thecapitol | Nothing wants to stay the same. [CLOSED]

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Nothing wants to stay the same. [CLOSED]

Who | Sigma and Howard
What | Sigma gives Howard medicine, bad advice, and Howard gives Sigma the flu.
Where | District 10 Suite, Sigma's room.
When | Before the Aliens plot.
Warnings/Notes | Flu stuff, unhappy cats, probably references to violence.

Sigma's apartment was, as usual, impeccably organized, not so much a living space as storage. It was almost certainly the antithesis of Howard's room: the Doctor's notebooks were sorted and stored, his clothes folded and put away, his bed made without the assistance of an Avox and without a wrinkle. The only evidence that the room was in use at all were the cat toys strewn across the floor, and a single framed headshot of Kyle Sigma kept on the nightstand: a memorial complete with an offering of a single vased flower, lest he let his failure as a parent go unrecognized.

A package of decongestant in hand, Sigma waited for Howard as calmly as he could. From behind the bathroom door Nye howled indignantly, furious to have been locked away from his master and guests - Sigma had easily decided he was more concerned with Nye catching the virus than Howard taking the cat's confinement the wrong way. There was also the matter of Howard's actions in the previous Arena: the boy had killed Neffa, one of the only adult Tributes Sigma had come to trust, and the magician had failed to return. Internally, Sigma was livid, and hoped to keep his temper down so that his anger would not slip through his lips and damage their relationship further. With a battle on the horizon and an illness to contend with, nothing could come of fighting over it now. Perhaps when Howard was better and the date of their next Arena was set, Sigma would consider scolding him.

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"That...that's a really nice idea." Howard perks up a little, wiggling in the nest he's made of the bed. "Maybe I could program it to be the song that we sang together during karaoke night. You know, 'Gimme Shelter'?"

He pauses for a moment, then asks the hanging question. "But it didn't keep her safe, did it?"

For once it seems Sigma has said something that worked for Howard. Lowering his guard, he smiles supportively at the choice of song, happy to have helped. But when Howard speaks again it stuns him - the smile vanishes from his face and he looks almost ill.

There is a painful pang in his heart and Sigma turns to face the opposite direction. "It did not," he says quietly. "That much will be up to you, Howard."

"I'm sorry." Howard's usual sarcastic, guarded tone gives way to something actually empathic, is hoarse from coughing. He stares at the wall, then lies back and stares at the ceiling.

At first Sigma continues looking away as if he had not heard him. After a moment he turns back with a forced smile, hitting the blankets and mattress next to him with a light clapping sound, as if testing their softness.

"Well, I should let you rest," he announces. "Seeing as you've already made yourself comfortable I see no reason for you to move." The Doctor stands up and dusts himself off as if he could shake off any stray virus. "Do you require anything else before I go?"

"You don't have to go," Howard whispers. He wipes his nose again and settles back. Whenever he's on his back and breathing deep, there's a phlegmatic rustle in his chest and throat. "I'm just...kind of cranky when I'm sick."

"I do not know if that is such a good idea," and he says this not only in consideration of his own health, but for Howard's as well. The boy's cough was not getting any better and this discussion was doing him no favours. "You need to sleep, and soon."

But more practiced at parenting than he was before, Sigma hesitates before standing. In the way that Kyle once grabbed for his father's sleeve when the child fell ill, the Doctor realizes that perhaps it was emotional comfort Howard was looking for and not a sound sleep - if it was, Sigma knew he was far too abrasive to ask outright. Sigma beholds Howard sympathetically, his expression informing him he has already been forgiven for his attitude. "...Would you like me to stay?"

There's a long pause while Howard looks not for the words, but instead for the courage to say 'yes', to accept the forgiveness that Sigma offers too freely. He takes a deep breath and nods. "Please."

Sigma, in spite of everything, is in that select group of people that Howard would trust when he's entirely helpless. For all their conflicts, there's no curdling in the blood between them.

In truth, it is not the answer Sigma had hoped for, but he respects it nonetheless. His innate selflessness finally overpowers his desire to keep himself away from danger - he isn't as young as he used to be and he's fully aware an otherwise harmless infection could kill him - and the Doctor does not move. Instead he slides a bit further up on the bed, making his seat more comfortable, and nods. "Okay," he answers gently. "But once you are tired, try to fall asleep."

"I'll try now. I just..." He coughs again. "I don't sleep good."

When he's alone, he has to curl up in tight spots to feel secure. Having someone watching over him will help, he hopes, as long as he doesn't focus on how embarrassed he'll be when he wakes up crying and begging for mercy from invisible assailants in his sleep.

