thecapitol | You Live Your Life Like You're Stuck in Hell [Closed]

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You Live Your Life Like You're Stuck in Hell [Closed]

WHO| Jason and Peggy
WHAT| The tat for a earlier tit.
WHEN| The day after Jason's fight with Swann.
WHERE| D7 Suite
WARNINGS| Jason and Peggy, so mentions of bidding, abuse, violence and general Capitolite awfulness will abound.

Jason could probably have timed this headache to the minute if he hadn't just gone ahead and ignored the warning signs with a sort of dogged stubbornness that rejected how every single time he spikes his stress levels, every single time he can't sleep the full night afterwards, every single time he wakes up in the morning seeing halos and floating spots he's going to spend his evening with an icepack on his head in a dark room. He could have raced through the work he has here and driven home and been back at his mother's house with earplugs in by now, but instead he's locked inside the District Seven bathroom, lights off, wincing in time to the music he can hear through the wall from Cassian's work studio.

If he and Swann hadn't had the fight that set all this off, maybe he would call her, ask her to drive him back to her place. But even having made up some he can't get the things she said out of his mind, and they almost take on a physical volume that makes the throbbing in his head worse. He rests it against the cool tile of the bathroom wall, trying to ignore the way his blood feels like clotted sludge shoving its way through each vein, pushing through space too tight for it. He grabs at his hair because the feeling of ripping it away from his scalp is at least the smallest distraction from the pain.

With his phone on the lowest volume setting, he picks his way through Peggy's speed dial code before holding it out on his knee, so it's not right next to his ear. He barely waits for it to be picked up before he asks: "Peggy? Are you busy?"

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It's never a good sign when Jason calls her while she's still in the tribute center. It's not that he doesn't come to talk to her during work hours, it's that he usually just comes up to see her. If he doesn't come up to see her, something's wrong.

So with a sinking feeling, she quietly closes the files she was looking at, surreptitiously glancing around the common area to make sure no one is around to eavesdrop. Of course no one is, because everyone who lives here is in the arena. "Not particularly. I was just looking over the budget. What's wrong?"

There's a long silence before he answers. Part of it is the balancing act of shame and need, as if he hasn't already made that decision before he lifted up the phone. As if he and Peggy haven't undergone this routine before, once a month or so back when they worked together.

When he does speak, it's quickly and precisely and quietly, like he's trying to get as much information out as he can before his ears pick up that there's sound happening around him and send the pain receptors in his head off to exploding again. Just moving his jaw makes him breathless.

"I'm having an episode. Do you still remember how to drive my car?"

Of course. He's about due for another migraine, isn't he?

She moves to put away the file in a safe spot--she didn't sleep in the room provided for her here too often, so she usually keeps her work materials there under lock and key--and adjusts the phone so she can hold it between her shoulder and her ear. "Of course." She had to learn how to drive when she decided to live in the Capitol full time. Since she's used to horses, she's not the best driver, but she makes up for her lack of experience with a judicious eye for following the rules of the road. She's not as familiar with Jason's car as she is with others, but she can still use it.

"Would you like me to take you home or to my apartment?" Her apartment is much closer and free of any screeching old women, but if he goes to his house, they won't have to deal with as much yelling about a Districter taking care of him.

"Your apartment. I'm in the Suite," he says before shutting off the phone, finding the sound and light from its face creeping through his eyelids to have become unbearable.

While Peggy heads down Jason focuses and steeling himself against the living room and it's various sensory assaults. Even with his glasses on their darkest setting, his eyes are squinted near-shut and he mostly uses a hand to the wall to guide his way out of the bathroom.

He doesn't get a glimpse of the clock, but he figures it's about four in the afternoon, which at least means he won't lose a whole half-day's pay. Between taking time to take his mother to appointments and taking a day or two off a month for his headaches, he's damned lucky he hasn't had any other serious crises, because his paid time is perpetually tapped out. He takes a seat at the kitchen counter, wrapping one hand idly over the back of the chair.

He flinches when the elevator announces Peggy's presence, gripping that chairback, but relaxes significantly when he realizes it's her. "Thank you. You know my Tributes like to flash the lights on and off at me when I have these? Or play loud music."

"I can't say I'm surprised." Jason has a way of inspiring the most petty of impulses in people. "Before anyone starts at it again, we should go."

