thecapitol | I'm only human, I've got a skeleton in me... [CLOSED]

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I'm only human, I've got a skeleton in me... [CLOSED]

Who| Kevin and Stephen
What| Stephen asks to meet and talk about something. Something very important.
Where| Out at the park.
When| Late Week 2 of the Arena.
Warnings| Kevin. Potentially angsty Kevin, even.

The reasons for the meeting were unclear, but Kevin thought it was nice to be actively REQUESTED for conversation for a change by someone. Sure, he was a Mentor now, but he...hadn't gotten to do as much actual mentoring as he would have liked. Everyone just seemed so gosh darned busy all the time, and they all seemed to have reasons not to talk to him for very long.

But at least Stephen wanted to take time out for conversation. That really was nice.

Kevin sat alone on his favorite park bench, patiently waiting for his company. Maybe he could have brought some paperwork with him to do while he was idle...but instead, he was using the time to take his daily prayer. His face was turned upward, his hollow gaze locked directly with the sun. He had done this once or twice since his time at the Capitol, but usually when he was feeling contemplative. Today, he was in good spirits all around.

Soon, Stephen would be there. But until then, he was having a lovely conversation with the Smiling God.

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Stephen approaches Kevin from behind. As he walks along the perfectly even path that winds along perfectly manicured grass and perfectly curated plants, he touches a hand to the breast of his jacket -- he is making sure the tablet is still in place.

He is going to need that, for this conversation.

...the fact that Kevin is staring directly at the sun takes Stephen aback. He gapes for a moment, wondering how that's possible -- what are Kevin's eyes?

He clears his throat. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"

The smiling man doesn't jump when he's addressed - merely looks down from the sun, turning his gaze instead to his company. "Not at all, friend!" Friend. If the word is strange for him to use, now, it seems lost on Kevin. "I was just praying. I don't get to do that as much as I would like these days! At least, not outside."

He sighs a little, scooting over on the bench and patting it, gesturing Stephen to sit.

"Now. What did you want to talk about?"

The glittering escort, who only looks more glittery in the afternoon sun, pulls in a deep breath.

"I wanted to talk to you about the last Arena. I know you've been asked this before, but...humor me. How much of it do you remember?"

"Oh," Kevin begins, drawing in a breath of his own. Oh.

"Well...gosh, Stephen, I don't remember very much. The last few weeks are kind of...a blur, honestly."

Still chipper, but...there's something disquieted creeping into his tone. He's been trying not to think about the Arena. Trying not to remember.

"Why do you think that is?" Stephen presses. Before he goes on, he wants -- no, he needs to know how much of the suppression system in his own body Kevin is aware of. If Kevin already knows and is fine with it, this will have been a pointless exercise. But if he doesn't...

If he didn't, then Stephen has some very bad news.

The self-awareness of his own condition, unfortunately, is somewhat related to his mental state. When the chip is firing off, he is more apt to realize that it's there...but right now, Kevin is in a very good (if displaying the beginnings of discomfort with the conversation) mood.

What happened with Molotov has already been largely erased from his disposition.

"I don't really know," he admits, smile twitching a little bit. "Maybe because it's just...not necessary for my personal efficiency to know about it?"

Edited 2014-09-10 06:15 (UTC)

"I don't think that's it," Stephen says. "After all, you are a Mentor now. How are you going to advise your Tributes on how to win the Games if you don't even remember how you won yours?"

He pulls the tablet out of his coat pocket.

"That's why I've brought footage from Arena 10 with me. I want to go over it with you."

Something, something about this is needling the back of Kevin's mind. It's like feeling something squirming behind his brain, trying to peek around a corner that he's been trying to seal away. For now, he tries to ignore it, but his voice has something strained in it when he nods, speaking slowly.

"It's a fair point. Okay...well, let's watch, then. Gosh, I hope I performed all right?"

His gaze falls to the tablet, smile going from friendly to fixed. What passes for neutral for Kevin.

"Why don't you see for yourself?"

