thecapitol | Everybody Knows This Ain't Heaven [Open]

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Everybody Knows This Ain't Heaven [Open]

WHO| Howard and OPEN
WHAT| Howard tries to prepare for the next arena.
WHERE| The Speakeasy
WHEN| A couple days after Valentine's day.
WARNINGS| Post-trauma, so some recollections of death.

In a way, Howard already misses the arena. Not the killing, of course, but the solitude, the way he spent so many days there in relative isolation, alert but alone, catching birds and melting water, ears pricked for every sound. There's no possible way to do that in the Capitol; if he jumped at every sound, he'd never stop startling. As it stands, he can't shake the idea that he should be listening for something, should be aware of someone sneaking up on him through the crowds that he can't hear over the white noise.

He's taken to shadows, to dark corners, to trying to exist as part of the periphery rather than in the middle of any attention. Before curfew he goes out into the Capitol and tries to find alleys to hide in, quiet locations, places away from televisions and radios. He's taken a liking to the pitch dark restaurant. After curfew he hides in his room with locks and a chair lodged under the door, or tries to visit Eponine. It's as if he's trying to lift himself away from this world, to become so convincing that he's not there that eventually it becomes true.

But spending all this time hiding doesn't actually accomplish anything recuperative. He's worn out. He spends so much time looking over his shoulder that he can't sleep at the Tribute Center. He has dark circles under his eyes and sores from biting his lips, including one that travels all the way up to the scoop above his mouth. He jumps at loud noises and stumbles when he's not staring directly at his feet as he walks.

Death was hard, but rebirth has not been kind to him. He wishes he could turn it off, banish it to the arena. He wishes he could trust the other Tributes to do the same, but he knows none of this will just be forgotten when he looks at Draco again, or Alpha. Aunamee.

Eventually he finds himself at the Speakeasy. He gets a non-alcoholic drink and finds a booth in the back. He has a book with him, Basic First Aid in the Field. If he's going to be prepared for next time, he'll need to be self-sufficient, and useful enough to keep alive for anyone whose graces he relies on. He goes over the book, getting visibly agitated and frustrated as his scattered mind fails to retain information as fast as he wants it to.

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Howard's taken to the bathroom as well, if only because that one extra wall between him and the ambient noise of the crowd is much appreciated. Or it could be that his stomach hurts, not from anything wrong he can tell but because there was a knife longer than his hand in there not so long ago, and he doesn't want to draw attention to himself by curling up fetal style in the dining booth.

Instead he sits on top of the water tank of the toilet, back to the wall, feet around the rim, staring down at his not-bleeding concave malnourished stomach. He looks so much smaller now without the winter clothes puffing him up, clearly just a hungry kid and not a short adult. He was putting weight back on before the arena but the last game wicked it away again, and he can see the veins stand out like rope in his wrists and ankles.

He listens when he hears someone come in, and he stays very still for the many, many minutes they spend in front of the mirror. He doesn't hear water, he doesn't hear them use a stall. He hears a choked sound and he wonders if they, like him, are very good at crying quietly, then he hears a man's voice - and that's dumb, he thinks, of course it's a man, it's the men's bathroom - saying "this is an opportunity".

Howard can't help but make a sharp laughing sound, which unfortunately echoes in the stall around him. Isn't that exactly what he told himself before the last arena? For some of us, it's an opportunity to get out of a bad situation.

It was his ticket out of the FAYZ. Out of the endless nightmare of starvation and mutants and abuse and into a brave new world of...more of the same.

He laughs again and rolls his eyes, shaking slightly. "Wuss."

He startles like a rabbit. His hand loses its grip on the mirror and there's a thump as he falls forward, stomach colliding with the sharp edge of the sink. He catches himself on the counter to stop himself from dropping completely and remains there, frozen, staring at his own wide eyes.

No one is in the stalls. He checked. He looked.

He wheels around, searching for cameras, monsters with impossibly large gullets, anything. It sounds like a boy, but he can't be sure. He can't be sure of anything anymore.

"Who'sit?"

When Katurian startles, Howard jumps a little too, slamming his hand to the side of the stall to keep from losing his balance on the tank. He should have remembered that he can't be easily seen with his feet drawn up.

He takes a deep breath before answering. "Chill out, man, we're okay. No need to kill each other out here."

There's a quaver in his voice that betrays that he's not the tough guy he's trying to sound like, and the last word is punctuated by a pubescent squeak. Great. He needs to work on that.

He hops off the toilet, unlatches the stall door and pokes his head partially out to see who he's talking to, just his forehead and eyes visible.

His hair is a mess that he hasn't bothered to comb. His arms are thin. His eyes are sunken. Everything about him (from the way his eyes never quite settle on one place, to the way his hands tremble against the porcelain) screams tribute. When he sees Howard, he visibly relaxes, but that does little to conceal the wreck inside. He swallows a breath.

He's only a boy. He's only a frightened boy

"Y-You scared the fucking shit out of me, you know that?" he says. He manages a laugh, except the enthusiasm behind it is obviously fake -- certain sounds are too loud, others are too quiet. "Jesus. What were you doing back there?"

In a way, seeing Katurian in this state boost Howard's morale a little. He wears those self-same marks of skittishness all over his expressions, all over the haunted look in his eyes, the tension in his knuckles, the deer-like awareness of his surroundings, but it helps to think he's not alone. That, in fact, he might not even be the worst off.

Howard laughs too, that same sort of laugh as Katurian, that sound less like humor and more like a voice being cracked in half. "Same thing as you. Hiding from the crowds."

He comes out from behind the metal wall of the stall. "You're right, though. This is an opportunity. This is a step up."

It's hard to tell if he's being sarcastic. It's even hard for him to tell.

Katurian glances back at the mirror as though he needs to see it to remember the words Howard is referencing. He looks at his worn, pale face, his tired eyes, and then-- and then he realizes that he can see the same things in Howard, that suffering. This isn't a comfort for him, not at all, because this is still a boy, this is still a kid, and how could this place throw a fucking teenager into a life or death struggle? Katurian's time in the arena was mercifully cut short. He knew there were younger tributes.

He just hadn't seen one before.

"I probably sound like an insane person." He starts a nervous laugh that trails into a sad one instead. "I didn't think anyone was in here."

"Sorry." Howard does look genuinely apologetic for scaring Katurian like that. He wouldn't want to be caught freaking out in the bathroom either. That's why he hides. "And don't worry. I seen people go off the deep end before. You sound okay."

He emerges entirely from the stall, shrinking, somehow. Hands in pockets, clenched into protective little fists. Rocking on his feet, in case he has to run. Shoulders hunched, spine curved forward and costing him a few inches in height he can't really afford to lose. He's the very definition of 'skulk'.

"It's only a matter of time before someone loses it outside the arena, though, I guess." He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and cringes.

He's seen people go off the deep end before.

It cracks Katurian's (limited) composure, this knowledge, if only for a moment. His more neutral expression falls into a cringe, barely concealed horror flickering in his eyes. He knows what it's like to lose a childhood, to watch the people around him crumble and snap. He knows what it feels like to murder, how after the deed was done, he crumbled and snapped, too. How many people has this boy been forced to kill? How many people has he seen fall?

"Thank you," he says, unsure if it makes sense to accept 'you sound okay' as a compliment but not knowing where else to take it. He hesitates. "I didn't really mean that, about opportunities."

"I did. It's not so bad here, not as bad as it could be." Good, Howard thinks. He just needs to keep telling himself this. Put it back in perspective. "At least here they feed us. The give us water. Death's not permanent. If you get lucky you can die pretty painlessly, I hear. And they even fixed my teeth."

There's something monotone and detached to his voice, like he's in no way trying to convince Katurian of this, but like he's reading something out of a brochure, something he wrote for himself to keep from screaming in the night. Something robotic, inhuman.

Something very far away from fear.

He walks over to the sinks and mirror without really asking Katurian's permission, and visibly steels himself before looking at his reflection again. In his pocket, one hand twinges with pain from being tensed for so long. "What's your name? I'm Howard."

"You're right," he says, because he wants to believe it, too. Katurian's every movement, every breath, is soaked in darkness. His bones are filled with a cold despair that barely makes him feel human. He wants a way to survive this world, and there's no way he'll last another week without hope.

It could be worse, he tells himself. He could have been systematically tortured. He could have survived Wesker's attack longer than those few agonizing seconds.

Michal could be in the Games, too.

"Katurian," he answers, his voice still thin. It is nice, in a way, to fall into a more routine sort of conversation. "My first name is the same as my last and, um, that is not normal where I come from. That's just my parents."

"If your middle name starts with a K, you have a really unfortunate set of initials." Howard sighs, turns on the sink and gets his hands wet in the warm water. He runs them over his face. It doesn't do much to clear his head but when his hands are in motion, he doesn't notice them shaking so bad.

Just like when he's talking, he doesn't notice how hard it is to breathe.

"Howard's not a super common name where I'm from. It's old-timey, I guess. Like some rich oil tycoon from the 20's or something, not like some brat kid from California. Where you come from?"

His middle name starts with K. His name is his name three times over, Katurian Katurian Katurian, like a cruel childhood taunt or a fever dream. This is the kind of thing he would rather not bring up, and so he doesn't, instead nodding his head with his lips sealed tight.

California. His geography isn't very good, but he vaguely recognizes where that is. America.

"England," he says. He sounds English, but there is another accent mixed up in there, something like Eastern European. Something shifted. Something wrong. "But I'd rather not talk about things back there."

His voice thins out on those last words, back there. He swallows.

"I've never been to California."

"The only thing I know about England is tea and crumpets. And I don't even know what crumpets are." He wrinkles his nose a little; he supposes it's probably a snobby way of talking about pie or something. There's something child-like and dismissive about the way Howard makes that pronouncement, as if it adheres perfectly to the self-centered teenage view that if something is done differently than the way he's accustomed to, and isn't inherently more useful, it's stupid and shouldn't exist.

He could tell Katurian was some sort of non-American, but unfortunately his knowledge of accents comes from television. He only assumes actors have bad accents, not Katurian.

"I'd say you aren't missing much, but I never been out of California before now, so I guess I wouldn't know." He shrugs, twists his hands around on his wrists to try and get the shakes out, to hide the trembles. He moves his jaw back and forth, feeling it pop on one side, then hops up and sits on the counter, back to the mirror.

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Everybody Knows This Ain't Heaven [Open]

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