you're caught in my head like a thorn on a vine [closed]

[69problems]

Who| The Signless, Roland and (later) the Psiioniic
What| Signless has a small meltdown in the wake of Sigma's broadcast, one he can't weather alone
Where| D4/Roland's room
When| Right after Sigma's broadcast
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of violence/brainwashing/slavery, possibly other terrible things.

Three days. Three days of only knowing the Initiate's fate as a vague uncertainty, of assuming the worst and hoping for the best. Signless had known going in there was a high chance that if anyone would take the hardest fall for this it would be his moirail. He'd thought he was prepared for that, but what he'd been preparing for was an execution. This is worse. This is worse in a way that is deeply personal, and it's with mounting rage and disbelief that he watches it unfold on the communicator. He can't even finish watching the broadcast; once Sigma becomes the focus again he physically takes off his communicator, shoves it in a drawer, and walks across the room to put as much distance between him and it as he can. He can still hear it muffled from the drawer and presumably from the television in the District 12 commons but none of the words manage to register.

A long time ago the Signless described his anger as liquid filling a cup. With each new atrocity he witnessed both on Alternia and later in Panem a little more liquid would pour in, until he would either have to risk his anger spilling over the brim or find a bigger cup. For the very first time there is no cup big enough. He cannot look at this objectively and set it aside in a box in his mind with the knowledge that it will one day be repaid with due justice. It's too raw, too close too his heart, too much after how much Kurloz Makara has already suffered trying to atone for a future he'll never act out. He understands now, he thinks, why his Disciple held herself like she'd been burned through to the core by his own execution. He understands that grief and rage that fate could be so cruel to someone who just wanted to do good.

He feels as though he might vibrate out of his skin. There's a fire at the back of his throat and behind his eyes. He can feel that he's on the verge of something and the boiling energy inside of him hasn't decided what yet. He paces around his room once, twice, and then finally leaves it and directs his bare feet toward the elevator and District 4. He needs someone to tell him not to do something he'll regret because right now he doesn't trust himself to have anything resembling good judgement.

Comments

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland's own feet are directing him out of District four. He'd taken the time for a question of Sigma, the man who might've been a friend, might be a traitor, but he hasn't waited for an answer. That answer - and his own feelings on the whole matter - can lie a while. He has waited, and knowing what it is to wait does not make the process any easier. The waiting before a battle, and sometimes after one, the full knowledge that everything may crash down around you and that you may do nothing but wait to see what falls, he has known it well. He knows it now. These last few days have been long ones.

And now they know. He knows, too, what must be done, at least in the short term. He does not pause to be relieved that the waiting is over, because there are things that must be done.

Comforting a grieving lover, that much he's done too, or tried. Alain had always been better, back in those brief days in the war when there had still been lovers to grieve them, and Roland feels the pull of homesickness now as he strides through the communal rooms of this floor. Surprising, since he knows well how those days had ended, but he'd been so confident back then that he'd be able to leave the jobs like that to the friends more suited to them. That there'd always be Alain's empathy to fill in the places Roland's mind and heart might lack. The thought's dismissed nearly as soon as he thinks it. The boy Alain is now, somewhere in the Capitol, may be more suited to this sort of comfort than the boy Roland was then, but the man Roland is now will not leave this task to anyone else. Not this.

His feet take him out of District four's suites, and into the small room in front of the elevator. Signless is his priority right now, and he will not pause for anything else.

[biiowiired]

Psii couldn't shake the dregs of horror at Initiate's Avoxing. Even if the lies were true, even if what was said cast a shadow on the doubt Psii had already harbored, even if Psii had been hilariously duped by the clown against all evidence, he still stuck by his belief that no one deserved to be Avoxed. He'd even told the clown to his face he believed that, even while saying he didn't trust him. Psii had been through the silence and shackles of slavery, and he couldn't wish it on anyone. Funny, that those who handed out that punishment had never suffered it themselves.

Worst of all, it had been sanctioned by someone Initiate regarded as a custodial figure, or so he'd said over s'mores and a campfire with Sam. Psii didn't understand why humans didn't just let lusii raise their young. There might be violence or abandonment, sure, but none of this premeditated betrayal bullshit.

Like the time Initiate left his last spoken words on the network, Psii sprung into action. He hoped he wouldn't find Signless with mood-ring troll eyes filled with red. He hoped he wouldn't find Signless dead in a ditch or Avoxed on TV because he lashed out at Peacekeepers. The best Psii could hope for was to find Signless broken and catatonic. Psii never hoped for much his entire life.

It took him a while to track him down, but he knew most if not all of his haunts. He knew Roland was in District 4, and there was no curfew to stop Psii from asking around and following leads to his respiteblock. Worst came to worst, he might simply get the wrong door. He announced his presence with his characteristic double knock.

"Roland," he called through the door, trying to keep his voice steady. Someone had to be the stable one in this quagmire of utter shit. "Have you theen SS?"

Even if one of them was gone, he could make some progress. If it was just Roland here, he'd warn him about troll emotional explosions and help him track down Signless. If it was just Signless, he'd make do until the human pail/palemate showed.