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

[whatisay]

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?"

Comments

[whatisay]

"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."

[impaledqueen]

"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."

[whatisay]

"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.

[impaledqueen]

"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.

[whatisay]

"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."

[impaledqueen]

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."

[whatisay]

"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."

[impaledqueen]

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.