thecapitol | Oh Death, can't you spare me over 'till another year?

Entry tags:

Oh Death, can't you spare me over 'till another year?

Who| Peggy Carter and Linden, then Peggy, Linden, and Jason
What| The Peacekeepers are coming for Peggy and Linden. Jason is Peggy's hail Mary to get them both out.
Where| Linden's room in the Tribute Center, then Compson Manor
When| Afternoon to Evening days before the parade.
Warnings/Notes| Jason, and (minor and breathtakingly pathetic) violence against a woman. I'll add more as they come up.

For Linden

Peggy has a lot of practice looking calm when inside she feels like melting down. After talking with Derek and destroying the letters Bucky had sent her (it stung a little, but she knows them word for word now and there can be no evidence of his survival left behind), she puts the radio Bucky had given her years ago into her bag, touches up her makeup, and goes to work like any other day.

Her girls are still working with the Stylist. Peggy wishes she could say goodbye to them, but she can't let on that she knows what's happening, and any gesture of favor from her would put them in greater danger once she's gone. She tries not to think of all the people she's probably never going to be able to see again after this.

"Linden?" She's at Linden's door, knocking gently. She doesn't really know how they'll get him out of the Capitol along with her, but she can't bear the thought of just leaving him to die and saving herself. She's making this up as she goes along, and hopefully she can just drag him along. "Linden, it's Peggy."

For Jason and Linden

Peggy explained what she could in public, which basically amounted to her taking his arm so she could lean in and whisper, "The peacekeepers are after you. Follow my lead and trust me," into his ear without it looking too weird or getting picked up by the microphones scattered through the city.

There's a blind spot in the middle of the Compson Manor's dining room. Jason doesn't know she knows about it. Hell, Peggy's not even sure if Jason knows about it. Either way, she's not sure if Bucky's instructions for escape were one-time or long-term, and if they are meant to be constant, she doesn't know if whatever system he set up could move as quickly as she needs it to and take on an extra person. She doesn't even know if District 13 would take her when she's been discovered and turned into a liability--that is, if any escape is sanctioned by D13, which she's not sure of. She's left thinking on her feet, unsure of how to proceed and going to Jason in an effort to save her and Linden.

She clicks the system to buzz her in at the gate, Linden by her side when she says, "Jason, it's Peggy. Could you buzz me in, please?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Linden's careful to sit exactly where Peggy indicates, the grandness of the chair clashing with the shrunken shabbiness of his appearance. Even though Peggy had given him the chance, actually urged him to make himself presentable, using that word is generous. His clothes only really look nice when the stylists guide his limbs into a coordinating, newly tailored number and run a comb by him, and they have not been near him in days. He is every bit a wild-haired, tortured Districter sitting at the dinner table in the Compson manor, in other words, sans the polish, makeup and tricks that allow him to pass in the Capitol. And he happens to be a Districter that Jason hates, on top of everything else.

He glances Peggy's way while Jason spews vitriol in the kitchen, but says nothing, even if his hands clench under the tabletop and the set of his jaw is tenser than usual. When Jason returns, he makes no move to help himself to a beverage, instead slipping a hand in his pocket for a carton of hand-rolled cigarettes. If his body is craving nourishment, the twisted knot in his stomach prevents it from registering. He also slips several scraps of paper and a pair of pens from the same pocket.

Linden keeps a careful eye on Peggy, trusting that this is a place to speak relatively freely given her direction, but not wanting to take the chance just in case microphones can still pick up what they're saying.

He takes a deep breath, as if about to say things that are immensely difficult for him. "To start off, I want to apologize, from the bottom of my heart, for everything I have ever said that you took personal offense to. The shots at your family were especially unfair and uncalled for, and it does nothing but reflect poorly on my District when I use that kind of rhetoric. Furthermore, it reflects poorly on me as a person to take advantage of such low blows. I am not a bully, and it pains me to realize I have been behaving very much like one."

As he speaks, he writes, more slowly to make his childish, sloppy hand legible.

We have to leave the Capitol. Both of us are in danger.

Peggy, on the other hand, takes the tea Jason offers. His servants know what kind of tea she likes, but it feels like pooling, molten lead in her stomach when she swallows. This is it. Eight years of plotting, scheming, and pretending behind the backs of everyone she knew and care about has all built up to this.

