thecapitol | Our Lives Between... [Open]

Entry tags:

Our Lives Between... [Open]

Who| Linden Lockhearst and OPEN
What| Encounters and conversations post parental death, Stephen-firing, and partly during his Victor Reel. These last few weeks, man.
Where| D6 suite, a bar, camera stalking in the streets
When| August 3rd, afternoon and into the night
Warnings/Notes| Creepy and potentially disturbing funeral rites, mentions of alcohol and drug use. ALSO the third prompt involves some rebellion-related activity, so PM me if you want to do something with that aside from just bumping into him and talking to him so we can figure out where to go with it!

a. D6 suite

Linden used to know how to spend his time in his District suite. Usually, it wasn't with any greater point or purpose in mind, just the general aim of getting as far away from the world as possible and leaving his tired, numb body behind in bed or on the floor, when even that was simply too much effort. Now, he feels and sees everything in sharp relief and focus. He hadn't felt any hesitation or regret at personally emptying and dumping every one of his stashes, watching his old escape methods slipping and trickling away where they can't do his new liver any harm. If he couldn't protect his mother, he can at least protect the second chance she gave him, whether or not he would have asked for it had he known where the organ was coming from in advance.

His first thought is to talk to Stephen, but Stephen is no longer there. Something turns sour in his stomach at the thought, and he tries to put it from his mind and focus on more productive things.

He could go out, check on the locations of the existing or changed blind spots again and begin the process of relying that information to District 13. Maybe he will once night's fallen proper and he can rely on at least a little cover. For now, though, he sits by the coffee table, and instead of poring over a bottle or pills, he's carefully shaping and pressing cream-colored clay into the rough shape of something that looks like a knuckle bone. He has four real ones strung together with twine beside him for reference, their yellowed, weathered color showing through the paint covering them, with names written in a cramped, spidery black hand.

Shawford, Karem, Arta, Scorpii.

He never learned his mother's name, but at least stand-ins for the real thing are not so uncommon in District 6. Factory accidents can be horrific and frequently mangle hands, sometimes entire bodies. Usually it's left to the oldest surviving member of a family to take this uncomfortable step, one who's too old to work anyway and doesn't need the use of their fingers, but Linden's the only one left in his who can, and he's sure that his mother deserves this much for her sacrifice. Before he can go further with crafting the fascimile, he reaches to open the coffee table's drawer, aware that he needs to make it at least appear to be an accident. He slips the smallest finger in the gap, taking a deep breath and exhaling as he presses the drawer shut with his knee until he hears a soft crunch.

He withdraws his trembling hand, breathing and gritting his teeth through the pain until the endorphins temporarily dull it. As the knuckle swells and turns vibrant, he continues to work on the details, more slowly and clumsily. It's another ache he can't run from, and another nagging reminder that his days of trying are at an end. If he can't live in a cage and he can't anesthetize himself until it no longer feels like a cage, there are only two options left: escape, or die trapped.

b. The Tower Bar, During his Victor's Reel

Many Victors avoid their recaps, revisitations and reels. Linden knows better not to, because to do so would make events like this even more painful to relive. The televisions in the bar are lit up with a wide-eyed face that's his, if younger and fresher, going through the recorded motions of what much of Panem would call his finest moments. Even if the narration states with regret that he is not one of the "shining star" Victors, not one of the "best", he has his fans, and everyone in the Capitol loves a trainwreck. What better place to export them from District 6, cradle of mechanical wonders and addiction alike?

The shabby creature at the bar is not larger-than-life as he watches the footage from the background; these are images he's seen hundreds of times, intentionally growing callous to them while nursing his obsession with Scorpii, and he's glad for it. This most recent set of reels, for every Victor, seems tailored to get reactions and punch holes hard and deep in the leftover human husks, and Linden can't afford many more hard punches. If there's anything at all he's relatively immune to, he's grateful. He holds up a hand when he's offered a drink for the third time, insisting that he'll stick with tea as the reel continues to blare throughout the bar.

