(no subject)

[marcato]

Who| Aunamee and OPEN
What| Aunamee is resting in the hospital after Orc used him as a human baseball bat.
Where| The hospital
When| Between Christmas and New Years
Warnings/Notes| Violent aftermath, injuries. Likely mentions of sadism. Feel free to the visit intentionally or just stumble into his room.

He sleeps for a long time. Weeks. Now and again, he wakes to humming machines and grey faces, his tongue heavy in his mouth, his fingers distant and detached like far away spiders. While he sleeps, he dreams in disconnected images. Two people holding hands. A mountain. Water. A mouse cleaning itself with fragile pink paws.

He sleeps for a long time, and while he sleeps, Christmas comes and goes. He receives a glass replica of his old knife. It waits for him on his nightstand like a bible.

He sleeps for a long time, although sometimes he screams himself awake because the pain finds him there anyway. Countless surgeries reset and restructure his arms and legs. Small incisions are made for long injections directly into his muscles. His jaw is wired. Unwired. His tongue is sewn back into his mouth.

He sleeps for a long time until he stops, finally, the world crisp and bright in front of his healed eyes. His casts are removed one by one. His remaining bruises are covered with wisps of foundation. If it weren't for the stitches above his left eye (and dotting his tongue), it would be easy to think he has been hospitalized for the flu.

When Aunamee is told that he will receive visitors, he doesn't dare close his eyes.

Comments

[gardienne]

Of course Eponine had heard what had happened. Everyone in the Capitol has heard about Orc nearly killing Aunamee.

Quite honestly, though, Eponine wasn't sure what to think. Orc was her friend - well, he said he was. And Aunamee said that he wanted to be friends with her as well. So whose side was she supposed to take?

She turned up at the hospital with a big bunch of white chrysanthemums pilfered from Eva's garden and tied with a ribbon that Eva had put in her hair.

She's relieved that he's awake, at least, and she comes forward straight away, dropping into a curtsey at the side of his bed.

"Monsieur. Monsieur, you are well? What happened? I'm sorry - in the arena - OH!" She thrusts the drooping bunch of flowers at him. "I brought you these."

[marcato]

Flowers. How many people are left that would bring him flowers?

"Thank you," he says softly, taking the flowers up in his arms. Moving still feels unnatural, like his bones belong to a wild animal and not to him. "It's my favorite color." White. Soft and empty and clean. "And one of my favorite flowers."

He makes a show of smelling them, bringing the bouquet up to his face. He closes his eyes. He lets it consume him.

"You know," he starts again, his eyes still closed, "I was hoping you would be my first visitor, sweet Eponine."

[gardienne]

"Did you, Monsieur?" Did he? Why? She lets her confusion cloud her expression only for a minute, before she shrugs it away.

"Well, but of course I came - I came as soon as they let me, Sir. Shall I put them in water? Oh - but you look better than I expected. Did he -" She bends, and reaches to brush a dirty finger over the stitches in his forehead.

"Oh, but I am furious with Monsieur Orc. I have told him over and over that he is not a monster. But perhaps, perhaps I was wrong. What did you do to him?"

[marcato]

He can't remember. At least, he can't remember the moments leading up to the incident. He remembers that morning (coffee and buttered croissants) but everything beyond that is a blur. Perhaps he provoked the boy, or perhaps the boy had simply caught up to him after his crimes in the arena.

More and more people are catching up to him these days.

"Nothing," he whispers into the flowers, lowering them onto his lap. "Nothing that warranted what was done to me." And that is true, isn't it? He never laid a hand on Orc. He never harmed his friends.

Strictly speaking.

He offers the flowers forward.

"Water would be so wonderful, Eponine," he says, managing a smile. "I hoped you'd come, you see, because I'm very fond of you. And I was worried for you, this last arena. After we separated."

[gardienne]

"I will shout at him," she promises. But she can't understand it, really. It does not seem like Orc to attack unprovoked. Anamee had surely done something first.
" But if it is you who hit first, Sir, it is you whom I shall be cross with.

She busies hersef fetching a vase from the nurse and dumping the flowers in.

"Did you really worry for me?" Oh it does feel nice to hear that someone cares. "Well, you mustn't. They took me, that awful Mr. Wyatt. He does not like me. He thinks I'm rude and rough and cruel,. He wants to hit me, I think. I wish he would. It is better than bottling it up. A hit at a time is not so bad as a long beating."

She prefer's Aunamee's way. It makes sense to her. She knows where she is with it. And, evenif she doesn't believe the compliments, it's nice to have them after such a horrid Christmas.

