thecapitol | [closed] it's a circle, friend

Entry tags:

[closed] it's a circle, friend

Who| Karkat and Phil, Alain, Roland and Signless
What| How to deal with the fact that you just murdered your ancestor's boyfriend and his friend/comrade, and that other murder earlier, and the person you couldn't save, and...
Where| Karkat's room.
When| The week between the end of the arena and Crowning.
Warnings/Notes| Description of gore and killing, allusion to or discussion of suicidal ideation.

Return from the arena sees a whole lot of shit to deal with. Roland and Alain each died because of him, and even if Alain killed him, too, it does a whole lot of nothing to make the burden easier. It was stupid and desperate and violent, one after the other, and Roland wouldn't let him do anything else.

(He thinks about it anyway, what if he'd done something different, what if he'd gotten the chair, what if he'd knocked him unconscious.)

Maglev and Sheen still haunt his memory in thoughts of what can't be undone and responsibilities failed. Sheen wasn't the first time he ever wanted to kill someone, and wasn't even the first he did it to. Gamzee and Eridan went murderous on the meteor, and Gamzee went worse over after the trip to the new session was done. He tries, then, and got killed for his trouble. And there was Nill in the space arena, a slow death looming over her if not for mercy. Even then, he had to use his teeth.

Now Nill is gone, too. If she were still here loops in his head, but he can't make her come back, and would feel too guilty to ask comfort if she did.

Then there were his rewards from the youth program.

He went to his room directly once he got back to the tower, ignoring reporters and media and fans, anyone in the halls to get there. They sat neatly laid out on his desk, merit badges and papers about his appointment to Jr Peacekeeper and graduation from the youth program, and some letter back from Drusus he couldn't bother to read more than a few words of. There were gifts: some kind of wind chime with little charms of his sickles and sign and lusus, and a model of the red, claw-like one he used in the last arena, contained within a glass case. Worst, though, were the replica hare's foot - Jackie's, that is, Maglev's token - and the video from Cable.

By the end he's shaking, breathing left an afterthought. It takes all his willpower not to destroy the things he's been given, and it's as if the effort exhausts him, for he collapses into his bed.

In this way he spends his free time over the next days. He leaves when he has to; there's no backing out of Peacekeeper training and duties. But he hides from his districtmates, hides from the media, and emerges only briefly for necessities.

The few times he's seen, he looks haunted.

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Alain takes his hand, and squeezes it gently, shaking his head. "I don't care what your people breed for. K-k-k-fate doesn't make mistakes. What you are is what you are supposed to be, and there's an end to it. And what you are may be someone who has killed, but not a killer." He frowns, digging in his pocket and proffering a crumpled kerchief. "If you were, you would not have acted as you did with the dragon. You would have fled and left me, or fought with greater purpose." Then, with a little half-smile, "You saved my life then. Saved it once, and took it once. I call that even."

It's another strange thing to hear. Fate and mistakes, it reminds him of Paradox Space. There he died, others were dead or dying, and the rest seemed on the way to the same fate the last time he was there. But he is here, isn't he? Alive despite everything. He wonders if he's still caught in the purview of those forces, or if this is outside them--or if Alain's right, and it doesn't matter, because something says he's meant to be here anyway.

He wants to believe he has purpose. He takes the kerchief and dabs his face.

"We're not even," he counters, but his voice is much lighter than it was. "I will carry this like a surgically attached ball and chain until I feel good and ready to have it removed, and I am going to keep saving you or finding other ways to keep your pale human husk alive until that day comes." He points a finger at him. "Do not even try to argue me on that."

He squeezes his hand back, then lets ago.

"You were saying, though... You said you lost control. That your emotions got the better of you. No shit you were angry and upset at me--I was the one who was there to get the sharp end of it--but what do you mean? What was it like, going through it?" His expression has bunched down into something complicated but curious. He's not quite sure where he's going with it, but there are two points on his mind: Sheen's death and his fight with Roland. Both were unusual in their own way, fed by fury, but in different context and execution.

Alain frowns. When he answers, it's slow and careful, putting one word in front of another like a man building a bridge as he goes along it. "I've never been angry that way," he says at last, and his frown deepens a little. "I've been angry, sure. Everyone has, some time or another, and I've been given plenty of cause for rage in the last few years. Aye, I've been angry, angry enough to kill. But not that way."

It takes him a moment to find the words for the next bit, and his hands half-rise from their place in his lap, as if he's trying to describe with his movements what he can't with words. "I don't know how to put this to someone who doesn't have the Touch, say true. Feelings are hard to describe. My anger's... slow. Cold. Blue? It takes time to build and time to fade, and I've never lost my head, not the way I did with you. My anger's like water; that anger was like fire. It flared up in a second, and burned too bright to stand. It wasn't mine." He only knows it as he says it, and curses himself for a fool for not seeing it sooner. He repeats it, almost incredulously: "It wasn't mine. Oh, those fatherless sons of bitches!"

Karkat listens carefully, and watches with the same intent as Alain makes his half-gestures, taking all what he can. Somehow this is going to help him, is all he can think to it - all he can hope.

It's strange and hard to follow first, even so. Alain's anger is not like his own. The colors are nothing he'd put to it, and indeed he has nothing like the Touch at all, but as Alain goes he gets the idea of it. It's different from how his manifests, at any rate. It's at the end, though, where he's truly struck.

"Alain!" He reaches forth, looking to put his hands on his shoulders, not to pull or push but as if fearing his attention will slip away if he doesn't hold it there. His eyes are unwavering, wide but focused. "You're sure? You're dead fucking positive that it wasn't?"

He doesn't answer for a long moment. Not until he's sure of the answer, sure that he isn't just desperately trying to push responsibility away. Fault lies in one place, Cort's voice echoes in his mind, with him weak enough to lay blame. Is he laying blame? Putting it aside from himself?

"I'm sure," he says at last, and presses his lips together. "It doesn't absolve me. And it doesn't mean I wasn't angry. I was. I am. But..." A deep breath. "I've never wanted to hurt someone that way. Not even Farson, and I hate him a good sight more than I hated you even then. I've killed, and wanted to kill. But if it had been me, only me, I would have put a knife through your throat and called an end to it. I... get angry. I don't rage."

Karkat draws his hands back, and after a second sits back down, too. Farson isn't a name he knows, but that doesn't matter next to the point. His reaction has slid to more of a quiet shock now, and his eyes look more beyond than at Alain. Not his rage. Not his.

He comes back to himself after not too long, because there are things still to ask.

"Alain, you know Roland. When I fought him..." His lips press together, then he starts again. "I literally ran into him when running from a monster down there. He came with me, we locked ourselves in that room, and then he started getting weird at me. He... He was mad that I wasn't fighting harder, that, I guess, I wasn't putting enough 'effort' into surviving. It didn't feel like him. Not any part of him I know. I tried to make him leave, but he kept..." He swallows, blinks, looks down and side. "I killed him, but he didn't give me any other option."

Finally he looks back. "Does that sound like him at all? Have you ever seen him act like that?"

Alain's silence is a little too long, and a little too deep. Then he sighs, shaking his head. "I wish I could tell you no," he says, his voice quiet and regretful. But he remembers Roland after his man's test, bloody and unremorseful; remembers Steven, too, kind but pitiless. Remembers how Roland felt to him in the last Arena, when he had his Touch back. He could tell Karkat no, but it would be a lie.

"I wish I could," he says again, and means it. "I wouldn't have expected it of him, that much is true. But there was a germ of it in him even when we were boys, and I don't know him well enough now to say it's grown out of him."

Something nervous settles in his gut, and when Alain's answer finally does come, it sets about making its home there. Karkat bites his lip.

"It was different than he was earlier," he says, a bit helpless. His lips press again as he considers saying more, but the memories there are tender, and what would be the point? At best, he'd be trying to argue into getting the answer he wants.

He almost says, 'I'll have to see what he says,' or, 'I'll talk to him later,' but they don't have much point either.

Instead he looks back up. "I don't hate you for what you did to me. I don't know how to feel about this rest of this, hut you should at least know that."

