thecapitol | A neverending tunnel

Entry tags:

A neverending tunnel

WHO| Mindy, open
WHAT| Total brooding and evaluation of life choices here.
WHEN| Week 5
WHERE| Training room and the tower
WARNINGS/NOTES Mindy, so good amount of swearing, thoughts/talk of deaths

The riot should have been the easiest thing. What did Mindy want more than burning, breaking, smashing and shooting any living thing she could spy with her eyes? It should have been like putting on a second skin, and really, it would have been, had she stayed in the Capitol. She'd have finally had her chance to show the Capitol what she really thought of them and all the shit they'd put her through all this time.

Then, of course, they tortured her and right after that, threw her into the Arena. After a temporary good time with some friends, she watched each of them die, even the ones she'd sworn to protect, right down to Ellie, her bestie, and getting killed herself by some murdering cyclops bitch.

And then, back here, where Eva fucking pulls a black out on the Capitol, something Mindy could not stop but admire. The sheer bitchitude she showed, her treachery for the Capitol, only to fuck them balls deep in the ass for three hours.

But that, obviously, spelled Eva's end, and knowing Eva, she wouldn't go for some spectacle execution where they disemboweled her or gunned her down after torture. No, she'd die alone, private, and that was that.

And here she was, three hours of madness in her hands, and she....fumbled. Those memories, that self hatred dragged on her, pushed her down and she doubted herself and everything around her. She wanted to burn things and cause mayhem but for the first time in her life, she feared the pain.

Well, not entirely accurate. She didn't want anymore, not right away for fucks sake. She was still having nightmares of her torture, only now she had to deal with dead Hotaru and Chibi Usa floating around in her dream, along with Ellie falling through ice. It was only the Arena, she knew that, but that didn't stop her smothered yelling, her body taut as the pain came again, swallowing screams and breaking into closed mouth sobs she suppressed. She began to lock her room and not sleep (again). She was in her room, and honestly?

She could use the company.

_

Now numbness was replaced with anger. Chibi Usa was gone, which made her angry, but was doable. She didn't want a girl that young watching people scream and die. But Riley. She was in her district. She was a friend. She was ELLIE'S...something (girlfrined? Friend with benefits? Main girl?), and now she was dead. Again.

Shittiness. At least Ellie had closure, even if it was in the most fucked up way possible.

So Mindy's frustrations went into her obstacle course, jumping through rings, punching bags, seeing how much further she could jump. Her body was tight, screaming at her, and this, after all this time, was comforting now. She was sweaty, bruised, but all by her own hands.

She felt, at least, like herself again, concentrating on how pissed she was.

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Harley sighed near the end of Mindy's rant. She knew how important it was to get all that off her chest so she didn't stop her. But at the end she stood up and moved closer to Mindy.

"We're not chips. And we're not toys. We're not helpless either. If we weren't a threat to them they wouldn't even bother trying to manipulate us they would just lock us in boxes and let us out when it's playtime."

Putting a hand on either side of Mindy's face she made their eyes meet.

"The only way you can be a kid is to do it the way that feels right for you. So yeah play video games, crash in bumper cars and eat too much junk food. But you're still training and protecting people as best you can because that's who you are. Not some comic book hero and not some tragic victim. You're Mindy Fucking Macready, the most dangerous pre-teen I've ever met. They can shake you, they can knock you down and even crack you. But if they break you then ole' Harley will just have to put the pieces back together. And it won't be smooth and it won't be perfect...but you'll still be your father's daughter and that's gonna have to be enough to hold onto for now."

It was almost embarrassing, that she needed the pep talk, that she couldn't lift herself out of this herself. But she would admit it to herself, that she'd been dealing with this in her head so long that eventually, someone needed to help dig her out of it a little bit. Dad wasn't here, which meant any mistake she made she blundered into without guidance, without help. Maybe she DID need some of Clem's adult figures, if only to find one that wasn't going to talk down to what she was.

"Eva wouldn't have risked her life if she believed that." She was quiet, her hands clasped. "What I wouldn't do to have had a real fucking conversation with her, no bullshit. Just guesswork now, and that annoying bitch that she left behind. Funny, who dies and who lives. Not even fair, really."