She holds the elevator open for him with one hand and presses the ground floor with the other. "Where are you parked?" She'll have to hold his arm to get him through the crowded mess that is the ground floor. It will feed the rumors that Celebrus has started, but she can't bring herself to care. Idle gossip is hardly the worst she has to worry about.

"Yes." He doesn't nod his head, knowing that even that will make everything worse. The elevator is always the worst part of the trip home, although the stairs are absolutely out of the question. Jason moves slowly, feeling a pulse of pain with each ginger step.

"Staff parking on the left." His car, a beautiful and expensive vehicle that he's tended obsessively since getting it in his teenage years. It has all the accoutrements and accessories and almost still smells like a new car (if not for the camphor), and it makes the state of his house in comparison all the more tragic. It likely looks exactly the same as the last time Peggy used it to help him get home years ago. "I should have known I was going to develop one of these since Swann threw a damn cake at me yesterday."

"A cake?"

Peggy, of course, assumes that Jason did something to deserve it. Most stable people don't throw things at their boyfriends, but Swann is with a particularly awful boyfriend. And, to be frank, Swann's probably not all there herself if they get along so well.

"Trouble in paradise, Jason?"

She leads him out, doing her best to not draw attention to his condition before stepping out into the warm night air. She finds his car quickly and holds out her hand for the keys.

"A whole damn cake. It got all over my face, all over the car - I found frosting in my ear this morning."

He flinches and cringes even at the gentle jangle of the keys as he fishes them from his pocket. He's shaking slightly under Peggy's hand, and his skin has a distinct sallow color to it. He keeps his voice quiet and low and unobtrusive as possible, even as it's harsh with irritation.

"She's angry that I won't introduce her to Mother. She's dodging a bullet, what I say, but the way she construes it you'd think I was ashamed of her. Well, I sure wasn't, up until she chucked a dessert at me, now I'm not so sure. Now she says I always side with Mother over her."

Which is true, but Jason seems somehow unaware of the sick codependence, the slavish, hapless devotion towards Caroline Bascomb that he personifies. What he says and what he's actually capable of diverge wildly where his mother is involved. He gets into the passenger seat, curling at the waist slightly and holding his head in his arms on the dashboard because it's the only position that alleviates the nausea he's feeling.

...Peggy's not touching this one with a ten foot pole. She can poke fun at his professional conduct, but she has a feeling she doesn't want to get into the romantic stuff.

"I would have thought that your mother would like Swann. She's from a very prestigious family. She seems nice as well, from what I've seen of her." That's a slight lie. Peggy has seen the way Caroline acts with her son, like he's hers and any attempt at wiggling out from her thumb is an act of the utmost rebellion. It's unhealthy and twisted. No wonder that kind of relationship formed an unhealthy and twisted man.

That's why she's not bringing Jason to his mother.

She gets into the driver's seat and turns it on as quietly as possible before inching out of the parking lot. She's a slow driver, but she's a very safe one.

"Doesn't matter. The last time I tried dating Mother threw such a fit I had to take a week off work to console her." He groans at even the slightest turn, shaking, entire body wracked with pain from the head down. "Not allowed to marry, not allowed to date. She says that's not how it is but any time I so much as have lipstick on my collar she's bedridden for a month. Not that I care, I'll just be a bachelor forever. Seems to suit you well enough."

He knows why Peggy doesn't date, that she's had trauma beaten into her so much it's like it's in her very pores, that she's still in love with ghosts because ghosts can only hurt her the same way they always have instead of finding new, sadistic methods of torture and violation - but it's easier, when you have a friend, to pretend that they do things by choice instead of because pain invisibly marionettes them. Easier to love them, easier to rest sleep at night not devoured alive by powerlessness.

"Slow down." Peggy's driving slow already, but even the tiniest motion feels like a jackhammer to Jason's head. "Anyone honks you have my permission to take down their license plate so I can key their car later."

Edited 2015-06-20 04:07 (UTC)

They both know why she doesn't date, but she'd prefer to pretend for now. Pretend that she could date whenever she wanted, that she just hasn't found the right person yet. "The single life isn't so bad. There are significantly fewer cakes being thrown at me."

She slows down even further, checking the rear view mirror to check for incoming cars. She tries to go fast enough to not risk being rear-ended, but she's never been very comfortable going too fast. Jason provokes a smile with his comment about license plates--despite the fact she herself would never be able to do that without serious consequences, she enjoys observing some of Jason's fits of retaliation.

