thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Roland and Alain
What| bombs!
Where| western lowlands of the Medieval-Fantasy section
When| beginning of week 3
Warnings/Notes| none

Strange, this. There's so much that's strange here, and not a single bit of it that's natural - but you wouldn't know it here and now, in the middle of a field with a small fire in front of him, gentle wind blowing, noises of animals here and there around him. This field could be anywhere. The fact that Alain's here makes it even stranger - perhaps things are different for Alain, as he only has to look at Roland's face for evidence of just when and where they are. But part of Roland's mind keeps telling him that this must be a good two decades ago, two at least. Back in the days when he and his tet traveled, explored, slept under the stars together. Old men do often get caught dreaming back on their youth, on their good old days, but that is not what his happening here because things back then were not quite good. Not on the whole. But there'd been times...

Looking at Alain is strange. It's easier in the Capitol, in that tower in which the tributes are kept. With any of those surroundings, it's usually easy to keep his mind in one place. Here there's nothing but grass and sky around, the sparse but long-familiar makings of a camp laid out in front. An old, dead friend at his side. Roland keeps having to remind himself.

He catches himself frowning at Alain again, and breaks his own gaze by leaning forward and poking a stick at the unfortunate creature cooking over their fire. "This ought to be about done," he says and looks up toward the sky, into the distance. He isn't looking for anything. That doesn't mean, though, that he isn't going to see anything. He is going to see something in that sky very soon.

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Alain looks up from leafing through Homilies and Meditations, the travel-worn pages growing more dog-eared by the day, and nods a little. "I'd hope so," he agrees, his voice low and quiet, and tucks the book back into his jumpsuit, close to the heart. "My stomach's starting to think my throat's been cut." It comes out dry, without a great deal of humour, but it's something. It would have been humour, he thinks bleakly, once upon a time. And Bert would have laughed and poked fun at me, and there would be warmth here. Instead, he can't get past the space between them, the difference.

He follows Roland's gaze, looking thoughtful. "Do you ever get used to it?" he asks, after a moment. "The stars changing? Looking up, and never seeing Old Mother?"

Roland, of course, completely misses the opportunity for humor. His mind is on the question instead. He hadn't considered it, not consciously - so far as he'd ever gotten with that thought was that the stars were different because the world was different, and that was all there was to it.

"Aye," he says, after a moment of thought. "Those stars've guided us as far as they can. That part of our tale's over now. You get used to that." But here's where he starts glancing sideways at Alain again, the type of glances which hope to be subtle but never really will be. Because, well- Well, during the latest round of exposees the boy Aang had been forced to see again the destruction of his own people. A little while after, he and Roland had talked about it. Roland hadn't connected their discussion to Alain, not at the time. But in these weeks walking, sleeping, hunting next to Alain, there's been time for Roland to give Alain a lot of those not so subtle glances. Time for an idea to slip its way into his head.

He can't look at Alain as he says it. He leans forward instead, moving their dinner from the fire. "After-" The words 'Jericho Hill' slip around his tongue and refuse to come out. He goes a little more vague instead. "After the end, I walked for a long time. I told you that, I think, but I didn't tell you what it was like. I don't know if I can describe it any better than that. I walked, and walked, and didn't think about anything. Not any of it. Not for a long time. But you-"

Roland sits back, looks up from a dinner that his hands have apparently begun to carve up fairly thoroughly, or as thorough as you can be with only a sharpish rock with which to do it. He looks at Alain straight-on. "You'll get used to the stars, I'm sure. But you haven't yet. Aang - the boy who lives on my floor, don't know if you've met him but I'm sure you've seen one another - he offered to hear, if I'd tell him of that which was my home. To remember it with me. But I've never offered the same to you. I don't know why. Alain-" Roland's mouth stays open for a second, because for this second words escape him. If he's lucky, Alain will read them in his face. Whatever they are.

"Because you know what I'd say, perhaps." Alain looks at Roland, his eyes heavy with a weariness that's older than his years. "What I could say of home, you know already. I could rattle through every room we used to walk through, every joke we shared, every man we saw fall... What would that serve, but to make its loss keener? And what I cannot say weighs heavier the more I try. The more I see the miles and years you walked without me."

He falls quiet for another long, heavy moment, looking away from Roland to stare instead into the fire. At last, he says quietly, "There's too much I can't say, not because I don't want to, but because there aren't the words for it. And sometimes I can say it, but not to you, and every time that happens, it feels like another part of me dies. Roland, I..."

And he cuts that off mid-word, looking up sharply as the first light streaks across the sky. "Do you see that?"

For what is not the first time in Roland's life but may as well be, Roland wants to ignore what may be a matter of life and death. He wants to talk to Alain. Needs to. But of course, not a second passes before Roland pushes that aside. Things are as they are, and if that means the thing Roland's been chewing over for more than a week has to be put back on the shelf now, well, it has to. "No," he says, and feels some distant shame that he was too caught up in talk and worry to notice. He pushes that aside, too. "But I hear it."

He does. A small, distant sound, a small, distant impact, and a second later one not so distant. He looks at Alain, then stands, quickly shoving what little's been left out back into his purse. The meat, he leaves. Pity, but better to keep his purse and all his few belongings in this place from smelling edible. He trusts Alain to do the same, but checks on him anyway once he's finished with his own. "Where's it coming from? Can you tell?"

Of course he does not ask what or how, because wasting time on that will get them killed. It's a gamemaker trick, as all new and strange things in every arena turn out to be, and that is all the what he needs. Where, now that's a question that matters. Where might give them some safe place to go, or at least a safe direction. If there is one.

"Downwind," Alain says, after a moment's consideration, shouldering the gun he took from Altair and pressing his lips together. "I smell burning." He's already gathered up his own few belongings, and, like Roland, abandons the meat without more than a cursory stab of regret. "If we head to the mountains, we might avoid it." Or, he doesn't say - doesn't feel he has to - they might be trapped in rough, unfriendly terrain if whatever it is keeps on coming.

The mountains, unfortunately, are also downwind, and a good ways away - but without knowing any more about this, any decision feels as good as all the others. Roland doesn't waste time dithering over it. Instead he nods and starts toward the mountains, and as he sees more of that light that Alain saw, hears more of the noises, he begins to run. There's an odd moment where he turns to Alain, mouth already open to tell him to pace himself. It's been so long since he's done something like this with a gunslinger, hasn't it? Roland closes his mouth, looks up toward the sky. Not heading toward the woods on their other side was a good decision, at least temporarily. He can more clearly see what's coming this way, and in a field like this, the only debris they'll have to worry about is dirt. If they're lucky.

Alain has already settled into his pace, a couple of steps behind Roland, and if he sees that moment of uncertainty in Roland, he doesn't answer it. (He does see it, as it happens - aye, sees it very well, and feels a dull stab of grief at it, his understanding of the workings of Roland's mind still plenty strong enough to guess at what it means. But it isn't a long moment, and they don't have the luxury of stopping to consider)

It feels painfully familiar, running from the thunder and fire of explosions, with the smell of smoke in his nostrils and Roland at his side. It's a familiarity that's almost nostalgia, even though there's nothing pleasant about any of the times they've spent fleeing.

The explosions are growing nearer, louder. The smoke is clearly visible now, and there's an edge of heat to the air. Alain looks back without flagging his pace, then curses quietly under his breath, veering sharply left as he sees a bomb fall right where they've just passed.

The explosion still knocks him off his feet. He raises his arm as he falls, sheltering himself from the fallout of stone and earth, and rises back into a run.

Roland, too, is knocked off his feet and he rolls into the fall, rolls smoothly back up, and then there's a couple awful seconds where he realizes he's lost Alain. It's a concept he should be well used to, the way all the dirt kicked up by the heavy, huge impacts blocks sight, the way those clouds of dirt mean that his companion could be killed in a second and Roland might not have even noticed. He is well used to it, in a general sense. That doesn't mean it's not a shock, though, an awful one, and he keeps moving forward, sparing more attention to the space beside him than that in front. He'll probably notice if any other bombs fall nearby. And the crater he's heading toward, of course he'll notice that too. After he finds Alain. Right after that.

Alain presses his lips together, trying not to breathe too deeply - he knows how easy it is to get a lungful of dust, to be caught coughing yourself silly when you need to be running - and casts about in the chaos for Roland. Blood runs down from a shallow cut on his forehead; he blinks it out of his eyes and keeps moving.

