Leaving No Signs of Pain, Your Wounds to Mend [Closed]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

WHO | Howard and Eponine, Howard and Sigma
WHAT | Howard reunites with the allies who didn't kill him.
WHEN | Week 5
WHERE | Tribute Center
WARNINGS / NOTES | Memories of torture/death.


There's one moment between dying and dead where he doesn't want to wake up, because the pain goes away. The puncture wounds stop stabbing, his head stops throbbing, the cold ceases to bite, and he thinks for a moment that it would be okay to be like this forever. But he does wake up, with a headache and a general sense of malaise. They revived him.

He doesn't leave his room for over a day, too scared to go anywhere but under the covers of his bed. He doesn't sleep, nor does he eat, nor does he get up to use the bathroom. He stays there, mostly in the fetal position, hungry, holding it, thirsty, shaking. He knows Alpha shares a Suite with him. He doesn't know if Aunamee does.

He can't face the television screens out there. He knows his painful, ugly death at Aunamee's hands will be fine entertainment, and he doesn't want to hear himself screaming again. He can still hear it in his own head. He runs his hands over the skin stretched over his ribs, looking for injuries that were fixed before he woke up. He keeps licking the inside of his teeth to remind himself he hasn't bitten his tongue off for good, he keeps spitting into the wastebin next to the bed because his mouth tastes like blood. When an Avox comes in to try and deliver chocolates, he bursts into tears.

When he finally does gather the strength to get up, he's trembling less from fear than exhaustion, and the blood rushing to his head makes him so dizzy he needs to steady himself with the bedstand. He listens under his door, but it's the dead of night and no one else seems to be awake, so he ventures out into the living room. The idea of running into Alpha chills him. He keeps alert, moving as quietly as he can to the elevator. The television in the living room is playing out Sherlock getting sliced in half. Howard looks away.

There are two people he needs to see, at least. Sigma and Eponine. So he visits their floors, the third suite and the tenth. He doesn't know how well either will take to a light knock at their door at some ungodly hour, but he doesn't know what else to do and he's afraid to be out and about when Draco or Aunamee or Alpha might see him.

At each door, he knocks lightly three times, and waits, arms wrapped around his skinny body in the plush snakeskin-print Capitol pajamas.

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He looks stunned, then deeply hurt, then angry in turn. He'd come to her looking for solace, looking for a friend, looking to comfort a friend in turn, and instead he's being yelled at and rejected. His cheeks flush red.

"No, I'm not happy!" He grits his teeth in the back before continuing. "Just because you don't play the game, Eponine, doesn't mean no one else is. I didn't even mean to kill him, I just wanted to scare him..."

A pall seems to come over his face, so he squints his eyes and looks away. He doesn't want to remember it. He gets up as if to storm out of her room and feels the dizziness come back, thinks better of it and sits back down.

[makeflowersgrow]

"Yes, well, maybe I should play the game and slit your throat whilst I am there. It would stop you getting me into bother with that man, no?" She spits her reply back.

"I am FED UP with this place. With all these people, kill kill kill - and you - Howard, you are my only friend - and I don't understand why you go to kill him. Valeria says I am here to make up for being bad in Paris. But what about you? Or Madame Lottie? Or Inspector Javert? Howard, you should be more careful. I do not wish to see you die."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He cringes away from her at the threat, unable to parse whether or not she's serious. There's something dark and scared in his eyes, that she's turned on him too, like everyone else he's placed any trust in here.

He doesn't know how he'd survive that. It preoccupies his thoughts even as she changes tactic and tells him she doesn't want him to die.

"You think I didn't have to be bad back home?"

[makeflowersgrow]

She sighs and shrugs, before sitting down a few meters from him.

"I do not know. It is different, no? You were all on your own; you HAD to break into houses. Me..." She shakes her head.

"I was not joking when I said I was a bad girl. I am a horrible girl. I always have been. I wish it were not so, but..." She shrugs again.

"I do not like the idea of you killing though. Especially not that man. Because he will come after you. He is like Montparnasse that one. He holds a grudge. He's dangerous."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It doesn't sound like you were that much better off than me." He looks as if he's about to start crying, but he doesn't. Instead he just runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth instead.

"I don't...I don't like killing, Epsy. I don't want to do it again, I don't..." He takes a deep breath. "I didn't mean to, not really. But if it comes down to him or me, or him or you, I'd do it again. And if he keeps coming back, I'll do it again and again."

[makeflowersgrow]

Eponine just offers him a smile, and reaches for his hand.

"I will ask you only one thing then, Howard. I ask you only not to kill on my behalf, okay? Kill for yourself - but do not kill people because they killed me, okay? That is all I ask."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He's silent for a bit, then he moves his hand close to hers, but doesn't yet take it. "If you promise not to kill yourself again. Or at least don't...don't just be gone on me one minute. That's what my parents did."

[makeflowersgrow]

"I just thought it'd be easier than saying goodbye. It didn't hurt, you know? The man was nice. He did it quick for me."

She scoots closer again, so that she can hug the poor boy.

"I'm sorry, Howard."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I'm glad it didn't hurt." He means it. He's still angry, but he knows if she shows that she can retort with the fact that she, too, must still be furious. And he does care enough about her to hope it was fast and painless.

He hugs her back. "I'm sorry you haven't been enjoying the Capitol none since you got back."

[makeflowersgrow]

"It is not bad. People keep trying to touch me now they have seen me naked, and they say things. And then those police pulled me out of the bush - and Valeria washed my hair and - and we are locked up always at night. And they called me drunk and unlady-like in their magazine, and put in a picture of me that they have made. I look like a whore."

