thecapitol | [closed] I suffer mornings most of all

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[closed] I suffer mornings most of all

Who| Karkat and the Psiioniic
What| Nothing like being found in the middle of a crying breakdown by that guy you had an awkward fight with.
Where| Some random hallway in the tower.
When| May 22, after this thread.
Warnings/Notes| Mild description of violence, not much else.

It's not the ideal situation. By now the Initiate has slunk off, and himself slumped to the floor, legs flopped out unevenly for the benefit of the healing one even as his back sits against the wall. His face is a mess in pink streaks, and his shirt below soaked around the collar from tears. He should move, he should get up and go back to his own block, but the weight of everything that's put him here holds him down still.

It's not enough that a Makara betrayed him. It had to be both, one after the other in short succession, from his trip back to LOFAF to the end of his mission here. Two stabs through the chest, two bullets in the leg, and somehow he's still here anyway. Maybe if he'd just died he could have moved on, back in the dream bubbles, resigned to no longer being the alpha. But here has no luxury like that, and it feels sick to even think of it as one.

Then again, he'd never be happy that way. He always wanted to take the lead.

By now, too, the sobs have worn down into weak sniffles. His cheeks are less drenched but kept from drying by a few stubborn, continued tears. It's stupid, of course, and him with it. He should have known better (he's told himself a hundred times, a hundred more, a hundred yet to come), and yet he walked on into it. It brings its own kind of hate, and the renewed knowledge that he'd never make it in troll society. He's always been softer than he likes.

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They had not left each other on a good note. Psii had been yelled at for prodding into the Initiate situation, so he kept his distance. He wondered if he shouldn't have dug, but his strategy had always been to assess and analyze. It had saved him and his little family more than once, even if he had to be cold and shove down his emotions to do it. He first learned to when he was a slave, when the slightest show of weakness would get him whipped. He was already a target for looking different. Panem was the same, except every other troll experienced being singled out by looks with him.

Karkat was someone Psii felt responsible for, more so than others within his admittedly wide self-sacrificial radius. He was Signless's descendant, and while Psii never believed in those until he met them here, he'd seen that Karkat shared some of his best friend's qualities--things which were more like liabilities. Caring about others too much, becoming impassioned and emotional, leading rebels, taking risks. Even so, Karkat postured and put on enough airs that Psii was still surprised to find him sitting on the floor like a discarded puppet.

Psii needed two moments to quickly silence the false alarms ringing in his head. The weeping Psii had learned to repress long ago was not explicitly punished here. Signless had had to reassure him at his first Crowning. Even so, not one tear had escaped to brand his face. Now he was confronted with a deluge. The tears Psii couldn't cry always seemed to be tinted a stigmatic mutant red, he found.

"Karkat, what the hell--?"

Even without the threat of being whipped, this sort of thing was embarrassing at best. He took off his jacket and deposited it on Karkat's head. It was the decent thing to do, he thought. Still, he couldn't let him sit in the middle of the hallway in full view of everyone. He put a hand out.

"Get up, or I'm picking you up and dragging you kicking and thcreaming to.... wherever you want to go," he finished lamely, shoulders sagging.

Oh, fuck him with a pneumatic drill. Sure, Karkat was aware that just about anyone could find him here, but there was a difference between logical knowledge and the practical effect of someone running into him. Not literally running into, at least, and that he could probably put to his position against the wall, for all he hadn't backed up against for that purpose.

He looked up just in time for the jacket to drop over him. Hands flinging up, Karkat swatted the garment off his head, pushing it aimlessly to settle half over his shoulders, half draped down his side. And rather than a greeting, he curled back his lips and hissed.

It would be a weird greeting from a human, and from a troll it still might be unusual, but when instinct yelled you did what it told you to. It was self-preservative when here he was sitting in his own misery, form set smaller than usual against the ground with this looming adult above him. The Psiioniic may have proved one of the better ones, but that didn't mean he wanted to be seen by him now, especially not after their last conversation.

"Fuck off. You so much as touch me and I will sink every one of my teeth into your pliant nerd muscles," he growled out.

