I Have Been Known to Surrender to Anything That Stands [Open]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

WHO| Howard and open
WHAT| Howard returns to Capitol life. He's not very good at it.
WHERE| A small cafe in the Capitol.
WHEN| End of Week 6
WARNINGS| Mentions of starvation and a stress disorder.

He has to win next time. He's never known this before, not like he does now. If he doesn't win this next time, he's sure he'll either die for good or lose himself completely. There is a point when forging the iron where blows stop forming it and start to distend it, and he's crossed over into the second half of the process.

He returns to Panem the same way he has every time. He returns to schedule, to letting his Escort point him politely in the right direction so she can get him out of her hair and focus on her more promising Tributes. For the most part, she's fond of him, but not about to invest too much energy. Even if he wins one of these days, he'll hardly make a useful Mentor - she predicts he's the type to self-medicate - and so she generally gives him a free reign these days. "Don't do anything gauche, dear." "Make sure your clothes are clean before you step out". "Curfew's at eight p.m., remember that. I want you sleeping in your bed tonight and not in some alleyway again, dear."

He hates that she calls him 'dear'. He hates that she reminds him of a mother - not his mother, but one nonetheless. But he doesn't have the will to hate her, so instead he just hates pieces of her personality as some proxy for the whole. To tell the truth, he doesn't even remember her name beyond 'the Escort'.

Back to scale, he thinks as he weighs himself in the morning, and he laughs at himself without humor or regard for anyone who might hear him. Seventy-two pounds again. Like always, after he dies. Seventy-two pounds and jaw sore from where they ripped his rotting teeth out and replaced them with shiny white straight ones between him dying and him waking back up in Panem. He's back to padded clothing to hide the way the bones jut from under his skin like fingers through latex. Once again he has to sit patiently before he goes anywhere 'people might see him' while his Escort pats makeup on his cheeks to hide their gauntness and pallor, and to distract from the dark circles under his eyes.

He makes sure all his allies are still alive, and he makes sure to set money aside for Wyatt, which comes in handy soon enough. And then he slips back into the life outside the Arena that he's arranged for himself as delicately as dominoes. Get food, get coffee, training center, lunch, training center, dinner, find a quiet spot in town and sleep for a few hours, wake up and read a survival guide or a first aid manual or watch Games footage on his device, sneak back into the Tribute Center before dawn and hope his Escort doesn't give him too much shit in the morning.

Being a creature of habit, he's soon found himself a favorite tiny cafe. Capitol citizens with their inquisitive stares and loud outfits that jab at his eyes and grating, hiccuping voices tend to ignore it, preferring more bombastic locales than a little hole in the wall. Tributes occasionally come in, and Mentors. No one stupid enough to poke and prod about how exciting the Games are and how did it feel to die, how did it feel to choke on your own blood? Isn't it so much nicer, now that you're back?

Well, isn't it?

From a cozy armchair, he can read his book on field-dressing different wild animals while watching the sun go down over the tips of Capitol skyscrapers. He parks his feet up under his butt and shakes the hood from his jacket off his head, not willing to let go of his large mug of hot, creamy coffee even long enough to leave it on the table next to him. He cradles it to his chest like a nursing infant. The warmth from it radiates even through the cotton padding over his concave gut and makes him feel, for a moment, like he's holding a small star inside his core.

He still startles as if he's about to leap out of his own flesh whenever the bell on the door announces visitors and catches him off-guard. Sometimes when someone walks in, he spills his drink on himself and dissolves into frustrated swearing right in front of them.

Comments

[burnedbrighter]

"Such a nervous creature, aren't you?"

Azula's cold impersonal voice slithered through his ears like a snake as she delicately lowered herself into a seat across from his. She held a warm drink of some sort as well and the steam from it brought a rose to her pale cheeks.

A waitress brought over a plate with some little pastry cakes on it as well as some chocolate dipped stirring sticks with candy tips. She took one by the yellow tip and stirred her drink with it thoughtfully.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Before he's even done mopping up the mess all over his shirt and the couch (he can see from the corner of his eye that the barista is already getting him a second), he leans back and puts his hands up. "Azula. I got no beef with you."

He saw footage, not all of it but enough. Diana's District. Used poison. Smart, deadly.

"You just here to lord your nerves of steel over me?"

[burnedbrighter]

"Oh no, there wouldn't be much pleasure in that." She drew the stirring stick out of her coffee and crunched it between her shiny perfect teeth.

