thecapitol | Mouths are dry, hands are tied.

Venus has never been good at preparing for the future. She's never been good at remembering she might have one. She didn't intend to die on this jailbreak (this decorated suicide mission), but she also made no effort to envision how they'd escape, and what would happen then. She hoped it would make sense in the midst of action, or that Wyatt would think of something.

It used to be on her progress reports from her agent, on the rejection letters from various hero teams. Impulsive. No leadership potential. Takes unnecessary risks. It made her good for television, her unpredictability, but awful here.

They're not even in the right arm of the prison. They have no idea which cell Max is in. And when the lights go off she sees stars, the glitter of rods and cones like an audience from a stage or like cameras going off. And blinded, she throws herself at the first Peacekeeper who appears, the knife she snuck in bared.

Wyatt was blinded, his eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden flood, the Peacekeepers pale blurs, Venus a dark shadow. He was deaf, barely able to hear himself think over the wail of the alarm and the clatter of boots - the fierce drum of his own heart.

He swung at a Peackeeper, fist connecting, the helmeted head smacking off the wall, but the satisfaction was short-lived. An answering blow came from behind - a baton striking across his back - and he was driven down to one knee. Trying desperately to keep from falling completely, knowing what would happen when he did.

Venus isn't so lucky. She doesn't have the earplugs or visors that the Peacekeepers do, and though she tackles one and brings him to the ground, when she raises her fist to bring it down she gets a taser to the back. She jerks forward, a droplet of spit flying from her lip as the shock comes into effect, and seizes onto the ground.

She should have been able to take them all. In the Arena, she would have at least spilled some blood. But the Capitol is an infinitely more dangerous place than the Games, made so not by weapons or mutts but inequality. Here, they're armed. Here's, she's one woman and she's blinded and deafened.

One slams his foot onto her abdomen as she convulses. Satisfied that she isn't getting up, the others converge on Wyatt.

He saw Venus go down, taken hard almost by magic. He called to her - or thought he did, his voice lost to the din - then the wall of white closed around him and the blows came like rain. A furious storm pelting his back and head, his arms as he brought them up to try and save his skull.

Darkness crept it, the blows slowed, dulled into a throb as the fight drained out of him. Distantly, he felt hands on him, dragging at his arms, forcing them down, wrenching them back.

He felt steel, a hard tightening around his wrists, but strangely, he wasn't afraid.

At least they could go together.

They force her to walk even when her leg muscles aren't cooperating. She stumbles and twitches, and they grab her under the arms and haul her back up. She thrashes for a hot second, then stops when she realizes the depths of its futility, the strength of the restraints.

Sometimes, you just have to admit your plan was stupid and you should feel bad for having stuck to it.

"Pretty sure we know who you guys were heading for," someone says. Venus can make it out over the echoes of the now-defunct alarm.

They're shoved into a cell, divided into three touching segments by a force-field, neither near each other. Their hands are still behind their backs. She makes and keeps eye contact with Wyatt, quietly mouthing apologies to him.

"Sorry he's indisposed, but if you'll stick around, he should be along soon," said a different voice, as if it was some fine joke.

They were shoved roughly into the cells, unable to catch themselves as they toppled to the cold, rough floor. A boot came down on the back of Wyatt's neck, heel biting hard.

Across the room, he met Venus' eye and held it.

Unable to shake his head, but hoping she understood.

"We can keep you entertained while you wait."

That means he's alive, at least for now. Venus holds Wyatt's gaze, not giving the satisfaction of looking up at their guards. Blood stains her teeth yellow. Her body sags slightly, curled up around the injury from getting stomped on. Her breath huffs out her nostrils like that of a bull pawing the earth.

She isn't afraid of death. She is afraid of it coming to visit the people she wants to protect.

She isn't fond of pain.

"Which one do you think will scream louder?" one of the Peacekeepers asks. "I bet we can get a fine, noble performance out of our good Mr. Earp if we take Ms. Milo's skin off bit by bit."

