Link: a mess of a former mentor (linkable) wrote in gamesofpanem, @ 2015-04-20 22:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! backstory, ! capitol, victor: 30th jessie link, victor: 51st george 'geo' malloy |
WHO: Link & Geo
WHAT: Link visits Geo after his games
WHEN: Right after 51st games
WHERE: Capitol
WARNINGS: Substance abuse, needles, & general memories of games violence
PROMPT: Color challenge [G]
Geo was looking at the massive machine currently encasing the middle of his leg with wary interest. They'd explained it to him: they'd reattached all the tendons and ligaments that had been snapped apart under the weight of [tributes name] falling on it, this machine was working all to keep the delicate work malleable. It hurt like hell, but it was a distant pain. He didn't know what they were giving him in the IV he was attached too - there were too many bags and the words weren't familiar anyway - but he wasn't complaining. He was just watching the small knobs knead deep into the muscle, to the bone. There was a knock on the door and that was a novelty - he didn't remember people knocking or people asking him to come in. Nobody had asked him now, but he still called out in his cracking, sore voice. "Come in." Link had rapped her knuckles against the door. A gesture of courtesy and privacy he probably was not getting from the Capitol folk. As the sore voice beckoned her in she opened the door very tentatively. Her movements unsure, and slow, like always. A gentle smile washing over her face, making her seem serene. She stood at the end of the bed, her hands resting on the bed frame. Link stood in silence a moment too long, but finally found her voice. “Hello Geo.” Why couldn’t it have been the girl? Why couldn’t she be free? Link’s eyes darted up to the bags attached to his IVs. The drive to take them strong, knowing that he would just be resupplied. The cruelty of the pain he would feel stopped her. He would be her partner soon. Edsel deserved it. He had done this longer than she. “You did it,” she said in a laboured manner like the words took effort. Her tone was still light and a smile on her face. "Yeah," he said, dazedly. He'd done it. Beaten a couple of people to death. So much blood, the soft tissue soft and the hard tissue hard under his fists. Starved. Thrown-up a lot. Cried. Loved, maybe, a little. A whole lifetime lived in a couple of weeks. He looked down at the machine again, keeping him pinned to the bed. Then he looked back up at her, a concerned but not wholly lucid light to his eyes. "It was bad, wasn't it?" he asked with a frown. “No,” the word was drawn out longer than it needed to be. Link shook her head after like she could not speak and accomplish it at the same time. “You gave a show,” the word show was stuttered as if she was stumbling over it. “Yes, show, they needed.” She patted her hand against the bed frame. “You, You, did,” she shook her head. “You did what you needed to do.” Link’s eyes flashed a look towards the medicine again. She gripped the bed frame. “Now you must live with it.” Probably not the most comforting words she could say. He was quiet as he worried the inside of his lip with his teeth. Eventually, it tasted like iron a little. Too much. "Is it hard?" he asked naively after some time had passed, his mind swimming in a circle, over and over the same moments of violence, over and over like he was watching it on a screen happening to someone else. It felt distant, like the pain. Link laughed awkwardly at the question. “You’ll find a way.” She nodded her head slowly. “We all do.” Letting go of the bed frame she walked closer to him. “It takes time.” Link looked at him and sighed, “But we have a lot to keep you busy until then.” She felt exhausted just thinking about it. The tour, the bloody victory tour. Seeing the faces of the districts was no easy task though. “The tour is busy, but not easy.” The last time she had done it, it had been her own. “You have us.” She said nervously. What good would that do him? He got here by himself. Or that was how she felt. She had helped, but for her own means to not feel guilty. Now he had to figure out how to be the victor he wanted to be. "I do?" he asked, perking up a little. He leaned back a little and looked at Jessie. He could tell that she was one of them, the whites of her eyes a little yellow from Morphling, but that didn't matter. After being hated and stalked and betrayed and abused, the nervous attempt at affection was well received. "Thanks." “Of course,” she furrowed her brow. Link could never live with the idea of just abandoning her victor to fend for himself. The Capitol would never let it happen either. He was the latest talk of the town, they needed him in good form and that fell on Edsel and herself. The stylist and escort would help too, but they didn’t understand what it felt like. “I’ll give advice as best I can,” she smiled, “My first dose is, enjoy that.” She gestured up to the medication, “While you can.” He followed her line of sight and her finger up to one of the many bags delivering medication into his arm. It occurred to him with a flash of brilliance was that this was how it started. He looked at the needle taped to the back of his hand with some keen interest. This feeling of distance from pain, this was why people paid his aunt so much money, gave their lives to Morphling. He’d always feared it because it meant becoming reliant on something other than himself, but this wasn’t bad. This wasn’t bad at all. Geo held up his hand a little, feeling the needle move a little under his skin, in his vein. “You always chase your first,” he said, remembering something Miles once said as he toed a yellowed, shriveled addict in the alley his house was in. I didn’t occur to him that would be a bad thing to say because nothing was really occurring to him but thoughts, flowing through his brain like a lazy river. “Something like that,” Link said with heavy heart. “I think it is more chasing your third or fourth.” Link shrugged, or maybe it was chasing that first when you became dependent? “Enjoy it while it is supplied easily.” Link wished she had, but her mother’s connections had solved that back home. It kept her asleep to begin with and now look at her. Jonesing to steal it from her tribute, no her new victor. He leaned back in the bed and looked up at the ceiling and considered what she said. Enjoy it while it lasts. The story of every tributes life, except the end was terrible, except he had survived it. It was going to last practically forever now. Enjoying it... seemed... sleepy, as he felt a new pulse of the medication hit his blood stream. |