interstellar5555 | you go run and tell your friends i'm losing touch

Entry tags:

you go run and tell your friends i'm losing touch

Who: Finnick Odair and Johanna Mason
What: an identity crisis
When: mid-January
Where: Virgo HQ
Warnings: maybe talk of the murder games or murder party

Look, it's been a hell of a month.

Since the party, Finnick's been making a slow recovery into something that feels something like sanity again, and it's been a fairly smooth road. A couple strange visions, or memories, or whatever you want to call them, but nothing like the the one he had had at the party, the one that mercifully stopped him from doing something terrible. That one was vaguely horrifying, but the rest have been benign, easy to brush off as recurring dreams even if they're too vivid for that. Finnick's dedicated to everything being normal, pouring his energy into the band and generally doing whatever Alex told him to.

Well, until this morning.

He had seen a shouting, cursing girl, covered in some dark, warm liquid, and he was picking her up and carrying her over his shoulder and throwing her into the same shallow ocean he had remembered before. It was vivid, and the smell of blood was so strong, and the feeling of... it wasn't really horror, it was more exasperation, with some fondness mixed in, which didn't really register with him. He'd usually shrug it off as a bad dream, but this was too strong not to be real, and he recognized the girl. It was Johanna.

So here he is, knocking on her door impatiently, not satisfied with trying to rationalize out where this would have come from on his own. There are blessedly no bodyguards within earshot right now, though he did ask one where Nuclear Parliament's penthouse was before he got on the elevator.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Johanna has been keeping away, mostly because she's been freaking the fuck out, and no one needs to see that. But first the label took control of her and made her nearly kill one of her only "friends", and now they've been getting rid of her bandmates one by one. It's frightening, but it doesn't make her scared. It makes her viciously angry. Ever since stabbing Squalo, she's had this itch for violence, this urge to solve her problems through brute force, and it's worrying away at her.

The interruption of someone rapping on her doors is almost welcome. Almost. She's confused, more than anything else, because she doesn't really have people who'd voluntarily visit her. That confusion only multiplies when she swings the door open and sees Finnick there, of all people. Putting one hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows, she asks, "what the hell, Odair?"

In her defense, it's a fair question.

Seeing her again just solidifies the memory in his mind, and he's speechless for a second. Maybe this is an awful idea, maybe he should just brush this one away like he's been doing all along, but he has to figure this out. He can't keep having these familiar feelings and visions and pretend they're not there.

"Do we know each other?" he finally says, and there's a sense of urgency in his tone. "Do you... do you recognize me from anywhere else?"

"Yeah, I recognize you from the big-ass posters with your face on them that hang around HQ every time your shitty band has a concert." Johanna snorts, leaning on the door frame and crossing her arms. "What sort of question is that?"

He sighs heavily, dragging his hands down his face and looking off into the distance as if he's searching for a sign that he's not crazy. He doesn't get one.

"I'm going crazy," he says. He glances up and down the hallway and something tells him he really shouldn't be here, shouldn't be talking about this, but he has to know. He can't keep sitting on all of this and now that he's seen someone he recognizes he needs to investigate further.

"I've been having these images," he says, hushed, making small gestures with his hands, "and I can't figure out what they mean, but today you were in one."

She shuts down at that. The expression on her face goes from judgmental, teasing, to completely blank. Then, she pushes away from the door, gesturing to him. "Get inside." Because this isn't a conversation to be having in a hallway, where anyone could walk by. Johanna might be reckless, but she has some sense of self-preservation. She's not exactly dying for the label to hear something like this and make up a reason get rid of her.

Once he comes in, she shuts the door behind her, sizing him up. He could be lying, but he doesn't look like it. Then again, he's not talking sense like a normal person. So slowly, she asks, "what exactly do you mean by images? And don't fuck around with me."

Finnick comes inside immediately, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shifting uncomfortably on his feet. He's well aware that all of this sounds crazy and he hates saying it out loud, but he's so tired of going through this alone.

