thecapitol | I Will Contain You, Then Cast You Away [Semi-Open]

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I Will Contain You, Then Cast You Away [Semi-Open]

WHO| Eva and Wallander, Eva and anyone with reason to be around the Peacekeeper HQ
WHAT| Eva sleeps with Wallander and brings him doughnuts.
WHEN| Week 2 of the Arena
WHERE| Wallander's house; Peacekeeper HQ
WARNINGS| Mentions of sex.

For Wallander

She wakes up next to Wallander again and slips out of the bed, donning a loose sheet as she searches for her clothing. Soon enough she's found her shirt and her pants and a rubber band to tie her hair in, even if it originally was used to keep bread in a bag fresh.

They've slept together at least ten times now. Normal people would consider it a relationship. Eva isn't sure she doesn't. That doesn't change her feelings on the matter, and her gaze as she looks at Wallander's bare back is both disdainful and a bit sad. She sits on the windowsill and stares at the moles and sweat on his back and the wrinkles on Kurt's face and the empty ringfinger. The morning light casting its way through the curtains makes him look washed out and not unlike a pastel sketch of a corpse. He snores and his hand roves the bed for the curve of her hip, but he doesn't wake when he finds only the sheets.

She gets up and heads to the kitchen. She does his dishes and she starts some coffee. She puts some makeup she keeps in her purse over the brand on her face. It doesn't do much, but it sends the message that she's trying.

She makes herself at home on his computer too.

-/-

Open

The next day, having spent the night alone at her own house, she pays a visit to Peacekeeper Headquarters. She's been coming in for regular meetings with some of the investigative officers as follow-up to the leads she gave them back during the interrogation. She has a reputation for being "prickly but cooperative" with the officers, which, she says, is a pretty outstanding performance given that they burned part of her face off.

Today she brings in a dozen doughnuts and instructs one of the desk jockeys to take it to Kurt's cube. She's sure only some of them will make it to him, and that the others will fill mouths that alternate between stuffing themselves and gossiping over it.

She doesn't mind that people know she's a Capitol canary; in fact, she all but flaunts it. Nor does she mind terribly that people know she's sleeping with Wallander, and if he's received any flack for it he's kept rather mum about it.

Besides. No one complains about fucking doughnuts.

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He woke up slowly - becoming aware of each part of him in turn, the sunlight flickering across his face to tease him into wakefulness. He groaned, stretching, his hand roaming over the sheets to find them warmed from the sun but not from another body. He was naked, and in bed, which in of itself was sign of something strange - he had a tendency to fall asleep fully clothed in his arm chair when he was alone. Once his brain kicked in, he remember why.

Eva had spent the night again.

It was strange, their little... well, relationship was the best word, he supposed, though it had never been said in as many words and he wouldn't dare to claim it to anyone else. The fact was, really, that sometimes she came and sometimes she didn't and he was never able to turn her away - not that he wanted to. Whatever he told himself (the first thing being, of course, that this at best was a severe conflict of interest), he couldn't quite resist it. The red nail marks on his back were all the proof he needed that it happened - and kept happening - and he wasn't really inclined to complain.

He didn't think he loved her, he mused to himself as he padded over to his closet, grabbing himself some clothes. He cared for her, certainly. Cared deeply for her. But half the time he saw her, he felt this overwhelming feeling of sadness, rather than joy - and he hoped - wished - that she took his company as some kind of comfort, at least.

He wandered back into the living room, hearing her on his computer. He wasn't the least bit worried. He had some games on there that she liked, he knew, and he knew that she didn't like to lie in, in the mornings. It was only fair that she entertained herself.

He padded to the kitchen, first - not exactly quietly - finding the coffee just finishing. He poured two cups, making sure hers was just as she liked it, before bringing them both to her.

"Morning," He murmured, leaning down to kiss her hair fondly as he set the cup of coffee beside her. (He'd been fooling himself, a little voice whispered. He did love her.)

"Sleep alright?"

This is becoming routine, this ritual. This is becoming regular, which isn't to say that it's become automatic. She knocks on his door sometime after his dinner (usually late, usually something easily microwaved) as if the impulse has just struck her after a hard day. He lets her in.

Sometimes they talk. Talking is the most difficult part and, she knows, the part she can't just skip over. Each word from her mouth to his ears is a daredevil feat on the tightrope between honesty and poise. The reason this arrangement is working is because they are, in so many ways, similar people in the darkest, saddest places in their skulls. They're wounded and the stitches sew them together. He would be able to detect if she were to fake her grief.

She uses the sex as a means to end the conversation more often than anything else. It's a coda he never refuses, either out of guilt or lust or, most likely, some combination of the two.

Her hand comes up when he kisses her and she strokes her fingers over his morning stubble, keeping his lips there in her hair for a moment. "Good morning." She's switched from reading his email to something innocuous - browsing the weather for the upcoming week - back when she heard him stirring.

She's taken the armchair, which means he's relegated to the couch.

"I slept as well as I ever do." It's the one place she isn't able to guard herself, and once this month - only once - she's woken in a fright, his doughy fingers stroking her face as he tries to remind her where she is, as he whispers to her that she is safe.

She wraps a hand over the hot cup of coffee. A smile crosses her disfigured face. "Sugar, no cream? It's almost like we've done this before."

He lets his fingers drift to her shoulder, squeezing gently, before retreating to the couch with his cup and sitting back, letting himself sink into the old piece of furniture. Everything in his apartment is old - bought when he first came to the capitol and never replaced. The fashions of them had been well out of date when he bought them, now they were practically retro again. Not that even then they would be fashionable - they were well worn and abused. His furniture, in fact, resembled him in more than a few ways.