"I kept my distance in the arena because of your connection to Diana. Whatever it was I saw no reason to cause you trouble. If anything you should be appreciative of my efforts to secure the location."

She brought the drink to her lips and they were hidden for a moment, but her words were clear.

"I did a much better job of it then your stone faced bodyguard who let you get kidnapped right out from under him."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Me and Diana come from the same place. That's all." He uses a napkin to pat at himself and the cushion. The barista sets a new coffee down on the low table, and Howard takes it and holds it to his chest.

His eyes harden, and the look he gives Azula is very close to a glare. "I didn't notice you swooping in to save the day when Aunamee got me."

[burnedbrighter]

That was more or less what Diana had said, but Azula wasn't convinced.

As for the second part she barely batted an eyelash.

"You weren't my responsibility. I just chose to allow you to remain in the area I was protecting. Don't project your frustrations with that beast on me. He's the one who let you down."

[alldeduction]

He wasn't looking for Howard.

He really wasn't. He could care less about what happened to the boy, all things considered, as it was all too apparent that Howard could care less about what happened to him.

Sherlock never did feel like investing energy in anything that wasn't reciprocal. Why bother trying to please people who hated you? Better to just let them justify it and ignore them.

So he really wasn't looking for Howard when he stepped into a cafe. All he wanted was some tea. But then again he couldn't exactly help himself when he saw the boy in the back look straight at him when he walked in and the chime announced his presence.

"Still alive then, Howard?" He said snidely.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

It's not even a reaction he thinks through, although the split second after he does it, he realizes that he probably would have gone ahead with it anyway.

He's felt loathing before. He's felt humiliated a thousand times. This is not a new feeling, just one that seems to dig a little deeper the more his defenses are worn away by death and rejection and hurt.

He almost would have preferred that Sherlock had spilled his secret while he was still in earshot, so he could at least defend himself. He's sure that either way he would have ended up in tears and angry and red-faced, but it might have been easier than finding out while rewatching footage.

So he doesn't respond with words. He stands up and throws the hot coffee in Sherlock's face instead.

[alldeduction]

Sherlock hisses, immediately stepping back as his eyes snap shut before the coffee hits. It's hot - very hot - but not hot enough to burn, just hot enough to hurt and he snaps his head around violently to shake the coffee off before scrubbing at it with his sleeves.

"Oh how very clever," He snaps viciously, "Am I to congratulate you on your discovery of caffeinated beverages as a weapon?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Go fuck yourself, Sherlock." He follows it up by throwing the empty mug at the ground by Sherlock's feet. It bounces away, harmless and plastic. Patrons of the cafe and the employees crane their necks, trying to decide whether or not to interfere. "You had no right to do that, not on live TV, you fucking heartless scum of the earth."

The way Howard's face turns red, the way his eyes line with wetness and the flutter of a pulse in his neck all betray how very real this anger is.

[hit_girl_mindy]

Getting out was good for her. She needed to clear her head, and three days straight in the training room was enough to finally spur her escort to kick her out to go see the outside, despite the choice words Mindy used to tell her what she thought of the idea. She hated the attention: by now, she had already seen the video of her death so she already knew about what Guy had done. She was grateful all people saw was him doing the deed, taking the poor child out of her misery. Never mind she had ripped into someone's eye or that she would have braved her death alone. To them, she was still that poor little girl with her leg mangled.

It was enough to have her glowering in the safety of a quiet cafe to contemplate THIS. A glorified reality star, god, what dad would have said. She drank, enjoying the chocolate only a little bit. This was, after all, far from the comfort drink it once was. It was the last thing she and her dad were having before he died that night. Her hand trembled slightly, but she steadied it, sighing, and took a moment to look over her shoulder and see the skinny black kid she'd sworn she saw at the Games.

"Hey," she said, clearing her throat. Voice was hoarser than she thought. "Was yours bad?"

aaaa Mindy 8D

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

The first thing he notices about Mindy is that she orders hot chocolate. Not coffee. Not alcohol. Not tea. Hot cocoa. It's strange to him that that's what he fixates on, because it's a detail most people would brush aside as Mindy just being a kid, but Howard is so very used to kids not being children at all. Where he's from, the vestiges of childhood lurk in the cracks of the kids toting guns and swilling booze before their baby teeth are out.

"Comparatively? It was okay." He's suffered worse deaths. At least this one was fast, although choking on his own blood with an arrow through him wasn't the most painless way he could think of going. He scoots in his chair so he can see her better over the back of it. "You're the eye-ripping girl, aren't you?"