He blows softly across the surface of the hot, herbal water, moving his swollen, bruised knuckle away from the heat and adjusting his grip to accommodate it. The reel makes him out to be weak, washed-up and likely not someone the odds will favor much longer. The Capitol sees a different Linden than his contacts in the Rebellion, and he's never been more glad of it.

c. In the City Streets After Dark

Linden doesn't look like himself with the hood of his dark jacket pulled close over his face, and he doesn't want to. He's on his usual rounds, and he hasn't been caught or questioned yet. There's a small signal disrupter he carries with him, painstakingly and secretly built over weeks in other blind spots, strapped to one of his ankles and hidden by a sturdy, soft-soled. If all goes well, the nearby cameras will wind up jammed and scrambled, and there will be a few new blind spots to report to the rebellion.

It's treason, plain and simple, and things will go badly for him if he's identified and his passage is associated with cameras going on the fritz. Things will go worse if he's questioned and searched, but he moves softly and quickly without looking overly suspicious. He moves with enough purpose that he seems to be going somewhere, and he's not loitering or lingering, but that might change depending on who (if anyone) hails him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Life has been a whirling blender of horseshit lately, in some ways. It's not so bad as an arena, no, and it's not remotely the kind of horseshit that came during the last break when the Initiate's plan all went haywire. Still, it's horseshit. Dave barging into his room at ass o'clock for reasons he didn't think to tell sooner, Stephen suddenly resigning and turning into an asshole, a week's worth of increasingly stressful dreams, all on top of school and the sponsorship deals he's had to keep at following the revoking of their credit lines...

It's a ton of shit to deal with, is the idea.

Linden is a part of it in his way: since Crowning, Karkat's been watching out as he can, not wanting to see Linden fall to temptation by stray alcohol or simply be straining himself in the wake of his surgery. It hasn't been overt - he's not his moirail, after all - and in general, it seems to have been more worry than needed. He hasn't heard anything bad yet.

He has maybe noticed the absence of a certain Avox from District 9, but he's kept his distance from them for a reason. He doesn't ask.

It's as he's coming in, a bag of cheap groceries hanging from one hand, that he spots him. The anklebones on the table catch his eye with their colors, and even with the yellow showing through he doesn't realize what they are at first, particularly as Linden works to shape a new one. More important is the swollen, discolored knuckle on his hand.

"What the hell happened?" He heads over straight, grocery bag set on a chair to the side and frankly unimportant for now. "You are not seriously just sitting here making trinkets while your hand's fucked up, are you? Tell me that's not what I'm seeing."

Linden stiffens slightly at the sound of Karkat's voice, which is never precisely dulcet. He's well-aware that he isn't Karkat's... Morrel, Moral, Moira..? He's also well aware that the troll still watches him sometimes like he is, especially lately. But Panem's citizens have their ways of rolling with horseshit, because even outside of the livestock District, it's fully expected.

"That's exactly what I'm doing," he says bluntly, voice slightly breathless. It's actually one of the few times D6 frowns upon the use of alcohol or drugs, when a knuckle is broken for family, and the bone-deep ache of breakage is starting to seep viciously back into the digit, felt every time he can't avoid moving or bending it. "It's kind of the point. A thing we do in my District... never thought I'd actually have to, but..."

He carefully finishes the makeshift knucklebone, face as pale as the clay as he pokes a small metal rod through it to ensure there's a way to string it up with the others.

"I have to bake it. You don't mind grabbing me a pan, do you? I'll buy your groceries next time if you help me out a little."

He is. He really is. Karkat's jaw sits ajar, and he gawks, listening to the edge in his voice as he gives an explanation that sits too insufficient in his mind. Not that he doubts detail would be hard, considering the dumbass just broke his finger. It's painful just to look at it as Linden finishes the false bone.

And of course, the fucker just has to bribe him.

"You stinking fleck of grubspittle," he grinds out, eyes narrowed down, but he goes.

He marches right on into the kitchen, where things shift and rattle as he searches out a good pan. A drawer shuts hard once he's found one, and he comes back with it dangling from a hand that wants to be a fist. He puts it on the table with a clatter, though at least the consideration not to drop it on his things.

"Did they lobotomize you too when they replaced your liver? Is it an endemic malfunction of the brain your people have? Who the fuck breaks their own prongs? And why? Tell me, Linden, what prompted your sudden desire for egregious self-injury?"

