thecapitol | Yes you are, my love, the astronaut, crashing in the name of science

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Yes you are, my love, the astronaut, crashing in the name of science

Who| Initiate and OPEN.
What| Initiate is Not Okay and is being obvious about it. Do you wish to bug him? Make him pay for his kills? Kick him while he's down? Offer support????
Where| Around the tower.
When| Some days after he flips his shit and Eddie stops him here.
WARNINGS| Language. Drugs. Clawing up the self?

The noise, the... everything, it ain't gone. It's fuzzy and soft and there but out of reach. It's there but it doesn't touch him. Just a short while ago his own self would've looked down on something like this, but he? He's okay with it. He is O-motherfucking-kay. And frankly there ain't much what his old self would like of this all right now. But fuck that guy, right? He laughs. Yeah, fuck that guy.

He's been in his room for a while. He realised eventually that everything in there was broken to shit, but he couldn't remember doing it. Was he out of it? Was it someone else? He wasn't real sure until he started finding things missing. If it was him he'd have just left it broken. So someone else was here. He can't find it in himself to care.

For a while he just sat in the room they gave him and he spaced. He'd flow back and forth like waves on the shore, between tearing at the walls and himself, putting blood everywhere, smashing what ain't already broke, and then being perfectly motherfucking fine. He's just there. He's chill. What a great gift he's been given. A miracle. A precious thing. He'd have to thank Eddie later. Soon.

Finally, with the rolling around of one more day, he steps outside. They've given him armbands, his stylists, upon his request. Just like his old subjugglator uniform but more over, it helped hide marks. They eyed his paint funny because it's more messed than usual. But they didn't touch as they knew better and he left it as it was.

He reaches up every few second for the small gold goat skull hung from his neck. He doesn't think about what it means though. Today, he decides, he's just going to walk around. Maybe see who all else is here. Yeah... sounds bitchin'.

He walks like a ghost through the building.

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"I'm not looking for questions or answers, though feel free to ask any of me you'd like. I'm looking to..." Roland takes a slow breath. He still has no clue. Luckily, operating mostly on impulse is a thing with which he is well familiar. "Is there something your people do when they'd like to make peace with one another? Or something similar? A truce, maybe."

One brow goes up. Then another. And then the smallest disbelieving laughs slips past his fangs, only a little hysterical with surprise.

"You want to make all like for truce with him?" He repeats. "OH BROTHER, THAT AIN'T A THING MY KIND MOTHERFUCKING GETS UP TO DO EVER. Peace is not ours to touch. OUR PEACEMAKING IS EXECUTION. Our truce tends only to be of auspictizing, a romance of ours. HE'S ALREADY TAKEN THERE." He looks like he wants to laugh more. As it is he just smirks. "But fine. TRUCE. A making of your human peace."

Not that he won't stay on guard. He's not stupid. But he can give to this. "ANY REASON WHY, BROTHER?"

"Because I'm not stupid. I heard enough to know there was very little malice in his culling, and the death itself matters less to me than whether he came back from it. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that was never your decision. And even were things different, there's a time and place for anger. I think... I don't know if I'm angry at you or not. But if I am, there's no point in keeping it. Can't use it for anything. Not here."

The fact that his proposal was apparently taken as a particularly witty joke makes very little difference to Roland. He just watches, waits and feels that quiet, muddled thing inside him that might be anger. It doesn't feel the way it used to, but Roland's not sure he could summon up any true anger even if he wanted to.

He makes a sound like 'huh' just as simple remarking reaction. He keeps waiting for a punchline. Not the time and place- that was a thing that was true. They all had a bigger enemy, a bigger issue at hand. But.

"...You're a rare motherfucking breed, ain't you, motherfucker?" He muses. The man must be saving it all for later then. Strange but, he supposes it's a viable enough explanation. "MOST AIN'T JUST ABLE TO TOSS SUCH A THING ALL THE FUCK ASIDE LIKE IT BE NOTHING. Or to simply not up and know. WHATEVER WORKS AT FOR YOU MOTHERFUCKER. This shit be just fine with he."