It feels like she's floating. She's trying to rip off the mask that she's been wearing her whole adult life, but it's fused to her skin and she doesn't know where it ends and she begins. She's so comfortable in her role as Capitolite pretender that she doesn't quite fit right in the skin of a proud and true rebel Districter anymore.

She allows Linden to talk. She sips her tea while staring forward, battling with herself to figure out how to tell the truth for the first time. The fact that Linden is apologizing to Jason can't hurt their chances.

"You can speak freely here, Linden. We're in an officially sanctioned blind spot." She sips her tea again, using the heat to ground herself. "Many Capitolites have them, especially when they're from powerful families."

She looks at Jason calmly. She's lied to him, and he's not going to be happy about it. She owes him eye contact when she finally tells him the truth. "The Peacekeepers will be coming for the two of us shortly. I imagine we're due for a brutal interrogation followed by a public execution." They're too famous to leave avoxed, she imagines, although they might avox her and keep her for leverage if they manage to find out that her Bucky is still alive and in District 13. That can't happen.

"Shut up," Jason says to Linden, all the more insulted that this apology is only coming as a feint for an actual conversation, as artifice as if to taunt with the absence of earnestness. It's like Linden can't help but be snide and passive-aggressive, and Jason is a bloodhound for it and for seeing the worst. He makes a 'zip it' gesture with his hand, then takes the napkin and crumples it without even reading it. Instead he watches Peggy, eyes hard and merciless on hers as they meet.

He raises his eyebrows as Peggy mentions the blind spot, and then they fall again into a glare. He feels that twitch in his jaw again, and his next words rip up out of his throat, even as they're quiet enough to keep from being caught on the microphones. "And you brought them here to my doorstep?"

He gets up and shoves his chair aside, pacing like a trapped animal around the table.

"What have you done? What in God's name did you do to get yourself into this? Did he do it?" He rounds on Linden, although at least this time he knows better than to touch Linden unannounced. "Did you drag her into this?"

He sets aside the pen when Peggy makes it clear that the blind spot is a confirmed one, audibly as well as visually. That being said, he still has to bear the brunt of Jason's rejection, which a part of him absolutely expected, and to his credit, he does so without a parrying retort or loss of temper. It doesn't matter that the apology sounded earnest (and might have been to a surprising extent), it matters that Jason feels used in this desperate situation.

Linden's eyes follow Jason as he rises from his seat and starts manically pacing, and he stiffens when he rounds on him, but doesn't otherwise react. The effort is a conscious one, concentration required for this amount of control.

"You know what I did," he says quietly. "What you said to Phillip about my whipping was public and it was fairly clear that you're informed. I've made my peace with death and I was ready to stay behind to help Peggy, but... for whatever reason... she wouldn't leave me. So here we are."

"I never wanted this to affect you, Jason, but I didn't know where else to go." For once she's allowed to be honest, and the first thing she feels herself wanting to say is that she didn't fake any of their friendship. She's genuinely afraid that she might have put Jason or Derek into deep trouble by associating with them right now, but she couldn't think of anything else. She doesn't try to justify it by telling him that he's the least likely of anyone to be scrutinized because of his name and how well established he is. That doesn't make it right for her to put him at risk.

She wants to reach out to Linden. To hold his hand or something to help keep him from lashing out, because she can see how difficult it is for him to keep his mouth shut, but right now, all three of them have struggles they have to face on their own.

"Linden didn't do anything to get me into this," she says quietly. It feels like she's swallowed a hook and is trying to drag the truth out of herself with the line, ripping apart her insides as she does so. "Everything I did was by my own decision."

Tea. She sips the tea, continuing to look at Jason because it's what she owes him. "I'm a spy for the rebellion. I have been for years. I don't know if I got sloppy or someone sold me out, but they're coming for me." And that's possibly why they're coming back for Linden too after his release, maybe expecting that since he runs with her that he also must collude with her. She's not sure. Either way, she's had enough of dead friends and doesn't want to add Linden's name to the mental list.

There are a lot of things she could say, but it's hard to find the right words. She's not going to jump to defend herself. She's not going to tell Jason that he has to help her. "I'm sorry for lying to you, Jason." Not to the Capitol. Not to the Victors. Not to anyone else. She's sorry for lying to Jason.