The insult rolls off easily; by this point in their relationship, it would have to, wouldn't it? It seems like every other word Karkat speaks is an expletive sometimes, to the point where Linden has long since ceased to consider it abuse. He's likewise able to weather the crashing and banging through the kitchen without so much as an upward glance, even though loud sudden noises used to make him flinch spectacularly. It helps that he's not hungover, but... still, it speaks volumes about how used to Karkat he's grown during the troll's time in the Tower.

Once it's on the table, does glance up, carefully placing the clay in the center of the pan.

"They took my new liver out of my mother, and then she died," he says; it feels realer and less shocking every time he voices it out loud, but he's yet to feel less like parasitic trash. That sense is just getting stronger. "We do this in my District. Ordinarily, the bones in the hands get divided among family and friends, painted and kept like those..." he gestures at the strung-together talisman on the table. "But they cremate the Avoxes here. I couldn't get her hands. When a body's not recoverable in 6, usually because of a really bad factory accident, the oldest clan member breaks a knuckle for them and everyone makes proxy bones. My father doesn't even know what's going on right now, so... by default, that's me."

His pain is offset by the grim deliberateness of his movements as he stands and gathers up the baking sheet, heading toward the kitchen.

"Oh."

It's a small sound and can't contain the enormity of what Linden has just told, but his face does what it can to back it up: irritation bleeds out, softening him and making way for a weaker set to his eyes. He may not know what having human parents is like, but he lost his lusus in a way he put to his own mistakes. And his mother - he has seen her, as Linden's further explanation confirms what he'd suspected.

He trails after him into the kitchen.

"I'm sorry," he says first. "Your culture is still fucked up, don't get me wrong--" Especially now that he knows Linden broke the knuckle himself. "--but that's awful. I saw them around before, but..."

He motions emptily, at a loss for how best to convey it. Linden should know; they're both constricted by the Capitol's eye.

Linden feels a passing sense of guilt when he does this to Karkat, drops a bombshell like that one and leaves the prickly but well-meaning Troll to feel like he was unintentionally callous or cruel. He can clearly relate enough to understand what it means to Linden, at least on some comparable level, and he says nothing as he follows him into the kitchen as he slides the tray into the oven.

"Don't be sorry," he says softly. "It is what it is, and it can't be changed. I appreciate your empathy, but... this is unfortunately just one more example of things being the way they are."

He leans against the counter.

"I didn't even know her name. I regret that."

It's the loss that's easy to translate more than the specifics. He frowns as Linden goes to them, talking of names, an apparent distance. Which, really, was a given - it's hard to be close to an Avox. He had his own issues even being as mad at the Initiate as he wanted to be when he ran into him after he was made one.

"What was it like?" he asks, tone similarly softened. "Having a parent who's..." He motions. "You know. Tell me to screw off if I'm asking anything weird, but so long as everything's depressing and you've got a maimed hand to distract yourself from. Trolls just don't have parents, let alone like that."

Besides that, baking the false knucklebone is sure to take some time. Sitting around silently won't make it pass any more quickly.

Edited 2015-08-16 15:11 (UTC)

"I'm not going to tell you to screw off," Linden says dully. "These are things that a lot of people in Panem aren't aware of or familiar with, so it makes sense for an Offworlder to want to know."

He sits against the refrigerator; ordinarily he'd fold himself up like a fortress with his knees tucked against his chest, but his entire torso area is rather tender at the moment, so he settles for stretching them out in front of him.

"They were taken away when I was a child, but they weren't celebrated and remembered like most of our dead. A wealthy family adopted me, pretty customary for children too young to work who've lost their parents. I was a servant and playmate for the other kids in that household, and then when I was old enough to work in the factory, what wages I was allowed to keep went to that family. So it was like being an orphan, which isn't uncommon in 6, but... also not, because when our festivals came around, no one had anything to remember them by. I didn't know their names, or who their friends were, just that they were engineers, one of the best jobs you can get and reserved for the smartest and most ambitious. Otherwise people were tight-lipped, and I guess that's what got me interested in uncovering the truth and finding lost things. If it was a puzzle, or a difficult question, I was in heaven."

He presses the heel of his hand against his temple, which harbors a different kind of ache.

