Screaming into the Wind || Sebastian and Puck/Noah (Post Interviews)

Sebastian does go back to the second floor eventually. He locks himself in his room, mirroring Quinn and leaving Schuester alternating between heartfelt speeches directed at the deaf doors that hide away his equally uncaring  tributes and overly pleased celebratory comments about how memorable Two was in the interviews.  

Sebastian leaves after Schuester finally gives up and goes to bed. He stands for second in the hall with his forehead pressed against Quinn’s door, trying and failing to work up the courage to knock and the inspiration to think of something he could possibly say if by some miracle she answered, before exiting the suite completely and taking the elevator back down to the ground floor .

The elevator has no problem dropping him off on the empty and echoing bottom level, but he finds his keycard refusing to open up the doors to the training floor.

Access revoked. Right there in red on the screen.

He had been planning on grabbing an ax and demolishing what remained of the training dummies after private sessions.  The only kind of therapy Sebastian Smythe would ever engage in.

Apparently the Gamemakers or the training center staff had anticipated this move, and, deciding anything that could possibly make Sebastian feel better was not to be allowed, cut his options off before his plan was even made.

It doesn’t occur to him that maybe the training center floor is simply closed to all the tributes now because training is officially over.  The world revolves around him. It always has.

He beats the door and adds a wordless scream to the dull thump his fists make, then heads into the kitchens behind the  empty skeleton of the tribute cafeteria—thanking whatever higher power there might be that even the Avoxes have retired for the night.

He wastes no time in locating the cooking liquor, and, in between long pulls of some admittedly top notch Capital whiskey, grabs a large metal ladle that’s hanging from the ceiling over the long kitchen island and uses it to start clubbing dents into the front of one of the refrigeration units.

Therapy.

He is distantly aware of approaching footsteps. Oh good, right on time. That would probably be some kind of security officer or whatever the Capital stationed equivalent of a Peacekeeper was, ready to subdue or sedate him. Bring it on. Sebastian was sure he could get in at least one good hit with the ladle before being shot.

It’s not a Peacekeeper.

“Oh, hello Noah.” Sebastian turns around, arms spread wide in a parody of a warm welcome,  now bent from misuse ladle in one hand and whiskey bottle in the other. “Come to tell me how all my problems are my own damn fault? Come to tell me how I’ve driven away anyone who might have ever loved me and then had the nerve to whine about being left alone? Well, hate to break it to you, Noah, but I fucking know that already.” His roar doesn’t have the volume he desires—his throat is still sore and straining from earlier—but at least it has malice.

He turns back to the refrigeration unit and gives one final, vigorous swing, snapping the ladle in half on contact. It’s then he realizes his cheeks are wet. No telling when he started crying. Probably long before he even heard Noah’s footfalls in the hallway. He drops the broken handle of the ladle and leans bodily against the cool, now slightly buckled metal of the refrigeration unit door.

“What do you want, Noah?” His voice is a whisper and a ragged plead. “What do you want from me?”