thearena | I Would Crack the Clouds Open Just to Show You Heaven [Closed]

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I Would Crack the Clouds Open Just to Show You Heaven [Closed]

WHO| Howard and Wyatt, then Eponine too
WHAT| Family bonding!
WHEN| End of week 6, before Howard and Eponine die.
WHERE| The jungle.
WARNINGS| Howard recovering from psychological torture, mentions of suicide likely.

It takes three days for Howard to find his feet again. Wyatt's medical supplies included nutritional tablets and booster shots, which are likely the only reason Howard doesn't just not wake up from his fitful sleep. He rests for the majority of the time, rousing only to eat and relieve himself and try to smooth the waters between Eponine and Wyatt. It isn't easy - he isn't sure what they're telling each other, but every time he comes around he notices that Eponine's sulking and casting mutinous glares and Wyatt's looking like he's ten seconds from telling her to get lost. But for the grace of his fatherly patience...

By the third day he can walk around without wobbling like a newborn calf, and by the fourth he's ready to go out into the jungle and scavenge for food, although he decides he'll keep Eponine with him rather than going alone. His wrists are still swollen, fingers in his left hand going numb. The cut on his chest is healing, but the sores remain stubbornly open. His head is clear, though, marred only by the moments when Aunamee infects his dreams.

He wakes this morning damp from the fog and sits up. His posture's taken on a hunch from keeping his hands safe to his chest. He looks around and sees that Wyatt's sitting next to him, and Eponine's out in a nearby clearing wandering around. Stretching her legs, maybe, or just needing some space to herself, to mutter and hum snatches of song and ponder why she hasn't let herself die up to this point.

"Morning," he whispers to Wyatt. "We have anything to eat?"

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He was carving. A hobby normally reserved for the Capitol, but suddenly necessary here in the arena as well. Calming himself again after the girl riled him up. One would think the words she threw at him would get easier to ignore, but instead they seemed to cut deeper ever time.

The things she said about Howard, and Max....

He'd stopped responding, but he still felt them.

His mouth was tight when Howard stirred, eyes distant, but his hands were steady, careful on the soft wood. They paused at the question, shifted the wood and knife into the same hand while the other dipped into his pocket, pulled out the scraps they'd eaten yesterday - the ones he'd squirreled away. Knowing Howard needed it more than he did.

He held them out.

"That's the last of it, 'til we can rustle up more."

Howard loves Wyatt enough to give up the last of the food for him, but not this time. Not when Wyatt's holding steady and Howard's so weak and fragile. He knows he does Wyatt no favors by recovering more slowly.

He gives a sage nod as he takes the scraps, swallowing the jerky practically whole. It's gone too soon, too soon, but it's enough to keep his stomach from screaming at him. He scoots over next to Wyatt, shivering slightly from the damp chill and looking for warmth. Eponine crouches down in the distance, investigating something in the grass.

"She wasn't like that before this Arena."

He let out a breath, returning the knife to the block. He didn't even look up, not needing to see whatever the girl was up to know what Howard was referring to.

"But that's how she is now, son," he said softly, running his thumb over the fresh cut. "An' I ain't sure yer gonna ever be able to bring her back."

Howard lets his eyes drift from his ex-girlfriend and down to the piece of wood Wyatt's cutting away at. It isn't recognizable as a figure so far, but Howard remembers his little wooden buffalo. He misses it, wishes he could have it now, but knows he couldn't close his hands over it without pain.

"I did this to her, you know. It's been ever since we split up."

"She had a right to be upset, Howard. To curse yer name, throw a few plates, maybe even never forgive ya for it, but the things she did an' said..." His jaw tightened. His head shook. "Heartache ain't an excuse for that. Love ain't got nothin' to do with it."

Whatever Eponine had gotten sick with was far darker, more twisted up.

"She's like me," Howard says, chin sinking down to his chest. He bites at his lip, then stops, knowing from the glances Wyatt gives him that it worries the man when he casually injures himself. Lipbiting wouldn't be such a problem except that Howard does it to the point of leaving wounds in the skin above his chin, to leaving infected pocks around his mouth.

"She, she...she's all messed up the same way I am. That's how this all started. She was the only person who understood me, it, um." He cracks his neck to the side. "It was like looking into a mirror, except a funhouse mirror where you look better than you do in real life."

