thecapitol | something that can wash all the pain

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something that can wash all the pain | OTA

Who| Nill and YOU
What| Drinking and possibly crying
Where| Tribute center lounge/bar
When| Way backdated to just after Week 2
Warnings/Notes| Typical post arena warnings + alcohol warning. References to hard drugs and suicide in Linden's thread.

Nill opens her eyes, and the first thought that goes through her mind is that she wants to cry. She can't tell if it's because she's relieved or bitterly angry, but it sits like lead in the pit of her stomach, like fire, and she pulls her knees up to her chest to drown the heat of it, or else she knows it will burn through to her bones.

It may be a good thing that the Tributes don't seem to wake up in their own beds, because if they did she's not sure when she would actually find it in her to get up again. Even with where she is it's a long time before Nill can muster the energy to actually sit up again, let alone to pull the blanket from the cot around her shoulders and stand. When they let her she stumbles her way out of the room, wings folded down and blanket still held tightly around herself as she slowly makes her way up through the tower.

There's no physical pain, and that's probably the most jarring part. There are phantom aches in her skin and joints, the unmarked patch of skin where a xenomorph had stabbed a hole into her side burns, and the long stretch of her forehead that was still horribly bruised for most of the Arena throbbed, though it was completely and utterly okay now. There's not a mark on her but everything hurts, and the ache in her chest is by far the worst of it. She feels sick, and Nill wants nothing more than to sink down and not move again. She does a good job of avoiding this base instinct until she gets to the lobby, and on one of the screens there's a flash of small troll with nubby horns, thoroughly miserable and beat up but alive, and Nill freezes before she can take more than a few steps.

She gives in to the instinct, though not where she stands. Nill makes her way to the bar, gestures to borrow a pen from the bartender, and writes out an order on a napkin. He seems to tel her that she can hold on to it, and once Nill has a hot coffee that smells very much of whiskey she sits in a seat far off to the side, where she can watch the monitors.

To say she looks miserable would be putting it lightly.

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It's difficult to see the clear signs of suffering in someone he has genuinely come to care about, and even more difficult to know that she's probably trying not to shed these tears. They aren't present with the intent of manipulating him; she cares to the extent that they fall unbidden, for him. Automatically, he reaches into his jacket, where his wrinkled pocket square has been stuffed out of sight. He sets it on the table, nudging it toward her, hoping that it doesn't make her self-conscious, the fact that he has blatantly acknowledged the fact that she is crying by this point.

He is patient as she writes, and he tries to be kind, though there aren't words that feel appropriate, somehow. So he remains silent until the napkin is within his sight again, at which point he shakes his head slowly back and forth.

"You take too many burdens on your shoulders," he sighs, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Even if there are people you can't save, it doesn't mean that you are killing them. There... is a distinction."

She doesn't become self-conscious, though that's in part because she tends to cry somewhat easily. She is frustrated with herself, however. He was the one that had to sit out and watch, and not do anything, not her. She'd at least kept Karkat alive. It feels like one of the only things she's managed to to do right in a very long time. She takes the offered square and dabs at her eyes, and for a few seconds at least her cheeks are dry.

Until she grabs another napkin and writes another message, anyway. She dabs at her eyes again as she passes the new note over.

all of my friends are dead
I dont want you to die
can I have some of that?

If he seems confused by the request, she'll gesture towards the bottle. She can't stop him from drinking, and would feel bad if she so much as implied it again, at least for today. And not being sober sounds so much better than whatever she is now. Her own drink has probably already been taken and disposed of by an Avox anyway.

The life of a Mentor is to reluctantly straddle two worlds, acting as a spectator while knowing all too well what it's actually like in the arena. Nill's not wrong, it is difficult, but this destruction is a slow burn. Nothing that's falling apart now hasn't been well on its way for years already.

He accepts the note in his slender-fingered, tentative grasp, reading it several times, dark eyes lingering on the second line each time. Then he slowly nudges the bottle her way.

"Go for it. As much as you need, no judgment... openly or clandestinely."

It says a lot for how much Nill honestly likes Linden that even though she's pretty miserable, on top of fresh out of an Arena, that the reassurance makes her smile a little. It's brief and fleeting, but it's still there, sincere despite the shortness of it. She sets her pencil aside, and grabs the bottle by the neck, pulling it to her side of the table.

