thecapitol | Tomorrow I'll be stronger, running colorful, no longer just in black and white [Week 6, Open]

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Tomorrow I'll be stronger, running colorful, no longer just in black and white [Week 6, Open]

Who| Linden Lockhearst and Open!
What| After this altercation, Linden had to spend the night in jail. Encounter him at any point during the 24 period during and after this less-than-glamorous ordeal.
Where| Jail, later on the District 6 suite.
When| Week 6
Warnings/Notes| The normal ones for Linden! References to drugs and death are likely.

I. Jail

Linden stares past the rigid plastic handcuffs at his black shoes on white tile. It was only a matter of time, perhaps... withdrawal and the ensuing hell that was sobriety has been rough on him. For the first time in over a decade, he's been forced to look at some of the experiences that have shaped the person he is without the haze of Morphling or alcohol influencing it, resulting in the emergence of a deeply sad and very angry man. Having numbed these emotions for so long means that his ability to deal with them isn't great; an already tense situation with an admittedly horrible District 7 Mentor had escalated and though he'd blacked out past a certain point, he's pretty sure that he hurt the guy. Possibly even enough to need stitches. At that point, it didn't matter who you were or what you'd been through; you at least had to spend a night in jail as a token punishment, and past that, even if you were lucky and the media didn't catch wind, it was inevitable that you'd have to deal with some kind of therapy or conflict-resolution seminar at some point.

There's a forcefield keeping Linden from walking out of his cell, but it's possible to hear through it, even smell through it. There's coffee brewing somewhere nearby, and he approaches the forcefield and tries to get the attention of the nearest Peacekeeper.

"Hey... hey, is that coffee? Can I have some, please?"

The Peacekeeper sighs. "Try to sleep. You can't leave until morning at the earliest, and it gets boring as hell in those cells. It's supposed to, this is a punishment."

"Then let me bum a cigarette."

He's left behind with a brisk, dismissive shake of the Peacekeeper's head.

II. The Next Morning- Bail Posted

"Rise and shine." the Peacekeeper in charge disables Linden's forcefield, and he sits up quickly, having not actually realized that he'd fallen asleep.

"What's going on?" he asks blearily, already reaching for the wastebasket he'd requested they leave in his cell with him. Since quitting Morphling, he's queasy in the mornings sometimes.

"Morning, and someone's posted your bail. Congratulations; 6 must really want their only Mentor back."

"Who was it?"

"Beats me. I'd suck up to them big time, though, they did you a hell of a favor."

III. The Next Morning- District 6 Suites

Linden probably shouldn't have been allowed to return to work so quickly after snapping so obviously and so badly, but he is 6's only Mentor right now, and he's therefore needed. A sweet-voiced woman in a nurse's uniform had stopped by his cell before his bail had been posted and given him a stack of pamphlets, commending him on his efforts to get clean but assuring him that there were more ways to quit than recklessly going cold turkey. She urged him to consider tapering off to avoid a situation like the one he'd ended up in, and explained that mood swings and aggression were common side effects of coming off of a persistent Morphling addiction, and he is broodingly considering it.

He's also considering how the fuck he is going to apologize to Jason Compson. A written apology was one of the conditions for his release, after all, and he takes a deep breath, trying not to clench his fist around his pen and staring at his attempt to write something acceptable.

Dear Mr. Compson,

I'm sorry you're ~~a sadistic brat~~

~~Stupid~~

~~have the self-control of a rabid warthog in front of an all-you-can-eat truffle buffet~~

I'm sorry that I lashed out at you. It was entirely my fault to expect you to be as refined as your bloodline would suggest when you are clearly ~~an Avox-hitting sow of a-------------~~

~~Fuck you, you spoiled~~

It's not going particularly well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There wasn't a hint of irony when Leo smirked and said, "Yes. I want to see this happen. I fully recognize I'm a terrible person, and I embrace it."

"You must also fully recognize that this could get me in a hell of a lot of trouble," Linden says, but he's already starting to write, seeming ultimately untroubled by the possibility. "Well, as I've always liked to say... I guess it's future-Linden's problem, isn't it?"

He accepts the glass of brandy from the Avox, raising it in a humorless toast before tipping back a generous swallow.

"That's one drink down, Linden, better make the other one count," Leo may not have as much self-restraint as Calendius when it came to vices but he was one to enforce anything he set out to do. And in this case, he wanted to see what kind of insanity the District 6 mentor could come up with on the fly.

One drink down didn't last long enough, and Linden seems a little bit disappointed about that, but he takes a deep breath, the brandy warming it on the way down. He takes his pen and spends a good several minute scribbling, before turning a sheepish gaze back to Leo.

"I like limericks," he confesses. "I guess I had to get some things out of my system before my serious attempt."

He hands the page over to Leo as he turns back to the Avox to accept more brandy.

An Escort who works in Panem
Must be a sparkling gem.
But when you dump out the box,
Sometimes you get rocks,
Surely Compson is one of them.

I once met a man who was smothered,
By his bag of a Dynasty mother.
She taught him his manners
With drums and with hammers,
Which explains why he's always so bothered.

There once was a Capitol pox,
who sucked a plethora of cocks.
One day he was dumb,
Broke his mug full of cum,
And took it out on a helpless Avox.

"That last one may have gotten away from me, but you can say it. I'm a genius."

Edited 2015-03-31 05:06 (UTC)

Leonidas shrugged with a grin, "It's your style, it wouldn't be that problematic. And it's different..."

Boy howdy was it different. By the time Leo finishes the twisted little poem, he's actively laughing his District 2 ass off.

"If you're not keeping this, I am. You've truly outdone yourself, Lockhearst!"

Linden busies himself with swallowing basically as much brandy as he can while Leo's preoccupied reading his rushed and irreverent poetry. If he wanted some District 6 insanity, he'd come at a good time, and asked an appropriate individual for maximum inappropriateness.

"Take it," he invites, with a one-shouldered shrug. "It'll surely change Panem forever... but I'm not signing it. There's flirting with trouble and then there's banging on its door and asking to get shot."

"I will treasure your letter and pass it on to my children," Cora added with the laughter that came along with the lurid poem and the context that brought it on. "You do not disappoint though it's fairly obvious I'm not the best influence to write this letter."

No, not really.

"You're never going to finish at this rate..." Not Leo's problem, "If you need another bail out, call me up."

"You'd show this to children?" Linden snorts, intentionally missing the man's actual point. "Well then, I'm honored, even if what you're saying is depressingly true and I'm not going to get this finished with you around."

He shrugs, the glass of brandy in his hands. "Well, the seal's broken, so at least there's something else to fall back on."

"Well, might as well learn at home before they learn on the street, as my father used to say," Leo clarified as he got up from his laughing fit and dusted himself from it and the lack of respect for his fellow Support Staff.

The coach then served himself a hearty glass from that bottle, as if to keep that very advice he'd given earlier, "I meant what I said, Lockhearst. Two glasses and that's it, even for you."

"Hm, is that so? I wouldn't know about that," Linden says absently. "I guess my father's always been the quiet sort."

Ha, ha...

"But they were very small glasses..." he protests half-heartedly, knowing full well that he's not going to win this. Admittedly, he's just a little bit grateful in that regard.

That was dark, even for Cora. Linden's family was always a subject that he never brought up unless the Mentor brought it up. Being Avoxed and held as an example was always a traumatic event for anyone who tuned in or watched the news. More so when it was a Mentor's parents. Leo makes no remark or folly of this and merely focused his energy onto the alcohol.

"Two glasses and filthy poetry, it's a fair trade for enabling your vice and your creative tendencies," Leo argued with a degree of playful finality. "You could have gone sober but then you would've found other ways."

The fate of Linden's parents is a better-kept secret than most in Panem, and it's for this reason alone that he feels safe joking about it as a broken little coping mechanism. Avoxed family members are a mark of shame, and for a Victor, it's doubly horrible, to the point where after Linden had one his Games a couple was briefly trotted out to act as his parents without actually being related to him. The public impression is that Linden found his parents and had a happy ending in that regard, closing off all of his interview stories very neatly indeed, but the truth is known to a few people, and it's very sad and jarring. Linden notices the way Leo's attention shifts to more fully encompass the alcohol, and he stiffens for a second, but then they're moving on. Maybe it was nothing.

Shouldn't flirt so much with trouble, anyway...

"Well, you know me," Linden says with a fractured smile. "Where there's a will, there's absolutely a way, and when you win the Games you do whatever you have to to survive."

Even if surviving just means being distracted long enough to not take your own life.

Watching that crowning was cringeworthy when the couple didn't quite look like they could have produced Linden. It was either Avoxed or executed, making the quiet father remark as morbid as it was tragic. The rumor mills painted a gruesome picture anyways, so Leo did his best to sidestep the issue at hand.

"Knowing you, you could have stashes in the laundry room, just to fuck with the Peacekeepers," he added with the same candor as before, "Or the books. It's hard to tell at this point."

It had really been terrible. Linden had been notably out of it, likely drugged for the first of many times. He'd stood shell-shocked, rigid and glazed between two classically beautiful people who smiled and waved at the cameras while they took turns embracing his thin shoulders. It had been wrong and sick on a variety of levels, to the point where the televised version of the Crowning had actually been cut short. Before his Games, Linden had been sweet, clever and humorously spacey; after the Games, he'd become a bitter shell of a human being, and it was a transition that no one was quite comfortable with.

"Could I?" he asks mildly. "Well, I like to take my drinks in tumblers, but that certainly puts a new spin on the concept. That being said, I do think that the idea is a wash."

"Did you just...Linden Lockhearst, did you just make a pun at me?" Leo blinked at how out of left field the Mentor's answer was.

Leo was still bitter about his own failed chance at being a Career Tribute when he saw Linden's Crowning. Even someone who was raised in the system, to become the most efficient killing machine, could see how bungled it all had been. Those Games had ended in a red mess, the scar could attest to that fact. But it was the breaking of the young boy's soul that gripped the audience.

It was a testament to Leonidas' capacity to adapt when he came across the District 6 Mentor now. Before, he believed Lockhearst was too weak to understand the honor of Victory and the drugs were a consequence. Now, even with their loutish behavior, some of that spirit seemed to live on in crappy jokes like these.

"Three, actually," Linden says with a one-shouldered shrug. "I've been really restless lately, you'll have to try to forgive it, if you can."

For someone so brittle and frail-looking, Linden is actually quite a resilient individual, it would appear. Even if his soul was broken, the rest of him is still present and determined and selectively sharp.

"You know, despite the two of us working for so many years in the Capitol... I don't think we've ever actually talked."

Spoken, yes. Talked, no, not like this.

"I'm glad to have had the chance."

"Oh I missed two, how delightful of you," Leonidas remained in a strange sort of state: between genuinely amused and his usual spiteful self towards those who thought themselves too high and might for the likes of Districters like him and Linden.

"I didn't frequent the Capitol as much as I would've preferred. I was mostly in District 2, prepping the Career candidates before the Never Ending Quell began," Cora explained his lack of actual bonding with any Victors and Capitolites, "If not, I was getting a sponsor or two for my students."

Whether or not it's delightful depends entirely on how one feels about puns, and how one feels about people who think themselves clever, as Linden does. His opinion is not entirely unfounded, but when it comes to being "high and mighty," he really only has a track record for being one of those things.

It's the less impressive thing.

"As staff, we're all busy," Linden rationalizes understandingly. "I didn't mean to make it sound as if you were at fault... I'm equally to blame. And in the past, I've simultaneously both admired and avoided District 2, so... perhaps the blame falls mostly to me, after all."

The admiration to his District made the Trainer smile just a little more sincere. "When was the last time you visited my home, Lockhearst? I think some time away from the Tower will do you good."

Anything to get the man away from the stupor that the Tribute Tower and all the intrigues that came with it. And drugs.

"My home is open to Victors and Mentors."

Most who are familiar with Linden's games even passingly know that the last Tribute alive alongside him was a District 2 favorite, Scorpii Cronen. The boy had slit Linden's throat only to be shoved backward onto a stalagmite with the last of Linden's strength, and from there it had been a breathless, bloody staring match until Scorpii had succumbed. Ever since then, District 2 and Linden have had a relationship every bit as complicated as the one he'd cultivated with Scorpii all those years ago.

"I don't recall... if you're really sure, though, of course I would like to visit."

Scorpii had gotten cocky in that last round, and of course Leo had been disappointed in the loss. But Linden had proven to be much more interesting, more self-destructive than what would've been, wasn't that punishment enough? To see the potential wither away? Raphael Cora would always use Linden's descent into drug addiction as a parable to his own child, to never let his pride and guard down.

"After what you did with Compson, you might have warmed some stonemasons' hearts," Leo remarked with the same candor as before. "Our home has quite the vista of the District plaza. Job stresses can be murder."

Tragic though it was, the least that could be said for Linden was that he was, in fact, quite an interesting Victor. It had certainly been fun for those in the Capitol to watch him stagger unhappily toward manhood and linger there uncertainly, as one who knew he didn't belong might. Now he was a parable, just a tale of wasted potential to pass down to the next generation in preparation for the Reapings of their childoods.

How had it come to that? Linden wasn't just bright, he was brilliant. Had he taken a lifetime worth of luck and wits into that Arena and left it on the cave floor alongside Scorpii's body?

"Maybe," he allows carefully, hesitant to celebrate it too much. With the kind of grudge that Jason Compson is known to hold, he's lucky to have only spent one night in jail, after all. "But every Districter has a difficult job. The harder we work, the easier the Capitolites can take it, right?"

Chatting with Linden, Leo would say that the Mentor left his soul behind with the District 2 boy, destroying any chance of a comeback...shame really, especially to a man who had his entire self-worth defined around the chance to be there. There were ghosts of that young Tribute still left in Lockhearst, peeking through those jet black eyes.

"Heh, you say it with such reverence," the coach admitted, reverence he would never show to the likes of the D7 escort. "We're all part of the great chains that hold Panem together."

Linden certainly gives that impression. Even his biggest fans have a hard time denying there's a strange absence of light in those eyes, or that there had been an enormous and troubling difference between the youth who'd entered the Arena and the glaring wraith who'd been dragged out. Soulless.

"Reverence isn't exactly the word I'd use..." he murmurs. "But 'chains', that's... actually incredibly apt, isn't it? Quite perfect in fact."

A wraith doesn't think, at least that's what Cora thought, slightly surprised at the agreement. He raised an eyebrow at Linden's tone, "A weak link will collapse the whole chain and then we all fall down." Leo was a former Career, his loyalty lied with the Capitol…and would be disappointed to know. He enjoyed the relative safety of being in the Capitol's favor, something that District 6 didn't have the fortune to have. "What did you think I meant?"

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TW for filthy drunken poetry

this is beautiful.

8D

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