My Hungry Ghost of Hopefulness [Closed]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

WHO| Howard and his interviewers (Rat, Eponine and possibly Roland), Howard and Orc, Howard and R, Howard and Wyatt
WHAT| Howard petitions out
WHEN| Before the latest Panem Nightly
WHERE| Tribute Suites
WARNINGS| None, but suicidal ideation may come up.

The paper in his hands is crumpled and grimy with sweat. He's been holding it in his hands for the last two days, picking it up over and over again to check times, check room numbers, make sure that he's ready to make his appointments. He doesn't sleep well, waking from nightmares where he misses his alarm, where he forgets what language is during his interview.

Despite his best efforts, he hasn't really been able to make himself look presentable. Typically he looks better after a few weeks in the Capitol to put some fat on his painfully skinny body, but the stress of waiting for his petition to process has done him no favors. He has dark circles under his eyes, which appear almost bulbous atop his hollow cheeks. His fingers on each hand are covered with scabs up to the first knuckle. His lips are covered with canker sores and he's developed a twitch in his right leg that ambushes him when he sits down.

He doesn't feel ready, and he doesn't feel like he'll feel any better once he's done with each interview. He gets to the doors over an hour in advance and paces outside them, lost, it seems, in his own shallow breathing and possible rejection. He knows, deep in his stomach, what he has to do if his petition is denied. He knows he can't handle another Arena. And yet while he isn't allowing himself to contemplate willfully, images of how he has to die start trickling into his mind and lurking in the shadows.

He knocks on the door at exactly the correct time for each interview.

-/-

After each one, there is no dissipation of tension. There's no feeling of relief, that he's done the hard part. The hard part is still the waiting, and that's still happening, like a car wreck he's going through in slow motion. He tries to sit by himself in his room but, to put it politely, he psychs himself out.

(The truth is that he finds himself unable to breathe, finds his legs unable to support his weight, starts shaking so hard he has to lie down and stare at the ceiling as if the white paint above him will swallow him up.)

He gets up and takes the elevator to District 4 and District 10. He goes and he finds his friends, no matter how they currently feel about him.

Comments

[the_marshal]

Wyatt has been busy since the wrap-up of the so-called 'special arena.' Between his stylist, who seemed to think victory meant he needed a completely new wardrobe every other day, and the arrival of Doc, he was out more often than he was in. But today, while Doc showered (he swore he could still hear the lewd crooning from all the way out in the common room), he sipped whiskey and pointedly ignored the stack of invitations his escort had left for him to look through.

He was watching the sun set behind the city, enjoying the lingering warmth of its dying rays, when the elevator opened.

"Howard--" His smiled died almost as quickly as it appeared, his glass immediately returning to the table. "What's wrong?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Nothing, nothing, just the usual," Howard says, words just spilling from him instead of actually being propelled out by conscious will. He feels safer, now, tucked inside Wyatt's room, inside the familiar smell of shaving cream and whiskey and wood shavings.

There's a small part of him that's angry that Wyatt's a Victor now, and another part that's angry at himself for that. He should have been congratulating Wyatt, and yet he's only managed to think about how alone he's going to be if he has to go back in.

"I just did my petition interviews."

[the_marshal]

Understanding washed over Wyatt's face. A gentle shift, softening his worry - the lines easing around his mouth - if not erasing it.

"You've done all ya can, son," he said, settling back down into his chair and gesturing for Howard to take the one next to him, patting the seat with one big hand. "Any word on when you'll know?"

He didn't want to think about it, not sure what he'd do if the boy had to go in without him (if he had to watch, unable to help), but the sooner they would know, one way or the other, the better.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"No. They want to keep me stressed. They're trying to drive me out of my mind." It's not just a conspiracy theory, Howard thinks; it's exactly the sort of thing the Capitol would do.

He curls up in the chair, looking near the verge of tears. "What are we going to do, Wyatt?"

It's no longer just him. He knows it'll break Wyatt down too.

[the_marshal]

"We're gunna wait," Wyatt replied, a straight, unhesitating reply, meant to steady them both. "An' we're gunna carry on as if we're gunna get the answer we want."

Because what was the harm in believing? In giving themselves a respite, for however long they might get?

"An' then, if by some chance, it ain't the one we want, we'll deal with it." He reached out and rested a hand on Howard's shoulder. "Together."

Somehow.

[gardienne]

Eponine had arrived at the appointed room early, quite glad to be away from her father and his awful schemes, and even from Azelma, who would not stop mooning around with her half vacant expression, exclaiming over things that were quite ordinary. Eponine hadn't realised quite how much she had been changed by Panem before her family appeared.