"When I came to the Capitol after getting Reaped I saw them in passing when I was getting off the train. They looked like me. I couldn't have mistaken them even under all that mess and makeup, and they recognized me too. I saw it in the way they looked at me. I thought that if I could win, just... maybe I could do something to help them, but that's the answer to the most difficult question. There's often very, very little that can be done to help. And that's hell," he says quietly. "Knowing the answer, and knowing that there's nowhere else to go."

It's an immensely heavy sentiment, but something about voicing it makes Linden feel lighter, less like it's trapped in his chest and crushing him.

"Thank you," he says to Karkat, without really understanding why.

Karkat stands awkwardly for a moment, then sinks to sit near him, legs crossed into a pretzel. The story is more than he expected, given he didn't know if Linden would give it, but the details go beyond that still. It's miles different from any of his experiences, and hard to wrap his head around as he thinks on it. The only Avox he knows is the Initiate, and that's a different matter entirely.

He blinks and looks up when Linden thanks him. "What for? I'm just some alien kid who doesn't know what to say after all that, beyond a generic, inadequate, 'holy shit, that sucks.'"

It's nice to have some company down here at any rate. He offers Karkat a half-smile as he sits and folds his legs.

"You know, sometimes there's nothing to say, and that's all right. Listening means the world. It means that someone actually cares that those things happened, and I'm not crazy for feeling like I've been gutted even more than I literally was."

"Of course you're not crazy." The answer is immediate, confusion changed for a frown. "They might not have been there to raise you, but they're still important, right? And you finally got to see them, but not know them, and now one of them is gone."

He might say more if they weren't being monitored, things about possible rehabilitation or finding ways to communicate. It's enough to talk about missing Avoxes like they can count as people at all, in this place - and that's hard enough when so much of what makes them them is gutted out by the conditioning.

He looks outward, motioning loosely as he speaks. "Like... It's not the same thing, but before I came here, I had some friends I met and knew for about a day. Just a day! But shit went down, to say the least, and because of convoluted reasons I couldn't talk to them for three years, let alone get the chance to meet them in person. But I still missed them, you know? It's a different scale and a different relation, but what I'm saying is I get you, as much as an alien can."

The answer is prompt, enough to startle Linden, and maybe get a little bit of a laugh out of him as well. Most Victors are assumed to be a little bit crazy by default, and Linden's not one of the best put-together ones by far, so the emphatic insistence isn't something he's quite used to.

"They're Avoxes," he says steadily, even though his eyes say that he agrees, that he wants to say it but has to play the part of the politically correct Capitol Mentor. It's true, they really can't talk about them as people. "While you're right, in ways, it's... really more like losing an old photograph than it is like losing a parent. I lost them twenty years ago."

He listens as Karkat relates a story that's similar enough to relate, even if it's loose. "You get me," he repeats, nodding briskly. "Yes, I... think so. That's what I thanked you for, because even without what you added, it's been clear for a little while. I can't imagine how that empathetic streak must have been received by others of your kind."

Linden's got his issues, but this isn't one of them as far as Karkat views him. Still, he's glad for his discretionary wording, even as he catches the telling look.

He pauses at the last, though, thinking over the comment and how to address it.

"... It wasn't, not always. Trolls aren't supposed to be softhearted and nice, so I played up the asshole streak," he starts in. "If I acted too weak or easy, it would be like inviting someone to take advantage. And I'm a mutant, you know? I would have been culled if that pouncebeast ever clawed out of the carrying sack. So I had to keep people at a distance until I felt like I could put trust in them."

It's a more open admission than he'd normally opt for, but it used to be that even using his own blood color to type with was too much for him, even in a conversation with himself alone. Here, blood doesn't matter. His mutation is public knowledge between the media and the Signless's victory. There's no point denying his empathy after he just doled it out willingly, either.

He motions broadly, indicating a group. "That kind of happened gradually once I started leading my team - my friends - in this game before I came here. And a lot of them had romance problems, and hey, romance is my fruity breakfast condiment. I was there to listen and sort their shit out, and it kind of became a regular deal. It... didn't last indefinitely." A frown crosses his face. "But I steadily laid off some of the more overt douchebag act, because who knew it's easier to keep friends if you aren't being a thorny frond whap to the face all the time?"

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