thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Maximus and OPEN
What| Maximus lost his leg to an alien and is in hospital while they build him a new one.
When| a few days after aliens
Where| Hospital
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of severe violence/trauma, depression, possibly suicidal thoughts

It was a desperate time. Even with the Capitol's extensive and immediate health care, there had been enough time between Maximus being hurt to being brought into critical care for him to lose a lot of blood - the mangled leg as unsalvagable as anyone could have imagined. The entire thing had been amputated from mid-thigh down.

The surgery had only taken a few hours but he needed time to recover, so no visitors were allowed until twelve hours later. Though they were making him a prosthetic, it would take a few days to build and tweak - so in the meantime he was stuck in the hospital.

Maximus was awake. They'd tried to force painkillers on him but he'd refused, so they'd slipped a minimal dosage into his IV without telling him and let him rough out the rest, gripping the pristine white sheets as he stared up at the ceiling. The form under the sheets strangely incomplete.

The nurses gave him a wide berth and spoke in hushed voices as they led any visitors to his room - though they would not allow Ferox in the hospital, so he went without his hard won companion.

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Maximus froze at the voice. He hadn't been looking at the door, hadn't been expecting anyone else (but then, he kept not expecting people and they kept coming). Of all they people he could expect, however, this...

This was not one of them.

"Aunamee." He said the name with a gravelly bite. Wyatt had killed him. He hadn't seen it happen, of course, but he knew. Knew better than to ask Wyatt the details. Wyatt had killed him, and Aunamee had not returned - one of the few measures of peace his friend had.

Erased.

"You were dead," He said bluntly.

"I never die," he said, an easy delusion that slips through his lips like butter. His body was not built for death. Didn't Maximus know that? Didn't he know how insulting it was to make that implication, to suggest that until this moment he only thought of Aunamee as a pile of bones?

He rolled the cherries in his palms. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"Your friend did do quite the number on me, however." He tried to sound casual, but his teeth sunk into the corner of his lip. "I wonder if you realized how vicious he is. Inside."

Wyatt. Vicious. He knew the man to be many things, but vicious was not a word he'd use in any circumstances. Knew it wasn't true.

Knew that whatever Wyatt had done to Aunamee, he believed that Aunamee had deserved it.

And Maximus had faith in his judgement.

So he smiled. He smiled the smile reserved solely for politicians, the smile he gave when he would rather be anywhere else.

"We all have our hidden depths," He said, almost a note of pride to his voice. "I wonder what you would call me, if you would name him vicious."

"You already know that you're a killer."

He rolled one of the cherries out of his palm, catching it between his thumb and forefinger. He allowed the rest of his fingers to clench, crushing the remaining cherry under the suffocating weight of his fist. Its juices, red and sticky, dripped down between his fingers like blood.

He wiped his hand on the foot of the bed. He stained the sheet.

"You're well aware you have blood on your hands."

He watched Aunamee move, his face hardening as the cherry stained his sheets.

"He is a Gladiator as well as I. As well as you," Maximus said, his tone as stoney as his expression. "He does what is necessary."

"Then you know that what I do is necessary."

He relished the words. As each sound left his lips, they blossomed into stars. Warmth.

"How refreshing. We're not so different, you and I."

Maximus smiled.

The smile was so cold it could have been a declaration of war. Forced to his lips through a dark humour that sometimes he forgot he had.

"You enjoy it," He said, flatly, through the smile. "There is a difference wider than any gulf I can imagine."

There was no benefit to lying. Not now. The cameras were turned away, and this man, yes, this man, he could see what Aunamee was on the inside. He knew.

"What a disgusting thing to say," he said all the same, his eyebrows knotting, his mouth curling into a frown. "Although I will admit, dear friend, that I take a certain pleasure in symmetry. Evening out the messes, one might say."

He leaned over the bed.

"When I'm left alone, I leave alone." He hissed the words. "But your friend can't stop making little messes for me."

"If you think he brought you mess, then you have absolutely no idea what I will bring you," Maximus said, his voice so quiet that he may not have spoken at all, a tremor beneath the earth that only hinted to the greater power below.

"Touch him, and I swear to you that nothing in the Capitol or in the Arena will protect you from me."

It was a large boast, perhaps, coming from an invalid missing a leg. A boast that was pure truth, right down to its core.

A threat that could only be uttered by a man who had no fear of death. A man who would have nothing left to lose.

He had been promised permanent death before. Grey had taken him aside and snarled the words in his face, and weeks later, there was a knife in his chest buried up under his ribcage and digging into his heart. It had happened in the Capitol, a place where he was assured he'd never revive, and the fear had been acute, solid, like a living being that had followed the knife into his bloodstream.

'I never die,' Aunamee had told Maxmius.

'Without your powers, you are nothing,' Grey had told Aunamee moments after jabbing the blade into his insides.

The fear was back now, rolling up and down his arms like marbles, and yet he did not flinch. Only his eyes registered the adrenaline, his pupils expanding like a dust cloud after an explosion.

"The Capitol," he said. He rolled the remaining cherry into his palm. It grew sticky with the juice of its companion. "You'd take it that far for him."

Edited 2013-11-12 17:57 (UTC)

"I would take it to the pits of Tartarus," Maximus growled, his eyes hard as flint, every muscle in his body taut and stiff.

"There are worse things than death, Aunamee. But I would grant you both."

"The Capitol will grant you both."

Aunamee never saw Grey again after the attempted murder. He liked to imagine he was long dead -- or no, not dead, but wasting away in a cell somewhere, his days plagued with torture.

"You're not stupid, Maximus." He watched Maximus with eyes that did not falter. He inhaled this, this man's death wish, with an enthusiasm reserved for cigarettes. "You just don't care."

Edited 2013-11-19 23:28 (UTC)

Nothing but a hard stare met Aunamee's proclamation. It wasn't something he could deny, though he felt as if the world kept playing with him - repeating themes, tangled in all his conversations, and perhaps he really did seem like a dead man walking.

Perhaps Wyatt's fears were justified.

He let the silence drag out for what felt like an age though in reality it was mere seconds - his gaze unwavering, unblinking.

He tried to ignore the fact that maybe Aunamee saw him as he saw Aunamee - the truth, written brazenly across their souls.

"No. I care," Maximus finally clarified. "But trust me when I say you don't want to give me a reason to stop."

"I like that," he said, although he didn't need to say it. His eyes were bright. His lips had fluttered into the ghost of a smile. It was easier to think about this than the looming possibility of his own demise, that was for certain. Look at this, this crumbling statue of a hero. Look at him protest. "Your self-destructive nature."

He dropped the remaining cherry in his mouth and chewed. He licked his lips, the roof of his mouth, the tiny spaces in between his teeth.

"I will be seeing you again, dear Maximus. Soon."

His fingers tightened on the blankets under him, his body tensing, but he could not argue it. Would not. Not with this man.

"I look forward to it," was all that he said, as hard as iron.