Howard Bassem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-05-08 02:06 am
iselldrugstothecommunity) wrote in thecapitol2014-05-08 02:06 am
Entry tags:
My Hungry Ghost of Hopefulness [Closed]
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.
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.
no subject
"A'course, son," he smiled, shifting to drape his arm over the boy's shoulders. He leaned a fraction closer and dropped his rumbling drawl to a stage whisper. "I'll even teach ya to make my secret bait."
For which Howard's strong stomach would be handy.
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"Can I lay down in your bed?"
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Then, with a last pat of Howard's shoulder, he pushed back his chair and moved to stand. Nodding in answer to the boy's other question.
"Come on, I'll introduce ya to Doc an' then ya can go on an' rest yerself for a bit."
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Crude in subject, but not unpleasant to the ear.
"Doc Holliday," Wyatt amended as he settled himself into the chair beside his desk, turning out to watch the boy settle. "I met him jus' before I was brought here. He lent me hand when I was in sore need'a one."
Wyatt still wasn't entirely sure why they'd brought him, over any of the others, but Doc was proving to be quite the entertaining house-guest and it was hard to worry about too much of anything with the man around.
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He settles down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and breathing deep. "I think I'm going to die of stress before anything else. I think I'm going to prove human spontaneous combustion is a thing."
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It was a talent he'd developed as a lawman, and had honed here to a skill.
"An' a'course, he does. Doc would be a hard one to hide, even if I had a mind to."
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Howard pulls the blanket up a bit, then stares at the ceiling, feeling so tired he can almost see Holliday's voice lilting in.
"They didn't bring my parents, you know."
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"...Do ya wish they had?"
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"You won't think it's because I don't trust you if I say I kind of wish they had, right?"
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Especially given how it had ended for them. Just to know what happened, to get some closure after so much uncertainty.
To know they hadn't left him by choice, as Wyatt was so certain they hadn't.
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Possibly their blessing to let Wyatt take that place in his life without feeling like he's betrayed anyone.
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"I imagine that's par the course as well," he said. "I... I would've liked to have seen my brothers again, but I don't want'em here." He frowned at the distant wall, the shadow of an owl gliding over the blue-green grass. "Can't really have one without the other though."
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"Did you ever think about having kids?"
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Then the rangy smile faded, brow wrinkling as he considered Howard's question.
The truth was he'd never really given it much thought, he'd always just assumed they'd be in his future. A hazy vision not really sought, but expected all the same. Now... being here... being with Max....
He hadn't given that any real thought either.
"Never planned on it, exactly," he murmured, voice gone soft and distant as he tumbled the new realization around inside himself. Deciphering how he felt about it. Wondering if Max had thought of it yet. How he felt about it. "Figured it would happen when it was meant to."
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He's shivering, so he pulls the blanket up tighter. Normally he puts on as much weight as possible before each Arena, but he's as small and stick-skinny as the day he got here, and that means even the lightest breeze seems to set goosebumps up his arms like a flock of birds.
"You know, dudes can adopt."
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So he didn't. Instead he took a moment to bind back up his thoughts, dragging the line back in from the depths it had unraveled, then he looked back up.
Focusing on Howard, knowing he'd have to cross that bridge with Max sooner or later, but also knowing he didn't have to do it now.
"...I think I have," he replied, smiling gently. "Maybe not all official like, but paper ain't everything."
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So he shifts the subject. "I guess I always assumed I'd have kids, but then- I don't know, I saw how awful they were in the FAYZ, and now I kind of just want to throw up thinking about it. I'd be too scared of them. It's like keeping a pet jaguar."
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Another piece of the family he hadn't expected, but now couldn't imagine his life without.
"They ain't the same, Howard," he murmured. "An' I imagine if some of their folks had stuck around, they wouldn't have all been so bad."
Who could expect ones so young to truly understand right and wrong without someone there to show them the way?
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Some images will stay in his brain forever, knit into the neurons. Some smells.
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On the screens day in and day out, in that very room, sitting across from him.
Wyatt had hunted a man like a dog, had slit his throat without hesitation, and had felt nothing but relief in act.
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But it isn't worth the fights. He can't make Wyatt see what he saw, and he wouldn't wish it on him. Not now or ever.
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Just another day. Two men in a bar. A Wednesday.
Then one in a box and one on the end of the rope.
Some things were universal, in his mind.
But he too let the silence lie. The water was still running beyond the wall and Doc was still warbling in his thick, lazy drawl about lovely, smiling women with bowed legs and that was far kinder a thing to dwell on.