I've been walkin' the streets at night

[fuckitall]

Who| Nick, Grantaire, Nill, castmates and anyone else!
What| Nick's still pretty bitter about the arena. There are lots of ways to cope!
Where| Training Center, rooftop, bar, here and there
When| Sometime after Arena 12, day/evening varies
Warnings| Mentions of violence that occurred in the arena



Training Center, castmates and anyone else

He never cared about going to the gym much back when his world was still normal. And when it became a living hell, running away from lurkers had been the best form of fear driven exercise.

Getting into shape isn't exactly the first thing on his mind as to why he's here though. Despite the talks and moments of catching up with those he could after the arena, his emotions still feel raw. He's still angry at himself for not being able to do more, still angry that he's brought back only to see people suffer fates they don't deserve.

And they all have to do it again and again. There will probably never be a point in his life now where he can stop and think life ain't so bad. Life ain't fair, he gets it. If only everything in the god damn universe would quit reminding him so much in the worse ways possible.

He only just realizes how white his knuckles are and unclenches his fist, making his way towards the training dummies with a steel baton in his other hand. He can hone his skills with ranged weapons later. Right now, he just needs to let out all this pent up frustration and disappointment in himself in the healthiest way he can think of: beating the ever living shit out of this dummy.

"Fuck you," he huffs after a hard swing before following up with one after each uttered word. "Fuckin'. Piece. Of. Shit."

Useless.

Luke

Lying in a soft bed has been a comfort Nick learns to never take for granted, but lately he hasn't been able to pull the blanket over himself without imagining lurkers or aliens popping out of nowhere in front of him the second he pulls the covers off. Needless to say, sleep isn't going to come to him easily any time soon. He's still stuck in this nightmare after all.

He hasn't seen Luke since the end of the arena. He doesn't know what to say. Maybe Luke's feeling something similar along the likes, since he hasn't heard from him either. Knowing Luke, he's probably keeping to himself just as Nick is doing right now. But he's been feeling this distance between them for a while. This distance that only closes in moments where Luke isn't acting like a leader whether the circumstances permit him or not.

One thing he does know is that Luke can't shoulder all this burden himself. Is Luke worried that Nick would think less of him if he tells him that? Does Luke think he blames him for what happened?

He slowly sits up from the bed, running one hand down his face while fumbling with the communicator with the other. If Luke's blaming himself for any of this, Nick needs to let him know that it isn't his fault. He sends Luke a ping, feeling the anxiety creeping along his throat.

"...Luke?"

The park, open

Spending hours beating the shit out of things at the Training Center certainly helps, but it can only do so much for the moment and not much else when the moment's over. And for some reason, he doesn't feel the slightest tired. Even if he was, he can't bring himself to sleep for no more than an hour.

For now he'll make do with his guitar. It calms him down, keeping him grounded. Even if he played angrily, which he has done more than a few occasions, he can do it without the shame if it's through music.

He spends a little time wandering around for a while before finally finding a bench that faces away from most of the foot traffic. He plucks the strings and tunes the guitar accordingly. It takes a couple of random strums before he lets his fingers finally decide on a song. He doesn't sing the lyrics despite knowing them. Instead, he whistles an accompaniment to the tune. Eventually the whistling dies down and he just lets his fingers glide along, for once not caring about screwing up a note or missing it entirely. He's too busy staring ahead at the trees ahead of him, reminiscent of days at the park back home or exploring the woods.

Grantaire

The bartender working practically knows Nick's face by now. At least, from what he can tell anyway from the look he gets and the following head shake. As usual, Nick responds to that with his order along with a flippant eye roll. He takes his seat at a corner stool, his preferred place to sit mostly so he could lean against the wall or some sense of bullshit security he can't explain while sober. Drinking with Beth earlier was nice, but tonight is the night where he intends to go all out.

He's not even halfway done with his glass of whiskey, but he's already ordered another.

Nightmares aren't coming to him tonight.

Nill

Nick had only seen Nill in the arena as a portrait painted by the stars. Before that, they only had what Nick recalls as one of the first decent conversations he had since his arrival here. They've only spoken that one time but in the end he decided that Nill's good in his book. It's not often he feels safe enough to talk without feeling like he's being judged for it. He hasn't forgotten that and deeply regrets not trying harder to seek her out in the arena.

The guilt just keeps growing the more he thinks about it. Even if he does find her on the rooftop, he's not even sure if she wants to see anyone. He'd understand if she doesn't, but he wants to let her know that her patience and willingness to listen isn't going to be overlooked.

These two packs of cigarettes he bought might not cut it, he thinks.

Comments

[fuckitall]

That answer isn't very reassuring, but they can never be certain about anything anymore no matter how good it probably sounds. As much as Nick wants to hear it, and it's easy to tell with the raised brow he's giving him, he isn't going to push the issue especially if the info seems that sensitive. "S'fine, you can tell me and everyone else later."

As far as Nick's concerned, the idea of them getting the cure so easy (if it even works) is pure bullshit.

He lowers his drink to reveal the smirk he had no idea he was still capable of making and finally lets out a laugh of his own when Luke's eyes fall on the can. "Nah, and I ain't gonna give you shit for being a lightweight. Not this time anyway. I nearly pick up a jar of moonshine for you too."

[burningdaylight]

“Yeah.” He nods soberly, leaving the matter at that. More time was needed to do his homework before he could then round up the others to discuss the cure and allow them make well-informed decisions down the line, when they were ready. "Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t... I mean, I wouldn’t get anythin’ done after a few sips.”

Even now, years after the fact, he still remembers the eye-watering, burning sting in his sinuses and low in the back of his throat after sampling the batch of moonshine they had cooked up one lazy summer with the help of eHow instructions and Pete’s occasional supervision of the distillation process. He had might as well been chugging gasoline. Definitely not his sort of drink, fun as it had been to make. "S'all yours, man."

[fuckitall]

"Nah. You'd still get plenty done with these though, so keep 'em." He gestures at the remaining four in the pack with a smirk. For Nick, drinking lite is for the sake of drinking something. It'd take a lot more to even make a dent on his tolerance. And truth be told, moonshine isn't exactly Nick's first choice of whiskey either. That's something to drink for the sake of getting drunk and nothing else. Grief made the taste bearable the last time he had it.

His smile flatlines at the memory. It was the darkest state he had been in since mom. He looks away from Luke, eyes straying back to the photo earlier. Thinking about the familiar faces that have been long gone brings him back to their present reality. Distractions can only last for so long.

"Hey," he's not sure if it's his nerves or just the beer, but it's lost its taste. He hasn't taken eyes off the photo but he's not really looking at it either. "I got somethin' else for you too."

He takes a long drink before setting the can down and reaches into his pocket to hand Luke a note he had scribbled down earlier. Passing notes like this feels dumb when he knows he can just say it, but considering how many times the Gamemakers threw shit in his path last time, he doesn't want to chance it.

What the note says is already about taking chances. He doesn't expect a good reception from Luke as he waits.

Going for the cornucopia on the next one. We gotta have supplies and not have it be like last time.

[burningdaylight]

Luke’s smile falls and he quirks a brow, helping himself to one last, long swallow of beer he half-suspects he’ll need before setting it down and reaching for the note. The Capitol breeds paranoia – all the easier to keep tributes in line - and it doesn’t escape him that there might be cameras tucked into his room as well, eliminating all the subtlety and secrecy of communicating by writing. But it’s a moot point now while he unfolds the piece of paper, curiosity and the smallest twinge of dread stirring in the pit of his stomach as he does.

Two lines on a piece of paper. That’s all there is. And for the first half-second he thinks it might be some kind of misplaced joke until he looks up and into Nick’s face and realizes that there’s no ‘maybe’ about this. This isn't a suggestion Nick's making. It's a statement of fact made in the hopes of finding approval, maybe. Something Nick wouldn't here.

Luke's eyes come alive, bright and fierce like those of animal backed into a corner.

“Goddammit Nick, no—! Hey--” He can feel heat rising within him and he cuts himself off, breathing and breathing as he fights to wrangle his emotions into submission and iron them out of his voice. Eyes and ears are everywhere.

“...Nobody’s jus’… runnin’ off doin’ their own thing, okay?” He presses on after a while, quieter now. Every word edged with a seething undercurrent of despair and frustrated helplessness. “We discuss this and we decide as a group.”

[fuckitall]

Deja vu. Nick knows better than to assume that Luke would be all for the idea in the first place. It could just be the familiar flow of the conversation, where the second Nick says something, someone else tells him it's stupid - that makes it easy for him to believe that Luke just doesn't have any faith in him. He tries not to believe that and it shows through his brows creasing, maybe even cringing, at the lack of approval. He already feels his resolve wavering but it's still backed by some level of stubbornness he has. Same old feeling.

"Jane and I already talked about it." He mumbles, biting his tongue from countering that it would've been easier if Luke hadn't been so distant, but he knows that isn't fair to say, and like he said earlier, he gets it. He can't help it though, as his tone gradually escalates to a harsh whisper. "I haven't gotten around tellin' Clem yet but - Jesus, Luke...! We were basically sittin' ducks. I don't want what happened back there happenin' again!"

He doesn't feel the need to go into details about the last arena. He doesn't want to. The memories are all too fresh as it is and he's still just barely recovering. Nick lowers his head, keeping his eyes on the floor. If there's anything his posture is saying now, it's that he can't go through this again.

[burningdaylight]

The words wash over him and silence runs thick as he realizes he should have expected this much from Jane, spirited and fiercely independent as she is. But he's sure to his bones that she didn't do any baiting, any persuading. This is a choice Nick has been ready to make for some time.

Luke glances away sharply - for just a brief moment - as if he can’t stand the sight of him, an unforgiving tightness to the line of his jaw. Because this isn't just about Nick risking his life in a desperate bid for access to supplies, he knows it isn't. This is also about Nick looking to prove himself, not wanting to pitch the idea to the group and risk being denied his chance. And Luke knows he would have shot it down for fear of Nick being blindsided by emotion.

"Y'don' think I know what the hell happened?" Luke takes measure of Nick with an unflinching stare, his shoulders square and his chest heaving slowly with barely-controlled anger. "You think I plan on standin’ around watchin’ my friends die all over again and not doin’ a goddamn thing to stop it? Jesus Christ, Nick–-” His voice cracks with all the hopelessness and sick, desperate frustration of knowing that he can’t keep them together, can’t keep them alive forever as hard as he tries, an' he just shakes his head uselessly, looking away again. A slow, creeping tiredness leaches into his bones, aging him. Taking all the fight out of him until his shoulders sag, his dullened, empty eyes just staring across the room.

He's done.

“...I'll hang back and keep an eye on Clem.” He says stiffly after a long moment. Someone had to. “We're not riskin' all of us at once.”

a hundred years later ;n; i'm sorry

[fuckitall]

"Yeah," he says from much practice of trying to dismiss his own surge of emotions. "Yeah, you do that."

If he had been talking to anyone else right now he might be able to keep with looking indignant. Anyone else that hasn't had the opportunity to see past the tough card he plays out to keep himself from breaking down. Hell, he's managed to keep glowering at Luke before when all he wanted to do was to be anything but angry.

This time it's different, and it's apparent as the more Luke's words sink in, the more Nick's face falls. "I didn't...didn't want you to see me." He was going to die anyway - it wasn't so much from lack of confidence but more from just simply knowing that he wasn't going to make it. Everyone in that photo over there is gone and it still stews in his mind that he should be gone too, but he isn't.

He didn't want to put Luke at risk - whether it was at the claws of the alien or Nick himself when he realized that he was close to turning the first time. The fact that he has died twice now has him wondering if he'll only continue to exist here as a personal reminder for Luke about his failures, even as things are out of their control.

