thecapitol | i've seen trials

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i've seen trials

Who| Susannah and OPEN
What| Susannah wakes up after having spent most of the mini-arena as Detta Walker, only to find out that everyone knows about her multiple personalities.
Where| Her room on District Ten's floor
When| Right after the mini-arena, but before the Thicker than Blood event.
Warnings/Notes| Reference to the awful things Detta did, possibly other things.

Her forspecial legs aren't there when she wakes up on the metal bed. They haven't been retrieved yet, they tell her. They'll let her know when--if? perhaps it is if--she can have them back and until then there's a wheelchair for her. Not her wheelchair, of course. Harley stole that one and crashed it.

Harley...

Susannah isn't paying as close attention as she should to what's being told to her, even though she knows she ought to be. She's too busy feeling shame for everything Detta did--everything that Eddie, Roland, her district mates, the other tributes, everyone in Panem saw her do.

What must they all think of her?

She find out as she wheels herself past one of the ubiquitous televisions airing footage of the game. They're talking about her onscreen, about Detta and Odetta, speculating on if she's ever manifested Detta before in the arenas, they know, they know, and the memory of her telling Harley about her divided self all those months ago resurfaces, they'd been in an arena then, the Capitol had the footage, they must have been waiting for the right time to air it, oh lord of course they had, it was absolutely scandalous, everyone would be talking about her for weeks, poor mad SusannaOdettaDetta--

"No," she whispers, half to herself, and she starts wheeling herself, as fast as she can, to the elevator, the blessedly empty elevator, and if the D10 common room isn't completely empty she can still wheel herself back into her bedroom, pull herself out of the chair and flop down on top of the bed and never move again ever.

She'll just hide out until the next arena starts.

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She closes her eyes. Leans against him. "I-- I really hate to say this, but I'm so, so glad you're here right now. I've needed you. Badly. Maybe I wouldn't have if I'd gone where I thought I was going but here, now, I do." She breathes out slowly. "I won't let it happen again. If Harley or someone tries to conjure that bitch up, I'll fight, harder. I'll-- I'll warn people about her. So they know to run."

Another slow, shuddery breath. "Do you think Eddie hates me?"

"If you're glad then I am, too. No call to feel badly about saying that. I'd rather be where I'm needed." Roland takes a slow breath, rubbing at her arm and thinking over the question. "I don't know," he decides, after a moment. "The Eddie I know would have been very angry, I think. Hurt."

Roland's not going to leave out that part. The hurt. It would have been there at the heart of that anger, and if Eddie's twinner is anything like the man himself Susannah's going to have to face that hurt sooner or later. "But he never could have hated you. Not truly. A little honest talk should set things right."

"I just... I wanted him to think well of me," she says, softly. "And-- how do you even do that, how do you tell a man that you've got an evil bitch inside you that tried to murder him when you first met him?"

Roland thinks a moment, remembers. "Eddie never wanted to believe it. Not at first. Did we ever tell you that part? I think..." He shakes his head, then gets back on track. This part of the memories he can make out well enough, while he focuses on it. "Not once did he listen to me about Detta. Not on his own. So maybe it's something you can't tell, at least not with words."

Susannah nods slowly. "I still feel like I should have--" She sighs. "Oh, I don't know. Harley said I never gave anyone a chance to see me for who I really was, but-- but I felt that Susannah was who I really was. She-- she wasn't right, was she?"

He shakes his head. "No. This 'Harley' wasn't right about that, nor about anything else. Nothing such people say can be trusted. You must try not to think on any of it." Roland rubs at her arm again, slowly. "Susannah didn't think herself so until the other two joined together. That bitch Detta is a part of that, but only a part. A tool to be used. Nothing more."

"That's-- that's what I was trying to do, before. Use her, but not get swept up in her. Stay myself unless there was something I absolutely needed her for." She breathes out slowly. "I'm-- I'm a little afraid to use her at all now."

"Hm." He leans over, pulling her a little closer. "I don't see that there's a way around that. Not here. But I don't... I don't think I recall you having any such problem before. Not without help. What did it this time, more than any of the other times you've used her? Was it simply the numbers?"

