thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Roland and the Signless
What| a reunion
Where| the Detainment Center in the Capitol
When| backdated to a few days after Signless died in the District 1 battle
Warnings/Notes| none

He keeps thinking of Firo. Thinking of the boy without thinking of him, his mind landing on the thought and flitting away from it. He remembers the sight of the boy torn apart, remembers seeing him in the halls of this building not so long after. He hadn't thought any of the offworlders would be brought back from war, wasn't sure whether the fools running this Capitol cared about their value as symbols to the people enough to try and keep them living, not now that the elaborate, idiotic plays that were the arenas are done with. Apparently they're worth something to those fools. Some of them, anyway. Gods know what.

Roland feels himself balancing on the edge of something, and doesn't like to think on what it might be. He doesn't like to think on the detachment he feels when he wonders if he's waiting, when he wonders just how much the life of an enemy footsoldier might be worth.

He'd rather think, instead, on the tools in his hand. Tools, at least, because he can't quite call them anything else. Brittle, breakable, dull on every side and much shorter than they ought to be, they're miles away from what he needs and all he is allowed if he wants to fix his hand.

It'd happened in that battle. He doesn't know when. He should, but he doesn't. It's taken this long to convince the peacekeepers to give him even this much. He tries one, two, three times to fit this stupid dull thing into the very tiny notch on the end of a very tiny screw and it should be no trouble, not for him. He leans forward, starting very carefully to turn the damned tool, turn the screw...

His necklace slips out from his shirt, knocks into the tool, and nudges it out of the very tiny slot of the very tiny screw.

"Damn it!" his hand is, at least, working well enough that when he moves to sweep the rest of the little tools, and the few parts of these fingers he's managed to disassemble, off the table, they go. They make a dull, small, and utterly unsatisfying sound as they hit the floor, and he holds a palm up in the direction of the peacekeeper just now passing near the open wall of his cell.

"It's alright. I only made a mistake. I cry your pardon. Shouldn't have raised my voice." He keeps his tone and posture submissive. It's a great effort but he does it, which is all that matters, and the man, after a second, keeps walking. Once he's out of sight Roland swallows, bows his head, sets an elbow on one knee and sets the fingers of his good hand to tugging at his hair. He swallows again, takes stock of himself, and wonders, vaguely, if he is about to weep.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He watches Roland toy uselessly with the bedsheets while he works at trying to bend that gear. His teeth don't get it quite straight but they do quite a bit of the work, enough that he can feel confident enough in a job mostly well-done to put it down on the desk. Later. Roland and his open arms are more important, and Signless settles in against him as close as he can get.

"Not too much, no."

Every few months they discover this, more they don't quite know about each other. It's never been important, sitting down and having the whole thing out. Surviving the present is difficult enough without reliving the past, and so the past has only come into play when it's been important -- like now.

"I've gathered it's important, to you and to everyone that you knew. Probably an understatement, if it was worth fighting a war over." He knows there was one; Roland's given him bits and pieces of it, particularly late at night when he awakes from nightmares where he's back on Jericho Hill.

"Tell me."

Roland takes a few seconds to arrange his thoughts in the order in which he wants them; it's been a while since he's explained. The last time had been... maybe when he'd first gotten to Panem, reeling, almost raving, he remembers trying to think around where and what and when, when, when, when well enough to explain The White and he remembers the girl asking him, doubtfully, if he was talking about something called the KKK.

This time will go better.

"There's a saying in someone's world. I'm not sure whose. Protect and Serve. That's it, almost, condensed. We protect peace, we serve The White. We protect what order we can and take what pieces of knowledge and light are left in the world and hold them up against the dark. There's a great deal more detail to it, or there was when gunslingers had a country, when there were more. You must be hard to do it, and quick, not just of hand but of mind."

The hand not around Signless taps at Roland's temple while the other presses down a little, feeling that warmth underneath it, taking a slow breath and looking at Signless. "It would have been politics, I think, back in Gilead. I might've said some of that to Firo, that part of it. There would've been fairly powerful people putting quite a bit of pressure on me to put down my guns. But it's only me here. I'm the last, the last once more, and my word goes."