Honestly, she wouldn't blame him for spitting in her face and throwing them both out the door, but she knows he won't. Or, well. She knows he won't throw her out the door, but who knows how he'll respond otherwise.

At first he talks over her, protests in a vicious whisper, "didn't you learn from Barnes not to get involved with traitors-" except then she drops that bombshell as she identifies as something he never expected from her. And he stops talking. He just lets her words not wash over him but run him down like a train and drag him.

He paces again, this time avoiding Peggy's eyes, even forgetting that Linden's even here, grabbing at his hair and kicking at the legs of chairs, breathing heavy, the truth of the matter sinking in. It's a blow he hadn't expected to ever have to bear because he was stupid, because even though he would never trust a Districter somewhere along the line Peggy began to stand as her own separate category for him, unsullied by the presumptions and paranoia and prejudice that so defined the limits of the former boundary.

And then he lunges to her and hits her as hard as he can in the face, the kind of blow that will bruise his hand as much as the side of her head. Come tomorrow, his fingers will be ringed purple like he's squeezed a sponge full of paint. He grabs the arms of Peggy's chair and leans in, face to face with her.

"How long?" The years he's known Peggy - nearly a decade, maybe more, who's been keeping score - snap up like a roll of film, across which he can only see his own trust in her, his foolishness, the word 'SUCKER' emblazoned across each miserable day in which they only found some consolation in each other, from her Reaping to the days only a week ago where she tended him through grieving the only family member who ever loved him.

Edited 2015-09-16 05:20 (UTC)

Linden braces at the sudden violence, the kicking and lashing and fury as Jason's breath heaves. He's honed a talent, has a gift for knowing when things are about to go from bad to worse. He thinks a lot of Victors have it. He rises from his chair, but he's not quick enough to prevent Jason from attacking Peggy, punching her in the face and boxing her in by clutching the arms of her chair and leaning in as he demands an answer in a voice laced with betrayal.

She brought him here, asked him to trust her, and it's because she trusts this bellowing caricature of a Capitolite that they're here now. Revulsion spreads through his limbs, tightening and clenching his fists as the scene plays out in a way that no one could have hoped it would.

So much unnecessary pain.

He knows that of all people, he is probably not going to be the one to appease Jason Compson. Only Peggy can do that, and if she hits back, she'll actually know how. He starts to approach out of guarded concern but resolves not to draw closer unless the situation escalates further and it looks like he is going to hurt her again. He does trust her, but Jason is volatile.

Peggy sees it coming before it happens. Long years of street fighting in District 10 would do that to her even if the Hunger Games hadn't happened. She rolls with the punch, turning her face so his fist bruises her rather than breaks anything--although to be frank, she's not sure if Jason could break anything except his own hand, with a punch like that.

As she turns her face to look at him again, she has to bite her tongue to keep from asking after hand. Seriously, that punch must have hurt him far more than it hurt her. Hopefully the servants will be able to coax him into icing it later.

She sees Linden approach. She shoots him a warning look, Let me handle this, before meeting Jason's eyes calmly. She will give him one free punch, but the next time she's going to have to restrain him.

"Since the 74th Games," she says, her voice completely even despite the rage in his face. It's very possible that a decade of friendship is over, and that's painful, but she can mourn it later. She's just going to give him the one thing she owes him right now. The truth. "Katniss gave the Districts hope that the Capitol could be defied. The rebellion reached out to many people who had reason to be angry at the Capitol. I was one of them."

There's one snippet of truth she'll continue to withhold. That Bucky was the one to approach her, that he is still alive. She cares about Jason, maybe even loves him as friends do, but she loves Bucky too much to trust anyone in he Capitol with the knowledge of his survival.

Jason's eyes cut to Linden's when Peggy's do, and he just now remembers that Linden's here too, that there is an outside world beyond the maelstrom of hurt and rage and betrayal that wants to swallow him and Peggy whole. Then he looks back at her.

"You've been lying to me for years." His voice cracks, unable to sustain the anger that bears down on it, the weight of what she's saying. "I would have- I would have-"

He would have helped her, he realizes with a shudder of nausea, because he isn't loyal to the Capitol out of anything other than ease and comfort and familiarity. His whole life has been dominated by familiarity, a stubborn refusal to change anything, even the miserable aspects, of which this damn city is one of them.