She waves a hand, as if to make it all disappear. "It is no matter. Howard, I'm glad you're back. It's been lonely here without you."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I know you're not a whore. I don't know if that counts for anything, but...." He sighs a rubs his eyes, then wraps his arms back around his knees in a sad ball pose. Like a pillbug, closing his vulnerable parts off to the world. The stomach and chest that were stabbed what feels like hours ago, but must have at least been two days.

"It's pretty lonely out there too. I'm glad you're alive. After you...anyway, until we got the food from you I thought I might not see you again, and I'd be alone when I got back." He squeezes her hand. "That food cost you a lot?"

[makeflowersgrow]

"Oh-" she hides her face, suddenly remembering.
"I thought the chair was Montparnasse. I thought he was threatening to hit me unless I knelt and tasted him. And I did so in front of the Inspector. He definitely thinks I am a prostitute."

Her cheeks are pink; Eponine is embarrassed.but the squeeze to her hand is nice.

"I will always be waiting, Monsieur. I am not easy to be rid of, unless I want to die. And here, no."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Who's the Inspector?" He sounds like police, from what she's been saying, and while Howard doesn't have the same experiences with them that Eponine has, he also doesn't really want to run into them either.

[makeflowersgrow]

"He is a man from Paris. An inspector with what you call the police. He had me arrested and sent to jail for two months for robbery."

She shakes her head. "It is not nice in jail, Howard. I was put in a tiny room with about thirty other women - some murderers, some prostitutes, some thieves like me - and they made us wear manacles on our wrists and shackles on our feet, as animals. And just a mouthful of gruel and a piece of black bread or biscuit each a day. That was his doing, Inspector Javert. He is not a nice man."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard listens to her silently as she explains. He wants to be honest with her, but he figures now isn't the best time to disclose that back in the FAYZ, he was, in essence, a jail warden. A jail warden to much worse people than the either of them, at least.

"He's just another Tribute like you, here. He can't do anything to you." He squeezes her hand. "He can only do things in the Arena, and he doesn't have a jail to put you in there. Right?"

[makeflowersgrow]

Eponine would be up and running if she knew that Howard was a jail warden. Thankfully, he doesn't let on, and she is blissfully ignorant.

"I am not scared of him, Howard. But I do not like him. Even before, he tried to call the peacekeepers on me. He calls me a prostitute... He will make me suffer in the next arena. You know, always he targets my brother - and he is a child. I forget how old. But only a child. There is not a kind bone in his body, that man."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard reaches over and, gently, in his own way comfortingly, strokes her hair.

"Maybe we could petition, or something. Switch out of our districts. Maybe we could even have a district with just us, and like, Sigma and Wyatt, maybe. Just good people, as a team."

[makeflowersgrow]

"Who is Wyatt? Do you think we could?"

She shies away from Howard's petting. To be petted makes her seem weak. And she is not that.

"Do you not like the people in your district?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"He's, um." Probably better not to mention that Wyatt's a sheriff. "He's a good guy. I stole food from him and he let me go. And he tried to rescue me when the guy who killed me, uh..."

He lets his hand fall. He wants to keep clinging to her, keep showing affection, to feel human contact with someone, but he knows how much he hates to be touched against his will and so he doesn't push it.

But he doesn't want to think of Aunamee. Or Alpha.

"I killed someone in my district. It wasn't like with Draco, I had to, it was self-defense. He was on top of me and had a knife and pinning me down."

[makeflowersgrow]

"And now you think he will murder you in your bed? So you will have me sleep there, just in case?"

Eponine bursts into cackles of laughter. "Howard, you have more about you than I thought. This is what my Pa and any of the other Patron Minette would do, so. They would say, 'it is not safe, so we will put Azelma or 'Ponine there - and of course Azelma would cry, so it would be I.It is good, I suppose you think this way. It shows you know how to survive."
She grins over at him, hiding her worry. She has no intention of dying here.
"I will take a knife to bed with me. I do not mind - but I will not die!"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"No, no, it's not like that!" Howard looks hurt and sad I'll over again. "You're my friend, I would never put you in danger like that, that's what friends means!"

He manages, just barely, to keep his voice in a whisper, but it's thick and full of urgency.

"He's got nothing personal against you, so I thought - and since you don't want to be here with the the Inspector..."

[makeflowersgrow]

His reply makes Eponine laugh the harder, an odd gutteral sound in the middle of the night.

"And neither did M'sieur Malfoy before it is that you slaughter him and declare it for me."

She reaches out, to pat Howard's knee in a 'comforting' gesture, all the while shaking her head.
"It doesn't matter to me, Howard. It is right that you should be safe. You are right. I would rather not room with the man who put me in jail - so you are helping me too, no? Now, come. You will show me your room, and then you will come back here tonight and I will stay in your bed. Yes?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"He won't come after you. He's too angry at me for that." But Howard looks abashed, and looks away, at his shoes. They're too big on his feet, mens' size shoes on a boy-sized body. They look comedic on his skinny ankles.

"Eponine, I'm serious. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not that kind of person, okay? Please believe me." He looks as if he'll take anything else as some sort of deep personal rejection.

[makeflowersgrow]

"Who? This man you hurt? Killed?" Eponine shakes her head once more. "You see, this is why it is better not to kill. Then nobody hates you."

She picks at her freshly polished toe nails; Valeria is RIGHT on her now. "Perhaps not, Monsieur. But it is good to be realisitic. I do not like such pretense. Here we all hurt a lot, no? Perhas you will not mean to... but as I hurt you in the arena when I died, perhaps you will hurt me when you do not mean it?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He sighs and wraps his arms around himself, rocking slightly. She's got a point. They are very good at hurting each other. "Maybe. I don't want to, but...I'll never hurt you on purpose, okay? I can promise you that much. If I do it on accident, it's just that, an accident."

He looks up at her door. "Want to raid the fridge? I haven't eaten nothing since I got back." he says without all that much enthusiasm.