thecapitol | [Open] Life is a record playing on repeat

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[Open] Life is a record playing on repeat

WHO| Clara and Dennett, Clara and You
WHAT| Clara's back in the Capitol after her first arena and general other things in the weeks that follow.
WHEN| From a day or so after the Hellrena That Wasn't up until post-D3 announcement.
WHERE| All over
WARNINGS| Slapping of a scientist in one thread. Other than that, not much.

Out in the Capitol (Beginning of Week Four)
There's something about almost dying (or actually dying and being brought back, as the case may be) that makes a person really savor the little things in life. Like shopping. Not that Clara would consider herself a shoppaholic or anything like that, but she's always enjoyed it and it's as good an excuse as any to get out of the tower to explore the city.

Plus after the past few weeks, she could use a little retail therapy to make her feel like her life hasn't spun completely out of control.

Which is what has led her to a store front with signs boasting about their Amazing Tribute Memorabilia At The Best Prices!!!! There are, from what she can see in the window, paintings, photographs, calendars, t-shirts, and a wide variety of other things featuring the faces of a number of people she did and didn't recognize.

"You've got to be kidding me." Clara doesn't mean to say that aloud, but it comes out anyway as she tries to wrap her head around this.

Training Center (Anytime)
To say that Clara doesn't have much in the way of combat training is a huge understatement. The closest she's ever come to it was some self-defense classes and watching her mom's Tae-Bo tapes in high school (and even then, the VCR died when she was 16, which put an abrupt stop to that), and neither of those are all that useful when it comes to surviving in a death match.

She's at a punching bag, sloppily throwing kicks and punches that don't have much strength behind them. If the punching bag was a sparring partner, or an actual assailant, it would be remarkably easy to find an opening to strike back and take advantage of her lack of fighting skills.

Central Commons (Week Five)
The illness running rampant in the Capitol has made Clara more than a little wary about leaving District 10's suite for the past few days. For the most part, the only places she's been willing to go to for an extended period has been downstairs to train or to District 5 to see Alex (and even then, she usually managed to convince him to come up to 10 since there was someone on his floor who had contracted whatever this mystery illness was). But getting the gift of a respirator made her feel a little bit better about getting about going into the more public areas of the building.

Which is why she's sitting alone at a table with a large coffee (that's closer to a dessert of some sort, considering how much chocolate and caramel are in it along with the truly ridiculous amount of whipped cream on top) and a pastry of some sort, occasionally taking off the respirator for a sip or a bite. While she may be reading a trashy romance novel, she's mostly just enjoying the change in scenery and would welcome some conversation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Of course he cares. It's just...complicated. "I'm pretty sure he lasted longer than me." Hahahhahaha, yeah, maybe Dennett should leave the jokes to someone else. Anyone else. He twitches back, because that joke was so bad he figures he's earned another slap.

"When he called you in..." Oh. "Mrs Murphy." If he hesitated any more, he'd be speaking backwards. "...what exactly did he tell you 'happened'?"

She gives him a small, humorless smile. His joke was bad, yes, but anything she could possibly say would be worse, and nobody needs that right now.

Until his question sinks in and any hint of a smile falls off of her face.

"He told me that..." Clara stops, trying to keep her voice even and steady, so as not to fall apart in front of him. It feels wrong telling him this, considering she hasn't even found a way to tell Alex (it's not like there there's an easy way for her to tell the man she had every intention of growing old with that, should they ever find a way home, it wasn't going to happen because he was already doomed), but there's a good chance that he already knows if he knows about the seizure. "...Alex had a psychotic break and killed another officer, and then he had a seizure and...he died. And that he wasn't going to let the media know about the break so David would never have to know and that Alex's legacy would stay intact." Despite her best efforts otherwise, she could feel her eyes welling up. "But I'm sure you already know all of this."

Yyyyyeah, the less said about that joke's miserable heavy floundering...the better. To think he used to consider himself good with patients.