He shoves away from the chair, which pushes Peggy back as well, and gets up and walks around the table. If they had any time - and he thinks she's a devious bitch, to put him in a position where there isn't time for him to draw blood from every confession, to demand a perfect catalog of every wrong and every omission of the truth and every lie - he would continue to grill her. But they don't. They don't, because she and Linden will have brought the Peacekeepers right to his home.

(Somewhere in the backyard, Benjy screams over something or other.)

Finally, he sets both palms on the table and rocks forward on his heels. "Alright. I hope you didn't plan on taking anything but what you have right now with you. And you-" he gestures at Linden- "I hope you aren't claustrophobic."

If he wasn't already hesitating to intervene, Peggy's look is enough to halt Linden in his tracks. Being able to see when things are about to go from bad to worse extends to situations where he recognizes what his own involvement could potentially do, and they're on the same page, because the situation isn't what it appears to be on the surface. This isn't a man failing to rush to the defense of a helpless woman another man is beating on, as much as it looks like one.

It pays off. Jason has his moment of violent anger, and then acceptance, and in moments it's ended and he's leaving her be (even if he almost tips over the chair in the process.)

He keeps his eyes on Jason as the man paces and circles like a caged lion, with nowhere to vent his frustration and certainly no way to do as Benjy does and simply shriek his wordless curses to the sky's deaf abattoir. He doesn't have that freedom; like Linden and Peggy, he's bound by the expectation for some kind of reason and decorum.

His eyes haven't left Jason since he left Peggy's side, but he's still surprised when the man addresses him in a way that isn't venom. He shakes his head in quick, compliant answer. "No, I'm not. If it keeps me out of a coffin or crematorium, and I can fit, I'll tolerate it."

Instead of his original Arena making him hate tight places, he actually still strongly associates them with safety and concealment. This is not a problem for him and, subsequently, them.

There's pain in her chest. Hairline fractures cracking through the surface of her heart, trying to force open cracks she had wrapped in masking tape years ago. He would have been ready to betray the Capitol for her.

Hell. It's what he's doing right now: risking his life and betraying the only home he's ever known for her. He's not even hesitating.

He pushes the chair back and turns away. She has to take a deep breath to keep her composure, and maybe the breath shudders a little in her chest.

There should be an explanation. Time to talk. They don't have that time, and he might not appreciate an explanation, perhaps seeing it as an excuse. But she'll give him one anyway, so if she dies, he won't have to wonder why she lied.

"I didn't want you to get wrapped up in this. You're my best friend, Jason." After Bucky and Steve were gone, Jason was the only one whose company and comfort she could consistently find, even if he bitched about it at times. After Bucky revealed himself as alive, she only had a few letters and a radio to remind herself that he was out there somewhere. Bucky is her best friend too, but one she hasn't been able to speak openly to in eight years. Jason has been there the whole time. "I couldn't bear the thought of losing you on top of everything else." She's not sure how many more dead friends her heart can take. She will never forgive herself if Jason helping her leads to his death.

It should be an uncomfortable admission, especially with Linden right there listening to all the feelings she's kept under wraps for years, but she doesn't care anymore. She's probably not going to see Jason again and Linden accepted a long time ago that he'll never understand Peggy's relationship with Jason. "If we both live through this, I promise to explain everything."

But they don't have time for anything more than that, so she slips on an invisible mask, takes a deep breath, and stands up from her chair. "I picked up everything we needed on our way here. I hid bags around the city full of gear just in case something like this happened and I needed to run." Admittedly, her gear is only for one person, but she'll make it work.

"Yeah, some good your friendship does," he hisses. He needs to hear it, even as it stings, as it drags him from the perfect purity of rage and betrayal into something altogether more complicated, something with jagged edges that makes swallowing painful.

He hasn't lost friends like Peggy has. He never had them to start with. He's always been alone, since childhood, his anger and unhappiness holding him at arm's length from the entire rest of the world. For the moment, rage feels, if not good, then at least as a preferable reprieve from grief for Peggy and for one of the only relationships he had any faith in.

"'If we both live through this'. If I don't, it's on your head. You shouldn't have come here, you should have called me to another blind. This can't be the last place you were seen. I can't be the last person you were with. Was that what you were thinking, Peggy, that I'd drop my whole life for your little whirlwind adventure?"

