dead_black_eyes: "Off to the Races" (With every beat of his cocaine heart)
dead_black_eyes ([personal profile] dead_black_eyes) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2015-08-03 09:41 pm

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.


crabmunicator: (065)

A

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-04 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
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."
crabmunicator: (054)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-10 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)
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?"
crabmunicator: (014)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-14 01:25 pm (UTC)(link)
"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.
crabmunicator: (148)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-16 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
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)
crabmunicator: (015)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-22 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)
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.'"
crabmunicator: (041)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-08-28 09:38 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
crabmunicator: (015)

[personal profile] crabmunicator 2015-09-01 07:37 am (UTC)(link)
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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voiceinthephone: http://nightingails.livejournal.com/131995.html ([HIDE])

A

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-05 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Turns out that Tributes aren’t quite allowed to visit their mentors and that left a sour taste in Phil’s mouth. He wanted to check up on Linden as soon as he was out of the operating table, but nope. Whatever small gains he had from sponsors that were impressed with his tenure in the Arena, they went for gifts and he made himself known in the nurses’ station by asking how he was.

That pretty much dropped the moment he had to look for work and search around for any and all Sponsors he could find. Phillip was already used to long hours and low pay thanks to Freddy’s and now the Arena, he didn’t mind it as long as there was food on the table. Shame Stephen outright quit and apparently showed his true colors. There went my last vestigial faith in Capitolites. Gray knows Karkat is doing his part with sponsors and…well Nux is still getting his bearings so things weren’t THAT bad.

What Phone Guy does mind and cringe at is the broken bone Lockhearst was sporting. “Holy crap, what happened?” the worry and concern never wavered and more so when he spotted the facsimile of the bone. Confused, he asked, “Shall I call medical services?”
voiceinthephone: ([Look Away])

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-06 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
"Don't worry about it." Phil thought nothing of the snapping, Linden was in pain, it was understandable. But the news about the donor and the tradition, there's really no way to avoid it: whoever this donor was, it was either a sibling or a...oh no. Linden didn't have siblings last Gray checked. It had to be a parent, the most compatible donor out there and that victor reel did no favors to clear that doubt in any other way.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Sir," he whispered, out of respect and condolences. He also understood that whoever the parent was, had to remain somewhat anonymous. There were many things happening in Panem but bringing back the dead from before the Never Ending Quell wasn't one of them. Had there not been this, he would have said outright I'm so sorry for your loss

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

voiceinthephone: http://squaredmc.livejournal.com/34010.html#cutid1 ([Climbing])

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-07 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
"Hm, what do I do if..." the question earned Linden a familiar smile, sheepish from what happened earlier but nonetheless cordial. "Like I told you, I couldn't show up drunk to work. I didn't want to be fired and risk someone else getting stuck in the night shift. I focused on everything else, I tired my brain and body out in the morning. I drank coffee, I worked out..."

Phil sighed, "I couldn't think about drinking at work either. Inebriation impairs many reflexes I'd need in t-the office. One wrong move and whoops, I'm dead, adrenaline kept me from drinking."
voiceinthephone: ([Well...nope])

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-08 06:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"Always. I never really forget the Missing posters and making sure they were safe," And he wasn't just talking about the ones in the machines. Confronting Jeremy in the Dream made Phil realize that he was definitely suspected as the killer back home. As much as it hurt Phone Guy to know that his company would sell him out so easily, his actions were inherently suspicious. He should have been more direct...something he's changing here in Panem.

"You have more of an incentive than I do. I know offworlders shouldn't have to worry about death but it still hurts like hell and-" he stopped short of anything that could come off as rude given the circumstances. "Would you like some light painkillers? Something to ease the swelling?"
voiceinthephone: ([I'm Listening])

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-11 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, one doesn't need to have Jerry Springer to know there's something very similar about Mrs. Stevens' son, the rambunctious child from District 8. Kids are kids and Phillip knows that it's best not to ask why the boy looks a lot like a Lockhearst than his mother. "I've seen him in passing, yeah. Seems like a sweet kid, but you're setting a very good example, that's great!"

Why though, is a bit worrying. It's no secret that adults drink and Linden's now on the path to recovery. Maybe it's to teach the boy that alcohol's not for everyone? Of course, Phil has yet to meet Temple.

As earnest as it is to offer painkillers again, Phil nods and respected the tradition, instead offering his mentor some water. "What about tea? Is that allowed?"
Edited (whoops, wrong gender for bailey) 2015-08-11 21:28 (UTC)
voiceinthephone: ([Screw it])

[personal profile] voiceinthephone 2015-08-14 03:32 am (UTC)(link)
"I am offering to make some," Phil assured Linden and got to it as fast as he could. This was a marked difference from the last time they had a private chat, they got buzzed and there were plenty of things to air out.

"Well, as long as he's not putting his finger in a socket or drinking from mommy's bottle, he'll be fine," he said, having made the connection between Temple and Linden's mystery friend as soon as the mentor said favorite uncle. But like hell Phil is making that verbally known. There's some decorum left.

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