Stephen sits down on a nearby bench, motions for Kevin to join him, and begins to replay footage from Arena 10. It's not all of Kevin's footage, of course -- that would take far too long -- but it has the important parts. Stephen put this tape together himself.

It covers Kevin's first few days in the arena fairly quickly: covering any highlights, any kills, anything of note.

Then it plays the recording of Kevin's blinding in full.

Scooting up close, Kevin turns his attention completely to the footage. At first, he enjoys watching it - smiling, laughing at some of his own performance, taking note of things that could have been performed better....

Until he sees Carlos there, poised with his acid gun.

The scene unfolds, and as it does, the color recedes from the smiling man's face. An initial sensation of roiling anger upon seeing Carlos reject his hug gives way quickly to horror, to a wince when he sees his own eyes come gushing out of their sockets. He watches himself scream and thrash as if watching a stranger - and the way that he jumps to his feet in recoil when he hears himself roar, all fury and rage and distortion...it makes something all too clear.

He's never seen himself through someone else's eyes before.

Forcing himself to move back to the bench, to sit down, to watch, his voice is a weak whisper when he speaks. A telltale bolt at the back of his neck sends a twitch throughout his body.

"...This...can't be right...."

Edited 2014-09-16 05:06 (UTC)

Stephen pauses the recording.

"Kevin, I need you to stay calm. When you aren't calm, your memories are erased. It's important that you remember what you're seeing right now." He is serious, his voice low and measured.

He will wait until the chip settles.

"Are you ready to go on?"

"Erased? Erased...."

Kevin blinks a couple of times, giving this a moment of thought...and then stares up into the sun for a few seconds, breathing deep and murmuring under his breath. The sparking dies down, ceases for the moment.

When he looks back down again, he pushes the grin back onto his face.

"...Of course I am, friend. Go on."

fight it

"As we go on," Stephen says, voice still slow, still quiet, "I need you to check back periodically. Make sure you remember the last five minutes. If you don't, tell me immediately. Do you understand?"

His heart is racing -- he knows he's playing with fire here. He wonders whether he'll accidentally break Kevin, or send him into a berserk rage. What if Kevin kills him before Peacekeepers can arrive? What if he's responsible for the complete mental breakdown of the only Victor Six has had in decades?

Well. He wasn't a very popular Victor anyways, thinks the part of Stephen that we all have, the part that makes utterly tasteless jokes you'll never say aloud.

Outwardly, Stephen is the picture of calm. See, Kevin? Everything's all right. No one is upset. All of this is perfectly normal. They're just reviewing tapes, and Stephen is voicing legitimate concerns. Checking your memory every few minutes is a completely reasonable precaution. Right? Right.

Kevin's heart is racing, too. Normally it runs fast - the quick tap tap tap of a rabbit's heart, running his body with more efficiency than the average person...but right now it's trying to escape, burst out of his chest.

He nods. Stephen's businesslike demeanor is helping him parse the situation.

"I understand, Stephen." A slow, almost catlike blink. "I can...remember right now."

So far so good then. Or I could just hit pause every time I smell that he's on fire, he thinks again, and wonders if he isn't making terrible jokes in his head to help himself deal with how unnerving this situation was.

He nods.

The tape resumes, and the tail end of that roar echoes tinnily through their little corner of the park. It will play through the entire confrontation, to where Kevin lets Carlos run, to his discovery by the Initiate.

In spite of himself, he flinches back at the roar when the tape is played - but he breathes through his distress, keeping his gaze fixed. Watching. Kevin remains as calm as one could expect...and then he hears himself whisper, hears a voice that is and isn't his tell Carlos to run away.

fight it

you have to fight it

It knocks the wind out of him. For a moment, as the footage shows him crumple up, pass out there on the ground, he finds himself unable to breathe.

A hand moves up to loosen his tie, and he makes himself draw a shaky little lungful of air through his nose. He can feel the thrumming of the chip threatening to shock him again.

"...Tell me why doing this is a good thing."

It's not a question. It's a command. Or maybe a plea.

It is the tone of command that makes Stephen realize what Kevin is actually asking. Kevin isn't asking Stephen to stop, or to convince him to go on.

He's trying to subvert the chip.

It gives Stephen the guts to go on.

Actually, if he's honest...it's heartening.

"Kevin, it's your job to gibe advice to Tributes on how to win arenas. Therefore, it is vital that you remember how you won yours. You won't be able to do your job if you don't remember this."

"I won't be able to do my job," he repeats softly, shutting his eyes for a moment, "If I don't remember this." He's willing himself to believe that, talking himself into it, keeping himself as balanced and calm as he possibly can.

Stephen has no reason to lie to me. Except that he's been pretending to like you this whole time. But that isn't a surprise. I knew that from the beginning.

After a long, slow breath, he opens his eyes again, his hands shaking and clenching on his thighs.

"...Okay. There's...more, isn't there?"

A nod.

Stephen knows he could back down. He could upset Kevin, and trigger the chip, and make all of this go away. He could demonstrate the exact same lack of respect for Kevin's personal autonomy that the rest of the Capitol did. That StrexCorp did.

If Kevin had begged him to stop, Stephen would have. For a moment, he had thought that tell me why doing this is a good thing had been a plea to stop. But that isn't what Kevin wants, is it?

Warily, Stephen will play the rest of the tape, highlights from his discovery by the Initiate to the announcements of the final deaths.

The tape goes on, and Kevin watches.

He watches Initiate show him kindness, watches him reach out for the back of his neck; he unconsciously reaches back to touch around the chip, comprehending for the moment that it is there. The skin is burnt, scarred. Realization dawns that he has been shocked for a very long time.

He watches himself slowly turn into something else, becoming more and more animal - but not before going mad with his blindness, roaring at people, eating them for reasons other than efficiency. He sees himself being cruel, terrifying, a monster until the very end.

And the whole time, while he watches, a very unfamiliar expression fixes itself on his face.

Terror.

wake up

fight it

don't let it disappear

By the end of the tape, he's breathing just a little too fast, something resembling a high pitched whimper escaping his throat. He's frozen there, staring at the screen, even once nothing more is playing....

Most disconcertingly, he doesn't say anything.

Edited 2014-09-17 17:36 (UTC)

Stephen has been afraid of his Tributes before. To be perfectly honest, Molotov scares him the most. More even than Kevin.

But over the past few months, Stephen has learned to keep a straight face in the face of fear. He presses his lips together, slides the tablet back into his pocket, and fixes his gaze on Kevin.

"Do you remember the last five minutes?"

"...Yes. I do."

Slowly, very slowly, Kevin lifts his gaze up to Stephen's face. It's funny...Stephen sitting there with his straight face, locking his gaze with the smiling man's - while Kevin himself looks rattled, pale as a ghost and just as haunted.

But he's still smiling.

He can't stop.

"...Stephen. Can...I ask you to write me a letter? Something to remind me about this? Gosh, I...it's so hard for me to...to keep a grip on -"

His hand moves up to his own head, twining into his hair, mussing it. Pain. It hurts, and he doesn't like the awareness that it hurts.

"A letter?" Stephen's expression is questioning. "Not a report?"

It is too soon to know if Stephen has done a good or a bad thing today. His personal feelings on it aren't being examined -- he'll worry about that later. Right now he wants to get through this without having to call the Peacekeepers, and though it's looking good, he isn't out of the woods yet.

"Well, silly, of course a report - nnnnn, but maybe also a letter. Cover letter, so I'll read it? I'm...I want..to make sure I can find this again...."

It's a struggle to keep himself together as he sits there, hand clenching against his scalp, pain mounting in his brain and spinal chord. His voice fluctuates - but not into the loud distortion that pours out of his mouth when he's angry. This is more akin to a radio being tuned, quiet and then barely there and then back to quiet again.

He never quite finds the station, but he tries. He tries, and his own body tortures him for it. The fight is already wearing him down. He wants to look up to the sun, to pray, but he also feels repulsed by the bright light. By what it stands for.

Kevin stares Stephen down, and his expression is one of hopelessness. He speaks again, the voice trying to break through his mind finding a way out between his lips. It sounds so different, so small, but Stephen has heard it before - on the tapes, when he had told Carlos to run.

"...Stephen...what have they done to me? I don't...." He falters. The chip gives him a warning shock, and he removes the hand from his hair to press it to the back of his neck. Tears start streaking down his cheeks.

"...I don't...want to be...a monster."

The world seems to fall away from Stephen, at that moment.

He's crying.

Kevin. Kevin is crying. And it's my fault.

Stephen, as a rule, hates making anyone cry. He's done it before, usually to girls who formed mistaken impressions of him, but he always hates it.

Truthfully, his first instinct is to try to make it stop -- but Stephen doesn't know how. He doesn't know how to do that in a way that isn't lying.

"Kevin--"

They had done something to him. Stephen doesn't know what, but maybe it was similar in some ways to being made an avox. Like an avox, but worse. What, then, did it mean for the person Kevin had been?

He's speaking to the person Kevin had been.

His brows crease and his mouth opens and before he knows it -- no, no, no -- that is a huge stirring of very personal pity for the man in front of him. When he speaks again, his tone is softer -- quieter, but more urgent.

"Kevin, I'll get it to you. I promise." Not much of a promise, but it's something -- it's all Stephen can offer right now. "But you have to calm down. Calm down, or you'll lose it again. All this'll be erased, and we'll be back to square one."

"You...you promise...I - oh god-"

Kevin knows he has to calm down. He has to, or he's going to fall back under control again, sink back into that bright light that burns within him against his well. Even knowing that, though, he struggles, feeling the chip burn under his hand. Lightless eyes remain locked with Stephen's, trying to find an anchor and finding something he wasn't really expecting instead.

Sympathy.

He draws a very slow breath, sweat beading on his forehead, and shuts his eyes for a moment, testing. Visual stimuli are still kind of alien to him, really. Originally, he wasn't built to see. Maybe if he cuts away the way the world shines at him, he can keep himself for just a little longer. He keeps them shut, and he feels instead. He feels the tears on his face. He feels the warm sun beating down on him. He feels the fabric of his slacks under his hand. He feels the breeze. It helps, acknowledging the world in a way that feels a little more familiar.

"...Being calm is only going to help for so long," he finally murmurs again, still speaking in that faint voice. It's dangerous, but there are things he has to say. Kevin - the real Kevin - hasn't spoken in so long. "It feels like someone unscrewed my head and pulled out all the wiring, and I'm going to short out. It hurts. Everything hurts."

Stephen's hand is on his mouth. His eyes are darting from Kevin to the grassy park around them, as though he might spot someone who could somehow, miraculously, help him. He sucks in a breath through his nose, then lowers his hand and the breath comes out in a sigh.

He has to stay calm. Stephen Reagan has to keep a level head, because Stephen Reagan's head isn't being influenced by some kind of corporate brainwashing chip.

(God, part of him thinks, this is without question the worst time to develop sympathy for Kevin. He's supposed to be distancing himself from the Tributes, not getting more deeply involved.

Really, he should drop this.

He should.)

"...what can I do?"

Kevin, of course, does not see Stephen's plain distress. He can hear it, but he doesn't want to see anything right now. He continues to feel.

He feels the fabric of his shirt where it is beginning to stick to the cold sweat slowly creeping over his skin. He feels the not-so-steady beat of his heart, too fast, too hard. He adjusts how he is sitting and he feels something grinding in his spine that may or may not be all in his head.

All in his head. What does that even mean right now?

His hands move from their respective tasks to reach up and start removing his tie. He can feel them shaking, and he knows it's because he is running out of time because he can also feel a mounting charge at the back of his neck. A sense of urgency creeps into his voice.

"I don't...I don't know. This isn't Desert Bluffs. Maybe...maybe I can escape the Smiling God here. But I can't do it alone. Don't let me-"

A jolt pulses through him, strong and sudden - the red silk tie is crumpled between his hands and a high pitched whine sounds from the back of his throat. Trying to stay calm is becoming nearly impossible. He's losing himself again and he knows it.

Speech becomes a frantic hiss between his teeth.

"...Please, Stephen, don't let me lose myself for good...don't...don't let me forget...I don't want to forget...."

What does one do, in a situation like this? What does protocol dictate, when someone in front of you is begging you to save him from himself? He must have skipped the class that had covered this kind of thing, because Stephen is lost.

The smart thing to do would be to walk away. Stephen, however, isn't known for his good decisions. He makes bad ones every weekend.

So, he does the dumb thing here and reaches out to grab Kevin's shoulders. Touching Kevin is usually very ew and never done if he can help it, but his fingers close over the bones of Kevin's shoulders and he looks at Kevin very hard.

"Kevin," he says, and his voice is forceful without being rough or aggressive, "it is going to be okay." It isn't, but Stephen has years of practice convincingly telling people it would be okay when it wouldn't be. There's a lot of confidence in his voice and face.

Immediately, Kevin throws his focus onto the warm hands holding onto him. It's something stabilizing, something outside himself. He focuses also on the sound of Stephen's voice, strong and firm in his ears; it's a comfort, but he also finds himself unable to believe it. It's hard to feel like everything is going to be okay when you can feel your own mind being overwritten by something wound around your spinal cord.

Besides, since he was a kid, he knew it was never going to be okay.

"I hope it will - I really hope it will. I can't...keep living like this. My whole body hurts."

Sucking in a shaky breath, he lowers his head, leaning into Stephen with intentions of resting it on the other man's shoulder. He knows he smells awful, like blood and cologne, but he needs the moment of creature comfort.

The chip is buzzing, charging up, alive.

He clenches the tie he's wadded up in his hand. Not long now.

God, Kevin did smell. Stephen's stomach turned --

-- but he didn't pull away.

Running was technically an option, but it wasn't a tempting one anymore.

"Shhh," Stephen breathes. If the chip shocks Kevin, will it hit Stephen too? he wonders. That's how electricity works, if Stephen remembers right: laws of nature dictate that human bodies conduct electrical charges.

Laws of human decency dictate that he stays right where he is.

Perhaps, at a moment when the conditioning was intact, Kevin would think nothing of hugging Stephen through an electric shock. Wouldn't even flinch at the idea that the current was strong enough to cause real pain, real damage. Kevin himself was built up to withstand everything in his body that has been changed, warped, installed and re-installed.

Right now, however, he is much more self-aware.

"Please, Stephen...don't let me go."

The words tumble out in a hoarse whisper, tears falling onto Stephen's shoulder...before suddenly, without further warning, the grinning man shoves away from the Escort, throwing himself unceremoniously to the ground and skidding on the concrete path. He holds on just long enough to shove the wadded-up tie between his teeth - a premeditated effort on his part - and then lets go.

The chip hits him with waves of electricity, leaving him convulsing with tears pouring down his face. He doesn't scream, strangled sounds in the back of his throat the only thing indicating anything is really being felt...but it is being felt. The chip hasn't had to bring him back with this much force for a very long time, and his body actually can't handle it. His limbs twitch, his suit scuffs and tears. His back arches, threatening to fold him in two the wrong way.

And then he's still, smoke billowing from his shirtcollar and carrying on the gentle breeze.

Oddly enough, this is something Stephen can handle.

As soon as he's recovered his balance, Stephen has Peacekeepers on the line and on their way. Kevin will be be picked up and carried off for medical treatment, and Stephen will find somewhere private to go and try to process everything that's happened.

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I'm only human, I've got a skeleton in me... [CLOSED]

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LOL THAT SECOND YOU CATCH A TYPO AS SOON AS YOU OPEN THE WINDOW TO REPLY herp, you know what I meant

Pffff yes, I totally got it.

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