Edited 2014-07-10 18:39 (UTC)

"It's not nothing. But there's no point in it. If Cuthbert were here I'd tell him the same." Saying those words hurts, of course, and Roland takes a moment, takes a breath before he continues. "But I'd like you to know that if the next time we meet is in the arena, this won't be a part of it. Not for me."

He shrugs. "Whether or not you believe me is your business. But for what it's worth, anger isn't coming so easily to me these days. If I were to save it, it'd be for something that mattered. Not in misguided revenge for a killing that almost might have been a mercy." Roland makes sure he looks into those strange eyes at that last. Doesn't blink. Only looks away once he's finished speaking, taking a slow breath and staring absently at the far wall.

It's hard to believe, but he's been here a long time. Maybe. He can live with maybe. He doesn't know what Roland means to communicate, meeting his eyes like that, but he doesn't dare blink first. Even if talking of losses, he's... tired. He's so fucking tired already. As Roland turns away, he blurts out.

"TO GET RECORD UP AND STATED, HE WISHED US STRIFE WHEN WE GOT FIRST MEETING. Didn't like my speech and preach, that motherfucker. DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ON HIM, ELSEWISE," He says, rubbing at his neck. "The Vantas would get on knowing more, the littlest of the three. NUBS HORNS, CAN'T SHUT THE FUCK UP TO SAVE THEIR LIVES. This one's got looking like he got something stuck in his craw. CAN'T MISS HIM. Just make to take every damn thing what all he says with sea scraped salt, that fucker's something the fuck else." A lot of fucking salt. The whole motherfucking ocean. He doesn't even know if that fucker will give good word onto cuthbert, nevermind anyone else. He shrugs his shoulders.

"LOST SOMEONE TOO, THIS TIME. He liked your friend, Cuthbert. MOTHERFUCKER ACTUALLY RESPECTED MY BELOVED. Think he..." He starts, only to trail off. He doesn't know what more to add to that. There wasn't really point in saying it. He shakes his head.

Roland studies the Initiate, looking for grief and thinking that he finds it. "That seems to be going around," he says quietly, because among the gunslingers into which Roland had been raised, news of death was not something to which you apologized. Death is a fact, if a hard one, and reacting to such a thing with an 'I'm sorry' isn't something he really considers. "The littlest Vantas. Do you mean Karkat?" That doesn't sound much like Karkat, though - at least not the side of him Roland knows. Might be.

That seems to be going around, he says. Heh. Yeah. Sure motherfucking is.

In a way, he'd be glad apology ain't a thing what Roland does. It ain't a thing trolls do either, he hadn't even know it a thing before coming here and staying.

"THAT'S THE ONE. I ain't know how he stands with how all they were last. FUCKER'S HARD AS TO KEEP TRACK OF UP IN THAT," He says. He still ain't sorry to be out of the whirlwind, for all he's made amends with... almost everyone else of his kind. "Don't say it from me none however. HE AND I REALLY DO GOT FOR A STRIFE ALL THE FUCK ON. He won't like knowing as you got association with I. BUT HE'S STILL BEST BET FOR THE KNOWING OF CUTHBERT."

"If he takes issue with our truce, he'll have to learn to live with it," Roland says absently, most of his attention going toward the decision of whether or not to clarify things regarding the relationship the two'd had. There's no reason to - if the Initiate and Karkat weren't close, he has no need to know - but Roland wants to. Wants to speak of it, at least briefly, to someone who isn't involved. So he does.

"They'd fought before the arena, and badly. I was there. I... It was the last time I spoke to him, too. I think he was expecting me to go after him, when he walked out. I probably would have when we were children together." He shakes his head and refocuses. That's probably as far into personal territory as this stranger cares to hear. "But there was love between them. What kind of love, I guess I'm never going to really understand. Not now. But if Karkat speaks badly of Cuthbert now, it'll be only out of grief."

That gets him critical. He hasn't forgotten how he obsessed over Terezi, told how they used to be something, and then how he turned on her until Terezi had come to him of all people for companionship. And he, The Initiate, had been far harsher company then, than he is now so he was certain that said something (and maybe he'd always be a little bitter over what had been done to Terezi, but it wasn't as if he was going to Karkat to make friends).