"They didn't help, but it wasn't just them," Susannah says, with a sigh. She nestles herself against him. "It's people," she says, finally. "At least as much as wantin' to be me for myself, I want to be me for other people. I figured that out last arena, when we were stuck in the museum. When I heard Bert's voice in the darkness I knew I had to be myself for him. It was the same with seeing Eddie on the Dino Island. I was glad to see Harley when I first found her, because she was another reason to be me."

She makes a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob. "But she didn't want me to be me. Oh, I think I know exactly why I had trouble, Roland, and that damn pi was only a little bit. It's because she wanted Detta around. Not to use as a tool. But as someone she genuinely enjoyed the company of. I-- didn't expect that. I guess I thought if she ever saw the reality of her, out there in her element, doing more than smashin' some stupid knicknack, she'd be rightly repulsed. But she wasn't, it only made her like Detta more and I s'pose even Detta likes being liked."

"She shouldn't get used to it." Roland begins to run his fingers over her hair, looking down at her. "Those 'mini-arenas' won't always be something that can be avoided. I suppose that means it's time to start trying to make allies. The times before, one of us must have always been there. The more allies we make, the more chance someone will be. I should have been working on it already, but I..." It's just seemed too much somehow, too much even without the effort of trying to charm strangers. That's no reason, though. He doesn't have a reason. He shrugs.

She looks up at him. "Sometimes it's just too damn much to bother with," she says. "I know, honey. It took me months before I was ready to try to make friends, make allies. And now that bitch Detta's gone and spoiled it all. I'll probably have to start all over again." She sighs.

She probably will. Roland doesn't pretend otherwise, just keeps stroking her hair and looking down at her. It's good to hear that term of affection from her lips again. Good to be so near, to feel the warmth and life of a dear friend so close and real. He's not going to pretend things for her are going to simply get better, but - for Roland, at least - it's enough to be able to be here, able to give some comfort for a while. "We'll start over together, you and I," he murmurs, and sweeps a curl of hair behind her ear. "It'll be work, but we're no strangers to any of that, are we?"

The corners of her mouth turn up slightly. "No," she says, "we aren't. And-- maybe she hasn't destroyed everything. Wyatt--he's from my district, he talked to me after they dragged Harley away--he was willing to give me another chance. Maybe there'll be one or two others. One or two's enough, really. I can work up from there."

She sighs and settles back against him. "I love you, Roland," she says very quietly, trusting she'll know what she means.

Those last words take him off the track of his surprise, his anger that Harley was here, right here interfering with Susannah again and he hadn't even known it. For a moment that anger remains evident, his whole body tense, face wooden - but that anger very clearly isn't what Susannah needs from him right now, and so he allows his attention to turn away from it.

"And I you," he replies easily, sliding a little downward and briefly tightening his arms around her. "With all my heart." She knows that, of course she knows, but now perhaps what she needs most is to hear it. Of all his duties as dinh, that one is perhaps the easiest. "I'll be here, I hope, the next time either of them decides to try their hand. Call me if I'm not."

"I will," she promises. "I've mostly got the hang of these communicator things. I'll use it." She doesn't say anything else, just closes her eyes and focuses on Roland's arms around her, how safe they make her feel despite everything, despite her knowing better than most how death follows the gunslinger like a grisly shadow.

(But not for you.)

But then, after those months where all they had to rely on was each other, why shouldn't he feel safe?

It's probably best she didn't air those thoughts, because as the silence lengthens Roland thinks this might have been something he needed a little bit, too. He'd known Detta would be too entertaining for the Capitol to let Susannah stay dead, but that knowledge had only fanned something inside him instead of bringing the relief it perhaps should have. Pacing in the commons with the grating voice of Susannah's betrayer sounding in his ears, waiting for word of a return and wondering all the way to her floor whether he was going to open the door on Susannah'd kindness or Detta's cruelty - it's not as if he hadn't expected this place to be difficult. But that knowledge hadn't made the process any easier.

But here he is with the woman herself, a gunslinger brave and true who calls him her dinh and trusts him to bring her comfort. Roland thinks on that and feels himself settling, breathing more deeply, relaxing against her. He'll stay, he knows, as long as she wants him to.

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i've seen trials

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we're getting close to the natural conclusion of this thread, i think

I think this one may do it?