thecapitol | Working for the church while your life falls apart

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Working for the church while your life falls apart

Who| Signless, Effie and Peeta
What| Murderparty Deluxe Extravaganza: the Fallout 2: Electric Boogaloo
Where| D12 Common Room
When| Not too long after Signless comes back to the Capitol; timing is a lil fuzzy for accommodation purposes
Warnings/Notes| References to death and suicide, most likely

Even with Karkat's support, the days after the Signless is revived blur together for him. The only thing that remains constant is the feeling of agitation that keeps him from sleeping but makes him feel utterly exhausted. He doesn't leave the suites, not wanting to deal with his fellow tributes, but most of his time is spent pacing around his respiteblock or the common room, flopping down occasionally onto flat surfaces, then getting back up when he can't take not moving. He hasn't been eating, either, except when Karkat makes him. Basically, he is a hot mess, and anyone who happens upon him where he's currently curled up on a common room couch can probably tell just by looking at him.

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Signless looked over at him in silence for a long couple of minutes. It was hard to know where to start, or what to say, because he genuinely liked Peeta. It must have been terrible, having to go back into the arena when the whole point of these new Games was ostensibly to prevent the death of any more Panem natives.

"You aren't angry with me, are you?" he asked finally, because that was really what he was most worried about. He'd just made his entire team's job harder, and in Peeta's case he felt especially bad about it.

Was he angry at him? After everything that happened, there was a point where he could be angry at Signless for everything that happened. But it would just be petty, and stupid, and selfish.

How could you expect someone to keep up the image that you were trying to project to the rest of the world, when they were under attack by people who could possibly be their friends, or people they knew from home? Honestly, Peeta had no idea how Katniss had kept it up, and it wasn't something you just asked someone.

"Not angry at you." Peeta shook his head. "Angry at the situation, yeah. The arena wasn't really a--" He cut himself off.

"What was it that made you snap? What he said, what he did, what you did?"

"All of it. Mostly what I did. Every time I try to help, every time I try to live by what I think is right, it just hurts everyone around me and doesn't help anyone at all. I should have realized sooner. I should have just kept my fucking head down and not bothered with things that weren't my business to begin with." His voice is so tired and so, so bitter.

"You probably should be angry with me."

Peeta cleared his throat. The one big thing that he had going for him was the fact that he was really, really good at talking. But having your throat slashed up, even if it was fixed, still really, really fucked you up.

"I am a little angry." Peeta admitted. "But I figured you have enough people yelling at you already. And I'm not up for yelling." It probably was better to be honest right now. For some things.

"So, you're never going to help another person, ever again. And you'll keep your head down, and never speak up, and just go through life not saying a thing that people might take the wrong way." He started to laugh softly. "So, who do you want us to make you into? Clearly, you don't want to be yourself anymore." Did he realize how it sounded?

He turned his face away, looking up at the ceiling instead.

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Like doing the only thing I know won't directly result in everyone around me suffering is the wrong choice."

Really, he didn't know what he wanted. Being himself hadn't worked very well for him, both when he thought he was different but justified and now that he had finally decided to accept that he was just a worthless piece of hoofbeastshit that meant nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. On the other hand, he'd spent an entire lifetime trying not to be himself and had wound up being himself so hard it had taken him that entire lifetime up to the present to realize the full extent of it. Either way he was fucked.

"Effie and I talked and thought it might work to make it about my relationship with Karkat. To play up how far I would go to keep him safe and how he's helping me stay together. Or it could be about me and Meulin, like it was about you and Katniss. If I'm defined by who I am to others, I don't have to be anyone myself. That might be best."

It was a bad thing. Peeta wanted to say that yes, it was a bad thing. But doing what you might normally do, that would hurt people. But everything, no matter what, was going to hurt people. Everyone Signless knew, they were going to go in the arena, die, and do it all again, until at some point they won.

But saying that it didn't matter what you did? Was not the right thing to ever say to someone. Especially now. Peeta couldn't tell if he was supposed to cheer him up, or snap him out of it. But he knew that it wouldn't be both at the same time.