She sighed. "I guess I can fake it. I've still got a few of my friends left, right? Hotaru, Clementine. Ellie, whenever she can get away from fucking Joel. I can start from somewhere. I just...I wish they hadn't brought dad back when they were doing their reunion shit. All I can think about is him these days, and how I'm not anywhere close enough to getting him back."

"You're closer now then you were a week ago." Harley answered in a soft and gentle voice far from her usual one. She took Mindy into her arms again.

"Eva wasn't perfect. If she was she could have opened up to us more and brought us into the fold. But the fact is she had trust issues. And look where it got her in the end? I mean really what was accomplished by her little stunt? Some riots, some fires. Nothing's changed. It was a waste because she didn't feel like she could trust anyone but herself."

"You've got friends. They may be targets, but they also are the ones you need in times like this when you're feeling weak in the knees."

A pause and she added, "And by the way? Why am I not on that list of friends? Just because I'm a little older? So cruel."

Yeah, Harley had a point, but at least Eva had done SOMETHING< and it had at least given them all the opportunity to see what they could REALLY do to the Capitol when they had the know how. Sure, in the end it seemed small, but even small things had a way of snowballing when they had the chance to collect. But she'd keep that to herself for now.

"See?" She mumbled. "In the old days, I would have shoved you off me. Well, maybe, you ARE Harley Quinn, its still insane that I've met you at all to begin with."

She wouldn't, of course. Harley was one of those adult friends she did care and respect.

"I was talking about my kid friends, dumb ass," she said. "I wouldn't put Clem in, say, the same category as Hawkeye."

That was enough to earn Mindy a noogie from Harley while she dragged the girl back to the sofa.

"Well I guess that'll have to do. I may be an adult but I'm still childish at heart." she cackled delighted with herself like no other.

"You fucker!" She groaned. "That's what I do to Clem, don't do that to me! I'm an ADULT!"

No, she was not totally referencing a certain song, what are you talking about?

"I don't know if I consider you an adult yet," Mindy said thoughtfully. "You still know how to have fun and you don't piss me off. Maybe something inbetween."

"Well no wonder neither of us fit in." Harley giggled flopping onto the sofa and dragging Mindy with her to flatten her face with a sofa cushion.

"We're not adults and we're not kids, we're something in between. I'd say teenagers but I think we're not quite that either because we're smarter and don't have acne yet."

Mindy grinned even with a face full of couch cushion and retaliated with a pillow straight to the stomach.

"Yeah, and I can wait for being a teenager. Between Dave and Eponine's drama I don't think I need to have that kind of life!"

"Yeah no kidding!" Harley grunted grabbing another pillow and sandwhiching Mindy's head between the two cushions.

"I thought MY teenage years were rough. Eponine makes it into a greek tragedy."

Mindy grunted and started tickling Harley, so her head could gain some breathing room.

"That's because Eponine is a fucking tragedy. A selfish, self destructive tragedy."

"Amen sister." Harley shook her head "I tried to help her after totally humiliating her, but she never wants to listen to a thing I say. It's amazing she's lasted this long really."

Eponine had even been there longer then Harley and the toll it had taken on her was clear for all to see.

"Funny how making someone look like an ass in public makes them so unresponsive," Mindy said, shaking her head. "But its more than that. She fucking HOARDS misery, you know? She hangs onto it and doesn't get better on purpose. It's like, the last thing she'd ever want is to fucking say the truth, and that's why she gets her ass killed, she'd so stubborn."

She shook her head. 'I'm not surprised she's still around. Her bullshit makes the arena interesting."

"Well maybe if she didn't steal Homura's cat I wouldn't have completely humiliated her so beautifully." Harley shot back still puffed up with pride.

"Maybe interesting to the masses, but I've grown bored with her." Harley countered with an elaborate and exaggerated yawn of boredom.

"Because that totally justifies shaving her head and marching her around the town," Mindy quipped, although she found now she was feeling less sympathetic about that.

"Of course you have," Mindy said, making a face, "you're a fucking headshrinker! In your spare time you've seen worse than her fucking high school Degrassi bullshit!"

"True." Harley agreed with a chuckle letting her head lounge back onto the sofa cushions.

"But let's be fair, I glued a clown wig to her head. Her stylist had to shave it off. She made my stoic and serious little friend cry. That cat was the only thing keeping Homura connected to the life and love she had lost and Eponine thought she could just steal it? She's lucky that I was smart enough to figure out humiliation was the only pain she would pay attention to."