But he knows how to do it. He leaves the dining room for a moment, stomp his way to his bedroom, and returns with his phone and a suitcase large enough to fit a person.

"Sure," he says into the phone, midway through a conversation with someone. "You know it's gonna get you a tenth what they're worth, but you can't sell antiques worth a damn in the Capitol. Trends...no, you think I'd be calling you for this if I had a windfall? Do you know how much a funeral costs out here? I need to move it now because I've got creditors pawing at the damn clothes I'm wearing...yeah, two. I'll drop it off tonight. Fine."

He shuts off his phone and grabs a few coats from the hallway closet, tossing them into the blind spot in the dining room.

"Alright," he says, loudly enough to be picked up on microphones. "I'll drop you off at the restaurant. Lockhearst, you really want me to believed that song and dance, you help me pack and carry this all. Out to my car, and if you scratch it you won't make it to the restaurant, I guarantee."

Linden had expected his presence to be upsetting and distasteful to Jason. What he hadn't expected was this scenario, essentially being relegated to the role of a spectator while two "friends" go at it, pent-up energy and resentment and something like affection all exploding simultaneously. It's strangely voyeuristic, one more reminder that he's not supposed to be here along with Peggy's single-person supplies and the last minute nature of fetching him from a suite he hadn't expected to leave again alive.

He doesn't understand why a Districter like Peggy, who never lost sight of her roots or attempted to bury them like Temple, feels anything but contempt for Jason. And he doesn't think he ever will, but even though he suspects the man is a psychopath, something about Peggy soothes and softens his edges. He can bluster and tantrum all he wants about this, but he can't refuse his self-described "best friend." He doesn't think she'd use those words lightly, even in an admittedly very desperate situation.

He has nothing to contribute. His own thoughts grind and spark behind his flinty eyes, but he says nothing, allows them to have it out and express their fear and their hurt. At first, he thinks that maybe Jason has had a change of heart, and he glances uncertainly at Peggy as the man stomps from the dining room... but then he returns with the suitcase and the phone, and as Linden eyes it, suddenly that comment about claustrophobia makes a lot more sense.

Jason's request is willful and haughty, lacking concern for the fact that Linden has no place lifting even moderately heavy objects or helping with manual labor. He's a man, but he hasn't ever truly had the strength of one. He nods briskly, not about to protest or make some kind of petty dig... not when it's shaping up to look like Jason's actually going to save their lives.

"You got it. Whatever you say."

Whatever it takes.

Peggy knew he wouldn't refuse them. No matter how angry he is, he can't say no to her, not over something like this. That's probably the most heartbreaking part of it all.

He's right. This can't be the last place she's seen, but she was worried that calling him to a public blind spot would have been too obvious. At least here, they have an excuse for being in a blind spot, because it covered a chunk of his dining room. She just prays to nothing in particular that she hasn't signed Jason's death warrant.

Deep breath. Slip on the mask. She can be conflicted and sad later, after there isn't an imminent threat of death for everyone involved. She mouths 'thank you' at Jason from the blind spot when he walks back downstairs with the phone and the suitcase.

"Maybe the Center won't be quite as unbearable anymore. I've been ready to kill you both for weeks," she says loudly as she slips into character. Exasperated, frustrated with her coworkers, and utterly oblivious of the danger lurking in the shadows. That's all she should be conveying right now.

"Here, let me help." She does it because it's in character for what the Peacekeepers have observed of her and also because Linden probably won't be able to carry the heavier stuff, and it will cut into their time too much if they have to playact (or perhaps not playact, since she doubts Jason would be too happy) a conflict over broken furniture. Thus, she carries the heavier things. It's fine, because she will usually use weights that are heavier than Jason's furniture, and it's no trouble to take it outside.

(Hallelujah for Linden's self-control, is all she can say. She's sure that he's been struggling to not say anything too biting or sarcastic this whole time, and if they get out of this in one piece, she owes him drinks. Or dinner, perhaps, since she's the last person to encourage him to get back into alcohol. Not that either of them will probably be dining out anywhere.)

Jason doesn't say much as they get the furniture in the car. He just storms about, having chosen things that he can argue were valuable enough to sell and that he won't care if they go missing. It's mostly things from Ben's room anyway. He glares at Linden but refrains from anything else.

