Repercussions // [Pckpr Helmsby + Aeron]

[Gamemaker Lauren Kinkade]

I look forward, to dying tonight, drinks till I'm myself,
life's harder every day

There were little joys he'd forgotten, in the twelve month sojourn in the Capitol. The joy of picking out what he would eat for breakfast, the joy of laundering his clothes every day if he chose to do so, the joy of pissing without an audience. He'd been back for almost a full month, and the pleasure just kept rolling in. After his shifts, he would allow himself a beer at the local dive bar before heading home for a scalding hot shower. A month of settling into his routine, and he was still finding pleasure around every corner.

Just not in every alley.

He'd been very careful in Six to avoid the drop spots. His duties had been mostly paperwork. The few times he went into the field, he was part of a phalanx. He was unlikely to ever be allowed on solo patrol again. It chaffed, as much as his crisp new uniform, which hugged his emaciated body far too tightly for his liking.

So when the summons came in for a mission in Seven, he accepted without hesitation. He had a scant week to complete the job and get back to his home base. He spent the first day getting acclimated to the District Seven team and doing preliminary research on the target's home address, job location, usual routine. For two days he tailed Citizen Bonher, recording every interaction. He was lucky that his subject had a fairly usual routine.

On the third night, Nightlocke dressed in plainclothes: roughened jeans, a faded striped shirt, a frayed belt. They were borrowed and they smelled like Seven. He left his hair long over his face, his beard slowly filling in the pale gaps. He looked in the mirror and barely recognized himself. If not for the feeling of the armored vest beneath the shirt and another gun tucked against his calf, he would not have been Nightlocke Helmsby at all.

Under the cover of darkness, he waited for Citizen Bonher to take his nightly walk. He followed half a block back, waiting for them to clear the lights of the lumbermill. "Hey," he jogged to close the distance between them. Nightlocke offered his prey a half smile. "Damn, they always work you that hard? Just had my first shift at this mill. You got a light?" From his shirt pocket, just above the butt of his hidden pistol, Nightlocke draws two cigarettes, the only vice he's still allowed.

banner credit: bad nana rising
lyrics: adema giving in

[flyss]

A e r o n   C a l i x t u s   B o n h e r

As I push myself back into the stark blacks and blues of the night, everything from before I left my house that morning comes crashing back unto Earth like one of the stars in the sky. Stars, I allow myself to think with the softest of voice and the quietest of manners, are like people. They twinkle in the void of space with an elegance of a thousand years, but fall so easily that they're almost clumsy. A solemn smile plays victim on my face as I think this, and as I begin the trek back to the only place in which I seem to belong, the pitter-pattering of my work boots on the pavement is the only sound- aside from a handful of crickets- that fill my ear with every step I take. 

The silence shatters and I hear hurried footsteps struggling to catch up with my quickened pace. 

"Hey," The man who doesn't have a name- nor a face in this lighting- says with something that I make out to resemble a smile; every inch of me waits for him to say something more and as he reaches where I am, every inch of him fulfils that patience. "Damn, they always work you that hard? Just had my first shift at this mill." And then he pauses, pulling out something small and tubed from his breast pocket; I recognize it to be a cigarette, and as he speaks once again, I move my eyes back up from the object to his face.

"You got a light?" He asks, and I nod with a movement so nil that it seems almost non-existent. Quietly, I let a calloused hand reach to where I keep my lighter, a small and sparsely used object that I use to light small fires in my room.

"Yeah man," Pulling it out, I toss the dulled item to him and return my glance back to the direction I'm walking in, my eyes slightly half-lidded out of tire from my work today. As I let my feet take me down the paths that they know by heart, I turn my attention back to the man that had taken spot next to me. "Ya gotta name?" 

I'm sure he does, but I use the words as a filler of sorts- a way to say "hello" to the tranger without actually saying those words in their entirety. After all, he seems nice enough, and as I stick one of my hands in my pocket quietly to show this, the little bit of gear I carry on my back shifts in its place like clockwork. A little company never hurt anyone, right?