"Don't do that." It came out as a command, and it surprised even himself, as he looked at him steadily. "Don't... don't pin your life to someone for the sake of a story. You're worth more then being someone's other."

"I'm not worth anything," he said fiercely. "I shouldn't even exist. If someone else hadn't taken pity on me as a grub I would have been culled then and the whole mess I made of my life wouldn't have happened. A whole lot of people would be better off for it."

He closed his eyes, breathed out hard through his nose. None of this was Peeta's fault. Peeta didn't deserve to have to deal with him acting like a petulant wiggler just because he was trying to help.

"No, I'm sorry. That's not helpful. I just don't want to be anything right now, and I know that's not an option, and it's frustrating."

This was indeed a tough one. Peeta had no idea how you get someone to like themselves again. He was very out of his depth, and he knew it, and knowing that didn't give him any sense of relief.

"I don't know what it's like to not want to be anything." Peeta admitted. "Maybe not be yourself, I can understand that, but making any comparisons would just be worse." He didn't know what Signless really wanted. You don't just not be anything.

"You're not just a tribute to me, you know. You're my friend. You're worth something, at least to me." He sighed. "So I do care about your well being, and not just how you look to sponsors. I just don't..."

I just don't know what to do. "I hate this." Peeta got up, walking around the couch. Unable to sit down now, he looked away from Signless, a hand to his throat. Signless had done what he thought was right. He helped a friend, but got shit for it.

He stopped walking. "You did what you thought was right. It didn't work out for you in the end, but you still did it." He looked at Signless. "Sure, we can play up the relationship a little more, but it's not what defines you. What you did does. And what you did was help someone who asked for your help, and made the decision to do what needed to be done, even if it was terrible."

Didn't he see that? It was a simple concept, one anyone could easily understand. The right thing to do is never an easy one.

For a few long moments Signless didn't say anything. There were a lot of things he wanted to say, about how if he'd had a choice he would have just not come back from the arena at all, how the Psiioniic hadn't asked for his help so much as accepted it when he offered and therefore the murder was squarely on his shoulders, how Karkat had begged him not to because he knew it meant giving in. It wasn't as simple as Peeta wanted to make it, but still, it meant a lot that Peeta was on his side. That Peeta thought what he'd done didn't make him evil.

That Peeta thought of him as a friend.

"Thank you. I'm sorry that I'm making things so difficult for you. And you could always make the argument that what I did, I did out of compassion and that makes it right, but it doesn't change that all my life I spoke against violence and now I've culled two people. I don't want my actions to define me when my actions are those of a person I don't want to be, but I can't go back to what I was before, either, and keep saying violence is wrong when I've committed violent acts."

He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I consider you a friend too, you know. One of the best I have here."

"Then don't do that anymore. You can't be what you were before, so there is no point in anyone thinking that, let alone doing something with that." Peeta stopped walking, coming back to the chair and taking a seat.

"It's what I tell everyone. What you do in the arena? Is what you do in the arena. Back when you guys weren't here, people died in the games, and never came back. So what we did in there, it was to help each of us live. So we did things, to live. Not good things." They did stories in there. Ways to live, because they were fighting for their lives.

Yes, the new tributes were also fighting for their lives. But not to the extent the old games was about.

"Never mind on that. What I'm trying to say is that it's okay. It's like wearing a shirt. You have on a nice, beautiful, comfortable white shirt. Then you went outside to play, and it got dirty. Dirt and mud all over it. But now, when some people see that, the dirty smudges on the white? They think it's beautiful, and they love it." He was touching his chest, showing off his shirt, and using it to gesture to. "But inside, it's still you. But now you need to become a person who's comfortable in the shirt, while also keeping a part of yourself still intact."

It's complicated. But this is complicating material, and he's doing the best. He smiles as Signless.