"I'll keep an eye out," she says. She's tempted to reach over and stroke his hair, but that would require taking a hand off of the steering wheel. She'd be ready to take her hands off a horse's mane at any point, but a steering wheel is a fickle creature and she must have two hands to maintain it. "Have you taken any painkillers? I still have some in my apartment from the last time this happened. It may take the edge off."

"No, you know I don't take those. If you have some ginger ale or even water or something for my stomach, though, I'd appreciate that." He groans again and buries his face totally in his arms. He's already been sick enough this afternoon that he doubts he will be again, but he's still painfully queasy in addition to the throbbing in his head.

He's been on this route to Peggy's place often enough that he can just about predict when she takes the turn to her place and, squinting even behind his dark glasses, he looks up to see her complex. He can't understand Mentors that choose to live in the Tower; the nights he does are often punctuated by screaming Tributes or tending to Mentors with nightmares, and it seems the opposite of a calming place. Then again, Jason often feels that he's rushing between one stressful locale to another, from his rotting, wail-filled house to the overstimulating and harried Tribute Center, so maybe he has no room to judge anyone else for not carving out a space of the world for themself.

"Thank you, Peggy." It's rare that he touches her, as if it's not proximity but skin contact that is a dirty blurring of social castes, and he never does without telegraphing his actions so she doesn't startle. He reaches over and gives her hand a squeeze after she stops the car. "You can head back if you need to, I'm just going to lie still and not move for a few hours."

Although he wouldn't mind company.

"I always have some ginger ale around." Sometimes her nightmares make her feel sick, but usually, she just keeps it around in case Jason needs it. He's a frequent enough guest and the migraines are regular enough that she likes to keep a couple bottles in her fridge just for him.

"Don't worry about it." She shoots him a smile and gently squeezes his hand back. They don't touch much, and he thanks her for things even less, but the usual rules are generally suspended in the case of the migraines. "That's fine, you're doing me a favor. Now I have an excuse to leave the budgeting for tomorrow."

Peggy slides out of the car after parking, making sure that it's locked once Jason's out. She doesn't like the idea of leaving Jason all alone in her apartment; he's not exactly in a state to chat, but he's also not exactly in a state to look after himself. She can do some quiet work at home and be easily accessible if he needs something.

She lets herself in the building, holding the door open for him. She had deliberately decided to live in a complex that didn't have any doormen or avoxes ready to greet the residents. She feels uncomfortable when people wait on her, so she avoids it by staying in a place that only had an elevator to greet her. She presses the button to get the elevator.

He smirks for just a second. "Right. I'm going to a lot of effort to do you this favor."

Jason covers his face for the trip up the elevator, crumpled like a piece of paper in the corner. He prefers the way Peggy lives, without the servants underfoot that teem around his house at his mother's request. His home doesn't have Avoxes anymore, hasn't in decades, but there's something to be said for coming and going without notice.

When they get to Peggy's apartment he beelines towards the nearest couch and lies down on it, facedown, still because even the slightest twitch seems to wake up whatever monster is wreaking havoc on his nerves and pain receptors. He'd think that after nearly thirty years of these headaches - they started, abruptly, after his grandmother died - they'd lose impact, and yet each one hits with the same force as the first, it seems.

"It's been going on since before lunch, I'll probably only be out a few more hours. Do you have ice?" He settles into the couch, pushing his glasses back up on his nose to keep the light blocked.

Peggy dims the lights as far as she can while still being able to see before going to her kitchen. "Yes, I'll put it in a plastic bag and towel for you."

She bustles a little, grabbing the ice and ginger ale, before coming back to her living room to sit on the edge of the couch and offer them to him. "You know, you can take the guest room, if you like." She rarely uses it, since she doesn't have many people who stay over night, but it came with the apartment, so it's there. It's minimally furnished, but it has clean bed linens on the mattress and that's all that really matters.

Absently, she reaches over and begins to stroke his hair. She's rarely so familiar with him at work, but she used to do it all the time for Steve or Bucky when they were sick or their heads hurt, and it's just her instinctive reaction to seeing someone she cares about going through unpleasantness like this.

"Thanks." He takes a sip of ginger ale and settles back with the ice held to his right temple. "I'll stay here a little while, if you don't mind. I think I've hit my limit for moving around."

He wouldn't let her stroke his hair like this in public, but in his car, in her apartment, he actually finds some comfort in it. He doesn't enjoy it but it brings him a little peace, something to focus on and to anchor him to the place he is now, at a friend's apartment instead of in his mold-filled room at home or surrounded by people he hates at work.