He sees Roland's figure, dim through the dust, at almost the same moment he nearly falls into the crater himself. Catching himself just in time, he shouts "'Ware, Roland! 'Ware ahead!" and tries to calm his heart, which went into overdrive when his foot slipped over the edge of the deep crater. He could have broken a leg, he thinks dimly, or worse.

Roland's glance ahead confirms the warning and he gives a couple instants of consideration to it, and then heads around the edge and toward wherever that voice had come. The sleeve of his jacket, tied around his neck, is pulled up to cover his nose and he keeps his mouth shut. No need to call back to Alain, so he doesn't. He heads toward Alain instead, takes his closest hand in a tight grip, and carries on forward.

"Alright?" He shouts it, leaning forward toward Alain's ear, because he can't quite tell whether that on his friend's forehead is a simple cut or something worse. They've been lucky so far, for the maybe minute that they've been running through this. To reach shelter, they'll have to keep that luck for far longer. But he's got Alain, now. Even if that blood on Alain means something worse than a cut, he's got him, and anything more they'll deal with.

"Alright!" Alain shouts back, over the lingering ringing in his ears, and ducks his head as they go on running. The thunder of the bombs pounds and echoes around his head, giving him a familiar sense of distance, and the adrenaline surges through his veins. He leaps over a boulder without looking, his agility belying his stout build, and raises his free arm in front of his face to defend against the smoke. "You?"

"Alright!" Roland shouts it back, keeping pace easily. Old he may be, reactions not so fast as they were in his prime, but he's fast enough now. Well fast enough to keep up with a gunslinger perhaps half his age. Which is fortunate, because if he couldn't keep up he'd have to let go of Alain's hand. In the interests of avoiding this terrible fate he leaps the boulder at the same moment Alain does and by the time they end up back in the Capitol the two of them will find that at least a couple Capitol businesses have started using that moment in their shoe and fashionably-hydrating-sports-drink commercials.

"Just keep-" The end of that sentence, thankfully, was predictable, because as as things turn out no one ever gets to hear it. Just keep running can be inferred. Less thankful is the reason he never says it - though being blown to one side by the force of a nearby blast is unquestionably better than being hit directly. Still, it sends him tumbling, and in the corner of his eye he makes out the ragged edge of a crater which he might be rolling toward.

And even now his grip on Alain doesn't loosen. It might, if the man in question tries hard and fast at doing it. Either way, Roland is heading down.

It doesn't even occur to Alain to let go of his dinh's hand, or to do anything but keep a tight grip on his gun as he, too, is sent flying. But he was a little further from the blast, and catches his balance quicker. He can't stop them from careening down into the crater, not without letting go, but he has the reflexes and the presence of mind to slow them a little, catching at rocks and clods of earth to break their fall, praying all the time that none of it is enough to break the gun.

So they fall, but less hard than they might, and at last Alain catches one crooked arm on an outcrop of rock, and hangs there for a moment, breathing heavily, before dropping the last couple of feet. His face is red with effort, under the dust and grime, and without thinking he collapses back under the spar of rock to catch his breath.

Roland's thinking, in this one way, runs along the same lines as Alain's and so Roland casts an eye over that gun. It'll need a going over as soon as they have enough peace to do it, but it looks alright.

That first instinctive urge satisfied Roland sits back, feels the reassuring, solid life of Alain close beside him, catches his own breath and listens to Alain catching his. Somewhere in the distance there's another impact. "I'd help you mourn," Roland finds himself saying, suddenly. "You could tell me anything once. Unless that's an old man misremembering his glory days. But I remember - we could speak of anything, when it suited us. Is that how it was, Alain? In our long-ago?"

There's another impact, somewhere. Roland doesn't seem to notice.

"That's how it was." Alain's voice, over the ringing in his ears, sounds curiously flat to him, and rough with exertion. His chest aches, and he feels like the start of one big bruise. Still, he's already starting to go over the gun, hands checking over its unfamiliar outer casing as he squints for any damage. It's easier, right now, than looking at Roland - and more important, even to him. "But that was our long-ago. The wheel's turned, and the world's moved on."

Then he does look at Roland, looks at him long and hard and forgets, for the moment, about the falling bombs (although his hands still check over the gun, probing for damage as though they had a mind of their own). Just for the moment, the world narrows back down to the two of them, with a peculiarly gunslinger intensity. It takes him a moment to formulate what he needs to say, during which time three more explosions sound, the closest of them rattling their stone cover and sending shale raining down on them. Alain ignores that, too, except to twitch the gun out of the way.

"If I had my Touch," he says, at last, "perhaps I could again. Or if you knew and could tell all that's passed for you. If you'd told me straight from the start what happened below Jericho Hill, if I'd known the questions to ask. If, and if, and if." He swallows, the taste of dust and blood thick in his mouth. "And maybe even then, I couldn't. What you've been through isn't something I could imagine, I think. You're a different man." He pauses for a moment before continuing, not for want of the concept, but trying to choose the best words in the face of the Capitol's limitations. Now would be the worst time to stutter and stumble. "Still my father, still my friend, still my most beloved. But a different man, Ro'. Not just age. Not just the days we lost." He breaks off to shelter his head, as another explosion makes the rock shelf creak, but doesn't stand. He'll have to, soon - if they stay here, they'll be flattened - but now he's started, it's hard to stop this flow of confession, of hard-won truth. The words come out faster, now, choked, unlike his usual steady, measured way of speaking. "You killed me, Roland, and it isn't anger that fucks me up so much, isn't blame or anything so dumb as that. It could've been your shell or his, but it doesn't matter. You killed me, aye, and him too, and we all faced it gladly, neither of us would have held it against you for a second, neither of us would have truly blamed you. What fucks me up is... it was you. What did it do to you? What would it have done to any of us? To feel that wave of k-k-separation crashing, to be the one standing at the end of it, to be all that's left, what does that do to you? How can I tell you pain? How can I tell you anything, after I was the beginning of that wave, after..."

They've stayed here too long. Alain breaks off mid-spiel at the whistle of another falling bomb, and springs to his feet to start running again.

Roland springs to his feet, too, and for a few moments the only thoughts in his head are of scrambling out from this crater, of staying close to Alain, and since somewhere in all that they've unclasped their hands he hooks one of his in the clothes at Alain's waist, like a child holding on to his father's belt to keep from losing him in a crowd. But if it does help Roland keep from losing Alain amidst all this, he doesn't give a rat's ass how it makes him look.

"You let guilt close you from me?" There's a small thought in Roland's mind of Cort, Cort and the cuff he'd give Roland if his old teacher heard him gabbing like a gossiping maid while both his and Alain's lives are in danger. But jumping obstacles, using all his senses to predict when the next impact is going to be and how to avoid it, those things feel as if they come almost automatically, and there's a stubbornness in Roland now. This is something that needs to be said and it needs to be said now, while they both still can say it.

"We're different men!" He shouts it but only because he has to, needs to make sure he's heard. "I'm different! But if you call me d- d- f-father-" There's a pause as he pushes at Alain, tries to pull him into a roll from which they'll both, ideally, roll smoothly up and start to running again. He keeps talking almost the whole time. "If you call me guide, if you speak true, how can it be so hard to open to me?"

Alain rolls with it, smoothly and without thinking. He's not as practiced in this as Roland, but he's still a gunslinger, and one who's spent a fair amount of time running. The gun he keeps a tight hold of, cradled up against his chest as he comes back to his feet.

"Not guilt!" he shouts back, over the deafening thunder of explosions, and coughs. "I remember the face of my father, Ro', I'm not so weak to lay blame with myself either!" And it's true. He still feels some guilt over his failure, but the worst of it passed weeks ago, and it was never really the guilt of blame. He's known for a long time now that there was nothing more he could have done. It doesn't totally ease his guilt and shame at failure, but it does mean he's removed it from his decision-making process, smoothed over it a little in his mind.

He veers sharply to the left, ducking and pulling Roland with him as he sees a bomb fall towards their right. "It's fear!" he shouts, when the thunder of that impact fades. "You're closed, Ro'! Not by choice, but something in you is closed, I can't know what or how without hurting you, and I...!" The rest of that sentence is lost in the deafening blast of two more bombs, although his mouth goes on moving.