Alain is quiet for a long moment, then smiles. It isn't an easy smile, or a particularly happy one; there's a sadness behind it that looks too heavy for his age, a solid weight of grief and guilt.

"Thank you," he says, his voice low. "I wish I could say the same. Whatever their role in it, whoever brought that anger on, it was my hand that wielded the knife and my memories I vomited out at you. And I who failed Roland, again." He sighs heavily, and shakes his head, pushing himself to his feet. "Still. Thank you. And I'm sorry."

A bolt of worry shocks through him first. Alain may have reassured him before, but so geared is he to blaming himself that he thinks first it might mean Alain hates him after all. But the rest of the words clarify, and Karkat sighs.

"No, I get it. You're talking to me like I'm not dragging a whole herd of boulders behind me formed from the crystallized excretions of my overworked guilt duct. That arena was..." He scrapes about for a metaphor close enough, but in the end frowns and says, "It was agony."

He shakes his head and stands too, then holds his hand out for a shake, if Alain will take it. "We're both sorry, and we both feel like crap, but at least we both get it. But so long as I have my own mind to do it, I'm going to make up for it by attempting to be somewhere half near decent from here on out. I'd rather have an ally than let this fuck that up for us when it doesn't have to."

Alain hesitates, but only for a moment, before taking Karkat's hand and shaking it. "I'd be a fool to argue with that," he says, with a little half-smile. "And I'd be glad to fight at your side in future. Not only in recompense, either. You're a good man."

A good man. The words settle in and sit. They don't fix all what's on his mind, but in the moment they're a help and something he needed to hear.

"I'll try to live up to that," he says mildly.

"I won't keep you chained here, though. You probably have other shit you need to do, and I need to figure out... what I'm going to do with the rest of this mess." His lips purse, but he moves on. "I'll have your fabric square cleaned and get it back to you later." The handkerchief, he means, which he lifts up to indicate.

"I've spent two days staring at a wall," Alain informs him mildly, though not without a wry, self-deprecating twist of humour. "Though I guess I should talk to Roland one of these days."

By his tone, it isn't something he looks forwards to. That used to hurt, but now it's settled into just being the way it is. After all, the distance between them isn't going anywhere any time soon.

"Keep the kerchief, if you like," he says, after a little thought, and shakes his head. "I have another."

"I haven't done much better," he admits, a touch sheepishly. "I don't know how I'm going to talk to him yet. Hopefully you have better luck than I do. You should." You didn't kill him goes the unsaid rider.

The kerchief he stuffs into a pocket. For not the first time, he misses his sylladex.

"But hey, if you don't have anywhere to be... You want to grab a sandwich, maybe?" He motions loosely at the door. "I don't want to hang around out where the media can hassle us, but we could get something from the restaurant near the lobby, then haul ourselves to the roof and eat there."

Alain considers for a moment, then nods. "Sure. I'd be glad to. You don't smoke, do you?" He's never seen Karkat smoking, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. And there's only a couple of cigarettes left in the pack in his jacket pocket, so if Karkat does smoke, he'll have to pick up some more cigarettes in the lobby.

Does he smoke?

If one were to ask from a simple, factual perspective, the answer would be no. He tried it once early into his time here, now a year passed, and decided promptly it wasn't for him. Who put that stuff in their lungs?

Nill did. It was her who introduced it to him, her who told him about it, who went on to etch out a pity-soft hole in his heart called moirail. And then she was gone. But she'd carried that scent around her, and the sight of her lighting a cigarette now and then became familiar. some people use them to calm down read her words when he asked.

He looks at Alain, looks at his hands, then says, "Sure. I'll smoke." His fingers run through his hair without straightening it. "Come on, let's head downstairs." And he steps toward the door.

Edited (left out a word, whoops) 2015-12-07 21:05 (UTC)

Alain can tell there's something more going on there than a simple answer, but he isn't about to press it. They've already touched on too many raw nerves for his liking; he isn't going to probe for more. Instead, he just nods, following Karkat out of the door and falling in beside him as they head for the stairs. (He doesn't even consider the elevator: they're remarkable technology, no doubt, but months since his arrival he still can't fully trust them)

He doesn't speak until they're down in the foyer, but it isn't a hostile silence; he's never been a man of many words. Even when they reach the ground floor, all he says is, "They sell smokes over there. I'll be back in a moment."

Karkat raises his eyebrows briefly as Alain bypasses the elevator, but with the stairs the less-used option, it means less likelihood of bumping into people on the way down. He'll take it. The silence is easy as they go.

There on ground floor, he nods to his words but says, "Tell me what sandwich you want first and I'll go get it with mine. I've got assi to spare, and you're already buying those." He owes him enough for the death as is, and when part of that money comes from killing him, he might as well pay it back.

Alain lets it go. He's more than willing to let Karkat buy, although since the Arena he has a little money put aside himself. He isn't about to quibble over it, especially not if it makes Karkat feel better.

He meets back up with Karkat at the foot of the stairs, tucking the two cigarette packs he just bought into his jacket pocket and starting up the stairs. He won't light up, though, until they're on the roof, when he leans against the wall and takes out two cigarettes, snapping the filter off one and holding the other wordlessly out to Karkat.

By luck or coincidence Karkat avoids getting bothered by the media. There are other people about; perhaps some are different tributes, attention drawn more to them in a moment than one short teen trying to slip by quietly. He gets their sandwiches, he returns, and they go.

He's not quite expecting the smoking to happen first, but there Alain goes anyhow. He takes a spot beside him, paper bag with their sandwiches held at his side, and accepts the second cigarette.

. . .

"Shit, uh, remind me how I do this again? I've seen other people--" Nill "--do this enough, but the last time I tried was about a year ago. Do you have a..." He flicks his thumb. "Lighter? Match?"

Alain nods and pulls out a book of matches, striking one to light his cigarette, then holding it out to Karkat to follow suit. "It takes better," he advises, breathing out a mouthful of smoke, "if you inhale while you light it." Then, tucking his matches back into his pocket, "We used to smoke after a battle, when we could. Settles the nerves. It's been strange in the Arenas, having time after fighting to smoke, and no tobacco."

Karkat looks to him, then leans his cigarette to the match, breathing in as advised. He coughs once, blinking against the acridity, then breathes out. He'll get used to it, he tells himself.

"That's what I've heard about it," he says after. "Not the battle part, the other thing. One of the people I met here... She smoked a lot, and she told me about it when I met her." He tries another drag, which he handles better. "Here on this roof, in fact."

"Best place for it," Alain says with a little shrug, and looks up at the sky. "At least, I don't know how it is for other people. Sai Compson is an officious little shit about regulations if I try to light up in the suite." He isn't about to mince words on that subject. He's sure his hatred for Jason is obvious; no sense being duplicitous if he doesn't have to.

"She's gone, I take it? Your friend."

Karkat snorts a laugh despite himself. He hasn't directly met him, but he knows who he is well enough. It's hard not to after Linden's dealings with him.

The humor dies back, and he nods to him. "Yeah, before this arena. She was..." His lips purse. He could say it, but he'd have to explain it, and does it really matter? "... Important to me. And since she's not here--" He lifts the cigarette.

It's not a big explanation, but it's enough of the gist, and he might as well share that much. It's no secret that he's not used to doing this, and curiosity allayed is probing questions saved later.

Alain is sharp when it comes to people, and he doesn't need more explanation than that. He can gather more from Karkat's tone and expression than the troll probably thinks, and he might not have the word for that relationship, but he can take a surprisingly good guess at what it might have been.

"I see," he says, and falls back into silence. It's friendly enough silence, though, open to being broken. He isn't about to probe further. He's lost enough people, and known enough people grieving, to understand that it's not appropriate for him to ask more. If Karkat ever wants to talk about her, well, that has to come from him, not Alain.

He closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. Conversation will flow, or it won't, but he isn't about to start it. Silence does just as well, sometimes.

[closed] it's a circle, friend

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beep beep underaged smoking yet to come for whoever's reading this and cares

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