He feels sick with anger, with the kind that can't explosively emerge in a vindictive fury against the nearest target, with the kind that has to be crumpled and squeezed into servility by circumstance. And loss, too; he just lost his mother, putting his world on a sort of tilt-a-whirl, and now he'll be losing Peggy. The anger takes a persecuted turn as he thinks that Peggy honestly couldn't have timed this better to cut the legs out from under him.

"Get in," he says when the decoy furniture has been loaded. "Let's make this quick, I told you I had a buyer waiting for me tonight and it's a few hours out."

He'll have to come up with some excuse for why he bothered to do an illegal transaction in front of people, one of whom he doesn't like. Peggy can be passed off as an issue of trust, but Linden...?

They'll have at least three hours of driving to figure it out, and then Jason will have the whole ride back to come up with something. It isn't the first time he's had to hide money or belongings or people. He starts the car and doesn't wait to make sure either of them are strapped in before going towards the nearest blind spot.

Linden catches that surly, dark look, and meets it levelly, his own expression remaining blank and unchanging. He's resigned himself to this; even if everyone in the room knows that he can't truly make nice with Jason, given their history, he can keep from being outright hostile. Even the socially abrasive and peculiar Linden is well aware that it would be wildly inappropriate when the man is risking so much, especially when a significant part of him very clearly doesn't want to. Therefore, Linden defaults to simply not reacting, when he's afraid that the only other option is reacting badly or childishly.

Loading up the car is a trial and a half, even with Linden loading the lighter articles. His back is still a mess even after having some time to recover, but just because he's no longer facedown and panting through the worst of it doesn't mean the lashing didn't do significant damage to his insubstantial frame. There's no fat or muscle on him to absorb the wheals or keep them from cutting him straight to the bone. They'll obviously scar hideously, but for now, even healing is very slow going. Every time he raises and lifts something, he can feel the scabs pulling, sometimes tearing, a warm trickle down his back, and it occurs to him that three hours in a suitcase is going to be a lot more than merely uncomfortable.

Maybe he doesn't have to go that far yet. At Jason's barked order, He climbs into the backseat, leaving shotgun for Peggy, folding himself up next to a chair that's almost as spiny and angular as he is. Hopefully the blood won't soak through his shirt and vest and stain the upholstery.

Normally, Peggy would scold Jason for driving Linden so hard when he's still recovering, but considering the situation, Linden can suck it up and Peggy will try to give him some medical attention when they have breathing room.

Peggy settles into the shotgun seat and hurriedly clicks her seat belt buckle when Jason peels out. She starts talking because it would look strange if she didn't and chances were that there were recording devices in Jason's car.

She says a few things about better work environments, tolerating people you hate for the sake of professionalism. Enough so that falling into complete silence doesn't seem unnatural. She feels Jason bursting to rage at her, at the world, but she knows he's going to control himself because he knows just as well as she does that she will die if he doesn't.

Once again, she wishes they had the time and privacy to talk. Jason would scream and interrogate and sling abuse at her, but then she'd have time to give him a little more to hold on to after she left. She doesn't want to leave him reeling and wondering the way Bucky did to her.

(But she's not, she reminds herself. Jason knows what's happening, even if he doesn't know all the details he'd like to. That's what she has to tell herself.)

Jason doesn't say much during the trip, aside from a few snide comments that are just as genuinely pissy as they are for show. His knuckles are white along the steering wheel, his cheeks blotchy with pink and white from gritting his teeth. There's a sheen of sweat along his forehead, as if the anger is so desperate to be released that it is escaping his very pores.

When they pull into the restaurant parking lot, he makes sure to park the car in one of the areas he knows is blind, has a long stretch of roofing that blocks any view from cameras. He's pretty sure microphones don't work here either, but he lowers his voice anyway.

He holds up his phone and types out a message on the notepad function. I need to disable tracking chips or you need to cut them out. Your choice.

He switches it over to the program for Escorts that allows them to program and collect data on a Tribute's whereabouts, inside the Arena or out of it. Linden and Peggy wouldn't have had theirs removed after their victories. It won't take him long, just a moment of disabling the functions after scanning theirs in. He'll have to come back to the logs later and delete it from the phone history.

Peggy, you crawl under seat. Linden, suitcase. SILENCE. Car is bugged for audio.

Once they've managed that, he'll pretend to bid them adieu and then start driving.