Edited 2015-05-26 00:44 (UTC)

His eyes narrowed a bit with the hissing, but he'd half expected it anyway, which was why he hadn't attempted touching him outright. Like an upset cat, best handled through a thick blanket of fabric. Psii was capable of being kind and coddly, he really was, but his usual reaction to Vantas griping was to gripe right back. He bent at the waist and rested his hands on his knees, but he was still a tall, gangly fucker.

"Karkat." And internally in exasperation, Karkat, please. "Do I look like I'm afraid of being bitten? Theriouthly, I'm covered in more thcarth than actual thkin. Don't throw a wiggler tantrum and come on, before thome Peacekeeper dethideth to pick on you. That'th a thing that happenth, you know."

His voice gave the barest wavering flick at the last. Despite trying to goad him into moving, he was legitimately worried about the tears on Karkat's face earning him some punishment or other. He was already glancing distractedly up and down the hall.

Karkat was definitely an upset cat about this, hissing and toothy and trying to puff himself up bigger. Had he any fur he certainly would have done so; his hair already stood up all directions without outside influence. But whatever obstinate fit of refusal and biting he may have wanted to put up was promptly shot through by the warning.

Peacekeepers. Just that word was enough to lock his limbs up tight. How did he look right now? He was a crying mess, wasn't he? He could feel how sticky his drying cheeks were against the air, and his shirt collar was gummed up from the wash of tears it had absorbed. Worse, these cameras had to have caught his breakdown. Even though it had all been born of hate and hurt over what the Initiate did - and memories of Gamzee dredged up with the muck - he knew the Peacekeepers had no mercy for his position.

Less than a moment later he was on his feet, hand seizing for Psii's to pull him along toward the elevator, the other dragging the jacket.

"Come on," he snapped out, as urgent as if this had been his idea. "I don't care where we go but we are not staying here."

Edited 2015-06-03 09:39 (UTC)

Involuntary twitches, unchecked fears, punishment flashbacks, Psii had experienced them all. He knew his argument was won the instant Karkat seized up, but he felt no satisfaction in it. Surprisingly, Karkat was able to spring into action on his own, even having the presence of mind not to forget Psii's jacket. Psii easily caught up to the shorter, injured troll and slipped into the elevator with him.

He mashed the "close door" button more than necessary, Karkat's apprehension infecting him a little. Balling his hands into fists calmed Psii. The elevator sat in momentary silence, not yet commanded to go up or down. Someone would call it soon, and they would have to face whoever did when the doors opened. They had to decide where they wanted to go and who they wanted to avoid running into.

"Out--Outthide. We'd have to make it patht the people in the Lobby, but there'd be leth Peacekeepers and more dithtractionth onthe we're in the thity."

Psii liked going out. The whole Training Center hivestem was tainted with the overwhelming presence of Peacekeepers. At least in the city they could lose themselves among the people. The open air provided an illusion of freedom. They could even grab some food or head to a blind spot, Psii thought.

"Or my block. I have shitloadth of tribbleth. I doubt thecurity would bother you there, even if they are watching that more clothely. People break down in their blockth all the time. You're definitely not the firtht."

It wasn't the first time Psii was held captive in close quarters with other traumatized broken souls. He didn't have to see people crying on their slumberpads to know it happened. His block meant they wouldn't have to wade through Capitolites at all. His tribbles, who he'd trained to pile up on the floor or disappear into his closet on command, were the best cooing machines.

"It'th up to you."

Once in the elevator, Karkat took to leaning heavily against the wall, wincing some from how he'd pushed his leg. It was worth it, though; for all he'd been trapped in a stuck elevator with Roland once, it felt safer than being out in the open.

He shook his head once Psii offered the choice.

"Not outside. Can't go there even if I wanted to wade past all the gawking grubfuckers in that lobby," he answered. "I'm stuck in the tower until the arena. Official 'for my safety' junk, you know--in case any of what happened is left over in my head." He finished with a gesture at his skull.

"Just get me to your block."

He closed his hand around Karkat's elbow. The last thing he needed was the elevator's movement to jar him and his bad leg to the floor.

"Right, I forgot about your hive arretht."

Wasting no time, he jabbed District 9's floor button. The elevator moved them smoothly and efficiently upward, and there were mercifully no people in the hall or the suite. Good thing too, Psii's Mentor tended to be peppy and invasive. He liked her though, even if she was a clown. No way would he tell her he tried to get Initiate's paint back on his face yesterday. She'd be ecstatic about delving deep into that clusterfuck of conflicting emotions.