He chews his tongue. "She died to save my life, back in the snow Arena. Not even to save me, just, just to give me a better chance. Before I knew anyone else."

He wanted to deny it. His immediate instinct is say they're nothing alike, and while it might have been true to a degree (he honestly did not believe Howard would react the same way she had), he also knew that Howard was right. He wasn't blind or deaf. He didn't understand the ticks and twitches, but he aware of them.

"Ya did the right thing, Howard," he said finally, after a long break broken only by the rasp of his knife against the wood. "Even puttin' the rest of it aside, even if that part weren't true, you two aren't right together."

He looked up then, glancing out at the girl. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

"Ya aren't good as a pair. Ya make each other worse, instead of better."

"I know." He doesn't want to admit that Wyatt's right, even though he knows it'll make it easier to just let go of the relationship he and Eponine had. The alternative appears to be only animosity, and he's not ready to handle that bleakness. "We weren't always like this."

He wants to find something to do with his hands, but with his wrists as damaged as they are he's limited. He fidgets with his foot instead, watching a figure beginning to slowly emerge from the wood block.

"I still love her. Is that wrong?"

Wyatt exhaled a sigh, and looked down at Howard, studying the top of the boy's head.

"Love is more than jus' affection, Howard. It's more than jus' wantin' to be with someone. It's wantin' what's best for them, an' for them to be happy... even if it can't be with you."

He'd told Eponine the same thing, but it had gone unheard - the concept willfully ignored, or impossible to accept.

"I believe ya love her. You've already proven ya do by bein' man enough to tell her the truth, but, son, I don't believe it's mutual. Not truly."

"She just..." Howard's face crumples a bit as he turns his gaze out and looks at what became of that stubborn, feisty girl who loved him. He's sure she did. He's sure. "She's all messed up, Wyatt. All messed up. If I told you some of the things people did to her to make her this way, you'd want to go on a warpath."

He understands how she got from point A to point B, the crazy heartbroken logic her mind took to determine that the Howard she loved no longer existed, that he was a sham just to taunt her.

"Please don't send her away."

"Howard..."

He shook his head, returned his attention to the carving.

"I ain't made of stone. The things she's said about Max an' you, an' how she keeps goin' on about Aunamee--" He cut himself off, forced the bile back down. "I'm not gonna make ya choose, but expect us to be on friendly terms any time soon."

He winces. He knows that Eponine's been getting her claws out, needling Wyatt about Maximus. He knows it's a matter of time before she hits, and then severs, a nerve.

Howard's voices is low and still as a lake at dawn. "Aunamee fucked with my head too, Wyatt. Why do you think I didn't escape?"

He stopped carving suddenly, eyed his work hard for a moment before tossing it away.

"I will keep her as safe as I can," he replied, voice going low and firm. "An' I won't ask her to leave, but don't ask for more than that from me, Howard. Not here, not now."

Howard jerks back and cringes at the sudden display of discontent. He pulls away from Wyatt and scooches to the back of their little hidey hole.

"Sorry."

He noticed, just like he always did. Howard, who was always so quick to forgive the faults in others (like his Eponine), could never really accept that Wyatt was human too. With his own pains and griefs.

"...I'm sorry, Howard, but I jus'... I can't. Not now."

Max might be gone, for good, and Eponine was singing the praises of the man responsible every chance she got.

He might someday be able to untangle the two, but for now, it was still too close, too soon.

He stood, and picked up a spear.

"Go on, an' keep an eye on her. I'll go see about findin' more to eat."

If possibly, this stings even deeper. Howard winces again and says nothing as he watches Wyatt, always so superhuman to him, walk off.

He can't help that he wonders if Wyatt will even come back. He wraps his arms around himself and waits in their hovel, rocking himself slightly.

It's a while before she comes staggering back, clutching an already wilting bunch of flowers.

"They're for you."

She sits carefully down next to Howard, and thrusts the toxic blooms at him.

"He was talking about me, that man, wasn't he?" She jerks her thumb in Wyatt's direction. "Now he, he is one of those I dislike, pretending to be so good, and is horrible behind me. I would rather he just calls me names and to hell with it. You can tell him that, if you like, Monsieur."

He stares mutely at the flowers for a second, then reaches out and holds them delicately. He can't close his hands entirely around them.

"Lay off, Eps. He saved your life because I asked him to." Howard tightens his lips. "I know you're pissed, but you gotta stop running your mouth at him."

"Well, I wish he hadn't. As soon as you die, he will kill me. He is a nasty man. He is like Monsieur Maximus , that one ."

No love lost there, then. But she strokes her hand over Howard's hair. She speaks slowly , thinking out her emotions. That's why she likes going by herself , so she can think and sort them out and plan how to get Howard away from Wyatt and his negitivity.

"We will be okay, you know, to go alone. You know I will not truly hurt you , don't you? I could have done... But I love you. But you make me mad. You are like Monsieur Marius , but worse, for you made me love you. And then you change your mind whenI love you."

"He's not going to kill you. He wouldn't even if I wasn't here." His eyes narrow at her, and he sets the flowers aside for the moment. He doesn't have the strength to put up a shield against her words. He shrinks under her gaze.

"I can't go alone. Aunamee's still out there, and you see...you see what he did to me." Howard's voice gets small and weak. "Wyatt will take care of us. Just please, please stop mouthing off."

"Why do you ask me to do such things, Howard?"

She doesn't move her hand from his head; she slides it down, stroking his cheek now.

"I wouldn't let Monsieur Aunamee hurt you, you know? He doesn't want to hurt you. He told me. You know he forbid me from hurting you. He made me promise him. He's our friend, Howard. He is not nice, but he is like my Montparnasse - and you know I know how to look after myself with the likes of him. I won't let him hurt you. Come - we go now whilst he isn't here."

He rests his cheek into the cup of her hand, shaking slightly.

"You're wrong." How can Eponine believe she is the greatest danger to Howard when Aunamee has a knife? Howard closes his eyes and they fill with tears and images of Aunamee's face, flicked with blood and snowflakes and grinning. "He's not our friend. He uses people. You don't want to get used again, right?"

She shrugs, and replies sadly:

"It's all I'm good for. I know how to talk to people like him, Howard. I'm not good - there's not a bit of goodness in me. I know how to make him pay when it comes to it - he will get too cocky, but he won't hurt me. People like him, he is a coward under it. He is like a dog that barks but will cower when danger comes."

"I love you whether there's goodness or not." But he knows she won't believe him, not while the wound of their broken relationships lies between them. He sighs again and wipes his nose on his shoulder.

"Look. Please just don't mouth off to Wyatt. For me? Then we can talk about how I love you." It feels dirty, selling her a promise he can't keep, but it's the only way he knows to smooth the waters.

She nods once.

"For you I will do it. I will keep my peace. But Howard? I cannot be kind with him. Do not ask me to. I do not trust that man."

She knows Howard's lying. She knows he will never say he loves her. But even the pretence of love is better than nothing. And despite what Wyatt might think, Eponine truly does love Howard, as much as she is able to. And she will do what he wants to make him even a little bit happy.

"Okay. Deal." He turns his gaze back to the flowers, their colors dim in the overhang of their hiding place.

She sighed and leaned her head down onto his shoulder.

"One day, my heart will not hurt. One day, the people I love will stop making me do what I do not want to do. Sometimes I wish I could just make it stop, but there is no point here. They will just bring me back."

The sun was high by the time Wyatt returned, the last wet of the morning burned off and replaced by the sweating heat and stickiness of midday. He hadn't found anything to eat, but he was reluctant to travel too far from the teens.

His the rough edges of his anger had soothed, as they always did, and the hard lines cut into his face were smooth again when he approached - making noise enough to keep from startling them.

"Didn't find anythin'," he said as he rounded the tree - his eyes flicked from Howard to Eponine, curled up in sleep, and his voice immediately dropped, hoping to keep her that way. "Sorry, Howard."

It shouldn't come as a surprise whenever Wyatt returns to him, steady as the sunrise, but it always does. Relief washes over his face and he shrugs Eponine gently off of where her head rested in his lap. "S'ok. Not like I'm burning calories or anything keeping watch."

He rolls his ankles in their sockets, examining the bruises that have settled into a grey-brown hue, like refuse from a paint palette. The aftertaste of his last conversation with Wyatt still hangs in the back of his teeth.

"...Can we take a walk?"

Leaning the spear against the trunk of the tree, he looked over in surprise, an eyebrow raising carefully.