"I am truly sorry, you know. Are you cross with me?"

[marcato]

"No," he says easily, calmly. He was furious when it happened, so completely furious. Yet there is a part of Aunamee that can always feign this sort of nonchalance. "You obeyed my promise, after all. You didn't kill Howard."

He closes his eyes once more, sipping in the air like a cool drink. How nice it is, breathing on his own.

"He does treat you cruelly," he says, opening his eyes to focus on Eponine, sharp and steady. "That Wyatt."

[gardienne]

Oh good. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that he was not cross with her. Eponine studies his face but relieved that Aunamee at least accepts her apologies, she troubles herself no further to ascertain he's telling the truth. Instead, she pulls up a seat beside Aunamee's bedside. To his statement about Wyatt, she shrugs.

"Perhaps he is right to. Howard told me that he was of the police. Of course he does treat me so. To him, I am scum. And he likes Howard too. He will take Howard's part over mine, of course."

[marcato]

"He isn't right, you know."

He offers her his hand. His palms are still cold, sweaty, despite his efforts to keep them dry under the blankets.

"There's a fire inside of you, Eponine. The people in charge, the police, they fear fires. I don't."

[gardienne]

"And you are talking nonsense, Sir." She gripped his hand, despite the damp touch, and turned it, so the back of his hand faced up. With the fingers of her free hand, she stroked a pattern onto his sweaty skin.

"You are ill. Soon, perhaps, death. And before that, you will go mad and tell me that I am your daughter, perhaps, and pledge me a fortune you do not have. Or you will throw a poker at me and beg me to end your life. I have seen it before."

She laughed. "I am not afraid of your fire - no. You do not have fire. You have an ice that pours from your eyes and chills me as much as the air from the Seine did in Paris. But I am not afraid. I have said, perhaps, that you remind me of Montparnasse. Well, I do not care if you are bad - so am I. Perhaps we go together, bad people together?"

[gluteus]

The click of his prosthetic echoed down the hall as he stepped to the door. It was hard not to feel in a good mood about this, despite what a very bad mood he'd been in since Christmas, and he let himself into the hospital room with all the determined ease of a man who knew he had every right in the world to be there.

Click, click, click went his step, exaggerated and un-oiled, as if to drive a point home.

"Aunamee."

[marcato]

This is symmetry.

This is perfect.

Perfect, yes, despite what this moment means, that now Aunamee is the weak one confined to a bed and Maximus is the one standing before it, looming over him like a god. If Aunamee had planned this moment, he would be ecstatic -- and yet he didn't, so something like jealousy boils up from his guts instead. Jealousy, envy, hatred. Murderousness.

"Maximus."

He nods his head with the greeting, a bitter smile crossing his lips.

"I don't see flowers."

[gluteus]

"I still haven't grown quite accustomed to that particular tradition," Maximus said, the last word a rumble on his lips as he stepped up to the bed, staring down at the man upon it. To him, Aunamee had only ever been just that - but he knew that to many people Wyatt cared about that the man meant much more. Much darker.

He didn't necessarily understand, and he wasn't allowed to care for Wyatt, but that didn't mean he couldn't care around him.

He tilts his head as he comes to a stop, his metal leg touching the blanket at the end of Aunamee's bed.

"You'll have to forgive my memory lapse."

[marcato]

"I do," he said, a hint of veracity escaping into his smile. He straightened his back as best he could. The world was still dizzying, uneven, and every movement required deliberateness. Precision.

"Are you here to finish the job, dear gladiator?"

[gluteus]

"Would that make things simpler for you?" He asked, the question such a low rumble that it's almost a purr. Really, he would have no qualms in killing him, if it was just the two of them. Aunamee had proven himself dangerous enough. But...

"I am no assassin," He assures him, unblinking. At least not here, not as far as the capitol knew. If he were to change his colours now, it would be for much colder prey.

"Though perhaps this is the only chance I have that would keep you from running."

[marcato]

"That's one of the reasons why I find you attractive, Maximus," he says, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "You have a sense of honor that would suffocate most normal people."

He means it. He has no shame in it. His gaze is steady as ever. His smiles cracks into something genuine, something bright and full of life.

"You'd never run. It's a shame they don't dig up the winners to give them their medals."

[gluteus]

There were a number of ways that someone could mean 'I find you attractive', especially when talking about honour. But something about the way Aunamee was smiling at him made Maximus think that perhaps he was not speaking of him as a platonic ideal. He narrowed his eyes, shifting his weight onto his back foot.

He decided to avoid that entire line of conversation completely.

"No. They merely go to Elysium," He said, his tone low and almost harsh. There was one place Aunamee would never know. "Honour will always be rewarded. In this life or the next."

He paused, offering a smile like the edge of a sword.

"And justice served."

[marcato]

"There is no next life."

How many minds had Aunamee read just before they winked out of existence? The thoughts of the dying always followed the same structure: a sharp spike, a dull roar, then nothingness. Aunamee had never stared into death's eyes and felt something rattling just beyond. He had never read a future that lasted more than one lifetime.

"It's such a normal thing to do, seeking reward in the afterlife." He clicked his tongue. "I would've preferred it if you didn't expect any reward at all."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He can't name the impulses that fire in his ankles, in his thighs and calves and feet, pushing them forward down streets he doesn't recognize and to the hospital door. Doesn't know what intent he has when he presses the button that pulls the elevator up to Aunamee's floor.

Doesn't know what words he meant to say when he stands in the doorway of that too-clean room and looks at Aunamee dead in the eyes.

"I didn't tell him to," he whispers. Not because he wants to pin responsibility on Orc, but because Aunamee draws honesty from him like blood into a syringe.

[marcato]

He likes this. The visit. The eye contact. There's a certain fire in it, a strength he recognized in Howard back when they first met.

You're not my friend. Remember that.

But mixed with that strength is obedience and honesty's purr. Aunamee smiles automatically. The whisper tickles his eardrums. His fingers tingle.

"I know."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He wants to ask, does it hurt? He wants to ask that because it's a stupid question that will take up time and space even though the answer is so disgustingly obvious.

But instead he says something else.

"I'm glad you're not dead."

And it's horrible because it's true, because as much as he wants to be free of Aunamee, he knows death won't be enough. Aunamee is no longer a corporeal being but a stain on Howard's soul. He's intertwined with the neurons and the brainstem.

Death would be pointless.

[marcato]

"You don't need to lie for my benefit."

He straightens his back inch by inch, vertebrate by vertebrate. It is a miracle, really, that anything is moving, that he's even alive. Aunamee knows what death feels like in himself, in other people. He knows it intimately, like the scars on a lover's back. He knows how close he came.

He knows Howard cannot be telling the truth.

(Or is he?)

The confusion registers in his eyes more than in his posture, his back still rigid like a mannequin's.

"Nonetheless," he continues slowly, his tongue salty in his mouth, "I appreciate the effort."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"If I didn't mean it, I'd be here gloating."

And that's the truth. If he didn't care what happened to Aunamee, he'd be happy to hear he'd been put in the hospital. But instead he freefalled.

"Or I'd..." His eyes travel to the pillow behind Aunamee. He imagines grabbing it and shoving it over that face that's nestled in the back of his head and laughed at him for months. He imagines the convulsions, the burst blood vessels in Aunamee's eyes, the way Aunamee's bowels would go slack in death, the death rattle forever tucked into Aunamee's throat.

He wonders who's stronger, if he'd be able to hold the pillow down with his bony arms until Aunamee stopped moving. If he'd have it in him to finish it off. If he'd panic and run out of the room. If Aunamee would grab his wrists and snap them like brittle twigs.

He already killed Alpha, and Hyperion, and people who've done less to him. Death's not enough, but murder? Murder is both a cage and its own key.

He takes a step forward.

[marcato]

Aunamee follows Howard's eyes, a cat following its prey.

"I'm waiting for the day," he says, "when you try to kill me."

He folds his hands in his lap. His fingers are pale and thin. Sickly.

But his eyes are sharp.

"It's as inevitable as the daybreak, Howard. There will come a time when something inside you snaps, when you act on the impulses you so desperately keep at bay. There will come a time when my charities are dwarfed by the awful things you believe I've done to you."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I don't believe you did things to me, you did them!" Howard's yell is sudden, explosive, surprising even him. "You held me down and cut me open while I screamed for you to stop! You tied me to a tree! I didn't just imagine those!"

If he were a stronger person, he'd tell Aunamee that he's not even worth killing. But he's not a strong person. He's a weak person ground down and flattened and barely surviving.

[marcato]

Aunamee wanted Howard to yell. He asked him to with his words. Between his words. Wanting something and then receiving that something, predicting and then having that prediction come true. It's like a hit of drug for Aunamee, and he closes his eyes, swept up, blinded, the faintest of smiles dotting his lips.

"You don't understand yet."

When he opens his eyes, his gaze is harsh as ever. The smile is gone.

"You don't see that I'm building you."