He looks down at his hips, which haven't worn those old familiar holsters in what feels like a long, long time. They've worn something, the weapons of his enemies, so that he can serve the Capitol's purpose of corrupting this world, of dragging it down into the dark. He isn't the last, Alain is here. Alain is very far away, Alain is using the guns of Roland's father to fight for the light of this world.

"So a gunslinger I am, still," he goes on slowly, almost bleakly. "In spite of my deeds. And my weaknesses. I said a gunslinger must be hard, hard everywhere, but I've got a crack in me. You've seen it. And if a man knows the right set of words, has the right lever, he can pull that crack open."

Roland might go on but here, with this man, he allows himself to close his eyes against the shame and to turn away from it, if only for a moment, to duck his head against the softness of Signless' hair and devote some thought to sorting out the smells of it. Perhaps it smells of the Capitol's perfumes and creams, still. Probably it doesn't. He lets Signless have the words he's spoken, lets Signless do what he will with them. They aren't Roland's problem anymore, at least, not solely. For this man, with this man, Roland can allow himself that much.

Oh, yes. He's seen it. Mostly late at night or in moments like these when Roland is tired enough and subdued enough to look inward even a little. He isn't usually that sort of man -- Signless has learned that about him in the long time they've known each other -- but there are some times that even he can't avoid it. This is one of them.

Besides. You probably have a lot of time to think when most of your time is spent in a cell.

"And that's what they've done. Oh, Roland."

He knows, he thinks, exactly what Roland's feeling. He felt that same dissonance between a part of himself he considered so defining and the life Panem required him to live -- still feels it, though he's learned to ignore the niggling discomfort.

"That's low, using something that already hurts you to hurt you more." He says it very quiet, in case the room is bugged -- of course the room is bugged. It just... it's too true to let it go unsaid.

Now that gets Roland to look up. It has the sound of something important, something the Signless considers important, but Roland's frowning as if what he heard came out in some unfamiliar tongue, and he's trying to figure out how to translate. "They used what was there. If I'd hidden it better- if. The fact is, I didn't. If a man's in battle and he leaves cover too early, does he blame his enemy for putting a bullet in his side?"

It's more than he would have said, a while back. Outright calling the Capitol's men his enemies. He's spent so much time being careful. It hardly seems worth the effort.

"No, the fault is mine. A gunslinger must have none of that, as I said. No weaknesses. At least, none he can't control."

He lets out a long, slow breath, letting himself lean a little more into Signless, holding him a little tighter. "Oh, I'm glad you're here. Hm. Low or not it worked, anyway. Even when you were gone, I- stayed. I'll be staying, I think. Long as I can. To do that... I know who I'm fighting for. I know it very well."

Edited 2016-04-20 21:53 (UTC)

That sounds so very reasonable and Signless hates that it does. It's not fair that Roland should blame himself for threats made against him, not fair that he should see it as weakness that he feels at all. It's not fair what's been done to him by this war and it makes Signless's heart ache. If they could escape right now out into the wilderness and leave the whole damn thing behind he almost thinks he wouldn't care about letting the two sides destroy themselves so long as he and Roland were safe, but he knows they can't and, deep down, he knows he'd feel guilty. So here they are and here they'll stay.

"So long as you know that, then."

He worries, privately, that he is a weakness too, another crack the Capitol can exploit-- is that why they brought him back, to use as leverage? The thought makes his stomach drop. Yes. Of course that's it. Why else?

"While I'm here I'll patch your cracks as best I can." While I'm here. Like he may not be soon; he knows very well that's something they'll both have to prepare for. With the way he's been thrown back and forth between the opposing sides he doesn't trust the ground under his feet anymore.

"Patch them?" Roland shakes his head, turning and trying to pull the other man's body along with him, wanting to stretch out on his side and pull the Signless down and stretched out close beside. Stretching out on this bed is always easy, even for him; it is soft and clean and plenty long enough. Panem is a land which likes to treat its prisoners well.

"Who can do that? Can any man? No, only stay. Stay with me. I saw you die and thought you gone from me for ever, and now you're here. You're warm and alive and I can feel your arms around me. For tomorrow, survive. Survive and come back to me and, for tomorrow, that will be enough. For tonight, Signless, only lay here a while. Remind me what it feels like to set your heart in someone else's hands. That will patch the parts of me which truly need the work. For tonight, that will do me well enough."