"Ya sure yer up for that, son?" he asked, looking him over with that steady blue gaze.

The boy had made progress, his color had started to return and he'd been staying awake longer every turn. He didn't want to see it undone by Howard pushing himself too far too soon.

"Yeah. Just not alone." He looks over at Eponine, how her hands curl into loose fists as she sleeps, how the corners of her lips twitch as she speaks to someone in a dream he can't have access to. "We won't go far, just around the clearing."

Howard's gait is like that of a many many, many times his age. Each step is slow and shaky and he stumbles a bit as he reaches Wyatt, finding help balancing by catching Wyatt's arm.

It takes a little while, but once they're outside the hiding place he says "sorry about what I said earlier. I talked to her. She won't say nothing anymore."

A pause, and then he repeats, "I'm sorry."

Wyatt held him up, shortening his stride to match Howard's. When the boy finally spoke, it slowed even further, Wyatt exhaling a long breath.

"I wasn't upset with you, Howard. I jus'... it's difficult to hear those things right now. Every time she brings him up, it's a reminder that Max might be gone an' Aunamee's still out there." He studied the ground ahead of their feet, as if expecting it might shift and try to trip them up. "An' I ain't done my job."

The sun's going down. The early stirrings of night animals are starting to fill the Arena.

"Oh." Howard mulls his teeth over his lips. "I thought you were angry with me for not...for not trying harder to get away."

He looks down at his wrists, still broken, still hard to hold things with even as one clings to Wyatt's elbow.

"I'll let you know he's there if I die first."

Wyatt did stop then, turning to look at Howard square.

"Howard," he spoke directly to the boy, eyes unblinking as he stared down at him. "You did the hardest part. Ya held on an' survived until we got there. That's all I could ever ask of anyone."

Something shifted in the dark around them, up in the trees and Wyatt's eyes finally flicked away, his head tipping as he listened. A beat later the growing dark filled with the trilling call of a night-bird and he relaxed again.

"Now I'm gonna do everythin' in my power to make sure you an' that girl stay that way, but if somethin' happens-" if he lost, if he failed again, "-I jus' want ya to know I don't blame anyone for anythin' Aunamee does 'cept for Aunamee."

Wyatt's gaze seems to unpeel Howard, and Howard feels as if layers are getting pared away in search of that good core Wyatt is sure exists, the one Howard suspects has rotted at the root.

"He had a knife," Howard small, and his voice is soft and small. He doesn't have to say more. Wyatt knows. Wyatt was there. When the bird rustles, Howard's body tenses, his mind flicking back to danger, to captivity, and for a second he sways and catches himself against Wyatt again.

"I don't guess you know how much it means you came for me."

He knew. He was there. He saw the red and white sometimes when he wasn't expecting it, creeping up on him from the dark corners of his mind.

He reminded steady, when the boy faltered. Held him up with that easy, unfailing grip.

"Ya told me not to follow you," he said, a low murmur. "But I promised to look after ya, Howard. Little spat wasn't gonna change that yer important to me."

"I know it don't mean much when I didn't do nothing but lay in the mud tied up," he says, "but I'd've come for you too. If you ever needed me."

It's never been the case, and that fact looms in Howard's calculations of love and guilt and fear. But he hopes Wyatt knows.

So he takes it a step further and says something he hopes he never had to back up. "Even against Aunamee."

His mouth curled, a gentle pull upward at one corner and he reached out, squeezing Howard's shoulder gently.

"Yer a good man."

Maybe not all the time, maybe not always for the right reasons, but he tried, and that, Wyatt had found, was often the hardest part of the battle.

(You could lead a horse to water, but you couldn't make it drink.)

"I'm proud of ya."

Howard snorts, not because the idea is silly, but because as independent as he thinks himself, he wouldn't call himself a man. A kid, maybe. A guy. Not a man.

(Something deeper inside stirs and hoards Wyatt's second statement away. It'll be a hot coal to keep him warm on cold nights.)

They walk a bit further, Howard occasionally tipping as he loses balance. He's out of breath before they make it around the clearing. It's awful, feeling so weak again. When they're back to the cave he lowers himself to the ground and curls up next to Eponine.

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I Would Crack the Clouds Open Just to Show You Heaven [Closed]

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