His voice finally cracks as he says something he wish he could've said back then. Something that he only was able to tell Luke through an attempted look of reassurance that only came out weak at best before his blood ran thinner.

"...it ain't your fault, all right? Back there or, in that trailer? I was done for either way."

[burningdaylight]

The conversation's inevitably edging into darker places than he’d have liked it to - places that're never far from his thoughts - and it's the abject defeat in Nick’s breaking voice that dampens that slow-smouldering anger. A part of him wishes it didn’t. A part of him wants to stew knowing he’s justified in it even if he might be the only one who understands why, at the end of the day.

But the pain and unhappiness of friends and loved ones always trumps his own, cries for help never failing to reach him in some way. And he hopes they always will. Even if he doesn’t always have the right, most comforting words for difficult situations; even if he doesn’t always know how to handle them. Even after twenty years of knowing Nick and sometimes feeling like he had spent half as many years just trying to pull him out of ruts and not knowing, at points, if he even wanted to come out and see the light of day and grasp at a world of possibilities waiting for him. Maybe that frustration and exhaustion he was inclined to feel around Nick when they weren’t laughing or strumming guitars made him a terrible friend.

Luke’s frown softens and he meets his eyes with some effort, his own gleaming dully, achingly honest.

“I know –“ His voice is low, roughened by emotion. “I jus’ –“ There’s supposed to be more but he gives up mid-sentence with a shake of his head. “…I know.”

But it’ll eat at him, little by little, day by day, until he’d wake up one morning and there’d be nothing left of him but a dead man walking. He can’t help it any more than an animal caught between the jaws of a trap could help struggling viciously and bright-eyed to live. He just hopes, when it happens, that he won’t remember a time when he had the capacity to feel something other than a static, buzzing numbness.

“Stick close to Jane. A’right?” It’s a necessary remark. Not because he thinks Nick won’t -- but because he won’t let him walk past him and slip out of his life again without a piece of advice to take with him. Without something more in the ways of an answer than a helpless glance back. He thinks it might take some out of the sting out of not having the chance, the luxury, to say goodbye for the third time if Nick bled out in that Cornucopia. But then again, maybe it’s just wishful thinking as always.

[fuckitall]

"I'll try." He answers in the most reassuring way he can. Last time he had attempted that it came off as nothing more than a thinly veiled farewell. There's only so much they can plan out regarding the arenas, but he's serious when he says he'll try. "And you stay close to Clem." He doesn't say that to merely echo Luke, but he means it, with a firm level of protectiveness an older sibling would have. They've bonded a lot more recently, more then they did with the time they had back at home. That girl has done more for him than he deserves and if there's anyone of them that deserves to make it out, it ought to be her.

A long sigh escapes him, torn between feeling hopeful or resigned to being caught in this cycle. One of them could slip sometime and end up killing other people. Nick had done it before. What if he actually ends up losing it? At what point is he going to end up being able to savagely beat someone, a person - not a wall or a pillow, into a bloody mess without even batting an eye? Maybe the reason why he agreed to the whole crazy idea was to see if he could avoid that from getting closer to happening.

Nick had expected some sort of argument that he's wrong for not blaming Luke for anything. If there's one other thing they had in common it's the tendency to take the blame while the other would protest otherwise. It had been a thing since they had known each other. To not face an argument about this for once should be a relief but Nick feels anything but.

It tells him a lot about his friend's state of mind right now, and taking it in has never made him feel more useless.

He picks up his drink again and finishes it, glancing over to Luke. He remembers telling Clem that people change along with the whole god damn world. With how much he knows Luke has been bottling up, he also knows there are only so many things he could distract himself with before...Nick doesn't know. He only feels that the more Luke tries to be a leader, the less of a friend he can be for him. Nick has to prove that he can be dependable. At least let him be able to make that happen.

Not knowing what to say anymore but also not wanting to leave, he stands up to put his arm around Luke's shoulder, a gesture not unfamiliar for them both by now. The gentle squeeze he gives is a mixed bag of don't worry about me and I'm sorry. The look he gives though, eyes tired but still wide awake, says I'm still here.