It's always been the others. Those he called his own. Max and Howard and Venus too. Just like the stylist had said.

Everyone knows you won't do anything, so long as we have Maximus on a leash.

But he fought the urge to respond - to struggle. His nose flared, his back teeth clenching, but he refused to give them the satisfaction. Refused to give them any more reason.

"And we wouldn't want our Roman friend to miss out on Mr. Earp screaming for mercy, would we?" The heel tapped, forcing his cheek tighter to the floor, blood from his split lip dipping over his chin. "Bring in the brand."

She tries to set a realistic goal for herself: she won't scream for mercy. She can't guarantee that she won't scream, especially when the word 'brand' comes into the conversation.

She wants to say something to Wyatt, to try and reassure him that she'll be okay, but anything that comes out of her mouth will either be absurd or make the situation worse. Instead she swallows the heart that lurches up into her throat, into the back of her mouth.

The guard behind her gets his hands into her braids and hauls her up by the head, twisting her neck so that she faces upwards. They hold her there for a few moments while she hears paperwork being done, the skitter of pens authorizing whatever weapon they're pulling out. That's the profanity of it; the fact that it's not just a beating, not just whatever they're doing here, but that there's procedure to it. System.

The Peacekeeper holds her chin up. She glares, but she doesn't spit. Her mouth is dry with fear.

"Shame, she had a pretty face. Some of those makeup companies are probably going to try and sue us over this."

His heart kicked up, pounding against his ribs. While they hold her, he can see the action taking place - as he's sure they intended.

It comes out, such a simple thing - something even he recognizes - and the pressure on the back of his neck shifts at his guard leans down to stage whisper to him.

"Come attractions, Mr. Earp."

It was then that he struggled, shoulders futilely struggling under the Peacekeeper's boot.

"Venus." He found his voice as the men laughed. A low, rough rumble. "Venus, look at me. Jus' look at me...."

She tries to nod, to show Wyatt that she's listening to him, that she's holding onto his voice as the only good thing in this world that smells like sweat and blood, that feels like concrete digging into her knees, like blood pooling inside her cells in her guts, that sounds like these men chuckling over her as they hold her at their mercy.

When they hold the brand over her, for a moment she doesn't even know what to make of the glowing orange shape in front of her. She knows what it is, what it means, and yet her mind can't put the pieces together quite yet-

One of them feels up her ass as he helps holds her up, and it's then that she moves into blind panic.

She's screaming before it even touches her skin, and when it does she can only cry out louder. Her flesh melts under the metal like wax from a candle, and she can feel it mingle with tears as some of it droops down her cheek.

The smell is the worst part. As she feels her cheek boil she can almost imagine a cookout, frying up gristle.

He'd seen it before, had even done it before himself with cattle. This... this was so much worse. The lowing of his memories melting into Venus' screams, the scent of burning hair and flesh mingling, the curl of smoke and flash of flame as iron met skin.

"Venus!"

Wyatt struggled enough against the weight that slipped and he lifted his head - only for it to be smashed against the floor again, concrete scraping across his cheek.

"You wait your turn," the Peacekeeper hissed, grinding his heel into Wyatt's skull.

"...Venus... I'm sorry..." The words tumbled out, low and soft and broken. She likely couldn't hear him, and if she could, he knew they held no value - that there was nothing he could say to fix this - but he couldn't stop them. "...I'm sorry, Venus."

When they initially pulled her up, for a few moments she deluded herself into thinking they were going to brand her stomach. She could have survived a brand to the stomach.

She isn't sure she's going to survive this.

There's a certain horror to when the pain lessens, because she realizes that it's gone because either they've hit bone or they've killed all the nerve endings there. When they pull the brand away pieces of her come with it like taffy. She doesn't see it, though, as they wipe the sizzling iron down in water. She's beyond seeing.

The Peacekeepers are yelling at her, jeering, gloating that this 'little firecracker' could be so easily cowed. The one who has her by the hair whispers in her ear, demanding to know if she and Wyatt had communicated with Max beforehand, where they found out about the prison, who they might have been working with.

She faints. Her eyes roll back and her body goes limp. The Peacekeeper drops her to the ground, where she groans and moves without her brain on, and turns on Wyatt, repeating the same questions.

"Give me bullshit and she's the one that'll pay for it."

His gaze peeled away from Venus, his horror melting into a heat as his eyes flicked up to find the speaking man. Rage burning in his chest, boiling in his gut.

He could have told them the truth, it wouldn't have harmed anything, but instead his lip curled, flashing his bloodied teeth.

"Go to hell."

He was rewarded with a another hard stomp, lights flashing behind his eyes.

"We've got all day, Earp. Hold him still, get the-- wait." A slyness steals into the Peacekeeper's tone. A cruel glee. "Bring the other back. He'll wanna see this."

Venus stirs, a low moan purring out of her mutilated lips. And she chokes on her spit and blood from her mouth. She gasps as she comes back to and wakes only to agony.

A guard kicks her in the stomach, giving Wyatt a pointed look. "See what you made me do?" he says. Venus writhes on the floor, trying to bring her hands to her face and finding them still locked behind her back. She can hear them chattering over her.

"Good idea. Go get this guy's boyfriend."

"Think they're fucking invincible, these Tributes and Mentors."

"Kick the bitch again. Always thought she was scored too high. Guess we were right."

"Wonder if we can get Maximus to cry."

"Boys. Try and be a little more professional. Just because there isn't footage of this room doesn't mean we can forget what makes us different than them."

"Come on, let's go get Maximus."

For a few minutes they leave, all of them, and it's just Wyatt, Venus and a forcefield.

The silence lay unbroken for several minutes, safe for Wyatt's ragged breathing, struggling to even think around the pounding in his head, and Venus' sobs, softer now, but no less wrenching.

"Venus...."

He shifted slowly, rolling gingerly onto his side, knowing he should and find his feet, but not sure he'd be able to.

"Venus... are ya-- can ya hear me?"

She jerks at the sound, almost as if she expects it to come with another blow, but she's aware enough that it's him that she rouses. After a moment she rolls and pushes herself along the floor with her hands tied.

"Wyatt," she whimpers, crawling and dragging herself over to the forcefield. She can see, barely. Her vision's still swimming from pain, white hot spots flashing across her view. She can make out Wyatt's figure more than his face.

Shame. She wants to make out his face. She wants to see kindness, sympathy, care. Someone who loves her. She melts back to the floor, the effort of moving three feet having completely exhausted her. Her knees tuck slightly, body arching around herself in a feeble attempt to stave off pain.

"Is it bad?"

He looked across her, head dropping to the floor. His cheek was torn, grit from the floor pebbled across his skin. His lip was swollen, his face was darkening, bruises blooming.

"We're alive," he murmured. "An' so is Max."

And that was something, wasn't it? That's what he'd come for. Just to be with Max, however long they had left.

"...I'm sorry. I shouldn't'a asked ya to help me."

He hadn't asked, she remembers. She volunteered. That makes it worse, almost, knowing that she can't blame him and use her anger to foist some of the pain onto someone else. "I'd have come anyway."

Snot drips from her nose onto the hell of her upper lip. She snorts and blows ugly bloody bubbles, unfiltered for an audience. And she sobs and contorts her face as if there were some way to force the pain out like a splinter.

"Oh my God, Wyatt, it hurts, I never felt hurt like this..."

What could he say? They'd been caught, they'd been beaten, and before the day was out, they'd both be wearing those traitors' brands he'd once joked about. And then they'd have more beatings, more taunting, more pain to forward too.

There was nothing he could do. No comfort he could offer.

He couldn't even touch her, with the force-field humming between them like a wall of angry bees.

"...It's hurt," he rumbled lowly, hands flexing uselessly - helplessly - under his cuffs. "A wound like any other. It's bad now, but hurts heal. They stitch an' they mend. ...You an' me, we've been through worse."

It sounded lame, even to himself, laying there on the cell floor, but at least it was true. They knew true pain, they two of them. Those hurts beneath the skin.

Heartbreak and loss, uncertainty and guilt.

She clenches her eyes shut and doesn't respond for a bit. Her stomach and chest heave for breath.

They've failed. All they've done, if anything, is make things worse for Max. All her life has been spent running towards something, accomplishing nothing. She could die here for no reason other than to galvanize Wyatt and Max's tears. It would be the greatest failure, to die mourned and a complete waste of potential.

She can think of nothing but the mistakes she's made and the people she's killed and the net loss that was her time in this life.

She says nothing more to Wyatt now, even though she should try to comfort him and prepare him for his own brand. She can't. She cries and she slips in and out of consciousness and she wishes the burden of her well- being was removed from his shoulders instead.

Maximus wasn't even looking where he was going as he we was led to the cell. He was a shadow of himself - he hadn't eaten since he'd been taken in, convinced that poison could be in any swallow, and they hadn't exactly convinced him otherwise.

Maximus had known torture, before this. He'd met death and walked with him, and wasn't surprised to meet him again.

The pain was nothing to the words. They told him Wyatt was dead. Venus. Everyone that he cared about. They described their deaths - his fault, of course, for a murder he didn't commit but was quickly wishing that he had.

The fight was totally worn out of him - exhausted and hungry - as they shoved him into the cell.

They didn't bother to tell him about the forcefields before he raised his eyes, and met his ghosts. His heart dropped through his stomach and he surged forward immediately, a word on his lips that was lost in a roar of pain as he ran straight into the force field.

It was a relief and a torment all at once to see him. To know he was alive, but to be able to see the damage done while Wyatt had been outside, sitting on his hands. Unable to help.

He struggled on the floor, fighting to turn himself toward the man.

"Max--!"

His call was lost under the sharp zap of the forcefield -- cut off by the sharp jerk of the Peacekeepers hands, dragging him back.

Max's roar is enough to rouse Venus from the depths of her ugly half-sleep, the painful bed inside her skull that she's rest her consciousness on. Her eyes are closed and she sees nothing but the colors of pain like green and yellow lights across the landscape of her body. It's an aurora borealis of agony.

And then she's sitting up so fast that her brain seems to lose its footing inside her head. Her vision tilts, her balance tilts further, and she nearly topples forward. It takes her a minute to see that Max has hit the shock field, that Wyatt's being pulled back. She feels bile at the back of her throat as she hears the sizzle of steam on the brand, knowing what's coming for Wyatt next. The same gruesome mauling as her own face recently received.

"Don't touch the field! Max, we're okay!"

Edited 2014-08-18 01:09 (UTC)

The voices seem enough to give him pause - as if he thought all ghosts silent - but he doesn't have his own, not yet. His throat is parched, his lips cracked, and he seems more confused and lost than anything else - the grief had long since overwhelmed him.

He obeyed, however, his body wracked with pain after he had fallen to the floor, but he stayed there, looking dully at them both.

A second later, however, his sight caught up to his brain, Wyatt being held back by the peacekeeper, the vision of Venus' face -

Not dead. Not dead, but mutilated. The pain clicked off, the rage clicking in instead, almost blinding him with hatred. He gave another roar, this one not of pain but of pure rage, and hit the shock field again, shoulder first, the pain immense as it sent him hard back again to the floor.

Wyatt knew what was coming even before he saw the brand, glowing a hateful red, appear in the corner of his vision. His mind called up the still fresh memory of Venus' burning flesh, the flash and hiss....

He knew too that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Even if he could fight, it would only be worse in the end.

But there was one thing he could do.

Peeling his eyes from the brand, he found Max, just as the Roman hit the forcefield again.

"Max!" he cried, a husky bark of a name as a Peacekeeper wrenched his head to the side (looking for the best angle, wanting the show to be good). "Max, don't. It's alright-- I'll be alright. Don't--"

He'd had the chant going, in the back of his head. Telling himself that it would hurt, but he would live. He just had to hold, he just had to accept the pain for what it was-- but there was no preparing for it.