"That is fine. I will stay here," Sigma assures. He likes to think he understands what is it like to have a difficult sleep, with his exaggerated dreams of being torn to shred by blades and waking up to find the nightmare waiting for him. To give him some peace he does not watch the boy directly, but folds his hands on his lap and stares at the wall- mercifully, not the side with Kyle's photograph propped on the nightstand- keeping Howard in his peripheral vision. "Sleep well, Howard."

And for a while, he does, despite the cough and rattling, popping sound in his chest when he breathes deep, despite the chills that crawl into his muscles and make them tighten and cramp. It's a light but dreamless affair, interspersed only by occasional sniffs and twitches.

It's a few hours in when the fear that soaks his waking hours slithers back into the subconscious it came from and wreaks its havoc there. Howard kicks his feet, fights invisible hands around his wrists, moans and whimpers. Wordless syllables kick out of his mouth in little barks and yelps.

Sigma had only moved to turn out the light once Howard had fallen asleep, and was beginning to doze off himself, still seated upright on the bed after three hours. He was snapped back into focus by Howard's thrashing behind him. Concerned and alarmed, Sigma neared the boy carefully, avoiding his frantic attacks and taking him by the shoulder.

"Howard. Wake up," he pleaded, shaking him gently out of his dream. He hadn't expected it to be as bad as this.

For an instant, the shake doesn't register, and the man holding him down in his dream with a knife tickling his navel is just grasping him harder. Tears fall, teeth grit, and he lurches out of Sigma's hand - only to be snapped into reality by the sound of his name.

"Dad?"

The overhead light, which they've left on, burns radial halos into his eyes, and he blinks up at Sigma's face through two beads of sweat collected on his lashes. His chest heaves with each breath.

Sigma froze. For a moment he forgets that Howard was asking for someone else and his face twists with heartache. The realization hits him once he begins to wipe the sweat from Howard's brow with his sleeve and he takes a breath to calm himself, his cold mask returning in time for Howard's eyes to adjust.

"It's me," he says quietly. "It's Sigma. Relax. You're alright. You're in my room."

He could feel the heat radiate through his cuff and the Doctor realizes with a a start that he's never been in this position before. Howard's fever was running high, it wasn't time to take the next dose of medication, and Sigma didn't know what else to do about it.

The rest of the details sink into place like ink along a stamp well. His father vanished two years ago. He's here, in Panem, in a bed much bigger than anything they could ever fit in his bedroom in California. There are no plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling with blue putty.

"Sorry," he whispers. He tries to relax, but when he closes his eyes the memory of Aunamee, from both dreams and reality, comes lunging back up out of the darkness. He focuses his eyes on Sigma's, instead - the metallic one, and the one ringed with wrinkles and lines. "I got confused."

He wet the bed once, when he was in his District room, a few nights after he woke up from the ice Arena. He was too ashamed to even let the Avox who came into his room see it and clean it up, although he wouldn't be surprised if the servant smelled it. For an instant he worries that that's happened again, but no, he's just sweating, the damp of his clothing and the sheet is only that.

His cough kicks in again, irritated by the heavy breathing, and he lays back into the pillow - not flopping like last time, but gingerly, as if every nerve is too sensitive in this state. "Please don't tell no one."

The Doctor sighs long and painfully. "No... There's nothing to apologize for," Sigma says gently, "and nothing to tell. It's alright, now."

He knows he cannot fix the problem, cannot chase Howard's nightmares away without replacing them with something benign. Nye slept on the bathroom rug and for a moment Sigma had half a mind to remove him, but instead Sigma raises the blankets to Howard's neck carefully, tucks them in at his shoulders, mimicking an ancient memory of his mother with hope it could help.

Finally Sigma slips his glove from his right hand and touches Howard's forehead as if to check his fever. He knew what temperature to expect already, but thought the soft touch of skin might calm him down. "It's alright," he repeats.

And then he's seized by a pang of guilt - he wishes he had turned Kyle's photo down or had put it away. This is not something he'd want those already betrayed eyes to see.

"Liar," Howard wheezes. But it doesn't matter that he doesn't actually believe that everything's alright, doesn't matter that hope and health are both so terribly far away - the fact that someone's willing to lie to him means more than a pleasant truth ever could.

There are parts of Howard that want nothing more than to be protected and cared for in a way he's been so deprived of for years, and those pieces of him bend to Sigma's touch like sunflowers to the light.

He burns under Sigma's palm, the area around his mouth made pale from sickness. "Last time I was this sick was my first Arena. I was the first one to get dropped midway through, you know?"

He forces his eyes away from Sigma's, then from Sigma's night table, up to the ceiling. "Tell me about your kid?"