"Oh." There's no surprise in his voice, because he's not really surprised. It's a piece of the puzzle he hadn't had, but he knew Sellars well enough to predict the rough shape. "Mrs--Clara. Alex was fine. He is fine. Well, back in Detroit, he was fine. It was...politics." There's a flappy hand gesture because, well, they never really included him in the political machinations--not that he minded the omission. "They weren't going to wake him up. But I--I--". I what, Dennett? I saved him? Can you really say that? Really?

It takes a moment for his words to sink in. After trying to grieve for Alex when she first arrived her, being reunited with him, and having to deal with her internal battle between wanting to stay here to keep Alex just a little bit longer and wanting to go home to David (as much as she knew that going home was impossible at the moment, it didn't change that gnawing feeling of guilt that grew in her stomach every time she felt grateful for the chance to be with him while she still could), it was almost too much.

"Are you serious?" There's a touch of hope in her voice, though it's decidedly cautious. This roller coaster of losing Alex and getting him back has been emotionally exhausting, to say the least, and the possibility of it ending well in the long run is enough to make all the grief and heartache worth it. There are things she still feels the need to grill him on, like answers for the lies and OmniCorp playing keepaway, but right now that isn't important. And unlike any of the other times Dr. Norton's given her some piece of news about Alex, there's a small smile on her face. "He's really alive?"

Edited 2014-07-07 01:37 (UTC)

"Mrs Murphy. On my life," If that still means anything here? "The last time I saw Alex, he was fine. It was over, all of it. You and David, your son, you were going in to talk with him." A small enough expiation, which didn't undo the wrong Dennett had done to that family, but it had been something, a step to healing them, if not him.

Her small smile grows, blossoming into one that's fuller, but not quite a grin. This is good, possibly one of the best things she's heard in months. "When you say he was fine, you mean he was himself, right? No sedatives or anything?"

Part of him wants to correct her--it wasn't sedatives he'd used on Alex. But that was not the point, pedantic, and fixated on something that wasn't important. So there is a tiny hitch before he answers, as he stuffs a bunch of polysyllabic medical terms back into his brain. "He's...no, Mrs Murphy. No sedatives. He's him."

She hopes that one day he'll wind up correcting her and telling her the truth. But for right now, it's probably for the best that he doesn't spoil the moment, considering how rare the good ones have been lately.

"Thank you so much, Dr. Norton," she says before it occurs to her that she's never really had a chance to say it since Alex came home. Things kept going wrong and, quite frankly, she couldn't bring herself to do it when he wasn't really back. But it needed to be said at some point and now seems like as good a time as any.

"So how much of it was a lie?" She means of what Sellars told her, but if Dr. Norton decides to come clean...well, it's not very likely she's going to slap him at this point.

Maybe when he has some sense of control over his life again, he could revisit the past. Out of slapping distance, though.

"There's...please. Don't thank me." Part of him still aches from the pain of the Congressional hearings. C-SPAN had never been part of his career plan.

"It's complicated, Mrs. Murphy. He decided Alex was...inconvenient. Especially after you went to the media." It was all cost benefit analysis, he was sure--somewhere in Sellars's brain was a handy spreadsheet that made everything look tidy and sensible. "Alex was shutdown, remotely, by Mattox." And ask Dennett how he feels about that upstart intruding in his project.

She's about to make it very clear that, all issues aside, he's pretty much the reason why she still has her husband and that means the world to her. The words die in her throat once he starts to explain and suddenly she has more questions than answers.

"Inconvenient?" There's an edge to her voice that's almost cold. "Stubbing your toe or accidentally leaving your phone at home is inconvenient. People aren't inconvenient." She doesn't want to think about what the other part of it could be, that Sellars (and OmniCorp as a whole) don't see Alex as a person and instead just see him as...well, she isn't sure what, and she doesn't want to know. She's tempted to explain herself and why she went to the press about the situation, but she decides against it. There are more important things at hand. "First off, you can do that? Second, who's Mattox?"

"Mrs Murphy--," please don't slap him again--he's going to edge back just in case. "It's Raymond Sellars. It's how he's always done business. He made it--" Oh, Dennnett, you probably shouldn't say this but maybe she deserves to know. "He made it clear to me that if I didn't get Alex to perform up to his standard, he would scrap the whole program. Alex would have died." For real, this time. And the worst possible way.

"Of course. There was a transciever on his cranial system. Remote access. For, you know, malfunctions." He had only used it once, himself, in China. It had been necessary.

"Mattox is, well, he's the weapons expert." Can we not go into Mattox? It's not Dennett's favorite topic. Not like any of this is.

Clara's really tempted to point out just how unethical that is, but she has a feeling that Dr. Norton's just as aware of that, if not more aware, than she is. So instead of bringing up OmniCorp's ethics (or lack thereof in this situation), she'll go for the other part of what he said. "What, exactly, did you do to get Alex up to Sellars' standard?"

It had never crossed Clara's mind that they could do that. To be fair, it was one of those things that made perfect sense, but she didn't want to acknowledge about what it meant to put Alex in OmniCorp's hands. But there was something more important than that at hand. "Why was a weapons expert given that kind of power?"

Oh, he knows. And it hurts worse than a slap on the face. Especially his own part in it. So he definitely looks uncomfortable--trapped, really--at that question.

"It's complicated." Yeah, Dennett, that isn't going to fly.

"I had to reroute certain portions of his consciousness in certain situations. So that he would react faster." That sounds harmless, right?

Probably not.

"I-I don't know. I didn't know, didn't even think of it, until it was too late!"

That trapped, uncomfortable look really says all that needs to be said. And were it not for that, she'd feel guilty for coming at him like this. Instead it kind of spurs her on since this is the closest she's gotten to getting some real answers.

Also because she kind of likes watching him squirm.

"Is that why the sedatives made him act that way?"

At least she isn't grilling him about Mattox any more since that seems like it probably wasn't his fault.

If she enjoys making old men squirm, then she is having the time of her life right about now, Dennett would guess.

"The seda--" Oh right. See, this is the problem with lying, Dennett--you have to remember the lies. He will try stalling, instead. "A-act what way?" Just so he doesn't confess to, well, more than he should.

Not all old men. Just this one in particular. Hell, after everything's out in the open, maybe not even him (well, eventually).

"The way he acted at the press conference. And after that." He can either come clean or bury himself in more lies. Either way, Clara isn't going to let this go until she has a decent answer other than sedatives magically making Alex act like a zombie for weeks. "I know my husband, Dr. Norton, and that wasn't him. Not really."

He wouldn't argue that he didn't deserve it. It was just...uncomfortable.

Oh. The...press conference. That's what he'd feared. Well, it was time to man up, Dennett. So he draws himself up to his entirely unintimidating height, sucking in a breath to galvanize himself. "No, that wasn't sedatives. He'd had--suffered--a malfunction, when we were uploading the police database. I had to, erm, adjust his biochemicals." There, that sounded maybe not so bad?

It's nice to get a real answer this time, especially since it sounded far more realistic than the lie he had fed her about giving Alex sedatives because he was nervous. "Thank you for finally telling me the truth," she says with a harsh tone in her voice.

Though, like most of the other answers he's given her, there are only more questions. "What kind of malfunction? Could it happen again?" She debates for a moment about if she really wants to ask the third question that's hovering around in her brain, before deciding that this is probably the best time to ask. "Why didn't you put him back to normal as soon as the press conference was over?"

Edited 2014-07-19 23:27 (UTC)

It might be nice to get answers, but he doesn't imagine the answers he has to give are, themselves, very nice. "Mrs Murphy, it was...it was OmniCorp. They thought it best." And he'd gone along with it, because he was....wrong.

"I-I don't quite know. I think--if I had to guess--it was because he saw the footage of his, erm, accident." Which would do it, wouldn't it? Who would want to watch their own murder?

The good news is, that wasn't likely to happen again here. That's not much, but it's something?

"We didn't have time. Sellars wanted him on the street, operational. As much visibility before the Dreyfuss vote." And he hadn't argued as strenuously as he should have. He'd gone along, because it was easier. Easier then, harder now.

There was so much wrong with everything he said that she almost didn't know where to start.