"Damn right its true," Mindy said. Like she would ignore what Harley was at THIS point. Really, the woman should be charging her.

"Dude, come on, be serious. That bitch was lucky that the cat happened to be something important to Homura, and she made it worse by fucking crying about it. Eponine has the intelligence of oatmeal, whatever her street smarts are. Homura just had no way of filtering her distress or being intimidating. That's one of her worse points, really. Don't act like making Eponine look fucking retarded was hard. That was the first thing my fucking murderer did in the Arena. I'm still angry about it."

Harley casually flicked Mindy on the nose for how riled up she was getting.

"Whatever Homura's faults are, she's my pal and I'd do the same to anyone who made you freak out like that so watch it." She warned following with "And it may have been easy, but that wasn't the point. The point is that Eponine has lived a difficult life and because of that she doesn't respond to things like being punched in the face, tortured with knives or even yelled at. None of those things bother her. What really upsets her is to be embarrassed and humiliated. After you figure that out it's easy to do, even easier for someone like me but if you just try to discipline her in more traditional ways the message won't get through to her oatmeal and she'll just keep doing whatever stupid thing she'd done."

For someone they didn't like these two spent an awful lot of time talking about her.

"You'll notice since that incident she doesn't mess with Homura and she has a healthy fear of me." Which had come in handy once or twice.

Mindy swatted her hand away.

"So you were going out to punish her. Fair enough: its you, and if anyone would know to go after the thing that a person hates the most, you would. I was sure that Eva might have killed you for that, seeing how she went after Felicity, but I guess Eva thought the girl had it coming. Makes me feel stupid that I went out and kicked her ass."

Because no one spits at her, damn it.

"Yeah, at the funeral. Seriously, that bitch had some nerve, trying to keep us out of that."

"A rare show of her nerves." Harley chuckled "Eva didn't share much with anyone, not even her favorite girl. So it stands to reason in her paranoid, self centered world that we would show up just to ruin her night instead of paying respects to our former mentor."

The funeral had been appropriately somber, but the kind of thing Eva would hate. All those people focused on her.

"I could have given a fuck about her night," Mindy said. "I wasn't there for her, like I kept telling her. I already could guess how she held vigil over fucking Orc dying, the last thing I needed was her pretending she gave half a shit about Eva's death as much as who was invited."

And Mindy would be damned if she wouldn't at least pay respects to Eva: it had taken balls to do what she did that night, wondering if everything she'd done would be forgotten later.

Harley yawned in response and stretched out her limbs luxuriously like she was posing for a magazine. A surefire way to distract even Mindy.

"Well as much fun as hating on Eponine is look at the time. We're gonna be sleeping till noon at this rate and that's hardly good Mentoring."

Harley normally would sleep in late but in the last couple weeks she'd been waking earlier and trying harder to get her tributes to train with her.

Mindy rolled her eyes and pokes Harley in the stomach. "Show off."

Mindy laughed at the insinuation that she would actually be sleeping in. "That'd be a nice dream. I'm young Harl, my metabolism is not to be fucked with. Keep in my mind I was making sure people at night didn't fuck around: strict regiment."

Drinking had toyed with that a little, but Mindy had figured out a decent enough schedule around it.

"You know you love it." Harley chuckled smugly.

"Yeah, yeah. I've heard that before. You may have been trained since birth to be some kind of ninja with a sailors mouth and a anti-hero complex. But you're also a teenager. Your insides are in a constant state of flux." She teased rolling to her feet.

"You're welcome to join me or not, but Mama's ready for some mildly disturbing dreams that could either be nightmares or my own madness." She called over her shoulder making her way to bed, hips swaying in an almost unconscious teasing fashion.

"Somehow I think I'm a poor substitute for the Ice queen," Mindy answered. YES, she had seen that.

"I guess you have a point, not that I want to acknowledge that. But even though I'm likely to have a bunch of awful dreams that will make me all PTSD when I wake up, I can totally thank you for telling me to go to sleep early."

That was a joke, of course.

"Yeah, maybe I will hit the hay. Might be a good idea."

Why Harley looked like she was walking the catwalk to go the bed was anyone's guess.

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A neverending tunnel

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I will forever think of this as the "lazy bj" icon

Keep dreaming~

I don't....want that in my dreams! Who wants a lazy bj in their dreams?!

Desperate people?

Re: Desperate people?

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