear. His teeth don't get it quite straight but they do quite a bit of the work, enough that he can feel confident enough in a job mostly well-done to put it down on the desk. Later. Roland and his open arms are more important, and Signless settles in against him as close as he can get.

"Not too much, no."

Every few months they discover this, more they don't quite know about each other. It's never been important, sitting down and having the whole thing out. Surviving the present is difficult enough without reliving the past, and so the past has only come into play when it's been important -- like now.

"I've gathered it's important, to you and to everyone that you knew. Probably an understatement, if it was worth fighting a war over." He knows there was one; Roland's given him bits and pieces of it, particularly late at night when he awakes from nightmares where he's back on Jericho Hill.

"Tell me."

Roland takes a few seconds to arrange his thoughts in the order in which he wants them; it's been a while since he's explained. The last time had been... maybe when he'd first gotten to Panem, reeling, almost raving, he remembers trying to think around where and what and when, when, when, when well enough to explain The White and he remembers the girl asking him, doubtfully, if he was talking about something called the KKK.

This time will go better.

"There's a saying in someone's world. I'm not sure whose. Protect and Serve. That's it, almost, condensed. We protect peace, we serve The White. We protect what order we can and take what pieces of knowledge and light are left in the world and hold them up against the dark. There's a great deal more detail to it, or there was when gunslingers had a country, when there were more. You must be hard to do it, and quick, not just of hand but of mind."

The hand not around Signless taps at Roland's temple while the other presses down a little, feeling that warmth underneath it, taking a slow breath and looking at Signless. "It would have been politics, I think, back in Gilead. I might've said some of that to Firo, that part of it. There would've been fairly powerful people putting quite a bit of pressure on me to put down my guns. But it's only me here. I'm the last, the last once more, and my word goes."

He looks down at his hips, which haven't worn those old familiar holsters in what feels like a long, long time. They've worn something, the weapons of his enemies, so that he can serve the Capitol's purpose of corrupting this world, of dragging it down into the dark. He isn't the last, Alain is here. Alain is very far away, Alain is using the guns of Roland's father to fight for the light of this world.

"So a gunslinger I am, still," he goes on slowly, almost bleakly. "In spite of my deeds. And my weaknesses. I said a gunslinger must be hard, hard everywhere, but I've got a crack in me. You've seen it. And if a man knows the right set of words, has the right lever, he can pull that crack open."

Roland might go on but here, with this man, he allows himself to close his eyes against the shame and to turn away from it, if only for a moment, to duck his head against the softness of Signless' hair and devote some thought to sorting out the smells of it. Perhaps it smells of the Capitol's perfumes and creams, still. Probably it doesn't. He lets Signless have the words he's spoken, lets Signless do what he will with them. They aren't Roland's problem anymore, at least, not solely. For this man, with this man, Roland can allow himself that much.

Oh, yes. He's seen it. Mostly late at night or in moments like these when Roland is tired enough and subdued enough to look inward even a little. He isn't usually that sort of man -- Signless has learned that about him in the long time they've known each other -- but there are some times that even he can't avoid it. This is one of them.

Besides. You probably have a lot of time to think when most of your time is spent in a cell.

"And that's what they've done. Oh, Roland."

He knows, he thinks, exactly what Roland's feeling. He felt that same dissonance between a part of himself he considered so defining and the life Panem required him to live -- still feels it, though he's learned to ignore the niggling discomfort.

"That's low, using something that already hurts you to hurt you more." He says it very quiet, in case the room is bugged -- of course the room is bugged. It just... it's too true to let it go unsaid.

Now that gets Roland to look up. It has the sound of something important, something the Signless considers important, but Roland's frowning as if what he heard came out in some unfamiliar tongue, and he's trying to figure out how to translate. "They used what was there. If I'd hidden it better- if. The fact is, I didn't. If a man's in battle and he leaves cover too early, does he blame his enemy for putting a bullet in his side?"

It's more than he would have said, a while back. Outright calling the Capitol's men his enemies. He's spent so much time being careful. It hardly seems worth the effort.

"No, the fault is mine. A gunslinger must have none of that, as I said. No weaknesses. At least, none he can't control."

He lets out a long, slow breath, letting himself lean a little more into Signless, holding him a little tighter. "Oh, I'm glad you're here. Hm. Low or not it worked, anyway. Even when you were gone, I- stayed. I'll be staying, I think. Long as I can. To do that... I know who I'm fighting for. I know it very well."

Edited 2016-04-20 21:53 (UTC)

That sounds so very reasonable and Signless hates that it does. It's not fair that Roland should blame himself for threats made against him, not fair that he should see it as weakness that he feels at all. It's not fair what's been done to him by this war and it makes Signless's heart ache. If they could escape right now out into the wilderness and leave the whole damn thing behind he almost thinks he wouldn't care about letting the two sides destroy themselves so long as he and Roland were safe, but he knows they can't and, deep down, he knows he'd feel guilty. So here they are and here they'll stay.

"So long as you know that, then."

He worries, privately, that he is a weakness too, another crack the Capitol can exploit-- is that why they brought him back, to use as leverage? The thought makes his stomach drop. Yes. Of course that's it. Why else?

"While I'm here I'll patch your cracks as best I can." While I'm here. Like he may not be soon; he knows very well that's something they'll both have to prepare for. With the way he's been thrown back and forth between the opposing sides he doesn't trust the ground under his feet anymore.

"Patch them?" Roland shakes his head, turning and trying to pull the other man's body along with him, wanting to stretch out on his side and pull the Signless down and stretched out close beside. Stretching out on this bed is always easy, even for him; it is soft and clean and plenty long enough. Panem is a land which likes to treat its prisoners well.

"Who can do that? Can any man? No, only stay. Stay with me. I saw you die and thought you gone from me for ever, and now you're here. You're warm and alive and I can feel your arms around me. For tomorrow, survive. Survive and come back to me and, for tomorrow, that will be enough. For tonight, Signless, only lay here a while. Remind me what it feels like to set your heart in someone else's hands. That will patch the parts of me which truly need the work. For tonight, that will do me well enough."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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pretend he just always had the second necklace,,,

of course

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