Re: aaaa Mindy 8D

[hit_girl_mindy]

It was something that should have been abandoned after the night, but there were some things Mindy could not let go, and despite swearing like a sailor and cutting off limbs at the drop of a hat, there were still some signs of her childhood there. Something things just persisted, and Mindy was content with it.

She snickered at the description. "Hey, she had a trap that pretty much ripped my leg off. Getting the eye ripped out was the least I could do." She took a long drink, looking over at him. "You're made up. I thought these people were supposed to, I don't know, keep you well fed and strong 'till they let the dogs loose on you."

Re: aaaa Mindy 8D

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Hey, I just died. Gimme a break." He wrinkles his nose as if trying to feel out the makeup his Escort patted onto his face. "I've only had like, what, three days to get all well-fed and strong? I'll get there."

Not really. Howard's not blessed with the genetic makeup for being physically strong, at the very least.

"You should've gotten both eyes. It'd be hilarious to watch her stumble around."

[shambler]

His Escort says he's supposed to take these with every meal. Something about drinking water with it. Do it on a full stomach. Don't mix with alcohol. Don't do this. Do that. But don't do it too much.

R takes the little canister just to shut her up. It's easier than trying to groan up an argument years after the fact.

He'll need help reading the rest of the instructions: knowing his Escort, she'll be monitoring him to make sure he's doing it right. Wheezing out a sigh, he shuffles off to find Howard with the plastic bag crinkled in his hand.

He finds Howard in a cafe not too far from the Tribute Tower, in a place he hadn't expected - he'd already checked some of the dumpsters and they'd been Bassem-free, weirdly enough. He'd expected him to be in that dumpster around the corner, the one where they throw a lot of clothes that, if you ask him, don't even look like trash. Howard should have been curled up in a bony ball in one of the piles. Instead he's here out in the open, nursing what R hopes isn't going to be a big red burn from the coffee he spilled all over.

"Sorry," R grunts. Seems like he has that effect on people still.

R flops down in the chair across from Howard: for all the weight the human's lost, he's gained on his end. His mouth's back; his guts neatly coiled in his stomach instead of flopping out. He thinks the maggots are gone. Mostly gone. He thinks one or two are still camped out. Maybe the Capitol missed them.

Staring at Howard, R gets the idea to reach over, grab a napkin and try to dab at the coffee stain. He's not very good at it; it's more tickling at the problem than cleaning it up.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He's totally already been to that dumpster, R. He scared off some pretty big rats from some of those tossed-out Halloween costumes.

"Not you," Howard says, pulling his hoodie off to make sure that the coffee hasn't soaked through his top layer. He's not about to do the same to his pants, so he just brushes some of the pooling liquid off his thighs and squirms a bit. He can see his ribs through his t-shirt, fucking awesome. He gently pushes R's hand away from dabbing at him, trying to preserve his personal bubble without insulting one of the few friends he has. "I'm just, you know, jumpy."

He presses the corners of his mouth together and looks at R. He has to say, he's grateful that R can have conversations again, even just the one-syllable ones. Trying to read R's already-muted body language was a bit of a trial back in the Arena.

One of the first things he did when he got back was make sure that those raptors hadn't gotten R. He breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn't, that he hadn't left R to get ripped apart by feathered death-lizards while he climbed up a tree in the jungle and examined the shallow cut that ripped its way down his stomach. He'd been lucky. A centimeter deeper and he'd have gotten his guts slashed up. It's not like he had a ton of padding the raptor had to get through.

Even more lucky that R isn't holding him running against him.

I charged a dinosaur with a stick for you. And then I ran away like a bitch.

A barista sets a new cup of coffee in front of Howard, knowing by now that he'll want something hot to drink no matter how long he's here, and that he'll pay up when the tab comes. He doesn't thank her. He covers the top with his hand, letting warm condensation form in his palm. He bites his lip a little as he looks at R, one of them looking deathly and the other looking like the fresher side of dead.

"You should try growing a beard, now that you got your jaw back."

[shambler]

"Jumpy" seems to be Howard's default.

He drops the napkin onto the table. Better focus on the new lips he has, the muscles he can feel pull and relax where a few days ago he'd only had strips of flesh hanging down.

"Can't. Not...good look," R wheezes. He means it, too. He's felt sorry for some of the zombies out there doomed to their half-rotted beards and patchy stubble, riddled with decomposition. "You...win...?"

Howard doesn't look like he's won. But the last time he saw him, he was trying (and failing) to beat off a raptor and then running for the hills, so maybe it's a possibility he could've somehow out-survived the other Tributes. Maybe he's a humble winner. It's just...if he won, R's convinced his Escort would've mentioned it. Bragged about how he has friends in high places now. Instead she didn't even look up when R mentioned his name.

The barista shoots R a questioning look when she swings by with the refills, trying to catch his eye as if he might want a drink too. He remains slumped over, staring vacantly right at Howard with that old muzzle plastered on his face. Doesn't even give a polite sniff her way. She probably smells delicious, like everyone else in this city who isn't doused with perfume.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah, right." He shakes his head. "Choked to death on my own blood after- after Au-" He can't seem to force those words out, so he waves them away as if they were gnats on a hot summer day. He just shrugs it off. Probably better they don't talk about Aunamee, anyway. It seems like a bruise on the bond between them, ugly even as it yellows. He runs his hand over his wrist, the one that broke in the ropes Aunamee strung him up with.

The body doesn't remember injuries as pain. It remembers them by forgetting that they've healed.

"Can I get more whipped cream?" he asks the barista in a plaintive little voice, eyes straddling the line between puppy dog and sort of bugging out in their sockets. Some of the employees here have taken a liking to him, probably because they see him startle and stutter and bundle up. No one's said the infamous V-word yet, but he can smell it on their breath, and he's long since decided to take advantage of it. "In a cup?"

She gives a quick nod and goes off to grab it. He honors R with yet another shrug, propping his feet on the table now despite the chill of hunger. The wet hoodie gets draped over the side of the chair, and he puts his book down.

"You okay, man? You seem kind of zoned out. Even for you."

[deafscythe]

"Ah, how rude." And here's a blond teenager, dressed vaguely like a priest. "Your drink did nothing to merit such a reaction."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It was an accident," Howard mutters, shooting Justin a glare that could slice through metal.

[deafscythe]

"For someone to curse so frequently that it becomes your first reaction upon opening your mouth? How distressing." Admittedly, Justin doesn't look distressed. Or concerned about Howard's glare. He orders a drink (hot chocolate) and then wanders over towards Howard while he waits for his order to be completed.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You got a problem with my language when you casually offer to kill people? Get bent." Howard gives Justin a single-fingered salute, too.

[undercoverprincess]

They'd fixed her up well enough, she'd give them that. Cindy didn't know why they couldn't have fixed up her stomach before sending her into the arena, instead of just patching up the holes so people couldn't see through them.

But everything got fixed. And the things that were more aesthetic, they got fixed too. Clothes to give her back the curves she'd used to have. Extensions for the hair that wasn't as nice as it used to be. Cindy wasn't sure if it was her Fable nature or not that she'd managed to keep everything else intact, and things just needed to be cleaned up.

She felt as bad as she did after rescuing Pinocchio, and dear god was that painful enough without having to go through the trials of the arena. Still, she needed to keep up appearances. She'd gone out with Daniel, she'd found most of her friends and seen how they were doing. Except one. And when she found him, he was spilling things all over himself.

"I'm always a fan of words that never change, no matter what they are." Fuck asking, she slides into the seat across from him.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He's actually happy to see Cindy, and that says a lot, because he hasn't been all too pleased by most of the company he's found here. After not seeing her at all in the Arena, he's been worried that she was retired for good.

"Hey, 'fuck' has permutations. It can mean a lot of things other than, well. Fucking." He mops up the coffee on the floor with a napkin, then, as if he can't help it, sucks on the soaked thing.

"How you been?"

[undercoverprincess]

"I'm going to have to remember that excuse the next time someone gets on my back about saying fuck too many times." What was he doing? What was he doing. She's really close to saying something on that one, but stops herself. Her memory wasn't something she'd left behind in that arena.

"Oh, you know. I've been working toward getting back to normal. You'd think with the unlimited food, clean clothing, and healthcare it'd be easier. But surprise, surprise, it's not doing much to help." She leaned forward, an elbow on the table so she could support her head. "How about you? You lasted longer then I did this time around."

Though it wasn't easy, she knew that.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You know they censor that here? They displayed me choke to death on my own blood in slow motion, but they censored it when I called someone a smacktard. Their priorities here are insane."

The look he gives Cindy next is one that's electric with understanding, but it doesn't reach his words. Who wants to really talk about how hard it is to feel normal again after you suffer? Why would Howard want to talk about being tied to a tree and starving and having his flesh actually coming off his body from exposure? Doesn't dwelling just make it worse?

"I usually make it to the last week. I'm losing my touch." He gestures for a barista to come over and take Cindy's order.