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.

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While Wyatt was no stranger to visiting other suites, other tributes, having a guest here, for him, was an altogther different - rarer - affair.

He was at the table when the mute swept in, eating silently, his hat hooked on the back of his chair. He looked up - caught mid-chew - his eyebrows raised, forehead furrowed. Surprise. ...Surprise that was tempered by the way his mouth curved when the Avox bowed, moved aside, and revealed Katurian.

Swallowing, he reached for a napkin, wiping at his mouth and mustache as he spoke. "Well this is unexpected."

Edited 2013-02-28 10:36 (UTC)

"Mr. Wyatt Earp," he said.

He folded his arms over his chest to keep his hands from fidgeting. He fought the urge to rock on the bottom of his feet.

"You probably don't remember me."

"Mr. Katurian," Wyatt returned, leaning back in his chair, shoulder brushing his hat. "The night before the arena."

His mustache twitched.

Bouncing and fidgeting, leaping from high to low, from moment to moment, yes, he remembered.

Settling the linen napkin in his lap with one hand, he gestured to the chair across from him with the other. "What can I do for ya?"

Katurian remembered Wyatt, but for a different reason. When he met him that night, he took a flashbulb memory of his face, his eyes, the way his lips curled and fell. He took everything in because this man, this man could be the last person he would ever talk to. He had thought about him as he shifted and swayed on his platform outside of the cornucopia. He had thought about him as he lay dying on the ice.

He had thought about regrets.

He sat down on the chair, moving slowly so as not to lose control of his muscles.

"I think you know." He let that hang, that slight mystery, before tangling his fingers. He cast his eyes down. He braced himself.

"I'm sorry. For the things I said."

His head tipped at the former, his brow knitting thoughtfully... then it relaxed, smoothing as Katurian continued.

"While I appreciate the sentiment," he said, once the other man had finished, his voice a smooth drawl, reassuring, as he waited for Katurian to look up. "And have a wealth of admiration for any man big enough to mean it, it ain't necessary. Not for that."

He shrugged, an easy roll of broad shoulders. "I was stranger, in a strange place, tellin' ya strange things... I was not offended."

Concerned. That Katurian might attempt to harm him, or, more likely, himself. But not offended.

Edited (forever forgetting words) 2013-03-01 17:51 (UTC)

And Katurian believed him.

This man was not offended.

It was almost impossible for him to comprehend, this altruism. Here before him was a man who had gladly given his life for someone else (he even stuck in the knife), and although Katurian had also given his life for a stranger's, he hated himself for it. He lay awake every night and wondered how much better his life would have been if he had said nothing, if he let Sherlock wander into the deadly camp and wiped his hands clean of whatever happened next. Maybe someone else would have been the one bleeding out in the lonely cold. Maybe someone else would have seen that impossibly large gullet. Maybe someone else would have heard their own bones crack.

It made him angry. At himself, for thinking these things in the first place. At Wyatt, for being the real thing. A hero.

He knew it was irrational. He buried it in hard swallows. In half-smiles.

"I just wanted you to know," he says, slow and careful, "that I know you're not the kind of person to deceive or hurt people, I know that now, because I saw everything. I saw everything."

But there was somethin' about the way Katurian said it. That stilted, almost pained way the words worked their way out of his mouth. Almost as if he didn't believe it. Or that he wasn't happy about it.

Wyatt paused, silent for a long moment.

"I've never taken pleasure in the sufferin' of others," he said finally.

Unbidden, he thought of Sam Kenedy, writhin' on Doc's table as they bullet buried in his hide was dug out. And himself, demanding to know where Sam's brother had holed up.

"But I ain't a saint. I just... do the best that I can."

(And his failings haunted him. Faces. Screams. Pain. In the darkest parts of the night.)

Edited 2013-03-05 12:47 (UTC)

"The man you killed left me to die," he said, the words escaping from his lips like bats, black wings exposing the darkness he kept inside. He didn't even have a chance to stop himself. He had no control. "He stabbed me in the stomach and he left me to die."

'Stomach' was a bit of a misnomer. After he had returned -- after the weeks of shock and vomiting wore off -- Katurian poured over the anatomy books in the training center, trying to figure out exactly what the blade might have hit. Liver. Pancreas.

He swallowed his sickness. Wavering.

"He laughed when I asked him for mercy."

"I'm sorry," Wyatt replied softly. Sincere. His pale eyes moving over Katurian's face.

He knew what it felt like, that knife to the gut.

And, if he had to guess, he had a feeling he knew where this was going now.

Katurian had suffered. And the good doctor... less so.

"That ain't any way to die."

"That's n-not--"

But he couldn't even finish saying those words, that's not how I died. His breath turned to dust. His composure flickered like a failing light bulb.

"He doesn't deserve anything. Any dignity."

"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."