Under most circumstances, Roland can read lips. But here there's dirt and dust and maybe Roland doesn't want to read Alain's lips now, doesn't want to hear any more about the deep, unassailable enemy inside his own mind or how necessary it's become for him to be treated like glass because of it. Maybe he's got no taste, suddenly, for hearing one more word about Alain's decision to close things off between them completely for fear that Roland's delicate mind will crack, and maybe he's got no taste for the whole of godrotted Panem to hear one more word about it, either. He'd rather wind his fingers tighter in Alain's clothing and pull, increasing his already demanding pace and trying to tug Alain into speeding up with him.

"You call yourself my bondsman!" He does still need to yell over all the noise but it isn't that old battleground yell he's using, that tone of voice made to drive strong over shouting and gunshots and dying screams. His voice is strong and loud, aye, but it isn't clear. "And you decide this for me? You?"

Another blast jolts him and he stumbles sideways, feels another one of those thrills of danger that turns the world around him sharper, heats his veins. Roland keeps his fingers tight in Alain's clothes. He is going to walk through this chaos and come out living on the other end of it, and Alain is going to be by his side. Alain isn't going to think of putting any distance between them, not for a second. As dinh it isn't just Roland's right to decide this for Alain, it is his duty, and accepting otherwise is not even considered as an option. Roland frowns forward at the promised shelter of the mountains, and doesn't turn when he speaks.

"You say you're my man! Are you? Or have you decided yourself my damned cradle-am- a-am-a- cradle-mother! Keep up, Alain, once we get there I'll need you to change my c-cl- c-c- my godsdamned diapers!"

Edited (nitpicking) 2015-10-24 00:46 (UTC)

Alain flinches, pale and greyish under the blood and dirt that smears his face, but he takes it on board, much as it stings. Because Roland is right, and he knows it - right most of all because Alain knows his own cowardice when he sees it, knows that he made that choice without consulting Roland because he was afraid of this, aye, more afraid than anything. There's no nobility in his attempts to save Roland pain, only a desperate scrabbling for solid ground, and for an excuse not to talk about the sick hurt festering under his skin.

"I cry your pardon!" he shouts back, his own voice cracking, and yanks Roland down as a large chunk of rock is blasted barely over their heads by one of the explosions around them. "I forgot the face of my father, I know it! Believe me, Roland, I know it! But I turned coward in the face of it, for it's not death I fear, it was never death I feared...!" He ducks again, thrown up against Roland by a too-close blast, and comes up with his eyes wet with tears. "It was losing you, Roland - if you'd died, I would have mourned but I could have moved on, but losing you... In the face of that I lost my reason. And I cry your pardon." His voice is quieter now, hoarse with emotion and barely audible above the chaos. "I thought better of myself than this."

Roland may not have the time to stare at Alain's face but he does it anyway. It's a young face, wet with tears, and who's the cause of them? Why, Roland is. Roland, and the temper he doesn't tend to remember that he has. The temper he's learned to keep under control since those long gone younger days - or maybe it isn't so under control as all that, not anymore, because this is at least the second time he's done this to Alain and how completely his friend folds in the face of Roland's anger always collapses that anger completely, like a fire with all the air smothered out from it.

There's no time for this, but he tightens his arms around Alain's back and leans forward to press a kiss to his friend's forehead. "Alain," he says, and is glad they're close enough that for this moment, he doesn't have to yell. Any other noises from now until he's said his little piece can be ignored.

"Bondsman," Roland says, and presses a soft, simple kiss on the gunslinger's lips. "Pardon gladly given, and when we reach a quiet place I'll cry your own. I questioned your loyalty and promptly acted like a squalling child, instead of a man who deserves it. Again. We ought not speak any more on this here. It isn't far now. Are you ready to run? Take my hand, dear, and this time I'll act like a man whose grip you can trust. Are you ready?"

Edited (i need to stop worrying about details XD) 2015-10-25 21:32 (UTC)

"As ever I was," Alain says, his voice low and hoarse, and reaches back to take Roland's hand. "As ever I will be." There's no room for unreadiness, he thinks to himself between the thunder of the bombs, not in this world or any other. If anything should prove it to him, it's this: that the world doesn't stop for him to weep, or Roland to rage, or either of them to rest. It never does. It never has. You live, you die, and the wheel goes on turning, and will you or never-so, you go along with it.

So he goes along with it. He pushes down all that he wants to say and all that he can't, holds on to Roland's hand like it's the last solid thing in this whole shifting world, and runs.

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