Before arriving, she hadn't known why she was being summoned. Had she known, she wouldn't have come. She would have ran off and curled up under a bush so that nobody would be able to find her and make her interview him.

It was only when the attending Peacekeeper sat her down and handed her a copy of Howard's petition and a list of questions, and explained what was happening that she began to understand.

What she understood was that Howard was petitioning out of the arena. That he was leaving her there by herself. She rose to leave immediately. The Peacekeeper's hand was at once on her arm, fingers gripping tight where Thenardier's fingerprints were still visible on her bony limb.

She stays sat in silence, with the Peacekeeper holding her, until Howard's knock. By this time, her carefully cultivated nails are bitten off, right down past her fingertips. She's got past her upset too. She's not close to tears any more. She's angry at the thought of yet another person leaving her behind. She's stared at the questions for so long that she's memorised them. But so what? She doesn't give a jot for their questions. She wants answers of her own from him.

When Howard's knock comes, she makes to rise again, and the Peacekeeper this time, rises with her, and guides her to the door, holding her back whilst he opens it enough to slip in. Once Howard is inside, the Peacekeeper exits, closing the door quite firmly, and locking the teenagers inside. They're not leaving until the questions are answered.

Eponine waits in silence, staring at Howard, until they are alone. And then, accusingly, her question is just a single syllable.

"Why?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He seems to shrink under her gaze. She's always been taller than him, but now she seems to tower, that question stretching each of its three letters up to the ceiling. It's daunting, because the answer is so obvious as to be obscured by the grandness of it.

So instead he dodges it, trying to answer her by the implication of his own question. He stuffs his voice with a sort of confidence he doesn't feel.

He's going to have to watch her suffering another Arena if he gets out. He's going to be dead if he doesn't.

"Why don't you?"

[gardienne]

"Because they will never let me have that, will they?" She barks a laugh, bitter. "Me, I have made too much trouble. If they keep me in the arenas, they know what I am doing exactly, don't they? It's like prison."

She shakes her head, and turns her back on Howard. She doesn't want to look at him. She doesn't want to see him escaping this mess, abandoning her in it. How can he leave her now?

"Why are you leaving me here alone?" She doesn't look back at him.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"They got not more reason to let me have it than you!" He doesn't want to yell at her, not when they just so recently repaired their fragile peace. "I can't put myself through another Arena just because you don't want to risk getting rejected from petitioning out."

He can't. He's barely surviving as is, without another death under his belt. Without more starving and dying and waiting each time to see if it's the end.

[ka_sera_sera]

When Roland's sat down and handed the list of questions, when it's finally explained to him why he's been called here, it's...

Well, to be honest, it's disappointing. But he puts himself in check soon enough. So he's found little to do since he arrived except wait and think? So he's eager enough for some distraction that he welcomes a mysterious summons, and finds himself disappointed when no confrontation follows? What of that?

If what he's been told was honest, he might have some little chance at helping a fellow prisoner. That's the important thing.

The Peacekeeper opens the door at the knock, and Roland eyes the boy as the Peacekeeper stands aside to let him enter. He raises his eyebrows.

"You'd better sit down." Before you fall over dead, his tone implies. It's not too clear whether that look about him is stress or some sort of illness, but either way, if ever there was anyone who needed a little help this boy certainly looks it.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

And so Howard does, hunching forward in his seat as if being even smaller will protect him from imaginary rain and wind. It's because he's cold; his skeletal frame doesn't hold heat well, what with no flesh to buffer it with. He rubs one hand over the other's knuckles and bounces his knee in a nervous fidget.

The man he's looking at is older, with a serious face but not an unkind one, and to tell the truth Howard would rather be interviewed by a stranger than by someone he might have made an enemy of in a past Arena.

He remembers all the faces from each Arena. He's studied them.

"You're Roland, right?"

[ka_sera_sera]

"I am. And you're a tribute who wants to leave the arena." Very much so, to look at him. Roland wonders if it's deliberate - some attempt to garner pity from the gamemakers (unlikely, as he's sure they have none), or from the people conducting these interviews (more so, though Roland doubts any of them have a real say in how this turns out). But he doesn't think on it long, as the answer doesn't really much matter. He'd decided to help where he could, after all, before they'd even seen each other.

Roland glances at the list of questions he can't really read. Not too hard to remember those that'd been read out to him, though. There were only three. "What did you do before you came here?"

He makes the question sound casual, almost like small talk. If whoever must be watching doesn't approve of the way he's doing this he's sure he'll be corrected. Until then, Roland wants some idea of the boy's skill set so he knows which questions will make him sound more valuable.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard reaches up and starts to chew his fingertips, no longer even bothering with the nails. They're so far receded that his teeth can't find purchase anyway.

"It's- it's a long story. I was a jail warden? And I did salvage, old materials, the kind of stuff you can recycle and keep using." It's not the sort of work that someone would expect from a kid who looks barely fifteen, aged by a hard life but somehow still youthful for his small size and large eyes. "I was on town government, you know, trying to keep people from killing each other. There weren't no adults or anything."

He looks for kindness in Roland's eyes like a trapped rabbit looking for escape.

[shambler]

R doesn't know he's coming.

Mostly these days he sits in his room, occasionally getting goaded out for a swimming lesson with Finnick that goes about as well as the others - he still doesn't know how to swim, and he proves that you can lead a zombie to water, but all he can do is stare and rot. With Julie gone and Perry...off, and Howard being a question mark R's not sure about, it feels like he's hemorrhaging friends (and maybe not friends, in Perry's case). His connection to the Living world withers. It'd been easier when he'd been the same anonymous grey face.

R keeps thinking about them, though, and that's where it's different from the airport. He remembers, he has memories of his own. R wonders how Julie is, if Perry will find something to live for or if one day he'll come up like Eponine did and ask for a bite.

And Howard. Over time he thinks it hurts a little less, only he's not sure. Zombies generally don't hurt anywhere, as a rule, and this is a first time experience for him. He's not sure if it's normal to keep thinking back to the Arenas, sitting there over a dead cat with one eye lolling, or the Capitol and the closet and Howard's fumbling fingers in the dark. When Howard drops by, R's there at the door, swaying slightly as he looks down at him over the edge of his muzzle. It's scuffed today, as if his Escort hasn't changed it for a few days.

"Come...in..." R sighs, not sure what to say or why Howard's even here. Are they still friends or strangers again?

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

It's always awkward when R looks so much more alive than Howard does. This is, sadly, one of those days. And yet as dead as Howard looks, and as dead as R is, Howard can pick up on the little details, the nonverbal cues in R's slack, stiff body language. He sees the scuff and hears how it takes R a little longer to get those words out, as if he's stopped thinking in language recently.

Howard slips under R's arm and into the room, near R's little hoards of trinkets and bobbles, tidier than those in Howard's room if only because there are fewer of them. R's had less time to hoard them, and it takes him longer to collect each piece.

He stands in the middle of the room, unsure if he should sit, if he wants to hug R or yell at him just to get some aggression out on one of the few people who won't fight back. Even standing at his tallest, even with R hunching, Howard's nearly a foot shorter. It takes a bit of the wind out of wanting to yell at him again.

The memory of the last time they talked is like grease in fabric; it's there, coloring everything, hard to see but easy to feel, an invisible stain on Howard's every mood. And lately he doesn't need the additional fear added to his usual diet of panic and paranoia. He folds his arms, looking R straight in the eye, trying not to remember what it looks like when R only has one.

"If I ask you to bite me, right now, will you do it?" And how would he interpret the answer? If R were angry at him still, would he go through with it or withhold it from spite?

[shambler]

R’s still in the slow, painstaking process of turning around as Howard ducks into his room. If it smells, he doesn’t say anything. It’s not a matter of being too polite, either – from the state of Howard’s own hoard, he guesses he might be used to any weird, toe-curling smells. R eventually swings around to face the other Tribute and gets a good look at him. His face has a grey sheen to it, looking washed out instead of the usual brown. Frown lines are deepened, the skin taut over cheekbones, and his eyes. His eyes look too-clear, darting around the room as if checking for exits.

He shuffles to the side to give Howard an exit, before he remembers he’s supposed to be still pissed about the last Arena. R was still working through a zombie’s version of “angry” (mostly it looked confused) when Howard dropped that question on him.

R gaped, face going more slack than usual before he flops his mouth shut, purses his lips, and actually draws himself up straight. Well. Straight-ish. The hunch is a permanent fixture, but whatever Cure might still be left in his decomposing cells makes it possible to stand his ground.

“No,” R says with a decisive wheeze. “Not…again. Not…anyone.”

He says that now, when the hunger is more or less simmering under the surface, the closest thing he knows to it being under control. R supposed he might feel different next Arena. But standing here, with the dusty mental cobwebs still his, he can say that he won’t bite Howard. No matter what happened in that stairwell, he’s not consciously biting him. It was bad enough he’d done it with Eponine.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's not sure how he feels about that answer. He sits back on R's bed, realizing that R's sheets are the only ones that wouldn't smell of sweat even if the Avoxes weren't constantly cleaning the Tributes' rooms. R's room doesn't smell like fear like Howard's does, like Orc's and even Wyatt's do.

"Fine." The fact that Howard isn't sure if he was asking R for a favor or daring him to take a swing at him probably helps how numb Howard feels.

The bed isn't even unmade. Maybe R hasn't laid down in a while. There might be no reason for him to given that he doesn't sleep.

"I'm leaving the Arena." One way or another - that's the horrible truth of it. Either he'll be petitioned out or he'll kill himself before his Stylists even get him in his outfit. He isn't even going to bother making it look like an accident.

And yes, it means leaving R. It means leaving Eponine and Orc, too. Each one is hard in a different way, Eponine because he's abandoning her again, Orc because Orc understands too well, and R because of all these stupid things left unsaid. All the stupid things made unsaid by the argument they had weeks ago.

[paidinbeer]

When Howard finds Orc he's in his usual booth at the bar. A small platoon of empty bottles speaks to his state of mind.

But rather then misery he has a pair of headphones on and his beady eyes are glazed over as he listens to the puffy, cushioned designer headphones that were patterned like his stone covered skin.

A deal gifted to him by a music company that wanted his endorsement for "Rock and Roll Phones."

Orc wasn't listening to rock music though. One of his handlers had suggested he try something peaceful.

With the music in his ears he wouldn't hear Howard coming but his blurry vision focused on a familiar face and he watched and waited to see if Howard was here for him or someone else.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He is, indeed, here for Orc. He slides into the booth next to him - not across from him, but next - as if drawn by a magnetic pull. And almost immediately he starts to stack the empty bottles, set them in lines as if organizing them will soothe the tangles of his mind.

Finally he looks over at Orc, all numb fingers and nervousness. "What are you listening to?"

[paidinbeer]

He slid off the headphones in time to hear the question and instead of answering passed it over to Howard. When Howard listened he would hear what sounded like a classical orchestra, and at the moment a flute.

"It's called Peter and the wolf." He explained after Howard had a moment to listen. "It's music...but it tells a story see?"

This was clearly the most amazing thing in the world to Orc.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Like a musical?" Howard pops it over his ears, although his hands are shaking so hard he barely gets it on straight. The music would be calming any other time, but as a ball of nerves he feels as if he's listening to metal screeching on metal. He takes them off.

"Are you getting all artsy on me now?"

[saveswithsong]

Rat had no idea why they thought he was a good choice for this kind of thing. And, as much as he doesn't like the idea, he doesn't really have room to refuse.

"Come in," he says boredly. When Howard comes in, he'll see that he's basically dressed similar to some romance novel man, but without the open shirt. Something one might expect of a delicate thespian type. His grey eyes are cold, and he doesn't really seem to have any sympathy to spare for Howard.

He hadn't even known it was possible to do this until this landed in his lap. He considered telling Shion, but he knew he'd never consider the process unless Rat did it too. And there was something about leaving the Arena in that way that didn't sit right. He'd fight. It was the only thing that felt right about himself here.

He gives Howard the time to come in and take a seat before he fires off the first question. Well. Maybe not exactly as they had it worded. "Why are you giving up on the Games?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

It takes all of Howard's will not to just break into tears at that. The thin cord of resolve he's hanging on by nearly snaps, and he fantasizes running from the room screaming. He daydreams about finding a way to behead himself.

Rat's face shows no pity, no understanding for a skeletal kid with blood under his fingernails. Any other time Howard would find that reassuring, predictable - he so rarely knows what to do with kindness.

"I already done six. How many times do I have to lose before we all agree the Games gave up on me?" His voice is shaky, his attempts to not stutter only barely effective.

[saveswithsong]

In another circumstance, he may have found some empathy to share with Howard. He'd seen a lot of skeletal, starving kids of all ages. He did all he could to avoid being one of them.

"Donatello from District 9, Wyatt from District 10, and Eliot from District 3 all have faced nine separate Games, the latter two only just recently became Victors themselves." He rattled this off as if he'd memorized it. He had. He had an interest in knowing who the most desperate among them would be.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah? And all three of them got at least eighty pounds on me and they aren't weak enough to get taken out by a ten year old."

There's a flash of old defensiveness, of the bullied kid who became a terrorizer of his own machinations in retaliation. Howard almost instantly regrets it. He's sure it's not endearing at all.