Linden's been doing a good job sucking it up, so far. He's been as quiet as the furniture he's sitting with, not bothering with a safety belt, curling up and thinking about how much he could use rest while admitting privately that his heart is beating too quickly to allow his eyes to close for even a moment. He listens to the sound of Peggy's voice, pulling his knees closer to his chest and resting his cheek against them as her words blur and blend into a series of pleasant, meaningless sounds until they dwindle and fade back into a natural-sounding silence. While it's easy to feel the way the air around Jason seems to vibrate with his pent-up anger, the desperation in Peggy's performance also radiates. Linden doubts that he's exuding anything on this trip, but it's only because he's so blanched, raw and beaten, here only because Peggy cared enough to pocket the cooling, ashy ember of his will to live and take it away from the Capitol before it could finish smothering him.

When the car finally stops after what feels like weeks in the stifling environment, Jason starts typing a message, and Linden pulls himself forward so he can read the glowing screen. He quickly holds up two fingers, indicating that he'd much prefer that the chip was disabled. He'd not hesitate to cut it out, ordinarily, but at the moment he doesn't feel that he can afford to lose any more blood. After he's done whatever's needed to scan the information into the program, he slips outside the car, pulling the large suitcase down with some effort and unlatching it. He'll fit inside with room to spare, but he glances over his shoulder, expecting that one of them will follow to help latch and stow him since no one could do this alone.

He's so thin and wasted. It isn't even cramped once he's inside the suitcase, just uncomfortable, with the boniness and the scabs on his back that regularly tear and bleed every time he moves in a way that isn't perfectly careful and delicate. What remains of the trip will be very difficult, and if any dogs even come near them, that blood that makes his shirt stick to his back will draw them directly to his location. He tries to take comfort in thinking about safety in 13, but of course there's no guarantee that he won't be shot, or worse, rejected and left to fend for himself in the wild until he is caught or killed.

Edited 2015-10-12 05:28 (UTC)

Peggy nods and presents her arm to Jason to scan. A part of her wants to tell him no and dig it out herself so he can keep his name off the logs entirely, but that would mean that her blood would be all over the inside of his car. Even if he scrubbed it away, trace amounts of her DNA could still be found and used to implicate him. It's better that she let him deactivate it now and take care of covering his tracks himself. She can dig it out later when she's not going to get blood somewhere important.

She waits until Jason has finished and Linden has left the car before opening the door itself. "Thank you for driving us, Jason," she says for the audio surveillance's benefit more than for anyone else's. Getting out to latch Linden into the suitcase and carefully put it away also has the benefit of making it sound like she has left the car, just as long as she leaves the door open while she works outside of it so she doesn't have to open it again.

She closes it when she climbed back inside and curls up under the seat. Her body is bulky from all the lean muscle she has tirelessly maintained, so it's a tight fit, but she manages it. She wishes she could close her eyes and relax, but she can't. Her eyes stay open, vigilant for any sign that they've been figured out, for a sign that she has helped sign their death warrants.

Jason turns on the radio as he drives, something he rarely does, if only to cover any sounds his smuggled persons might make. It's some talk radio program about how subsidies to the Districts are raising capital gains taxes in the Capitol. He isn't really listening to it or absorbing anything.

The first border check is easy, him flashing some credentials, a license to travel, an explanation that he has to head out to find a relative on vacation in the Districts for some post-funereal business of his mother's. Still, it's two hours before he crosses the border and gets out far enough to get them out of the car. By the time he pulls over in the middle of a forested area, his hands ache for having been clenched for so many hours.

He doesn't explain anything to Peggy and Lunden as he kills the car and leaves it. For all he knows, Linden's suffocated by now. Good, he thinks. At a scheduled meeting point, he reconnoiters with a man who has an unkempt beard and the sort of glassy eyes that look like marbles in most lights.

"I thought that niece of yours run off."

"She did. That's not what I'm here for. I just need you to not ask questions, alright?" Jason runs his hands through his hair and marches back to the car. "Just help me unload the furniture."

It's not about the furniture; that's not what this man is here for. He's here to dispose of the antiques and make sure the smuggled people get to a drop-off point - even if it is the middle of the woods - without incident. And he doesn't say much, either, just undoing the seat Peggy's under and grabbing the suitcase and dragging it out a good distance from the car.

Jason helps Peggy untangle herself from the seat and leads her towards the bushes.