"Good. Because I'm glad to have a friend like you, here." He pauses, and decides that he can say this, without the Capitol doing anything to it. "All of my friends and family, they're back home. Same for Katniss. But I'm glad that I have these friends, here. I don't know if you'd actually fit in well in Twelve, but." That went into a joking quality. He didn't want to get mushy.

"I think I see what you mean." He doesn't, entirely, but he's got enough of an idea: what he is on the inside and what he presents on the outside may be different, but he needs to be comfortable with both parts of himself. He doesn't really think Peeta is getting exactly how difficult that's going to be when one is anathema to the other, but he means well, and the advice is sound even if it'll be difficult to follow.

At least Peeta knows he'll be able to see his family again, maybe, in the future. Signless is almost certain he'll never see his mother again unless she's brought here to die, and however much he misses her he doesn't want that.

"That's what's made it the most bearable, being able to form friendships here even in the face of..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Everything. I'd like to visit Twelve, sometime. See what Panem is like outside of the Capitol."

It's good that Signless is getting it, because even Peeta is a little confused by what he was saying. That you can be both, is what the gist of it was, and he hopes that got across. Change is the one thing you can't forget in this place. You will be changed from your experiences here. They won't be good.

He slept with a knife under his pillow now. "Yeah, I know. It's one of the things I'm glad about. I'm glad I met you all. Maybe not how, but I am glad to know you." He smiled. "I'd like that. I'd really like you to see Twelve. It's not like here, not even close. But we're surrounded by forest... you cant really get to it, but it's better then the Capitol."

He laughed softly. "It's really not much, district-wise. But it's home."

"Home doesn't have to be much to be home," he says, his tone a little subdued. 'Home' for him was wherever his family was, after all. Home was deserts and caves and the ship, for a while. Maybe that's why he feels so lost here sometimes, because only half of them are here and his relationship with half of that half is just a burned bridge now.

"I'm of the opinion that our homes can be as grand or as humble as we want them to be, so long as they're full of good memories."

Is home filled with good memories? Peeta would have to say about 80 percent of them were good. Growing up with the threat of death over every kid's head until they were safe at 18, only to then be sent to work in the mines, was a tough thing to deal with. Watching the games every year, because you were forced to? Seeing your friends die, if they were chosen?

Peeta never had a friend who went in, so he was lucky. His family life wasn't exactly the best, but it was better then a lot of others. And home was with Katniss, now, except not.

"Yeah, I agree with that. And good memories can be hard to come by, sometimes. But that's what just makes them more special, right?"

It was sad, that growing up with the threat of death hanging over your head was an almost universal troll experience. Just for some that threat was more salient than others. But there were always good things -- his mother trying to teach him to sew (and thus the creation of the prototype Righteous Leggings), painting on cave walls with the Disciple. The Psiioniic, but that's painful to think about now.

"I think so. When you have little, it means more to have anything at all."

And that's true here, isn't it? He's in flux and he's unsure of himself or what he wants and believes, but he has people that care about him regardless. That's worth something. The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile.

"Thank you, Peeta. This has actually made me feel a little better."

Giving him a smile in response, he moves as if to put a hand on his shoulder, and then stops. He's the guy who does want to give hugs, to put a hand on someone's shoulder in a reassuring manner. He wants to hold hands, and that's something not a lot of people, especially here, want to do themselves.

"So long as it's something in the right direction, good. You know you can come to me with anything. Just not in the middle of the night, please, that's... just wait till the morning, if you can." Nights are reserved for trying not to have nightmares, for both him and Katniss. And for not slashing at anyone with a knife, when you jolt awake.

"Of course. With how hard you work, you deserve time set aside for yourself." The way Peeta says it sort of implies there's more to it than just that, but it isn't really the Signless's place to pry. He does reach out and take Peeta's hovering hand, though, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Of all the Twelve tributes, he's certainly one of the ones most likely to be okay with hugs.

"I'll keep that in mind."

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Working for the church while your life falls apart

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OKAY I THINK IT'S OVER I THINK WE DID IT [MUFFLED WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS]