patheticvillain | fifty-three ➢ video

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fifty-three ➢ video

[Cassel's in his room, rearranging his drawer of scraps in some order discernible only to him. Ilia is perched on a high shelf, his eyes narrowed and tail twitching, disturbed by the commotion and looking ready to jump down onto Cassel's shoulders at any moment. As he rummages, Cassel addresses the camera; the moment he turns towards it, a bruise slides into view on his left temple, light and mottled black. He seems not to notice it.]

A few things. First of all, if anybody who's not all Admiral-ed up has a problem with the power outages, I think - I think I can make flashlights and lamps that don't need to be powered. [He's speaking specifically to Morgana here, but he doesn't know everybody's hangups, either, so he's leaving it open to the Barge as a whole.]

Second of all, has anybody actually gotten anywhere with the ship? Steering it or anything? Because this seems like it's getting kind of. Critical. [As Dean so astutely pointed out.]

Last thing - I know nobody cares right now, but we still need staff for the gym. At least one more person. If you feel like going slightly less stir-crazy while we're marooned in the middle of nowhere, apply now.

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[He believes that. He honestly does. Because isn't that what he's supposed to be doing here, believing in people? Even when it's hard. He wonders if he would've trusted Zane to keep his hands to himself after someone struck him, remembers what everybody said to him after the first time, years ago in the infirmary bed, that it hurts other people when he lets this happen.]

[There's a twinge of guilt there, but not much.]

It was Pietro.

Who?

[Then it clicks, and it's such a blank surprise that it actually shocks him out of being pissed for a second.]

The new guy? That little asshole?

[Cassel can't help it; he laughs, bright and pleased.]

Yeah. That little asshole.

[He doesn't get it.]

What the fuck are you sticking up for him for?

[Then he does get it, he thinks: Anya. Anya is friends with Cassel. Mickey scowls, eyes darkening. Family is one thing, but that's not fair, he thinks. Pietro doesn't get to do whatever the fuck he wants just because Anya's declared him off-limits, severed heads or no. He wouldn't stop someone from going after Mandy if she'd done something to earn it.

It doesn't occur to him that Cassel might have been the one to earn it.]

Fuck no. Asshead needs to learn that ain't the way shit goes up here.

[Cassel rolls his eyes, flopping down on the bed and rubbing the bridge of his nose.]

Yeah, man, but he didn't do anything. That's what I'm trying to tell you.

[He didn't do anything Cassel didn't ask for, he means. It barely rates as pain to pay attention to, in Cassel's opinion. A few scratches and scrapes - when he was an inmate, he got worse than this all the time. Even then, he fucking asked for it.]

He hit you? You hit him first?

I didn't hit him first. I told him to hit me.

...what?

Why?

Because I thought it'd make him feel better.

[That's only about half of the reason. The other half, Cassel doesn't want Mickey to know, even if, at this point, he might be able to guess.]

Are you fucking...

[Kidding? But he does, then, see the shape of it, and he trails off into silence. Not the good, comfortable kind.]

You're not.

[Why do you care? Cassel had snarled, deflecting for himself, not for Pietro. It's not the first time this has happened.]

What the fuck is wrong with you?

[No, he's not kidding. And no, he can't answer that question, what the fuck is wrong with you, like it's simple or it's straightforward or it's even something he can wrap his mind around. Some days it feels like everything is wrong with him.]

[This is why, or part of why, he wants to be so close to people like Mickey. Because compared to him, they're normal. He wants to ask, Did I ever tell you how Zane and I met?, but he doesn't, just laughs, hollow and low, shrugging.]

You tell me.

[Mean though he knows Cassel can be sometimes, that laugh sounds more like Ian to him. Ha ha, okay, calm down, psycho. Like it's crazy that Mickey is upset. He is upset, it's fucking upsetting, but he doesn't know any words to explain how or why. Don't? Stop? Hasn't he said them before? Has he?]

Grow the fuck up, Cassel.

[He knows simultaneously that lashing out is probably the wrong move and that he has no idea what the fuck else to do. He can't take care of this. You can't even take care of yourself, Zane whispers in his head, as right now as he was then.]

[It's possibly the worst thing he could have heard right now, especially because he knows that Mickey is right. He does need to grow up. He's always needed to and he's never been able to, not now, not ever, not for anybody. Not even for Chris. He's not good enough, he's not going to be good enough, and he should just fucking stop trying.]

[The look on his face is - not even angry. Not sad. Just frozen for a long moment, a silent beat that he wants to fill with something but has no idea what even to start with.]

[Then he throws something - a thick piece of wire - at the communicator, knocking it off his desk and onto the floor. There's a curse in the background, past the gloomy underside of his desk, and then the slam of the cabin door. He's gone.]

Fuck.

[Big surprise: he fucked up. Mickey is no genius, but he doesn't need to be to have seen that that would go badly. He should go after him, he thinks -- but something, some fear or indecision, paralyzes him where he sits. He's not going to do any better in person. In person, he might wind up hitting Cassel himself.

When he does eventually pull up roots, that's what it winds up being for. He can't take care of Cassel, or his family, or himself. He runs again and again into problems he can't solve, can't help, makes fucking worse just by opening his mouth. The only thing he can think to pull out of himself, maybe the only good in him at all right now, is that he can find something better to hit.

Or at least something else. By the next time Cassel sees him, he'll be sporting some fresh bruises of his own.]

[What Cassel does after he leaves the room is he copes. Poorly. He spends most of the night in Anya's room, curled up with her, drinking. He doesn't talk much, or if he does, he tries to forget about it the next day. Sometimes talking doesn't help anything at all. Sometimes talking just makes it worse.]

[Drinking shouldn't help as much as it does. But when he wakes up the next morning with a headache and a dry mouth, it's at least something else to focus on. He uncurls from his nest of blankets and stretches and prods his bruises to make them hurt, because he can, because he wants to. It's supposed to hurt.]

[He almost doesn't go to work. Mickey's gonna be there, unless he's a bigger douche than Cassel thinks he is. But in the end it's a matter of responsibility. If he can't be responsible for himself, he can at least be responsible for this thing that's bigger than himself.]

[When he enters the gym, the first thing he sees is a big black-and-blue bruise. It tugs his eye, makes his stomach roil, and it takes a minute for him to realize who it belongs to. When he lifts his gaze to meet Mickey's, his eyes are wet, his expression pinched and hurt. What is this, some kind of I told you so?]

[It's not the same for Mickey as it is for Cassel. He doesn't relish his war wounds; he takes no pleasure from the pain once it's been inflicted. For him, it's all about the adrenaline, and now that it's past all he can do is feel hollow and achy.

He's trying to get it back at the punching bag when Cassel comes in. His knuckles are bandaged under their wraps, but he's still hitting hard and fast as a runaway train. He doesn't like the pain, but there's a certain grim satisfaction in the way it lances through his hands with every smack of his fists against the bag. It's real. It's solid. Maybe that's what really drives him into all these fights: with all the problems chasing each other endlessly in his head, there's something about being able to hit something heavy with his hands and hear it crack.

The sound of the door comes to him only distantly, but he stops anyway, fighting to catch his breath, wiping the sting of sweat away from his eyes and the cuts on his face. He turns, spots Cassel, and goes still, expression hunted and guilty.]

What?

[It doesn't connect for him just yet what the look of betrayal is for.]</small

Edited 2015-05-18 03:04 (UTC)

[He opens his mouth, closes it again, tries to make sense of things. He did a bad thing, he knows he did. The part of him that still remembers a bare hand and an electric magic touch wants to fall down on his knees, sob, apologize, make it better by being anything that Mickey wants him to be. If it was Shandra--]

[But it's not. He has to forcibly wrench his thoughts off that track. Mickey can't hurt him like that. He can hit him, he could probably kill him if he really tried to, but he can't take away what makes him him.]

[Cassel hopes he wouldn't want to. But sometimes it's hard to know. The parts of him that are intrinsically Cassel are also the parts that hurt other people, over and over and over again, that make people turn their backs on him. Tell him to grow the fuck up.]

[Swallowing, he shakes his head. What ultimately comes out is helpless and small.]

You got hurt.

[Mickey figures it out then -- what Cassel thinks happened -- and shakes his head. He moves away from the bag and goes to sit down, straddling one of the benches.]

I got in a fight.

[He starts unwrapping his hands with a veil of disinterest, like it's just something that needs doing. It is, but he also wants Cassel to see. Underneath the wraps the bandages around each fist are mottled, a fresher, darker red where they hit the bag, but brown and rusty elsewhere with the lingering stain of yesterday's blood. Maybe not the nicest thing to look at, but proof in their own way: he didn't do this to give Cassel a taste of his own medicine or to make some kind of point. He gets into fights. It's what he does.]

You should see the other guy.

Edited (SORRY) 2015-05-18 23:03 (UTC)

[Not the nicest thing to look at, but Cassel's eyes are drawn anyway. The blood is refreshing, somehow, a reassurance that things aren't as he expected them to be. Still not great - he expects that he knows the reason Mickey was so angry that he had to get into a fight in the first place - but better than he thought, anyway.]

[He didn't make Mickey mad enough to lash out on purpose. He hasn't lost another friend. This, he can deal with this.]

[His smile is hesitant, quick as a flash and gone, but he attempts it, anyway, and it lingers around his eyes as he crosses the floor to sit next to Mickey on the bench. Close enough to feel his body heat, not close enough to touch. A compromise.]

You fuck him up?

[Mickey tenses slightly as Cassel comes near, watching him with shadowed eyes until he settles down next to him. Then he settles down again, too, grateful for the compromise. He shifts, bringing his leg over so they're both facing the same way.]

I guess.

[He shrugs. He and Tig had both walked away at the end of it, which means that it's far from as bad as it could have been. He finishes with the wraps and tosses them carelessly aside, then flexes his fingers with a grimace. Maybe the bag hadn't been the best idea today.]

[He watches Mickey's knuckles, the way they move under his manipulation. It's been a really long time since he got into that kind of fight. He wonders if it's better, if it makes you feel better, than what he does, if it makes people less angry with you, because he doesn't feel very angry with Mickey now. Maybe he should.]

Does that mean you're not mad at me anymore?

[It comes out rawer than he means, and he looks down at his hands hanging between his knees. He's tired of being weird and fucked-up and vulnerable, but he doesn't want to leave, either, not until he gets his answer.]

Edited 2015-05-19 02:07 (UTC)

What the fuck does one thing have to do with the other?

[He glances at him out of the corner of his eye, his confusion genuine. He'd hit Tig, not Cassel. It had gotten all that extra energy out, yeah, but that's all.

Then again, there's the other fact at hand: that he was never really angry with Cassel to begin with. Not angry. That had come when he couldn't handle any of the rest. He frowns down at his hands and curls them into loose fists, his voice going quieter and less sharp.]

I don't get why you do that shit.

Edited 2015-05-19 02:19 (UTC)

I don't know. [He really doesn't. He was just kind of assuming.] Victory forgiveness or something.

[His gaze slides away like oil on water, snagging on the weights and the still-swinging bag. He's never gotten or given a good reason for it. Once again he finds himself thinking of Kon, how disappointed he'd be. This isn't how a warden's supposed to act.]

It makes me feel better. And this time . . . I thought it'd help him, too.

[He had felt so grounded, afterwards. Like one stupid thing was in his control. A leftover of his old life: if people are going to hurt him anyway, he might as well control how.]

That's not good, Cassel.

[Now it's Mickey's turn to sound raw, and more than he means to, as well. He's briefly relieved that Cassel isn't looking to see the flash of pain that he knows passes across his face with it. He bites it back, covers it up with a sigh, rubs at his eyes like he can push the feelings back inside if he just tries hard enough.

But then, that's really his fucking problem, right? They're all locked up in him, lodged under his throat and in the pit of his stomach, growing sharper and harder to manage every time he gets into something like this. Each and every time: he lets someone in, lets them in until he has no choice but to... give a shit, his mind supplies, unwilling to go near the obvious word. Until he has no choice but to give a shit, and then they lay something at his feet that he can barely even understand, let alone help with. Let alone take care of.

He presses the heels of his hands harder into his eye sockets, then lets them drop again once he sees stars.]

I don't-- [He bites his lip.] Do you-- do you think you need help or something?

[Cassel didn't mean to put this on Mickey, is the thing. If he knew what he was doing - if he honestly understood how hard he was making it to just function, to just give a shit - he'd leave, make it so Mickey didn't have to. Which is part of the problem.]

[He doesn't want to lay anything more on the line here. It feels instinctively not only like he's done something wrong but like he continues to do things wrong, every second he's sitting here. Like he's actively fucking up Mickey's life by being near him. Like he's cursed.]

[I don't need help, I need Zane back, he thinks, and bites his lip hard enough that it doesn't come out.]

I don't need help. I'll be okay. You don't have to worry about me.

[A bright smile as he turns to Mickey again, all sunny bullshit.]

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