"They're like... memories," he says, and he sounds just a bit less frantic than he did out in the hall, "but they're not from anything that's actually happened to me. There are people I don't recognize and things I've done that... I haven't done, I swear I haven't. But there was no one I actually knew until you."

Memories that weren't memories. Well, she knows about that. She's had enough visions that she can't ignore them - but she's not about to tell him that. She's still not entirely sure he's not just pulling her leg, at this point.

"Alright, first of all, that sounds really fake. Just so we're clear." Her fingers drum impatiently against her arm. "And second of all, I haven't been in a great mood for a while. So if you're lying to me, I might just literally kill you." And while it's the sort of thing she would've said just to sound menacing before, she finds herself actually kind of meaning it.

"So what did you remember about me?"

Finnick's first thought is to get defensive, because his self-preservation instinct has been extra touchy lately, but he sets his jaw and decides to move on, steeling himself to recount the image. As he speaks he sounds like someone who really doesn't like cops giving a witness statement.

"We were on a beach. You were... covered in blood and I was carrying you to the water. You were shouting at something or someone, which isn't exactly out of character for you, and I threw you into the water to calm you down or wash you off or... I don't know. It felt like we knew each other." When he finishes, he looks at the floor, waiting for her to tell him he's crazy, to get the hell out. He doesn't know.

She would tell him he's crazy. Honestly, she probably should tell him to leave and never talk to him again. But the beach and the water... Johanna recalls the memory she'd had, the woman she'd killed and the two others who'd retreated to a beach in the distance when she started to pursue them. There's a similarity. She can't deny that.

She hesitates, not looking directly at him, then asks, "what else have you remembered? Besides me?"

She's not throwing him out, which is a good sign. He hesitantly goes on.

"There's more from that beach, some people I don't recognize, an old woman I've seen a few times..." he says. He feels sad when he thinks of the woman, but he doesn't know why. That, he doesn't tell Johanna, and he doesn't tell her about the boy he saw either, the one with the trident in his chest and Finnick's hands on the hilt. That one crosses a line that he's not interested in crossing just yet.

Instead, he looks at her cautiously. "Have you had anything like that?"

She isn't sure if she wants to trust him. But with all this, she isn't sure she has a choice. He remembered her. Her face. What does that even mean?

There's obvious reluctance when she begins to speak, but she does offer, "I remember the beach, but I remember a jungle too. I remember lots of yelling. I remember this one chick from time to time..." She trails off, not sure of whether to continue or not.

But if they're sharing and all, she shouldn't hold back on the details. So she says quietly, in a voice entirely too nice for the subject matter at hand, "and I remember axing this girl in the chest. No big deal."

He's about to agree - the jungle, of course, and it was so hot - but then she mentions the axe. Finnick's expressions is surprised, not horrified, and there's a hint of recognition there too. He looks over his shoulder, checking that no one's there, a paranoid habit he's gotten into over the past month.

"I did it with a trident, one of those... fishing spears. It was a boy, and I was on top of him and I had just..."

He swallows. "I killed him."

It's the first time he's said it out loud. It's so vivid and so terrible, but at least it stopped him in his tracks when he was trying to do it for real. It still feels like it was just a dream compared to what he could have done to Terry.

Okay. So. That's something.

Johanna needs a moment. She needs a moment to cross the room, sit down on her bed, convince herself that she's not going to fly into an unbidden rage in response to this... this shitshow, whatever this is. After a few moments, when she feels less like screaming, she says with feeling, "what the eternal fuck."

She scrubs a hand through her hair, then gestures around the room. "Sit down, somewhere, I guess. If you want." She's a great hostess, okay. And there are more important matters to deal with right now, anyway. Like, "what... what does this shit even mean?"

Finnick pulls the chair out from her desk and sits down. "I don't know what it means," he says tiredly. "I don't understand what's going on, all I know is that I keep getting this feeling like I shouldn't talk about it. Alex tells us to talk to someone if anything's going on, but I can't...."

This is the first time he's said any of this. He's told Keith about the party, but he didn't say anything about the vision he had.

"Yeah, like how we all got feelings that we should stab Pride kids at that party?" Johanna asks with a scoff. "I don't trust anything anymore. I'm, like, ninety percent sure these visions or whatever is something else shady related to our label. We should talk about it."

Ugh, wait-- "I mean, that's not an invitation for you to come over and vent." Gross. "But if you have other not-memories, you should tell me so we can compare."

Finnick nods slowly. He wouldn't dream of using Johanna's bedroom as a place to go vent, but he doesn't need to say that. Sure, he needs to do it sometimes, but he has too much pride to have Johanna be his support system. But enough about that.

"Have you heard of anyone else seeing anything like this?"

She thinks for a moment, then offers, "my bandmate. But she saw her dad dying. Not herself actively killing people. Kind of a massive difference there." After a second, she adds on, "she also said something about a robot suit, so take that with a grain of salt, I guess.

What about you?"

"I never talked about it with anyone," Finnick admits. "Then again, they have fired half my band. Not many people to talk to anymore anyway."

"Tell me about it." She laughs airily, but there's an undercurrent of anger and confusion there that makes it unconvincing. "I have a bandmate, singular, now. This might be the last time you ever see me. Next thing you know, the label will have disappeared me too."

"I don't think that's the goal," he says with a dry laugh. "Still, I don't know what they're trying to get at by changing the line-up so quickly after the success we've had. Alex just keeps telling me 'it's what's best for the band.' Bullshit, in my opinion," Finnick gestures like he's waving off Alex in his mind. The man can be glued to twitter all day and hardly pay any mind to what's going on in reality, but as soon as any discord is detected it's like an insistent little gnat.

"Everything's for the best of the band," she says dryly, and it's actually kind of refreshing, to be able to get all this shit off her chest. "Including, apparently, getting rid of everyone I didn't have a problem with and leaving me with fucking Parker, for some reason. If they don't fill out the ranks soon, I might just disappear myself."

"They'll do it soon," Finnick says, so confident he sounds a little passive. "Our success is their success. It seems like as long as you still want that, you aren't in danger of being let go. Well, that, and making sure you don't piss them off."

He raises an eyebrow at Johanna, wondering if she has the capability to go for very long without doing that.

She meets his gaze with a mild look, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “Who, me? I would never,” she responds, in a voice that says she definitely might. “I’m in this for the music. But if chasing fame will keep me here, well, I’m willing to compromise."

"Then I guess it just depends on how much you're willing to compromise," he says, a little more gravity in the statement. He feels as if he's already compromised so much of himself just at that godawful party, but focusing on work will surely make all that go away, right?

"Whatever keeps me in the game," she responds immediately, without a second thought. And then, a little recklessly, she adds on, "can't get payback if you're not around, right?" Which, of course, is a totally general statement not aimed at anyone above her in rank. Of course.

Something in that kind of scares him, and he wants to tell her not to be so reckless, that they need to protect their friends here by not toeing over the line. Instead, he smiles like he's amused. He waits a beat, thinking on whatever relationship they're supposed to have and coming back to the vision he had about her.

"I should go," he finally says. "We have a recording session coming up soon and they can't do much without their lead, can they?"

"Right. Wouldn't want them to let you go cause of negligence." She nods in the direction of the door, then adds on, "don't forget what I said."

Specifically, the part where if something else happens, he should tell her.

"Don't worry, I won't," he tells her, sending her a habitual smirk over his shoulder as he gets up and heads for the door. He looks a bit worn out now, like all the frantic energy from before has him wiped. But he straightens up as he opens up the door and steps outside.

"I'll see you around."

He closes the door gently behind him and starts on his way back to the quiet penthouse.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

you go run and tell your friends i'm losing touch

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject