thecapitol | open;

He dreamt, before he awoke. He dreamt of endless fields, of his son riding a new horse, of his wife smiling as she welcomed him home. He dreamt of a door...

And awoke to a cold cot and a cold room.

He had been dead. He had felt it, felt his life slip away from him. He'd felt his wife's arms reach out to take him. But as he stared at the ceiling and sucked in a breath, he knew he was not to rejoin them yet. He wasn't surprised. He'd lost. Obviously he was meant to continue in these games until he won, until Commodus was brought before him, until he killed the man himself. Had he not said "in this life or the next"? This was surely the next - or some form of it - and he would not be dissuaded. No. Not even if it meant dying again, and again, and again.

The games, he expected.

The Capitol, he didn't.

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Maximus glanced around, following Javert's eyes. Certainly, there were objects he didn't recognize and could not discern their use, but such was always the case in a culture not one's own.

"I'm sure we'll acclimatize in time," He said after a moment, looking back at Javert. "You have been misplaced too, then." He paused, frowning. "A man I met said that he hailed from a year numbered 1878. At my best calculation, he and I were a millenia apart."

He's noticed that the technology here is different, but it hasn't even occurred to him that it's because he's in the future. "The year is 1821."

After a pause, with a much more uncertain tone and widened eyes, "or, it was when last I checked."

"I doubt, from his words, that it is that." Maximus said, and then shrugged. How would he know the difference between the 19th century and now?

"Either way, it matters little. I doubt time has much importance, here. If it did, we would not stand across from one another."

"Most of the general rules of the world seem to lack importance here. Death, for one." Not that Javert isn't happy to be alive, but in a way he'd prefer if he didn't have to find a way to rearrange his concept of death. He likes his world neat, orderly and predictable.

"And you died also, I presume?"

"Yes." The word was final. He did not with to relive it.

He turned, making his way through the living room, glancing toward the main doors to the hall. He wanted to get a look at the guards...

But when he got there, and pushed open the door, there was no one. Maximus frowned, and turned to look back at Javert.

"What's through here?"

"A corridor, and then the city, which is..." Javert frowns a bit and rests his hands on his knees. "'Perplexing' would be the word, I suppose. It's a bit much to take in all at once."

Even in comparison to all of this in general. Out in the arena, the ideas are hard to pin down, but the basics of snow, battle, food, survival are straightforward enough. Here everything seems to be threaded through the circuitous needle-head of new technology.

Maximus had been awed by a city once before. When he had first set his eyes on Rome it had nearly taken the breath from his lungs. In a way, even though the Capitol was grander, even though it was stranger, it did not awe him the same way Rome had. Instead it felt alien.

"And we can just... walk out into it. What of the guards? Are we escorted?"

"We have Escorts, but they don't seem to be stopping us from doing much. One helped me to navigate the kitchen." He gestures towards the room in question, which he finds somewhat hellishly overstimulating between the microwave, the radio, the propane stovetop and the freezer. "I don't think we're under any sort of supervision right now, or any sort of restrictions beyond our own good morals."

Maximus let out a dark chuckle after 'good morals', and looked back at Javert.

It was extremely strange, to speak this way to a man he had choked to death on the ice.

He wondered, vaguely, if in Elysium he would meet all his former enemies, his former opponents - if every man with honour he had killed would then become compatriot.

"How far have you walked, from this place?"

"Not far. Probably less than a mile westwards. It seems incautious to go much further without a guide. Everything here seems so...active. The carriages all move much too quickly."

Restless, he gets back up and starts pacing again. The suite may be a nice respite from the chaos of the city, but Javert recognizes he's also making a cage for himself of it.

"It seems that death once has made me no more eager to try my luck again."

"I saw some from the balcony. With no horses." He says it flatly, glancing out the door again. He looked back at Javert.

"A guide would probably end up being a detriment, if we wish to know the true nature of this place."

"It's a mystery."

Javert pauses near the doorway to the hall outside. "We are already at such an informational detriment that a guide would have to lie quite a lot to make us even worse off. As it stands it's nearly impossible to separate any discrepancies from mere...cultural differences, between our homelands and this one."

Maximus shrugged. "Does it matter? Nothing here is like home. But I'd rather know the truth of the place than the glossy surface a guide would show."

He paused, then arched an eyebrow.

"We should scout."

"I would rather know both. The latter could be a tool for understanding the former, and valuable information in its own right."

He arches an eyebrow back. "I agree. And we would do well to combine our skills."

He gave Javert a considering look, and then stepped forward, chin raised slightly.

"And you have no qualms working with a man who took your life, once?"

"Well, it's hardly a question I've posed to myself before today."

But, since seeing Maximus here, he's been turning it over in his head. It's true that his muscles tense a bit at the sight of him, that as much as Javert can logic it away he still feels a pang of memory. But he imagines that will fade with time. He hopes so, at least.

"But I don't. I can't fault you for it when I was the one who started the attack, and we were both doing our duty in the arena. Do you have qualms working with a man who tried to kill you?"

Edited 2013-02-17 16:48 (UTC)

"As long as he does not attempt to repeat the experience here," Maximus mused, though his tone was more amused than a warning. Despite their fight on the ice, despite killing him, Javert held his honour.

Not to mention that he was, at the least, human.

The thing that had taken Maximus' life most certainly was not.

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