If Roland wants to believe that love, and not that those two were a quadrant blurring disaster from day motherfucking one, well, he's not going to take that bit of peace from him. If Roland thinks Karkat Vantas will just live with it quietly, then he will prepare the popgrubs for that fallout. If not, well, he'd be pleasantly surprised.

But there is one thing that catches him all in surprise. "You were friends as children? HE DIDN'T... You looked all to be different ages, he didn't think..." His mind is immediately on his younger self and the signless's. So close in age were they and then they came here and the Signless knew him as the Grand Highblood and he? Well he didn't know what he was dealing with at all. Things had been so bitter, they were still bitter. But for the briefest second he can imagine if they weren't and then this-- no.

"ENDING ALL STRIFE AND LEAVE OF ANOTHER... It's hard not all to wonder. THINK AS LIKE, IF A MOTHERFUCKER'D GONE AFTER. But it don't change nothing the wonder of that," He says. Not that it made one just stop wondering. But those were facts.

Roland wouldn't have denied that the two were a disaster, or would have been. While he knows sometimes love is enough to overcome all other difficulties, often it isn't. Which doesn't mean the feeling isn't there; it was, he's sure, because he saw it. But the topic has turned elsewhere, so this is not what Roland is thinking of now.

"Wondering what would have happened if I'd gone after Cuthbert? If I understand you correctly, you're right. It changes nothing. And if he'd-- It would have been the right choice. But that doesn't change anything either. Things are as they are, and I'm going to regret it for a very long time." This is one thing Roland is sure of, having some experience with death, and with regret. It's a fact like any other fact, and Roland says it plainly. "And yes. This place... I'm not sure why they took us when they did. But the last time Cuthbert'd seen me before Panem, we were both fourteen. But you don't measure years the same way, do you? We were... hm. We were still a while away from maturity. Still children, though back then we would have insisted differently. I lived an entire life away from Cuthbert before I was brought here." He snorts and a corner of his mouth turns up - not particularly amused, but smiling a little anyway. "Several of them, feels like. I don't think that's particularly common here, being brought so far apart, but it can't be that rare."

Fourteen... he thinks hard, trying to work it out... maybe six sweeps, close? Oh. There's a second long sag to his shoulders when he works that out. And how familiar that sounds.

"IT AIN'T SO RARE. Maybe a little..." He says. He hadn't known any of the humans being so far apart. "EVERYONE WHAT BE FROM MY WORLD IS AFTER MY TIME. The closest is-" a faltering- "the Signless. HE'S ELDER TO MY OWNSELF NOW I THINK, looks it anyway. LAST I SAW HIM ALL BEFORE COMING HE was my age."

He hadn't put much thought to that. Since the first time, he'd mistaken Karkat for Signless because it'd been baffling on two counts that the mutant had managed progeny when all he'd have been culled and because Signless being older than him broke some sort of law in his mind.

"WHAT'S IT LIKE? Getting meet on back from the other side of it?

"It's like... like going back to another time. Or trying to. And not quite being able to make it fit. When I looked at him I was fourteen again, in my mind. But I'm not. And never will be. Too much's changed. It'll be different for you, probably, but-" Roland takes a breath. "What's it like for you? On your side of things?"

"IT BE LIKE..." He had to think about it. He thinks hard. When he finds the answer though, well, it seems obvious. Or course that's how it is.

"Being left behind," He says. "YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN A WHOLE NEW MOTHERFUCKING LIFE, FACE, SINS, AND WEIGHT TO BEAR. But you ain't know how to carry motherfucking none of it, what to do, why ain't no one gets react all the way you think as they should. MADE ALL UP INTO A NEW PERSON TO FIND AS THE SKIN DON'T FIT RIGHT NO MORE. Find as you've lost something what all you was reaching for. ALREADY DONE AND ALREADY ASH. Seems good as good up at first but leaves bad taste ultimate." A bad taste what all he's tasting now.

Edited 2014-07-23 18:28 (UTC)

It's a look into Cuthbert's own mind that Roland isn't sure he's glad to have. Nonetheless it was a gift, that understanding, the way the Initiate had torn himself open to share it. Roland nods, expression thoughtful and just a little bit sympathetic. "Like seeing the past right in front of you, and never being able to grasp it. Like losing something all over again." He realizes his arms are wrapped around his chest, moves them to hook his thumbs into his belt instead. "Alright.

