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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"You were suffering," he says. "Because you had suffered. It is not your fault."

It was a simple fact. Ice is cold. Water is wet.

"And you know that's a lie, everything staying inside the arena." The light above him bathes his jacket, his hair. "I haven't slept either."

Another truth. Aunamee spends his nights tossing and turning and then wandering the tribute tower, lost, searching for human contact. But it's not remorse that keeps him awake. It's fear. It's the feeling of a metal claw gripping his neck. It's darkness.

He drops his voice.

"It eats at me evey night."

The muscles under Howard's eyes twitch. He allows his gaze to just slightly depart from Aunamee's eyes, to look at his face, look at his body language, and then snap back to his eyes. Aunamee does look tired. The light above catches his nose and forehead and pools into dark, ugly blots under his eyebrows, nose, lower lip, chin.

Howard slept with evil in the basement for four months. Evil never looked so tired. It frightens him, knowing that sadism can have other faces, and he doesn't want to believe.

"Yeah, I'm sorry you feel bad about stabbing me to death. That must be really hard on you," he says, then looks mortified. The sarcasm just tumbled out, the gates of his self-restraint opened by his tiredness, his lack of guard. He shakes harder, and he realizes he's going to vomit, if not right now than in a few minutes at most.

Aunamee has never needed to confront his victims before. The people who saw his mask fall, they were either dead or otherwise discarded from his life. First Grey. Now this.

He should feel angry -- and he does to a degree, fire flickering in his stomach, tension building in his temples, but he stifles it, choosing instead to treat this like a puzzle. A game. After all, Howard's temper is half of what makes him interesting, and wouldn't it be boring if he swayed so easily?

"It's all right," he says. "I won't hurt you. I never wanted hurt you."

Strange, contradictory words, but his voice is smooth like a lullaby. Laced with mercy.

"I killed you because I believed your death would be permanent."

(Howard was suffering because he had suffered.)

There's a pause, a heavy, stifling pause while Howard swallows again. "But I don't want to die."

And then he asks himself why it took so long to say that. He tells himself it's because he's scared of Aunamee, scared of speaking up against the man who stuck him with holes. And he tries not to think about how disappointed he was to wake back in the Capitol. How much he wanted to escape, not by foot but by retreating into himself until there was nothing left, where there wouldn't be a knife anymore, where there wouldn't be sensitive human nerves to even feel one.

"You didn't have to draw it out..." He feels his throat seize and lunges for a nearby trash can. If he was going to say anything, it's forgotten as he expels Aunamee's gift dinner (the milkshakes, sandwich, pasta, oatmeal, bread rolls, everything else). A Capitol citizen watching across the street gets out a camera phone, and he's vaguely aware of it enough to make an ignored gesture for them to go away.

Aunamee murders with one hand and protects with the other. He does not violate his promise by approaching Howard, by rubbing his shoulders, by whispering sweet words of encouragement in his ear. He instead approaches the man with the camera. He hardly misses a beat, taking long, confident strides to close the distance between them.

He could lash out, but he does not lash out. He chooses to speak in a low voice. Sir. If you would. I'm being quite serious. Sir.

These negotiations will take time.

When Howard's finally finished retching, he stays for a moment hung over the edge of the garbage bin. He wipes his face; there are tears running down his cheeks, and his face is flushed. He spits and straightens up, having managaed to see what Aunamee was doing, seeing the way the peevish voyeur is retreating, looking as if he's been cheated of something.

He keeps the reeking garbage can between them, wishing somehow he could shield himself with it, shrink behind it, disappear entirely. Be gone, be nonexistent. Be that somewhere else that is beyond the taste of upchuck, beyond the smell of acid in his nose, beyond the way he shakes from the base of his skull at Aunamee's very silhouette.

His mouth moves but the words are voiceless, a 'thank you' because he's scared of what will happen if he doesn't say it. He feels too weak to run, so he stays frozen there, like a rabbit dying of fright and shame, feeling as if every eye in the world has turned to him.

When it's all said and done, Aunamee has recovered the camera and clicked away its memory. The man insists that no, nothing was been recorded, he hadn't gotten a chance to record, but it's not worth it. Even a split second of Howard's sickness reaching the evening news would be too much. Aunamee is selfish. This is something he wants to keep for himself. This belongs to him.

Once the man is gone, Aunamee turns to face the poor, suffering boy crouched over the garbage bin.

'You're welcome,' he mouths back, just as silent.

He steps backwards once. Then again. It is not unlike how he retreated from Howard's body all those days ago.

"I help people," he says finally. He slips his cold hands into his pockets. "And I'm only here to help you, Howard."

A shudder wracks its way up Howard's body, like some invisible force plucking at his vertebrae. "I don't understand."

It's intuitive, that the Aunamee whom he first met, who talked about being a helping hand to those in need and took care of his ankle, does not actually exist. He was a mask, covering up the butcher on the ice. But Howard's intuition has no explanation for why Aunamee would put the mask back up again, once the face beneath is exposed. Aunamee can't think he's that stupid, can't think he'd just forget. Especially when all he can do is remember.

"If you wanted to help me, you'd have just slit my throat," he says quietly, just loudly enough that Aunamee can hear him. He doesn't want this conversation public, but he wants to stay away from Aunamee, so he finally decides and says "you can come closer, just stay- stay seven feet away, okay? Seven feet."

Far enough that he's out of arm's reach, that Howard can bolt if Aunamee makes any sudden moves.

"That was my intention."

He doesn't even hesitate when he says it. His hands come out of his pockets as he steps forward again, his palms soft and empty and safe.

"It would have been very quick," he says. "It wasn't supposed to feel bad at all."

But you fought, whisper the unspoken words. You cried and squirmed and stuck a knife into your savior's leg.

"That's why I came to apologize."

"You twisted the knife," Howard says, but the words dribble over his lips rather than being a cutting accusation, like they were in his head.

He shrinks back, hands leaving the rim of the trashcan. Aunamee may be looking to come across as unarmed, but he's still bigger than Howard, still faster, and he still wields the memory around him like an invisible weapon.

"You got angry."

That's the only explanation, that he brought it on himself.

He lost control, in those moments. His synapses and muscles were bathed in twisting, violent rage, the kind that shaves his vision into narrow tunnels. All-powerful (all perfect) Aunamee hates losing control more than anything, but all-powerful Aunamee also thinks of himself as a wrathful god, a bringer of lightning, a father that must sometimes guide his children with force. This is all right, what he did to Howard. This is unfortunate, but this is all right.

"I got angry."

His admittance is quiet, yet firm, and he lets the silence hang behind it.

"Everyone's always angry at me."

It's a quiet, sad little statement, bathed not only in his experience in Aunamee but with the way his best friend broke his nose when he was only trying to help, trying to get the situation back under control. It happens that way, doesn't it? As soon as he tries to take control of something, to make someone listen to him, they break his face. They break his body. They walk away.

He sniffs, not from tears but because the bitter vomity snot in his nose is leaking down onto his upper lip. Charming. He coughs.

He tries to find his nerve again, although his eyes slide past Aunamee's face, as if their ability to meet his gaze has been exhausted. "Okay, you apologized. Why are you still here?"

"Because I see something in you," he says. (Blood and bandages and screams and torn skin.) "A potential for greatness."

This is how it always goes. There is always a person set adrift, clawing for meaning. For acceptance. And there is always Aunamee, a savior in white, waiting on the shoreline with an ore covered with splinters.

"I was wrong to be angry with you," he says, low and gentle. "And I might have been wrong about death being your only hope of salvation."

Howard spits again and straightens up, although there's still a way his body bends, an inclination towards shrinking his already small frame. "That's bullshit. That's what people tell me when they want me to stop skipping class."

He's uncertain. He can tell something's happening, but he can't discern that he's being dismantled from the inside, rearranged. "And I don't need salvation, anyway."

There are so many things he could say, so many sweet lies he could whisper and hum and croon. He could tell Howard that there is nothing he wants him to do (he wants him to kick and scream, he wants to crack open his head like an egg) or that the people in the rest of his life, they weren't as selfless as he is selfless. Instead, he opts for the truth. The brilliant, maddening truth.

"Salvation is all you've ever wanted."

He spins the words from his lips like spiderwebs.

Howard's hands fall away from the rim of the garbage can. He wipes his mouth, his nose. His stomach clenches again but he ignores it.

He doesn't know why Aunamee's placing another riddle in front of him when his very presence is a puzzle. His head's spinning too much to try and crack the code. It's maddening, disorienting, like a flurry of attacks he can't recognize as such, and he can't get his bearings enough to protect himself.

"I'm not religious."

He should run. One moment to catch his breath and he'll run.

"You remember what I said," he says, forever soothing. "God has nothing to do with it."

He looks upwards as though looking at Him, God, but nothing is up there except for the sky, absent of stars, murky with light pollution. He is on a stage, right now. He is a performer.

He looks back to Howard.

"What you want, Howard, is happiness." He purses his lips. "Safety. That is your salvation."

For a moment, Howard doesn't breathe. He doesn't know if Aunamee just hit on a deeply secret, hidden truth, or something so painfully obvious that he has no right to be affronted when it's named out loud.

It's true, of course, it's all he's ever wanted was to be safe, in a world that started by throwing bullies on the playground and his cousins at him and has been upping the ante with plague, with abandonment, with mutant animals and death matches and starving and brutal murders without conclusion and the whole goodie bag of Hell's party favors. Nightmares, cold sweats, anxiety attacks, pains in his neck and hands and chest, insomnia, the taste of blood always on his lips, the strips of skin pulled from around his fingernails, bloody noses, bloody mouth, blood soaked into the way he sees the whole world.

The one thing he can never have.

When he does breathe again it's a strange, weak little wheeze that seems more like a rat escaping from the gutter than setting loose the bird of life. He stands for a moment, not so much torn between options as bereft of ones that seem any good, and then he bolts.

He trips on the edge of the curb and scrapes his knees, but he's back on his feet in a moment, sprinting far far away from Aunamee. Far away from here.

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Everybody Knows This Ain't Heaven [Open]

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