She takes a sip straight from the bottle, probably a larger one than she should have, because almost as soon as she's set the bottle down she grimaces and coughs and shudders all the way to the tips of her wings. She hasn't drank anything straight since the Kid Arena, and since she died even that was reset, so it's been ages. She's not really made for the hard stuff. At least it doesn't last long. And hey, it's strong.

She's certainly nowhere near Linden's ability to drink it like water though, and she pushes it closer to the middle of the table for now, in case he wants it before her esophagus recovers.

Linden winces, knowing even as she starts to tip back the bottle that she's going for it too eagerly and recklessly for a palette that is undoubtedly at least a little bit more delicate than his own. When she coughs, splutters and shudders in response to the acrid taste, he automatically slides the glass of water at his elbow toward her, essentially trading it for the whiskey she is returning to him.

He doesn't drink more, though, simply turning the bottle in his hands and staring at it while he waits for Nill to recover somewhat.

"It's horrible, I know. I stopped drinking for the taste a long time ago... the downside of tolerance is that the higher it gets, the more it takes."

Nill is all too grateful for the water when he passes it over to her, and she downs a third of the glass in a few moments, setting it down with a hard clink when she's done. Her expression is something a little close to embarrassed, but even that doesn't linger for very long.

it never takes very much for me.
not even when I drank a lot.

Which is probably a little obvious. Even with that one mouthful, it probably had more alcohol in it than the entire drink she left behind at the other table, and now that the coughing has subsided it's easy to see the tips of her ears are already a little on the red side. Though Nill is about average when it comes to her height, she's also a small slip of a thing, most definitely on the underweight side of things. It doesn't take very much of anything to hit her hard. She regards the bottle in his hands quietly, and instead of asking for more she takes another sip of water.

do you know how long it's been since I died?

Nill's embarrassment is obvious, but Linden tries not to let her dwell on it for too long. She's a lightweight, and honestly looks like one, though that isn't actually particularly reliable; Linden himself is living proof of that, with a tolerance much higher than his wasted frame looks like it can contain.

"That's OK. Probably better, in the long run..."

Drinking less meant less of a chance of getting alcohol poisoning, passing out, and never waking up.

"Sorry, I... don't. I don't even know what time it is, now..."

He's been on something of a bender, and this has been true for quite awhile.

She spares the bottle a considering glance, but decides to stick with the water, at least for the moment. While her body is totally fine, that last week or so in the Arena she'd barely had anything to drink or eat. Though her throat no longer feels like sand paper there's something sort of soothing about something that doesn't burn on the way down. For now, anyway.

Nill tilts her head a little, unsuprised for the most part, and manages another small smile.

I don't either.

For different reasons, obviously, but it could almost be considered a joke. And maybe if he doesn't remember when it happened, he doesn't remember seeing it either, if he did at all. The Capitol probably didn't broadcast all of it - it was a pretty long thing up until the end, and constant, ever-worsening pain.

He laughs, a harsh, broken sound. Another consequence of the Games that changed him forever is that it's changed the way he expresses mirth, and turned him into someone who can't affect it in a way that doesn't sound just a little tortured. Sometimes, if he thinks he needs to, he can come close, but when it takes him by surprise, as Nill's maybe-joke does, he has a much harder time controlling it.

Especially since he does remember seeing it, far more than she probably knows or expects. Though it takes a lot of effort for him to be present and attentive in the world, he has a lot of focus when he does apply himself. Sometimes too much.

"That's one of my favorite things about drinking," he confesses. "If I lose track of time, maybe I'm outside of it, and its passage doesn't change me. Even if I know that's not logically true, the feeling is so good. There's no pain."

It does sound tortured, and Linden looks it even as the noise escapes him. For as odd as it sounds, Nill's fairly certain it's not an inherently bad reaction, though she's also unsure if it's a good one. But the joke did it's job though, at least in part.

She seems to consider her pen for a moment, before reaching for a new napkin. She gestures for him to pass her the bottle again, and trades him the napkin for the bottle when she's done writing.

I was in a hospital after I got the scars on my back.
it hurt when I moved but it was really nice if I was still. nothing hurt at all.
drinking is almost as nice.

The drugs they'd had her on then were pretty fantastic. She's not sure what it was, but morphine would be an easy enough guess. At the time she hadn't abused it, and was too exhausted and hurt to really consider doing so, but even at the time she remembers thinking it was about the best she'd felt all year.

If he does trade her for the bottle, her second swig goes down easier. She's more careful, and it mostly results in a grimace and a brief cough. She chases it with water, and then she's fine.

Not inherently bad, no. The lines get so blurred that it can be difficult to keep track or tell, but she has given him something better than any normal joke: she's given him, as she so often does, a sense of camaraderie, and of not being alone.

He exchanges his bottle for the napkin, glancing it over, understanding the implication that she was on harder drugs following her procedure. Just thinking about it on that level is enough to draw him in and make him want to know more, because this is the world he is the happiest to inhabit.

"Have you tried Morphling?" he asks, trying not to seem too eager to talk about what might be his favorite ever topic.

Nill smiles, and though it reaches her eyes more than the last one did, it's also just a little sad. She's more than happy to give him something that actually lets him feel connected to the world when it seems like so little else does, but she's more than a little bit conflicted that it's about shared methods of self-destruction and escapism, because she knows that's what it is for him, and that's what it is for her, too.

no. I haven't been injured here.

No means to start it, and she hasn't gone to seek it out. At the few Capitol parties that she's been to she's mostly kept to herself. The two pulls from the bottle are the most substance abuse she's done since she arrived here (unless you count cigarettes; she doesn't).

Her pen has stilled against the napkin though, and she doesn't pass it over to him yet, though he'd probably be able to read what was there if he looked. After a few long seconds she reaches for the bottle again and downs another mouthful, cringing again, and she cringes again, but there's no coughing. She writes and passes it over.

there was someone that I loved very much who did everything he could get.
he probably would have tried morphling his first day here.

The on-label use of Morphling isn't quite what he was implying, and in a way, he's glad. It's bittersweet; on one hand, it's something he can't connect with Nill over. On the other hand, isn't that a good thing? Morphling is a useful painkiller, but it absolutely destroys looks, health and lives. He likes Nill enough to not want that for her, and it overwhelms the fleeting, instant-gratification aspect of wishing she could experience the endorphin rush and the lush, heavy numbness that wraps a person's mind and body when they're under the influence. He nods to show he understands, not pressuring or congratulating her one way or the other.

He does glance at the paper towel, anxious to see what's written despite her hesitation in passing it over to him. When she drinks again and finishes writing, he is glad to accept it and read the rest of the message, and it... actually doesn't surprise him. Conversely, it explains a great deal, up to and including her incredible tolerance for existing alongside someone as self-destructive as Linden for any significant amount of time.

"That's difficult," he says, biting his lip, trying to keep his words from slurring. He's not sure what to say, whether it's his place to judge or justify the behavior of a man he doesn't know. "People like that... tend to have a lot of demons chasing them."

I know.

"What were his demons?"

She's never really been able to mention him to people without getting upset. Even as she wrote two sentences about him she needed an extra mouthful to wash down the ache in her chest and the bitterness in her mind in regard to him - the burn was worth it, because she'd rather continuously warp her memories of him than come to have him eventually, though she frequently does anyway. It was only his fault a little. It was only her fault a little, too.

This time she sips her water because her head is starting to get a little numb, and the world has begun to look a little fuzzy around the edges. She really is a light weight.

I don't think I could list them all if I tried.
when things started we had lots of friends.
bad things happened to all of them.
he was in love with someone that never cared about him.
he was forced to do things he never wanted to.
he was tortured.
his mind was ruined.
eventually it was just me and him, and he didn't want to exist anymore.
now it's just me.

After blinking her eyes rapidly a few times she reaches for the bottle again and takes a smaller sip, before she grabs one of the napkins off to the side and writes on that one as well, passing it over.

his memory is the one that killed me.

Edited 2015-01-25 02:47 (UTC)

The moment the bottle is free, he's taking it back, reaching across the table for it. He doesn't drink from it, just clings to it, a reliable constant in a threatening world. She's writing for a long time, and he thinks that it might be as difficult to read as it is for her to write.

He's not wrong; his eyes move over words that waver, that the alcohol he's already swallowed moves through his blood to distort. He has to blink and focus hard to extract their meaning with any real success. And once he's pieced it together, other things start falling into place; it explains a lot, so much, about Nill.

"You said you loved him. Do you mean 'in love?' With all the time you spent together, afterward, did he...?"

He can't finish the sentence. It feels too raw and tender, but the meaning is probably clear. Did he come to love you, too? Does that mean anything at all, with a ruined mind?

He lets her take back the bottle, fingers limp and pliable as she pulls it away.

"If it was strong enough to kill you, you were strong to live with it for any length of time. I'm sorry."

Once she's finished with that sip she passes the bottle back to him in case he wants it again. That was probably the worse of it, she thinks; surely anything else she would tell him wouldn't make her want to drown herself in that bottle. She did for a good year after he was gone. Surely the sting of his loss has lessened by now. Surely the bitterness of his abandonment has been subdued.

She has to be better now than she was then, because if she's not then it means she'd never get over it.

Nill shakes her head, though her expression is thoughtful as she writes.

I loved him and he loved me, but it wasn't like that.
I would have done anything for him.
he would have done anything for me.

Her fingers curl around the napkin a little at that spot, the anger rising like bile in her chest for one awful moment; anything but stay, apparently. She smooths the napkin out again after she pushes down the vitriol in her veins, feels the vice around her lungs loosen. She only blames him for leaving her behind on bad days. Today is not a good one.

I don't know the right words.

She rather pointedly doesn't address his apology, or his claim to her strength. It's an obvious disagreement, but hopefully not one that he'll try to argue; in Nill's mind nothing will ever excuse the way she let his memory kill her.

Edited 2015-01-25 22:28 (UTC)

Sadly, the truth of the matter is that when one talks to a person who understands pain well enough to run from it every moment of every day, it can always sting more potently. though Linden has no intention to hurt her by dredging up painful memories and opening old wounds, the possibility that he will inadvertently do so is very real. He's self-aware enough to realize this, and to feel preemptive guilt for making tears well up in those blue eyes.

Forgive me. I started with the best intentions, I swear it.

"It's OK. Sometimes there aren't right words, or even words at all. Silence gets a bad rap, but it's not always a uncomfortable, and it's not always wrong."

I never liked silence very much.

She's grateful, however, that he seems to understand even if she can't find the right way to write what he meant to her. It was easier when she had her abilities; if she really wanted to she could just show him the feeling. She's doubly grateful for the fact that he doesn't press her for any details about the man she cared about, even if it's just for the moment. She wouldn't mind telling him about it, but it would almost surely make her cry again.

you remind me of him a little, but I'm not trying to replace him with you.
I don't want a replacement for him.

"Silence has its merits, but... it can be heavy. In my arena, it was too quiet, most of the time and I found myself purposely making noise sometimes just to keep from going crazy."

An Avox is at his elbow, nudging a glass of water toward him. He starts to wave it away, but he accepts it after catching himself and really, really considering that he does actually need that water.

He's surprised to see that she's explicitly written that he reminds her of her friend; on one hand, it's logical, given their surface similarities, but it's not candor he believed she'd be willing to speak with. He glances away, conflicted over how to take something like that.

"I'm honored... and I'm sorry," he replies after a moment of thought. "A certain kind of person causes pain without ever intending to, and I don't want to hurt you. So for your sake... I hope that I could never be his replacement."

Even though the Avox is leaving something for Linden Nill offers it a very small smile in passing, an unspoken kind of thanks. Whether or not it sees it or even acknowledges it is probably debatable, since it leaves just as quickly as it arrived, but she tries. Most of the Avoxes make her heart ache, and there's so little that can be done for them.

if it helps, you're a much better friend than he was near the end.

Nill has a first-class seat on the honesty train today, evidently. Or maybe that's the alcohol - she's had enough that her fingertips tingle, and she might even be willing to sleep if it occurred to her to lay down instead of continuing to be awake. But Linden's slow decline and destruction over the past ten years is a much different thing than his pointed collapse had been. In the end Nill's friend pulled it off in a matter of years, all while functioning mostly as normal, and the drugs weren't even what ultimately killed him. That part, however, she can't go into. It would be far too dangerous with the Capitol constantly peering over their shoulders.

