thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Katurian and Wyatt
What| A late reunion
Where| District 10 suite
When| Evening
Warnings/Notes| Discussions of murder, mercy, suicide ideation.

Katurian liked to close his eyes in the elevator.

He knew that privacy -- any privacy -- was an illusion. He had learned to curb his more public breakdowns. He no longer vomited in the common rooms, no longer cried in the hallways, no longer whined or whimpered or laughed so hard that it felt like his throat was coming apart from the inside out. He had hollowed himself out, slowly but surely. He was a worker, deep down, a mechanical cog in a grinding machine. He preferred invisibility more than anything. He blended. He disappeared.

He closed his eyes.

(Close your eyes and you can go anywhere.)

With his eyes shut, he was in a freight elevator, back at the abattoir. He was climbing a tree in their backyard, the one with the branches that makes it look like a dancer. He was jumping, higher and higher, his fingertips brushing the clouds. He was going to heaven.

But he always fell. The images always grew blistered and chapped and bloodstained. Whenever he opened it eyes, it was because he could no longer take it anymore. Not because he was satisfied. Not because he was happy.

When he opened his eyes today, his hands weren't knots against his chest like they usually were. Instead, he had reached forward. His finger was on an elevator button.

Ten.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"That may be so," Wyatt agreed with a gentle nod of his head. "And were I home, I would be happy to walk him to the noose."

He pushed his half-eaten meal aside so he could link his hands atop the table, his shoulders square, back straight.

"But to treat him as anything less than a man, to draw it out for our own pleasure - makes us no better than him." His eyes flashed with a hard edge, his stare direct. "And I refuse to be brought low for him."

He knew Wyatt was right. Intellectually, morally, he knew Wyatt was right. But he couldn't stop that feeling, that irrational anger buzzing in the back of his mind, in his spine, in his fingertips.

Monsters should die like monsters.

When Katurian killed his parents all those years ago, he could have used a knife. He could have slit their throats while they slept and it would have been easy, simple, quick. But he instead opted to use a pillow, to feel their lives ebb out underneath him. He even woke up his mother just before, to let her know what was coming. To let her fear.

Grey deserved an opportunity to fear.

He nodded his head. He shook his head. He nodded his head. He shook his head.

Where did he want to take this?

"I'm just saying," he said finally, his voice faint and rippling with barely suppressed anger, "that death in this place is barely a fucking punishment."

Edited 2013-03-14 21:21 (UTC)

Wyatt was silent for a long time, watching Katurian's face - recognizing the trembling rage as he spoke - and waiting.

"Is that what ya come here for, Katurian?" he asked finally, the thumb of one hand rubbing across the knuckle of the other. "Why ya come to see me?"

Edited 2013-03-14 22:03 (UTC)

He shook his head no. That was the good answer, that was the proper answer. But was it true?

He buried his face in his hands, silent. Unmoving. Unwilling to commit to the anger.

Edited 2013-03-14 22:49 (UTC)

And Wyatt nodded. The silence answer enough.

He leaned back in his chair, hands unlocking, and tipping back. Fingers splayed loosely, his palms up and open.

"You're a better man than I am," he finally said into his hands, his voice so frail that it was practically a whisper. "Because if I see that son of a bitch in the arena again, I'm tearing him apart."

He stood quite abruptly, so fast that his balance wavered and his feet swayed.

Wyatt's head tipped back, watching him rise with almost sad eyes.

"We've all got to make the choices for ourselves. Find out what we each can live with, and what we can't."