"You will beat this before the next," Sigma assures. He isn't sure there's anything else to say and he doesn't like the image of the boy suffering alone in the Arena that's come into his head.

And then Howard's question blindsides him, strikes him before he can realize it's coming, and Sigma shudders. Despite Howard's fever, the room seems very cold, now.

"Kyle..?" he says weakly once he's recovered through unfocused eyes. It's less of a question than an excuse to say his name, for it's the first time he's openly admitted it. Deciding he would like, after all, to talk about him with someone, Sigma removes his hand from Howard's forehead and crosses his arms. Where to begin with that boy? His life was nothing at all like the one Howard had lived and it would be hard for him to relate.

Sigma's voice is almost a whisper when he begins, launching into his story without further invitation. "Kyle... Kyle and I lived alone on the moon. He was born there," and the way Sigma says it makes the potentially funny situation quite sober. "After the mass extinction, Earth had become a wasteland. Both the environment and the few survivors were potentially too savage to restore any semblance of normalcy. I needed a place where I could work in private, and there were many underground communities that survived peacefully on the moon."

He pauses to sigh. "...In fact, it would be wrong to say that Kyle was 'born' at all. He was my clone," he admits gravely, quickly adding "but I must stress that it changes nothing. He was my clone, and he was my son. Do not regard him any differently than you would anyone else." He fears, for an instant, that Howard would think of Kyle as inhuman. He knew Kyle was already quite difficult to like.

At first he worries that he's offended Sigma, that that stunned look on his face is just the preface to the decision to leave. He relaxes slightly when Sigma starts to talk instead, nodding a little at the name of Sigma's kid.

"My best friend's a rock monster and my girlfriend's a French prostitute," Howard says. His voice is more just a breath than a sentence. "I don't judge."

He curls up in the fetal position, listening to Sigma talk, shivering slightly. It sounds nice, living alone, away from all the threats and harshness of the destroyed world. To be alone, with one person. To know, simply because leaving wasn't an option, that their world had to orbit around you. He's so used to being second choice - even Eponine prefers another man - that the idea of having someone to himself, not sexually, not romantically, but simply having them to himself, sounds like paradise.

Sigma almost chuckles. Ah, Orc. He wasn't aware the two of them were friends. Duly noted...

Unfortunately the reality was far from the pleasant hypotheses of Howard's imagination. Satisfied Howard had accepted Kyle's background, Sigma continues. "I raised him on my own... with some difficulty. As we were on the moon, gravity was much less than it was on Earth and without certain measures in place Kyle would not have developed properly. He had to be completely encased in a metal suit to compensate for the weight reduction. I am sure you can imagine babies are already handfuls without being practically made out of iron..."

There were many fresh dents in the considerably tough walls and tables, and bright white bruises on Sigma's strong arms, for years to come. He remembered fondly the first time Kyle discovered removing his suit turned their entire home effectively into a trampoline. Though Sigma had scolded him harshly for this transgression, and had later installed a restraining system, it wasn't long before Kyle got around it and did it again in 'secret'.

"He grew to be quite expressionless as a result, as I am sure you have noticed. But he was a bright child nonetheless. Kyle enjoyed reading very much, playing games, making up his own stories..." The hours the boy had spent playing 'house' and having tea with his rabbit was not unknown to him. "He took after me as he got older. He wanted to get his PhD in Genetics and worked very hard towards it. I was so proud of him..." For perhaps the first time Sigma genuinely smiles, beaming with joy. Those years were as if they could have had a future together.

Though Sigma realizes he should perhaps stop to give Howard a word, he does not, continuing to share his memories selfishly. "Those stories filled him with strange ideas. I suspect after a few novels he believed the nuclear family was a sacred and unbreakable concept. He asked me if I would give him a mother as though I could make one appear out of the air. He was not satisfied with anything less... Well, I am sure you remember Akane. She was kind enough to volunteer, but not before he had already become an adult. I owe that woman more than I can afford."

There is a silence, long enough to invite comment, but Sigma cuts it short at the last moment. "...I had my task to complete, as you recall," the one that had involved planning the murder of several innocent people and required no repeating. "I was unable to look after him the way I should have and he did not think much of me as a result. He... He grew up with a very warped sense of morality. He could not discern right from wrong and could be quite violent when he wanted to. Akane has killed more than you would consider for her frailty and would not have set him straight from those ways even if she had thought to - and it was not her responsibility to begin with. The things he had done here... Please, do not blame him. He did not understand..." No doubt others had noted Kyle's plot to kill Don in his first Arena. But how could Kyle have known it was bad? He was only following the rules obediently as they had been explained to him, like a child would.

"He may have been 22, but he was still just a boy. He had never been outside. He had never lived in a functional society. He did not know what it was like to meet others his age and have friends. He did not know what was and what was not appropriate, that men his age did not play, could not comprehend personal romance, did not cope well with loss, did not know how to handle his temper or hurt feelings..." He is clearly rambling, now.

"I wanted... to show him..." Sigma cannot continue. His eyes have glossed over with tears and he dare not go on. Oh, how he loved his son. Oh, how he had failed, and now he might lose Howard and Eponine as well. His chest heaves a breath stuck in his throat and he suppresses a sob. "...It's all my fault," he says heavily at last, lost.

Howard listens patiently, finding that he thinks it's more important for Sigma to say these things than it is for Howard to really hear them. His fever pulls and tugs at the corners of his mind, dragging some of Sigma's words askance, warping the sounds and echoing them in strange hymns in Howard's ears.

But he hears enough, and when he feels the tension coming into Sigma's voice, the crack not completed because there's just a little too much control to make it show. Sounds going tight under the pressure of sorrow.

He's never lost like that, but he understands grief. And he understands burying it rather than tackling it head on. He knows, deep down, that he hides his under anger, under the betrayal of being left behind, and knows that other people drown theirs in guilt.

He's never felt closer to someone.

He snakes a hand out from under the blankets and rubs the back of Sigma's back gingerly. "It's okay, man. It's okay."

Sigma shakes his head, taking long breaths to collect himself. He cannot cry in front of Howard, but he allows the hand to remain on his back without jerking away.

"It isn't, Howard. I told you already," he says sharply, his anger misdirected. But instead of leaving Howard to wonder he looks to the ceiling, balancing tears that have not fallen yet in the white of his eye, and clarifies with a tremble to his voice. "I had to kill him. My ability would only work if I had witnessed death and Kyle was one of the people I was ordered to watch die," he gasps. "My own son! ...But if I could turn back time and alter the past, I could arrive in a time where Kyle would never have to go through that. At least, that was what I had believed." It was no secret to Howard that Sigma had failed.

"And then we came here. I thought if could ensure his victory, it would be no different than if I had succeeded earlier. Look at where that got us," he says finally.

Howard shrinks from Sigma's tone, although he keeps his hand where it is, and launches into a coughing fit that brings tears to his eyes. It stings, the misdirected hurt, Sigma splashing at around at himself and at Howard because there's too much to fit inside. This is the difference between here and the FAYZ, that he is forced, by circumstances or decisions he doesn't understand, to be vulnerable. To trust that sick, underweight, scared, miserable, helpless, he doesn't have to fear their potential blows.

Maybe if he weren't coughing, he'd change his mind and run our the door.

His throat is barely settled when Sigma explains. He breathes deep, his lungs full of nettles. He has to pee, but he's not going to abandon one of his only friends in the war on grief.

"Well, that's your problem. You hope too much." It's a sarcastic comment, but warm. The next one is sincere, unshielded, sad. "You tried. You did him better than some people do. Than my parents..."

He doesn't have to finish that sentence.

"He loved you. We talked a few times."

Howard's backhanded compliment gives Sigma pause. He had never belived he hoped more or less than anyone else and assumed it was a universal phenomenon. "Maybe I do," he admits softly, but it is not when it comes to things he can no longer change, for he immediately denies Howard's claim. "It's a nice thought, Howard," he says quietly, "but you do not need to lie for me." It is unclear if he is talking about the comparison to Howard's parents or Kyle's feelings.

Sigma wonders, briefly, if he's done Howard any good at all, either. Perhaps if he hasn't, it would not be too late to start.

"...I've kept you up," he announces, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand and clearing away any tears that remain. "You are not going to get any better if we stay up talking."

He rolls his eyes in the dark. "Oh, fuck off. Me and him talked a few times. I don't say mushy shit just to stroke your ego. I meant it."

He's been taken for a liar so many times that it doesn't really hurt not to be believed any more. He brushes it off - the real hurt comes from feeling as if he's being chased out of Sigma's room. He knows logically he should go back to his room and sleep there, but all that waits for him there is four walls filled with junk and a stuffed rabbit and a tribble. He doesn't want to need company, but he's loath to leave it.

"Fine, fine, I'm leaving." There's a sulking tone that's all too settled into his voice. He sits up in the bed, shoulders jerking as chills pluck at muscles. His body aches everywhere, and when he rubs his hand over his face he realizes just how high a temperature he's running. He stands up and sets off another bout of coughing, then sits back down.

He doesn't have it in him to ask for help, for someone to make sure he gets back to District 1 without passing out in the elevator, so instead he just drops his head into his hands and shivers.

Nothing wants to stay the same. [CLOSED]

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