It's one of the only times - the only time? - that he's mentioned his Arena to her, and Nill's eyes drift to the napkin dispenser again. She considers it for a few moments before apparently coming to a decision and pulling another out. Her expression is a little on the guilty side of things when she passes it over to him.

I watched some of your tapes.
the first few and the end of the last.
it was after we spoke the first time over the network.
I should have told you sooner.
I'm sorry.

At the time she'd just been trying to gauge what he was capable of - or, more specifically, what he wasn't. She wanted to see if he'd be able to help Clementine. She'd known it was a violation, but it wasn't until she spoke with him more that she realized just how gross of a violation it was.

Linden isn't sure whether it helps or not. It's a compliment of some sort... isn't it? He tries to decide if he's flattered while he feels himself slipping into the inevitable grasp of inebriation. He's not sure how he's been anything but a shitty addict friend to Nill, but if she says so... it's possible that she has a different relative scale for such matters, and he has made a real effort.

He nods, nursing his water as she reaches for another napkin. He considers the subject dropped, a mere passing mention of what complete silence means to him, but then he sees her written admission and lowers the glass from his lips, staring hard at it. He doesn't immediately know how to answer; on one hand, it's not the first time someone has watched his tapes, far from it. It's even a fair expectation to have of any tribute, old or new, to review material from Games past.

"Oh, I see..."

He tries not to stammer, consciously keeping his voice calm and level, his hand straying to the scar across his throat.

"You didn't owe it to me to tell me... so don't feel bad. It's part of life when you're a Victor, that... part of you is public record. For anyone to see."

you're wrong. I do.
you're my friend.
being public record doesn't make it ok.

Not even close to it really, as far as Nill is concerned. Nill doesn't expect forgiveness, or understanding, or anything even remotely close to anything like that. Above most things she just wants him to know, and to understand, even if ultimately that was actually the worse outcome for him. He needed to know. He deserved to know. Linden had spent too much of his life being fed lies he couldn't contradict for her to just add to the pile of them.

But, you know. At least he's seen her Arena now. It's a hundred times from even, but it's at least better than most people have.

He gives her a broken smile, shaking his head permissively.

"That is hardly the worse invasion of privacy a Victor can experience. Everyone in Panem has seen my Games. It's... everything here, in so many ways. Entertainment, politics, career... watching is better than not watching. It's better than not knowing who's alive and who's dead. So we all watch, every year, and have since long before I was born. It might not be OK, to you, but... it's normal, Nill."

He takes a last sip of water before reaching for the bottle again.

"It's human. I think it's the only chance the people in the Capitol really get, to see it so raw and real."

There are a hundred things she could say, and she wants to say all of them. The urge is almost tripled when he smiles at her the way he does; it cuts into her chest like a physical wound, worse than the xenomorph tail that ultimately killed her.

There are so many things she could say about this place, all of them awful, and how they're so many times more awful for what they've done to Linden over the years. But almost all of them would have Peacekeepers on her in a moment, and it's a good thing that the mute can't just blurt out the things they want to say, because if Nill could they would probably already have her in handcuffs.

She's not sure when she crushed the napkin that was in her hands-- only that, when she goes to set it down and write on it, it's already a crumpled mess. She sets it aside and looks at it for a few long seconds before reaching for another.

normal doesn't make it ok.

Nothing about this place makes it okay.

People like to say that Linden is weak, a slave to his vices, and utterly pitiful. Sometimes, they couldn't be more right, but the truth is that it takes a lot of strength to smile, even that way, and to breathe, and to continue. Linden only survived his arena because he was able to adapt, and even if it hurts and has left a lot of scars, he can still smile, breathe, and continue on command.

He meets her eyes, catches a glimpse of some of those things she wants to say but would be very foolish to. He notes the motion of her hand crushing the napkin, and then, after a considering pause, moves his own hand forward across the table to brush it with his fingertips.

"Sometimes, even if the pieces will never be whole again... there's something to be said for keeping them all together in the same place, or at least as many as possible. I find it helps to look at the pieces... for example, I'm sitting here, enjoying a drink with my friend, and learning new things about her, so... normal, and OK, even if..." he trails off, taking his turn to recognize what he can't say.

"I'm grateful for the chances I have."

something that can wash all the pain | OTA

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cw: references to suicide

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