"You know, the first time I had one of these, I actually thought I was dying. Father said I was making a fuss over nothing and gave me a whipping for it, too. Remarkable how that didn't actually help things." He winces and half-laughs at the same time. "Mother says she just takes aspirin for hers and it clears right up. I think she's out of her mind if she thinks a headache that can get taken away by some wishful thinking and an aspirin is the same thing as this."

It's not a side of Peggy most people see, the gentle and caring. It's not one that anyone's taken much interest in for her branding after the Arena; she's got an aura of harshness to her, with her makeup and poise and her high demands from her Tributes. The audience remembers a spitfire and now sees the pinnacle of Mentorship. Only a small group sees how much she cares.

Believe it or not, Jason's grateful to be in that circle.

"You can stay there all night if you want to."

She likes being allowed to take care of him. She's always been a tough woman, but she'd always had people who she could afford to be soft with. After Steve and Bucky were gone, she ended up with no one, and it felt like a part of her was dying when she couldn't express anything but the toughness.

Things like this remind her that she isn't just the hardass she portrays to the world. She can still be tender like she used to be.

"That doesn't surprise me." She keeps stroking his hair, gentle and tender. Jason could stand to experience some 'gentle and tender.' She's met Caroline, and she's heard plenty of stories about Jason's family life. It makes sense that his father would have belted him and his mother would have dismissed it. "You know you're always welcome here if you find things overwhelming at home."

"Don't tell me that. I'd never go home again." There are plenty of people who've heard tell of the Compsons' dysfunction. Peggy's one of the few who's heard more than just the public rumors and the vague bitching Jason's put on the network - about the incest, the beatings, the strange habits that Jason knows well enough not to bring up around company but doesn't even realize were abuse, just knows that since he was a teenager people found it awkward if he mentioned them. She knows just how heavy they weigh on Jason, how they are a component to his rage and vitriol as much as his own weakness is.

Jason wouldn't know what it's like to appreciate being tender like Peggy does now. His efforts taking care of the sickly are mostly with his mother, a role he resents every day, every moment, even when he's out of her presence. He thinks Peggy must resent this, too, and so he wills himself to try and recover more quickly, to little avail.

"Tell me how you feel about Steve and Bucky, alright? Because you loved them, didn't you- I don't think I've ever loved anyone but Mother." And he doubts even that, honestly.

His question provokes a surprised glance, but her hand is still stroking his hair. He doesn’t ask about Steve or Bucky. No one asks about them. It is a very personal question, but this is a personal setting. “My feelings for them aren’t the end all, be all of love, Jason,” she starts quietly. “Love can take different shapes. The way I love them is different from the way I love my parents. The way I love Steve is different from the way I love Bucky, even.” She refuses to use past tense, because she still loves them, even if they’re gone.

“But you’re right. I do love them.” She adjusts herself to make herself comfortable, her strokes becoming slower and her fingers gently massaging his scalp as she thinks. “I feel… When I was with one of them, I felt warmer. Even if my day had been bad, they made it better just by being with me. I didn’t really mind when Steve picked another fight or Bucky started fussing too much, because even if they could be a pain, I couldn’t stay angry because I could be a pain too, and they didn’t mind any more than I did. I suppose you could say that I knew their flaws, and I knew them as well as I knew mine, but I always felt that the good things they were outshone it.”

All the memories are flowing in. It hurts, but it feels good at the same time. She can’t talk about them too often, and she never really talked to anyone about how painful it was to lose them. “I think Steve’s the reason why Bucky and I even learned how to read. Bucky’s mother worked, but she had four little mouths to feed, and my parents weren’t always very healthy. We skipped school a lot to work and support our families, and we had to drop out eventually. Steve sat down with us every night after work and went over the lessons that day. It didn’t matter how tired any of us were; we’d stay up and do all the homework, and Steve was always patient even though he could have just left us with his schoolbooks. Sometimes we’d just fall asleep together on a pile of blankets and books.”

It’s cathartic to talk about them, even if it’s with someone who would have never really appreciated them. “I guess that’s what our love was. It was about sacrificing for each other, and being happier having done it, because taking care of each other made us happy.”

"I know they aren't. I'm just trying to get a perspective." Besides, the only other thing he can think about is the physical pain, and he's sure Peggy wants to hear about that about as much as Jason wants to reveal it. It's not even the pain that Jason would get rid of if he could eliminate one thing from his migraines, it's the weakness, the helplessness, that so undermine the pride that he tries to carry in spite of his constant martyrdom.

Jason feels a chill that has nothing to do with nausea settling in his stomach, something that originates not from the body but from the soul, as Peggy talks. He knows he might be in love with Swann, knows it on some level too deep for words because the feeling is as foreign to him as the genuine friendship he first felt with Peggy and Lorraine, like an invasive flush of hot blood in cold water.

But what Peggy's describing sounds different, like the flaws don't matter at all, like they're only mild dips as opposed to the wild highs and lows he and Swann have. He thinks maybe she only really, truly remembers the support she got from them, that their absence has made anger and disappointment fade rather than deepen like Jason feels for the dead and missing.

"Sacrifice is a pretty familiar word for all that. Duty. Obligation. I've never been happy taking care of someone. Maybe it's a Districter thing." He says that with a sort of dismissive sniff.

Maybe it's just her memory blurring them. After all, the last time she had really spent any time with them was eight years ago. People change in eight years, and memories get mixed up. Maybe it doesn't really matter either way. She knows she loves them, and that helps her when times are tough and she needs to remember why she's fighting so hard every day.

"Maybe." Who knows? If Peggy has learned anything of Capitolites, it's that they don't often feel like Districters feel. Where a Districter can have raw and simple feelings, it always seems like a Capitolite's is refracted through multiple cracked lenses and mirrors, bounced around until there are pieces of many things in it, and it's shined through their actions as imperfect projectors. Capitolites are selfish because they are taught they are entitled to pampering. They have to lie and are told what to think, and that twists the feelings until no one really knows how they feel anymore. At least in District 10, where the animals get better treatment than the people, no one cares what you think or feel. No one will put in the effort to warp what you have inside. "It feels nice to me to take care of someone I care about. I like knowing that I'm helping them."

Although to be frank, there aren't many people she cares about that much anymore.

"Why the need for perspective?" As she strokes his hair, she is forced to wonder if the man has ever been happy. Peggy, for all the horror and pain in her life, at least had fifteen precious years when her loved ones could make her happy, even when she was scared or angry or starving. Jason can hardly say the same.

Maybe that will change in the future. It probably won't. She has never met a man so determined to be miserable in her life, and come war and peace, Jason Compson will always be the same.

Jason's never known happiness as a state of being so much as the occasional moment. It's not the climate of his life so much as the odd crack of lightning. It's precious, fleeting, frustrating and coquettish in how elusive it is. He cannot point to a period in his life, like Peggy can, where happiness existed as something that could be dependably given. The one time he might be able to identify it comes before his living memory, when he was too young to record anything for review in adulthood.

Perhaps that's something that makes connecting to Tributes difficult. Jason can't picture being taken from an alright existence and having a life destroyed.

"I think Swann might be in love with me." He doesn't say that as if he's skeptical that Swann loves him so much as generally suspicious of love as a general concept, all the more so that he's afraid he might return it to someone. It's a strange foe, one built more of expectation and rumor than flesh and bone. "But she threw a cake at me, like I said, so who really knows? Maybe she's just menstruating."

Because it would hardly be a conversation with Jason without something prejudiced coming out of his mouth.

Peggy has to resist the urge to roll her eyes to the sky. "With charm like that, how could she resist?" As much as Peggy cares for Jason, she can't imagine trying to have any kind of romantic relationship with him without smothering him with his own pillow. Swann could smother Jason herself and Peggy would have to understand why.

Yet for some reason, this woman who Peggy barely knows has only thrown cake at him (and probably yelled at him, if she has any modicum of humanity in her). Swann must have the world's worst self esteem.

Even so, maybe she can do something for Jason. Maybe she do what no one else could: make him happy. Peggy would like that.

"How do you think you feel about her?" she asks, choosing to not pick at his stupid menstruation stuff. She normally would, but he seems to vulnerable to her to really start digging in beyond one or two snarky remarks.

"Good thing I don't get paid for charm."

He's rarely as comfortable in the midst of a storm as he is now, his head nearly on Peggy's lap, no longer fighting so much as riding the waves of dizzying pain that are coursing with predictable regularity from his head to the base of his neck, as if the locus of human suffering were the tight, cramped blood vessels in his very eyes.

"I don't know. I don't think about feelings much. What's the point?" Jason says those last three words aggressively, as if he's trying to throw the entirety of human introspection to the four winds and rid himself of it entirely. He sighs and winces again, bringing a hand up to rub at his temple. "You can't buy an emotion. You can't sell it. You can't even keep it. It'll eventually die and then what'll you have for all your trouble? Nothing. Not a damn thing."

"Beautiful things tend not to last forever. That's often where the beauty lies."

While she'd never admit it out loud, she likes moments like these. Moments where they can touch each other and, yes, where she can take care of him a little bit. Maybe she's just used to expressing affection through taking care of people, or maybe she just prefers Jason when circumstances demand he remove pretense. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

She keeps stroking his hair, trying to distract from the pain in his head. "Emotions are fleeting, but I don't see much point to life if we don't have them. They're what give things meaning." Not that she really thinks Jason will understand what she's saying. Jason is breathtaking in his lack of self awareness, and that bleeds into a lack of insight often. "Not everything with value can be priced."

"Right, because you're a Districter. You've got to rationalize why it's better to not have things somehow." Peggy's the only person around which Jason can say that epithet - Districter - without making it sound like he's spitting it.

But he has a point, that it has to do with where they were respectively raised; Capitolite children are told from the start to have things, to accumulate and measure their value by price tags and bank accounts and real estate, not to appreciate what they have but to use it as a definition of their worth anyway. His Uncle Maury has the latin form of "he with the most toys, wins" above his mantle. When Jason was in kindergarten he learned the proverb "a bird in the hand is worth more than its memory".

"That's only if you take the leap to think anything has meaning anyway." It's not just a lack of insight but a staggering amount of depressive nihilism, not just a lack of self-awareness but a purposeful aversion to it at all. Life doesn't have a meaning to Jason, only existing as a spiteful alternative to the decision his older brother made.

"Maybe that's it."

To her, Capitolites have a completely warped view of human life and material possessions, but they think the same of Districters. She believes it's because Districters don't have to lie to each other constantly, but that still means that Jason will always have a different view of value than she does.

"Why would people fight so hard to live if they didn't find meaning in it?"

The question means something different to Jason than it does to Peggy. Jason has witnessed people endure life, and the endurance is what can become the struggle. Peggy has seen people actively battle for just one more day of life, both in and out of the games. She's been one of them.

"Some of them don't, I'll remind you."

He's heard Districters comment about his brother's suicide that it's suiting that a Capitolite would value life little enough to throw it away. He knows it's crap, that there are suicides out in the Districts too, but there is something to be said for the weight that Capitolites put on their survival. Their very recreation tends to be drugs, mind-altering substances and risky experiences, as if their lives are collateral in every day deals.

"I guess it's just...more trouble than it's worth to die. Just because it's harder than living doesn't make life easy." He takes her hand moves her fingers to a place on his temple. "It feels like someone's driving a nail in there with every heartbeat. Jesus."

Would Capitolites behave differently if the possibility that they would die before the day ended was always clear and present? Peggy thinks they would. They take life for granted, and like all things taken for granted, it becomes easy to waste.

"I've always seen dying as easier." But maybe that's because her life is harder than the average Capitolite's. District life is hard, and succumbing to starvation is easy.

She allows him to move her hand and she very gently starts rubbing his temple. "Let me see if I can help."

"No, dying's hard. You wouldn't understand it, being from the Districts and all. Real people have affairs to get in order, contingencies, arrangements..."

Real people. Sometimes he doesn't realize that he says such things, believes them so deeply that there's no reason he wouldn't. And sometimes he does realize, like now, and feels uneasy, not thinking Peggy will be angry but as if he's shown a bright light on something ugly and lurking in the corners of their friendships.

"That helps a bit. I think I just..." He rubs his jaw, where the pain's lancing down from his head. "I need to stop talking. Silence. Silence is good."

Ten years ago, Peggy would have pushed back. She would have yelled at him. Demanded that he tell her what it was that made him any more real than her, made his feeling any more valid.

Now, she just looks down at him, and for a moment there is no mask. There's no smile. There isn't even anger or resentment, since she's long become used to the way all Capitolites will forever see her as just a Districter, even the Capitolites who care about her most.

Instead of any of that, she just looks at him. It's the look of someone who is observing something they already knew was there, something they accepted a long time ago. Something that cut deep once and has now scarred over until it doesn't feel like anything anymore.

She stays silent. She rubs his head gently and tends to his pain. She won't say a word more if he doesn't.

Edited 2015-10-14 05:04 (UTC)

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You Live Your Life Like You're Stuck in Hell [Closed]

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