The searing metal came down on his skin and all his intention went out the window.

He jerked and struggled, an instinctive bid to escape, and then came the sound. More animal than human. A cry of torment, a scream of pain.

There's nothing she can do. She wonders if she would have had the courage to do something if she could get past the force field, but then Wyatt's screaming and she knows that she wouldn't need courage to try to hurt these people. Love supplies rage and bravery enough to make up for any moral failing; love cannot abide the smell of burning flesh, the cries of rage from one of her dearest friends and pain from another.

"Max, stop!" Her voice is hoarse and raw from the crying she's done. "Stop! You'll make it worse! Wyatt!"

She struggles to her feet, finding no solace in being able to see from above the floor. She still can't pass the field.

"Wyatt, the pain fades! It's temporary!"

It's a lie, but one she has to tell.

He hadn't cried. Even when the torture was at its worst, even when they'd described Wyatt's burned and broken corpse, every scrap of burnt and twisted flesh left of Venus. He'd had no tears, then.

But the smell--

The smell.

The voices could have been a thousand miles away, for all they mattered. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils, made them flare, caught in his throat and made him choke. The tears pulled at his eyes before he even recognized they were there - and he didn't try to stop them once they were.

He let out another ravaged roar, a symphony of pain and grief and flame, and he could see them burning - Wyatt, Venus, his Wife, his Son - wait, his husband, his daughter? He wasn't thinking straight, his entire body shaking with pain because he'd thrown himself against the force field again - and again - before his body crumpled and he knelt, sobbing, on the floor. His strength was gone, his will was gone, and he was certain that in a few seconds he would be watching the only things he cared about in the world taken from him, too.

Edited 2014-08-18 03:23 (UTC)

He heard their voices - the crack of the forcefield again and again - as if from a great distance. A canyon between them right there in the tiny cell. He could hear the rage and the despair and the pain, theirs and his, but it wasn't what stopped him.

He would wish later that he could say it was. That he was brave enough, strong enough to be able to save them his pain... but in the end, he stopped simply because the pain did.

The brand peeled away, pulling pieces of his burned, blacked skin with it and the pain melted into a throb of heat. The damage so much, he couldn't even feel it anymore.

Voice falling away to the rough pant of his breath, he was shoved roughly back down to cold floor of the cell. The weight of a Peacekeeper's boot a distant pressure in the small of his back as his heart beat a wild rhythm against the underside of his ribs.

His eyes sliding closed just as someone spat at him.

Edited 2014-08-18 10:32 (UTC)

Venus' face crumples further into tears, the folds of her face accentuating and highlighting the ripped and melted flesh across her cheek and jaw. She stays standing but she sways. Behind her back, her hands clench into fists, and when she stretches her fingers they're shaking.

"You got all that paperwork signed?" the Peacekeeper over Wyatt asks, and his comrades nod and affirm until the sound of the alarm going off again cuts them short. The boot leaves Wyatt's back. "Think about what you done while we deal with this."

They leave and there's silence, marred only by sobbing, by ragged breathing. Venus kneels again, next to the forcefield, as close as she dares.

"Max. Max, we're alive, we're..." Broken but alive. "We're alive."

The words didn't break through immediately, through the wracking sobs - of a hurt deeper than was visible. He lowered his forehead to the ground - cold concrete grounding him, somehow, the tears and snot mixing to pool just below his nose as he drew in shaking breaths. But slowly he came to - Venus's words getting through to him, finally. They were alone. And they were alive.

He raised his head, his attention immediately snapping to the Wyatt's form on the floor, and he reached out again, his fingers immediately snapping back as they met the forcefield.

"They told me you were dead--" He said, his voice rough, fingers curled, hovering next to the invisible field.

At first, all he could do was lay there, forcing himself to breath. To swallow down the smell of cooked meat, to ignore the strange humming of his own flesh, to set aside the sharp jolt of knowing what they'd just done to him -- what he would see when, if, he saw himself again.

But then he heard Venus, and then Max.

Alive.

And for whatever else, he'd gotten what he wanted. (They were going to take them both, one way or the other.)

"...I told ya..." he coughed, throat raw and aching, and turned slowly to look at Max, the wound black and terrible on his face. His eyes moved over his partner's face, heart twisting at the bruises, at the gauntness. Something cold and hard settling in his gut at the healing brand on Max's face.

He couldn't reach back, his hands still bound, but his fingers twitched and curled, wishing he could.

"...Ya weren't gunna get rid'a me easy."

"Jesus, you guys. Get a room," she interjects, then laughs, a hoarse, gurgling sound. She sits back on her haunches and starts to examine the injuries that have been done to her. Nothing worse than the things she's pushed through in the Arena, the brand aside.

The difference this time is what was at stake. They went in half-cocked and they lost the chance to get Max out for good. That they're together now is a small comfort given what awaits them.

"Pretty sure if you were going to kill Penny, you wouldn't have done it in the privacy of her own home." She imagines Max carrying Penny's decapitated head through the streets of the Capitol.

The rage, bubbling and broiling within him, had not yet died - and at the sight of Wyatt's face is flowed right threw him again, hot and painful and aching. (Vengeance, his soul cried, not for the first time.)

"If I had killed her, everyone would know." He said bluntly, the rage the last thing really left living in him - the rest so beaten down and bent that it wasn't there. The strength, the honour, gone. Even the love was twisted with grief.

But rage? Rage was his consistent companion.

"I would have hardly ended with her head."

Wyatt hadn't given any more thought to Max's possible guilt in the passing days than he had when he'd first learned of the accusation. It simply didn't matter then, and it still didn't matter now.

He just looked between Venus and Max, and gave a small nod of agreement, good cheek rubbing the floor.

"I ain't a marshal anymore, but I like to think I'd have noticed somethin' when ya got back," he muttered wryly. He shifted carefully, turning onto a hip and sat up slowly. "...We came for ya, didn't quite go to plan."

He looked across at Venus, apology heavy in his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure no jury of his peers would have convicted him." She meets Wyatt's eyes with a stern look of her own, one that accepts no pity, that gives and expects no quarter. "It was a shitty plan, and at least half of the fault lies on me."

The handcuffs beep, and for a moment Venus is convinced they're going to explode- but then the high-tech gadgets release automatically, letting free her hands. Max's and Wyatt's soon follow.

"Little mercy, there."

"I did nothing," He said heavily again, wanting so badly to reach for Wyatt that it was taking all his strength to keep back - the lesson of the force fields finally seeming to have gotten through his thick skull. He rubbed his wrists slowly.

"I... I am only glad that the two of you still live," He said, gravel in his throat. "They have been telling me of your executions for..." He trailed off. He had been about to say 'days', but realised he had absolutely no idea how long he'd been in there.

Wyatt's handcuffs clattered to the floor, but for a long moment his hands lingered, coming back around slowly as his eyes moved over the near invisible wall between himself and Max. Finally, he seemed to accept there was nothing he could do and they settled - one next to Max's, just on the other side of the forcefield.

"I'd have come sooner," he said lowly. "But they wouldn't tell us nothin'. Not where ya were, if they were gunna let'cha go, not even if ya were still alive."

Venus decides it's better not to reveal where they got the information. Anything they say could have consequences for someone else, even if the Capitol already knows.

Her wrists are bloody from the cuffs, from struggling against them. She has red bracelets of weeping lacerations. She pulls up her shirt slightly and notes the broken skin where she was kicked particularly hard in the stomach.

She's sure it won't be the last time. There'll be more soon.

"They can't kill me. I'm too pretty." She means it as a joke but her laughter turns into an earnest sob at the end, at realizing how false that is now that they've mauled her so.

Mouths are dry, hands are tied.

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