"It wasn't an accident, it was an attempt on his life that almost worked. And no amount of sugarcoating it is going to undo what happened to him." From the tone of her voice, it's impossible to tell if she means the bombing or the suit. Probably both, really. "And why didn't anyone make sure that footage wasn't..." She stops, almost saying uploaded, but not really able to bring herself to say it yet. Somehow, in her mind, there's a huge difference between being able to say 'malfunction' and 'shut down' when talking about Alex's mechanical parts, and saying 'uploaded' like he's a computer instead of a person. Maybe one day, but today isn't that day. "...shown to him? Or why wasn't it done sooner, so you would've had more time to fix the issue?"

Of course it doesn't occur to her that doing so would make sense but would have meant trying to fit in extra time on their surprisingly tight timetable.

"Why didn't you try to overrule him? You're Alex's doctor, your input should've been enough in that situation." If Clara had been pulled from just an hour later, she wouldn't be arguing this part at all and would be well aware of just how ruthless Sellars could be. But she isn't and she's still convinced, on some level, that maybe Raymond Sellars had a shred of human decency in him. "Wouldn't it have looked better for them for the public to know that OmniCorp was putting Alex's wellbeing before politics?"

Oh Clara, you sweet summer child.

It's like she knows Dennett has a spine of solid marshmallow. And if he'd known where to start--with either of them--it probably would have gone a lot better.

"Yes, you're right. I just...it's so foreign to think about someone wanting someone else dead." Most of his patients were accident victims, burn victms: it was just a slip because it was how he was used to seeing his patients. "So you can imagine how strange this place is to me."

"Mrs Murphy, we had one day. We had to have direct access to the database and, well, honestly, I didn't think. I didn't realize the footage would be in there!" He probably should have, in retrospect: Detroit police officer, Detroit police records, but his brain hadn't made the connection.

"Sellars is--was--a difficult man, Clara. Any time anything went...awry, he talked of cancelling the program. Cutting off funding. Alex would have died. I...I thought I was doing the best I could to at least keep him alive, functioning." And he knows, now, especially after the Congressional hearing, all the questions they'd flung at him, that it was still the better decision, but not a 'good' one.

"I don't think I'd want to meet someone who isn't a local who doesn't find this place strange." There's something in her voice, it isn't quite a laugh, but it's different from how she sounded before by just the slightest bit. But at least she's on decent terms with him, even if it's for just a moment.

"If it was taking more time than originally expected, shouldn't the press conference have been moved back? That's taking a big risk. What if something else had gone wrong?" There isn't anything accusatory in her tone, as if she's starting to really clue in on the fact that, yes, he had a hand in some of the things that had gone wrong, but he wasn't the only one involved.

She almost says something about how Sellars killing Alex if it didn't work out to his precise specifications should be illegal since, last she checked, it's against the law to kill another person. Except there's one word that came out of Dr. Norton's mouth that stood out to her. "What do you mean 'was?' Did he have a sudden change of heart, or...did something happen?"

Well, true enough. He'd feel the same if he thought about it. He's just trying not to think about it.

"In retrospect, yes, it should have. I should have pushed harder, but I thought--I thought I could handle it, and I thought Sellars--I thought it was a calculated risk." Sellars, faced with the public spectacle of his product not rolling out on the announced date, and having to announce it at the press conference...? It would not have gone well for Alex.

Oh. Oh, Dennett, you nerdy idiot. Nerdiot. "...Mr Sellars is dead." And it's bad to speak ill of the dead, even though Dennett's not a superstitious man. Please don't ask how. He knows only part of the story, but enough to piece together a very ugly picture of his former employer.

Clara manages not to be completely tactless. Which is an accomplishment, considering the first thing that comes to mind about that little piece of news is Good. Which isn't fair, despite how much new information she's suddenly gained about Sellars over the course of this conversation alone.

"How?" She isn't even sure she wants to know, since she has a feeling that it wasn't just a random heart attack or something along those lines. "He seemed fine when I met with him."

It was his former employer, but all things considered, Dennett would have an embarrassingly hard time scraping up any real sympathy. From what he's pieced together...he couldn't say Sellars hadn't deserved it.

"He was shot. Killed. By. Uh. Your husband." Who had been, if what Dennett had seen was any judge, a bit of a mess.

[Open] Life is a record playing on repeat

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Just popping a wrap tag on it.