Psii's block was never really his own space, immaculate for the sake of the Avoxes. The only personal touch was--

"Thtep on one, and I'll murder you."

It was tribble hell. Some parts of the room were ankle-deep. A few of the tribbles sported bits of homemade yarn atrocities on their round furry forms, sort of like ill-fitting hats and headbands. They all had a bit of mustard yellow in the pattern for identification, and they were all poorly knitted. Psii gave a short, ululating purr from the back of his throat, a different-pitched version of the tribbles' coos. At once they shuffled from their various places towards the center of the block. He bent and tested the pile for springiness with his hand.

"I mean, if you prefer the chair inthtead, I'm not going to thtop you. But being thmothered by cooing furballth wouldn't be a bad death at all."

Karkat wasn't familiar with the staff of District 9, no matter how many times he had been up there for Dave or Nill. Surely the Psiioniic would have had to have seen him around at some point during those visits, but with other goals he wouldn't have stopped for long.

In any case, now on his floor, he followed along unevenly to his block--and the tribbles.

What sat before him was a writhing see, full of more of the creatures than he's yet seen, and more eye catching still for their knitted adornments. Did they need those? Weren't they fluffy enough already? And who the hell took the time to train the little puffballs? Karkat watched with a look that might optimistically be described as mesmerized, and less so as dumbstruck.

"Sweet horrorterrors, I'm not sitting on that."

And he resolutely limped over to the chair.

Psii took the time to train them well indeed. He'd seen their cuddling potential, and before anyone could warn him, he'd fed them and they'd multiplied. They were not as intelligent as Alternian bees, but they made a good colony and an excellent pile.

"They're the furthetht thing from horrorterrorth. At leatht take one or two, in return for handing me back my jacket," he said, rolling his eyes. "They won't eat you, even though they eat jutht about everything elthe." He scooped up two (of course two) and held them out to Karkat.

"What do you want to talk about firtht, the thourthe of your debilitating breakdown or your undithguithed averthion to Peacekeeperth? Not that I blame you for either one...." His tone was casual, an earnest attempt at keeping a pleasant and sympathetic atmosphere. Well, he tried.

Karkat looked up at him, mouth still twisted somewhere between dismay and discomfort, and unwillingly took the two tribbles. He held no particular fondness or ire for them, but a couple balls of fluff weren't particularly what he wanted right now. He held the jacket out after.

"It was an exclamation, not an appellation."

But what first, huh? He didn't want to talk about either, in all honesty, but it was a bit late for that. The Psiioniic had given him concern enough to get him up to D9, to his room, when he owed him none of it, and when he didn't expect it at all. Part of him wanted to snap anyway, but the simple feeling of how wrung out he was overrode it.

His posture curled inward, knees together, head bowed over the two tribbles in his lap.

"They held me in jail for three days," he started. "After they caught me and the others. I don't want to give them any reason to take me back."

Edited 2015-06-11 18:14 (UTC)

Psii experienced enough cruelty to know that those in power broke their own rules more freely than anyone else. Hauling in someone on trumped-up charges would not surprise him. Psii sunk down on his bed and rested elbows on his knees pensively, lightly calloused fingertips touching. The two tribbles remained placidly still, their oddly soothing coos harmonizing with the chorus of the pile.

"There'th a differenthe between thmart thinking and letting fear get to you. You were all twitchy. Fear ith an inthtinct, and it'th utheful, but you can't afford to let it rule you. I don't want you to thuffer for thweepth before you underthtand thith. You wouldn't want to be like me, would you?" His flash of grinning was short-lived.

"Terrible thingth have happened, and they won't thtop happening no matter how hard you cry. But you thurvived in a thothiety that would have culled you at hatching. Thpite them all."

Psii's voice hardened at the last, as he came the closest he could to speaking insurrection. The ruling highbloods, their caste system, the Capitol, its Games, they were all the same to him. Psii had already lost one ally to his current slave drivers. He'd be damned if he let another hand his headspace over to them on a silver platter.