"Thankee-sai, Initiate, you've done me a service. I think that was something I needed to understand. Most things can never go back to the way they were, but if you ever need... I don't know. The Signless and I are friendly enough. If you ever want a mediator- Nothing can be the way that it was. But as long as you're both still here, there's hope for something." He shrugs.

A wry chuckle, all on it's lonesome, slips from him. "OF COURSE YOU TWO BE FRIENDS, HE SHOULD ALL HAVE UP AND KNOWN," He says, just as wry.

He shakes his head, puts his hands on his hips and looks off. "There is many a bitter thing between us beyond mere time. THOUGH, ON THINKING, HE IS SURE IT BE WELL ADVERTISED IN REPETITION UPON CAPITOL SCREENS. The offerings sentiment, and in knowing you ain't know of what it means to a troll, can be of something he will offer gratitude for. BUT HE SHOULD HAVE TO DECLINE TO THE ACT. I am already taken ashen and I will have no others."

He reaches up to his neck and pulls a necklace out from under his shirt. On it are three things; a golden goat's skull for his moirail, a small tube of paint for his faith within the arenas, and three rings interlocked. They are in three colors, one being indigo, like himself, another Roland might recognize as the color of blood, a bright red, the same as the Signless. The final is teal, for Terezi. He tucks the necklace back away, safe and hidden.

"IT'S SUCH A NOSTALGIC THING, TO GET ASHEN PROPOSITION FROM A MOTHERFUCKER WHAT CALL HIM WITH 'SAI'. May Messiahs see to your paths clear, and Mirth be to thee." He gives a simple, respectful nod.

"Ah-" Roland frowns and tilts his head, and in his mind for the first time in a long while he remembers the voice of his old tutor. And that is why you learn about these things before you go rushing in to speak to different species, he'd say, after telling them of a gunslinger who'd accidentally married a taheen with a raven's head at a point where negotiations were too delicate to risk calling it off. All those years of preparation and here he was, long past and far away from any when or where it'd ever be useful. No choice but to take the risk.

Luckily enough for him, the Initiate seems more well-versed in human custom than Roland is in his. "You're right, I, ah. I didn't realize that's what I was offering." Roland's still frowning, looking like he might be about to blush, but it's not actually happening. Takes a lot more than that to heat Roland's cheeks. "I still have a lot to learn about trolls. If you don't mind explaining, what exactly was it I said that would have led to, ah, to your 'ashen proposition'?" He'd like to ask about that goodbye, too, but. Priorities.

Is it bad, that he's gotten to the point he ain't even bothered with this no more? That he has in his heady descriptors of what had once been innate knowledge known everywhere?

"YOU ASKED IF THE SIGNLESS AND I WOULD WISH AS FOR YOUR MEDIATION," He says. And then he explains, "When strife and hate become too great between a pair unable to extricate themselves from one another for whatever motherfucking reason, and so too much turmoil be caused, if the pair and those what be around have for any motherfucking luck up at all, a third will step in. AN AUSPISTICE, AND SO IN TAKING THEM, THEY THREE BECOMING ASHMATES. It be one of four quadrants what as all our species have, this particular being of conciliatory hate. THE OTHER THREE BE CONCUPISCENT HATE- KISMESITUDE, CONCUPISCENT PITY- MATESPRITSHIP, CONCILIATORY PITY- MOIRAILLEGIANCE. Within ashen, the auspistice mediates between the strifing pair. YOU RELY AND CARE FOR THEM. Confide in them and give an utmost trust, one what be dangerous in any other means of doing. THEY ARE BONDED AND SO THE STRIFE SETTLES TO THE MANAGEABLE."

He raises a brow, giving a look that says 'you follow?'

Roland responds to the look with a nod. So he'd accidentally offered far worse than sex; he'd offered intimacy. Trust. Well. No sense worrying about that, as the Initiate - unless Roland's read him wrong - doesn't seem to mind. "That's certainly not what I intended. No offense meant."

He smiles at the Initiate, the expression small and tired. "I don't know how you can bear such closeness with anyone. Not in this place." As deeply as Roland had meant his long-ago decision that the loss was worth it - that it'd always been worth it, every time, and that it was important he remember that - it was difficult to remember it, here. Difficult and maybe dangerous, considering the circumstances. "But that's none of my business. Thank you for your patience with me."

If nothing else has hurt in this whole conversation, this stands sharp like the wrench of weapon in his gut, just seconds from splitting him open. And if nothing else has phased him, the pain that flashes across and twists his features as he tries to smile is evident enough to make up for it.

It's funny. It's funny how this motherfucker says that when the truth is only just before this arena, he was ready to run, terror ridden that he might have to face losing someone and willing to cut everyone off for that. It's funny how his future burned everything what could be good, powerful and unhurt, but alone and with every love hurt instead, because there was no hope of love without pain on Alternia. It's funny how he reached back in light of such, so as to be better, because he was asked to trust and hope though he's been burned by hope so many times before.

It's funny because with all that, Mituna is gone and every hole in him is screaming and he nearly lost his mind forever and just motherfucking culled everyone and the only reason he can walk around and speak now at all is because there's a drug in his veins disconnecting him just enough that he can breathe.

His eyes go up, to the ceiling, head tilting back. It's not a common gesture for trolls, since it exposes the neck, but the other options that he let indigo rise from his eyes, is not an option. His voice cracks, and badly. "He does not bear it, brother. HE CAN STAND NOTHING, NOT HERE, NOR NOWHERE. It is merely that, for whatever reason, stubbornness of my species perhaps, I have not died of it yet. BUT BECAUSE HE HAS TO. There is something he cannot be and he cannot keep from being it alone."

Another time, a moment before, he might've said how his patience is only mirrored. That the respect would naturally bring such. But he can't. He can hardly speak no more and he will not stand before a practical stranger to weep, because he has chosen weakness and pain for the sake of trying not to be a monster. His breath shudders.

"HE OUGHT as to go," He just barely manages to gasp out. He bows his head quick and starts to turn, intending all just to walk faster and faster until he's reached his room once more and he can at least retain some dignity as he tears into himself.

Roland stares after him.

Well.

Shit.

He rubs at his jaw, after a second finds himself wondering if Cuthbert would consider that revenge, putting the one who'd killed him into such a state. It's not a very practical thought, though, and was actually the opposite of what he'd set out to do. Truly, he's still not sure quite what it was he'd meant to accomplish, but he knows it hadn't been that.

Signless would surely know if there's some way trolls apologize, but the more Roland learns about them, the more he suspects the answers to all his troll-related questions lie either in murder or in alarmingly profound sex. While Roland is sorry, he is not quite sorry enough for either of those options, and from what the Initiate had said about his relationship with Signless bringing the other troll into the matter would probably bring a whole new level of trouble to whatever the hell it is that conversation had turned into.

Roland isn't startled by the avox trying to get past him, but that does prompt him to move somewhere else while he thinks on the matter. It isn't too long before he's leaning against an out-of-the-way wall and, thanks to Panem's newest improvement inside all the tribute's brains, typing in English.

[text to the Initiate]

A human apology probably wouldn't mean much from me at this point. Would it seem fair if I gave you the chance to hurt me the same way I've hurt you? Physically if nothing else.

Edited 2014-07-26 00:53 (UTC)

It takes sometime before the Initiate has anything in him to answer the message incoming. He may have split vein to put more drug in his system. Too much feeling, not enough distance. But even before that he had to take the time to breathe again.

And so when he finally finds the message that's been left, there's a distinct off-note to his flutuating tones. Like he ain't quite hivebound, though the illumination be lit. The camera is kept dark.

"DON'T. I aiN'T making as to HURT no one all because of business all me and mine. MINE OWNSELF. Didn't DO nothing... FAIR'S fair's fair. CHOSE FOR MY OWNSELF. Made choice. HE COULD BE INVINCIBLE. I ain't want to be... YOU AIN'T owe him nothing. LEAST OF ALL SUCH."

It's not much of a surprise that his attempt at a troll-apology didn't work out. At this point it'd be more of a surprise if he got something right. But it's also, if not quite obvious that something is off with the Initiate, at least visible. Visible in the strange distance to his tone as well as in the words themselves, sentences more abrupt than they should be.

The Initiate isn't one of his, but maybe that means less in this place where everyone in the building is a prisoner, where death doesn't hurt nearly as much as losing someone. They've both lost someone, and it's gotten more obvious the longer their conversation's gone on that the Initiate is having more trouble handling that than Roland is. Or maybe he's simply had more happen, one tragedy weighing on top of another.

Roland sets his knitting aside on the bed, straightens, and records a video in reply.

"That's true, I owe you very little. Do you need anything? How long has it been since you've eaten?" Dramatic subject change? Not so much, actually. He owes the Initiate nothing and has decided to try to help him anyway, but there's no sense in announcing that. Best to start right in with practicalities like food, especially when he has so loose a grasp on what the actual problem is.

His attempt at a troll-apology mostly didn't work because, well, there is no difference between a human and troll apology.

How long has he eaten? His mouth opens to protest, that he doesn't need this sort of thing from no one, (but his moirail, who is gone, and who he always got telling to eat more because his Moirail, being a former Helmsman, forgot he had to) then closes. He scowls as he thinks. Well. Mituna was gone, and then he'd reacted. Then Eddie gave the Morphling and he... stayed in his hiveblock-room without making as to come the fuck out. And then he did come out...

A few days then. He hadn't actually meant to up and do that. But it wasn't as if it was a big deal, right? They starved in arenas all the time. He hunted for himself as a wriggler and sometimes he didn't catch shit. Ain't weren't being nothing new so as to be noteworthy.

"He'll get something," He huffs at last, a little petulant to have been caught in that. "PIN IN A MOTHERFUCKING ORDER HE WILL, AIGHT? I ain't need nothing else." That Roland can give him.

He rubs at his neck, looking down. "IF YOU KNOW YOU AIN'T OWE NOTHING, WHY THEN?" A perfectly reasonable question to ask. They were still all fighters to the death.

There might not be much point in recording a video in which a fair portion of the message is you, quiet, looking thoughtfully downward. But the Initiate ought to know that Roland's taking the question seriously. It's not often that anyone's confused about why Roland chooses to help - but that was Before, and mostly in his own world, where anyone could take one look at his guns and know exactly why he'd chosen to help them. There are multiple reasons that isn't an option here, none of which Roland cares to dwell on. This, though, this goes beyond a gunslinger's duty, doesn't it? It's more personal. None of his offers had done any good, but the offers themselves hadn't been anything like what he'd do for a stranger. He'd offered because it felt right, but that logic doesn't tend to mean as much to other people as it does to him. Especially when the answer looks like it's an important one, which seems the case here.

It'd felt right. And why was that? After his moment of thought Roland begins slowly, feeling it out as he speaks. "I mentioned earlier that we're connected. By certain events," and he isn't glossing over Cuthbert's death here, not at all, but rehashing that topic now won't do any good for either of them, "as well as by certain losses we've both suffered. In this place, as much as any other, all of us are prisoners of- of the universe." He makes a face, tries again. "Of- of fate."

It's the first time he's truly realized that he can't speak in any tongue but this one - neither of those things are at all an appropriate substitute for the concept of ka - but this isn't the time for that realization. Roland shakes his head, dismisses his disturbed expression as best he can.

"We're all prisoners of powers greater than ourselves here. Among other things. That promotes a certain sense of brotherhood. But at bottom, I did it because I wanted to. And if you decide there's something I can do for you, well." He shrugs. He's already offered to help, after all. Might as well try to do a full job of it.

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carnagecarnival - 2014-08-04 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

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ka_sera_sera - 2014-08-04 22:41 (UTC) - Expand

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Yes you are, my love, the astronaut, crashing in the name of science

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That icon is genuinely unsettling. I like it.

Gr8. Nothing expresses "I'm laughing but deeply uneasy" like past-life tongue-loss callback art. :'D

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(pst, they don't have text unless there's an anon post)

noting for anyone watching, we're going to pretend Roland sent an audio message instead. XD

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