Once Linden's encased in leather and securely stowed, the car starts moving again. It feels like longer than it is as the air in the suitcase begins to thin out and grow stale, and he nods off into an uneasy sleep as the vehicle rocks and bumps along their road's smooth and rough patches.

He's dreaming of Karkat yelling soundlessly, with only steam coming out of his mouth as his horns glow neon, when a jolt of sudden, erratic movement startles him awake. The car's stopped and the suitcase is being handled, dropped, and dragged along the ground and left while footsteps retreat.

He slept awkwardly and put kinks in his already hurting body. He's more than a little lightheaded from breathing the same stale air for two hours, but he remains still, not knowing the circumstances of this dropoff or if they're among friends.

Peggy both wishes that she could fall asleep and has a deep anxiety at the thought. Her muscles start to cramp, but she stays silent, biting her tongue. She has gone through worse pain. She remembers sleeping under machine guns.

She feels the bumps in the road and waits. Waits for a sign that they're either safe or the peacekeepers have stopped them. Waits for a sign that they'll live or die.

They stop. She holds her breath. Jason starts talking to someone. It doesn't sound like a peacekeeper.

Then they take the seat off of her. She needs the help Jason offers--her legs have fallen asleep and she has to use him to balance as feeling rushes back to them. They're not in the Capitol anymore. Her heart thuds in her chest.

She lets Jason lead her. She hopes Linden is okay in the suitcase.

"Thank you, Jason."

She could thank him a thousand times and she doesn't think that it'd be enough.

"Yeah, you'd better. If I end up with my brains blown out on public television it's going to be your fault," he mutters, once they're far enough from the car. He sets her against a tree, trusting her to hold herself up while he finishes the matters he needs to, mainly payment. The man helps Linden out of the suitcase and puts the thing back in the car, leaves Linden to stretch out and unfold himself in the damp grass.

Jason peels off bills from his money clip for the coyote, but it's not enough even after he's stripped the whole thing down, so he has to go digging in the car and grab from his stash in the glove compartment. He grabs his cigarette and tries in vain to feel calmed as he sucks it deep, then stretches his hands and wrings them like an old rag.

"Where they going?" the coyote asks.

"I don't know. Just keep them out of the surveillance zones and let them figure it out once you get them far enough away from the roads." Jason sounds callous, more than usual, even, laying on thick that anger that smothers everything else. Anger is so easy. It's simple, pure, a radiant and undiscriminating glow that bathes everything around it in blinding red.

He sure as hell doesn't break it for Linden. In fact, as if he can't even help himself, as he passes Linden he gives him a disdainful nudge with his foot towards the welts. He hopes it hurts.

But when he reaches Peggy - God, he wants to hit her again, and his hand hurts in longing and sympathy to do so - instead he pulls her close and holds her to his chest for a moment, stiff and wordless, tight, and then he kisses the crown of her head.

"I hope I never see you again," he says, and he means it to be vicious but it's entirely true. If he sees her again it'll probably be on television before her execution. He hands her the rest of the money from the stash in his car; it's a day's wages in the Capitol, and she probably has some stowed away, but it'll last a long time in the Districts. He feels sick, sick behind his eyes, even, like he wants to cry but can't and won't as another brick is pulled from his rotting foundation.

"This way," the coyote says, to Linden and Peggy both. "Not far before I leave you."

Feeling left his extremities a long time ago, and even though the rush of cool, fresh air is welcome, as well as (surprisingly) Jason's help getting out of the suitcase, and once he's free of the confining space, he stretches painfully and slowly while a variety of other things go on above and around him. Some concern him, like that vicious kick that renders him speechless and breathless by merit of coming so close to the tender whip-wheals. Some, like whatever Jason has to say to Peggy, do not, and as the blood and sensation rushes back into his cramped limbs, he focuses on the scent of the grass, slowly counting these brief seconds he's been afforded for the purpose of recovery.

He cranes his head back; it looks like an embrace. The kink in his neck prevents him from staring too long.

At the prompting of the coyote, he wills his cramped and aching legs to hold his weight and staggers to his feet, knowing that the journey will be long and difficult from this point forward but hopefully worth it in the end.

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impaledqueen - 2015-12-21 05:49 (UTC) - Expand

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whatisay - 2015-12-25 03:09 (UTC) - Expand

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