Karkat might have come along willingly, albeit with prompting, but now he was starting to regret it. He wasn't all that ready for a conversation. Even if he 'owed' the Psiioniic for bringing him up here safe, he felt out of place, uncomfortable with these topics being pushed to the fore.

"I know. I know terrible shit is always going to happen, because that's how life is, especially for stupid mutant trying to survive, alright?" He wasn't looking at him and couldn't bring himself to do so. "I already know I'm shit at this. I'm being a scared little fucking grub, and I don't need you telling me how unhelpful it is like I wanted to be having a goddamn breakdown in the hallway over everything just to run like the Handmaid herself was after me as soon as you mentioned Peacekeepers."

It was pointed, rough at the edges, and coated over thickly with a film of self-loathing. He was a crap troll, and he would always be a crap troll: that was how he felt. To be advised toward betterment wasn't an easy thing to take when the phrasing only felt like digs at his vulnerable state.

"I don't know your life," he said more softly. "I have the rough outline and that's it. You've had, what, sweeps to get used to this? This happened to me not even a perigee ago. It's still raw."

Edited 2015-06-24 04:08 (UTC)

"I had my entire wigglerhood, yeth, and it took thweepth to crawl back out. I don't want that to be you. It'th natural to feel thad and afraid, and I'm thure plenty of other Tributeth thcream and cry in their thleep. None of uth can be blamed for that."

The only reason Psii didn't was because he was beaten for it. Even he wasn't sure how it happened, but one day he ran out of tears as they mingled with his blood, and he found it difficult to cry again. Something had been taken from him, he knew, and he felt he could never get it back.

"What do you want me to thay? I've never thaid thingth people wanted to hear. I've never been good at thith." He wring his fingers together. His frustration was plain. Crowded slave barracks were never a great place to hone one's skill at consoling.

"You're not leth of a perthon jutht becauthe thomeone beat you. I wish I'd had thomeone to tell me that before, tho I'm telling you now. You're only leth of a perthon if you give up on yourthelf and thtop caring or thurviving. You're not a thing, and you're not property." Psii's hands curled defiantly into fists. "It may feel like you are, but don't ever think like that. You did nothing wrong."

Karkat passed a look at him from the corners of his eyes, sore and reluctant to believe. He may never have been a slave the way Psii was, but everything here had served to remind him what a solid hold the Capitol had on all its Tributes. Behave, play along, comply, or else. It felt worse still from the cloying knowledge that it wasn't remotely the worst he could have gone through.

"I'm trying," he said at last. "I haven't stopped caring, and they let me live, and I'm not going to go dying recklessly if I can help it."

His gaze slipped forward again. He wished the tribbles were actually good for something; all their fluff and cooing mostly served distraction and kept him from curling up tighter on his chair.

"I don't know what I want you to say. You found me and you brought me here and I don't even know why you want me around, as pissed as you were the last time we talked. You keep expecting me to know what I think about everything, or what I want from you, and I'm just tired and sick of--of losing people I thought were friends."

"I wathn't pithed, you were. I jutht didn't know what to thay, tho I left you alone before you could evitherate me. I've never been good with wordth, tho I figured I'd leave before I did any more damage. SS thaid later that you had thome hangup, but I didn't athk about it. Not my plathe."

Psii stared at his hands, awkwardly pensive.

"I wanted to make thure you weren't on the verge of doing thomething thtupid, tho I dragged you here to get thome downtime. I athk quethtionth becauthe, newth flash, I care about your well-being. It'th not like I'm running an interrogation chamber out of my block."

Psii saw Signless's downcast face in Karkat. Signless described a time when he didn't want to go on after so many trials here. The nookmunch claimed to have toned that down, but Psii always worried. Signless had lost several moirails and friends to the Games. One didn't just forget that.

Some hangup sure was a way to put it. The rest added further perspective, and with it at least some rudimentary understanding of what this was about. He hadn't expected the Psiioniic to care so much, or much at all. He hadn't taken the time to get close to him.

But he looked up now, properly so as his muscles slowly lost their hunch. Even if he couldn't curl up, his body had tried to scrunch down tight and small in the chair.

"I wasn't going to do something stupid." His tone was calmer, slower. "I just... ran across him there, completely by chance. And it hit me all at once. He betrayed me, Psii--he reached up in my head and changed it all and made me into a pawn for his own purposes, and made me believe something else. I know I'm not even close to the worst on the line of punishments, and that's the thing: I spent those three days scared for my life, and I come out feeling guilty for even that, because how can I bitch when my ancestor is who he is?"

Strung up from a flogging jut in burning irons, tortured and shot with an arrow, screaming with all compassion and hope for something better turned to rage in the last moment... It was a specter than hung over him, or a weight from his neck: he did, after all, carry the sign on a necklace under his clothes.

"And yeah, I've got a hangup. My last moirail was a Makara, his descendant. The short version is that he went murder crazy, so I became his moirail, but he dumped me, abused a friend, tried to murder her, then killed me when I finally tried to kill him. And now this one screws us all over too--but he's..." His lips pursed, head lowering. "I was pissed off, but I can't do anything. He's not the same. They took everything out of him." His hand flourished beside his head. "He's just a husk with the same face, so I told him to leave while my feelings vomited all over me."

"It'th not--" It's not true, there's some mixup here. I'd be dead if Initiate went the full clown. But Psii knew Karkat wouldn't respond favorably to that. This was more complicated than Psii's aversion to the clowns who tormented him in his sweeps as a slave. Romance and friends were mixed up in Karkat's feelings of betrayal, and if he took after his ancestor, those were two very important things to him.

"None of what happened to you ith ok. Him being an Avox maketh you feel like you can't do anything about it, but I promithe revenge won't help you feel better either. In fact, I'd thtop you from hurting him. The latht thing you need ith to get in trouble with either Peacekeepers or SS.... Are you you and your anthethtor thtill not talking?"

Karkat would have argued if he brought it up. They couldn't have caught someone better; when they took the Initiate and brainwashed him by his power, everything slotted in just so. He had issues built to play upon, hurts both old and fresh, and the end result was a story woven more perfectly than they could have done alone.

It was better for them both that he let the matter lie, but what followed wasn't much better.

His expression hardened. "Just, stop presuming what I do or don't want. Don't tell me not to do something I can't do and don't know if I want in the first place. It's obnoxious and it's just going to turn me into a massive shrapnel explosion if you keep it up." He shot him a warning look. It was bad enough to have gone through this without others dictating his reactions to him. Worse still, he didn't need extra reason to fear the Peacekeepers.

The tribbles weren't helping him. He cleared them gently from his lap before folding his legs up onto the chair, against his chest, for his arms to encircle.

"No, we aren't, and I don't want to talk about it with you. He and I both have our own shit we're dealing with on this."

Karkat's withering look didn't faze Psii. He knew that Karkat didn't hold a large grudge against him personally. It was just another sign of how much he was hurting. An animal was most dangerous when it was cornered. Still, Karkat's stubbornness was beginning to piss him off.

"I'm pretty thure you don't want to pith off Peacekeepers again. The convulthionth tipped me off. SS might be avoiding you becauthe of your mathive shrapnel exthplothion threatth, but he thtill careth about you."

He dragged both his hands down his face with a sigh. It was things like this (along with a lifetime of caste oppression) that made him look older than his sweeps.

"God, and both you athholeth hate it when I'm right," he groaned, plucking up the tribbles and returning them to the pile. "Fine, don't talk. I'm not interethted in mediating between you two anyway. When you're ready, get out of my block."

Karkat glowered at him again. "I didn't have 'convulthionth', bulgeknot. I'm just a little wary of attracting their attention after what happened, which means I'm not going to go baiting it now with the big, obvious stupid shit. Contrary to expectations, I do have an actual thought organ in my pan along with the sense to rub the cells together until the phenomenon called conscious thought occurs, so spare me your needless warnings."

Get out of my block was how he ended it, though, so Karkat unfolded his legs to rise from the chair.

"You're not 'right' either, whatever point you think you're making, and I didn't ask you to mediate in the first place. Go on, keep your prongs out, pretend you're keeping free from a situation I don't want you in in the first place. Trust me, if things go ashen - and they won't because I'm not that emotionally stunted - it won't be your sorry hide I go to."

So leaving immediately didn't happen, but since when was he one to avoid running his mouth? That, though, was the end of it for him. He moved toward the door, and unless the Psiioniic would have anything to add, he finally went to leave.

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[closed] I suffer mornings most of all

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