He doesn't judge her for the nightmares. He actually felt relieved, when he realised what they were. It made her more human, somehow. He couldn't imagine anyone going through what she did - the arena, her son - without the nightmares to match. (His own are dark and dreary rather than scary.)

(In his own, he's always the monster.)

"I would claim it on my deductive powers, but I think that would ring rather false," he said mildly, offering her a slightly sleepy but fond smile as he raised his coffee to his lips. Still too hot to sip, but he knew he wouldn't be a fully functioning human being until he did so. "Give me a minute and I'll make us some breakfast. Eggs alright? Don't have much else in, but eggs and toast I can do."

"Eggs sound wonderful." She has a tendency to take up his armchair like a cat, sprawling a little more than is necessary, certainly more than she would in public. In this case one of her legs is slung over the arm, revealing the ankle of a leg she shaved an hour before showing up on his doorstep.

She finds what she wants on his computer, then makes sure to cover her tracks, and wanders barefoot into the kitchen while he works on scrambling the eggs. There's mildew on the tile, scuffed carpet that's a little moldy. Eva can see Kurt's depression like a second skin on the surfaces here, mingling with the dust and sunlight.

She comes up behind him and, as he nudges the eggs with a spatula, rests her head on the back of his shoulder. It's a gesture that's as affectionate as it is clingy, and as he can't see he face it's a shame he can't see how little acting she has to do when she really wants to feel a body against her cheek.

Maybe she isn't being cruel, she thinks. Maybe she's providing a lonely man with a few moments of pleasure. Maybe she just doesn't care.

"What are you working on today? Nothing exciting, I hope."

In all his years in politics, Cyrus can count on one hand the times he's seen the inside of Peacekeeper Headquarters. Peacekeepers, when he really needed them, always came to him; his requests of them went down over communicators, or were borne there in person by office aids, overeager and wobbling under the weight of his influence.

...Or, well. So it used to be. In the month since his transfer of duties, he's ended up on a first-name basis with the reception staff here. Codifying an inconsistent system of Tribute discipline, it turns out, involves a great deal of discussion with Peacekeepers and their administrators; and that was before the damned jailbreak went and rearranged his priorities for him.

Cyrus feels like he's said the words I have no control over the progress of the investigation at least six times to every individual Tribute, but that doesn't mean he's allowed to ignore the investigation's results. With his own brother wearing a traitor's cuff and half of Tribute Tower walking around with brands on their faces, he can hardly write the jailbreak off as just another ill-conceived show of discontent, can hardly wave it away with mere words. And so he's here, again, with a wan, brittle smile for the receptionist; come to pore over reports in person, to record conversations in rooms with white concrete walls, and to beat his head against the arbitrary cruelty of this stupid system until something gives, maybe.

He sees Eva because she comes in not far behind him, while he's still having his identification checked (because they have to do that, every time, never mind that there's no one here who doesn't know who he is)-- donuts in her arms, brand on her face. He glances at her over his shoulder, and then glances again, because he recognizes her-- distantly, but undeniably.

And then it hits-- a Mentor. A Victor. Right? Yes. It's odd, to see her face in the flesh, and not on a screen. After all, that's the only place he's seen it before, every year and then some, since he was a child and the Games still held some excitement for him. He can guess why she's here - the brand on her face suggests that she has just as much business being here as he does. More, really.

He can't pretend he didn't just perform an obvious double-take. And so he straightens up from the desk, slipping his identification back into his pocket and turning to her in the same motion, putting something friendly on his face - an expression that says met-a-celebrity-in-public, not met-a-criminal-in-public. He focuses on her eyes, and then the box in her hands, and pointedly not the brand.

"Little late for bribery, don't you think?" he asks, with a grin that really wants to belong to the kind of person with the right to joke about this.

She wouldn't have said anything to him if he hadn't double-taked at her, but once he has it's almost a point of principle to meet him back with a challenging stare, one that demands an explanation that avoids the obvious (you're famous and also your face is still healing from the way we burned your skin off, sorry about that).

Her brand is slightly covered with makeup and a clear plastic bandage, which leaves the bloody scabs pressed up against the transparent restraint like zombies pressing at a window. Her hair is nicer; it's up, styled, a long, lazy lock curling like a wisp of smoke and swinging under her chin like a hangman.

Her face when she assesses Cyrus betrays nothing, not the simmer of loathing that she holds for all the higher-ups, these rich brats that spat up meals onto their nanny's laps that would have fed her child for a week, not the strategizing that lights up the inside of her brain like a roadway, not even the recognition as her mind goes yes, that is, indeed, the older Reagan.

His younger brother had proven to either have surprising depths or shocking idiocy - from their conversation, Eva has a somewhat optimistic view that it might be the former, but still no respect for Stephen's intelligence. He got caught, after all (she would argue that the difference for her was that she got framed, which isn't remotely similar).

She doesn't have quite the same hopes for Cyrus, if only because, unlike his brother, he chose a somewhat more prestigious line of work than wiping snot from Tributes' noses.

"'Late' would imply that it might not happen again." She holds forward the box of donuts and pops up the lid like the hood of a car. "Would you like one? I've been told that Officer Wallander's arteries will thank you for relieving the burden on them."

She pauses, and then says in a voice as dry as it is hoarse, like tinder on the floor of a barn, "if you're worried that I baked a razor into any of them, I'm sure the fine staff at Peacekeeper Headquarters would be happy to let these go through the x-ray."

Edited 2014-09-03 08:54 (UTC)

Cyrus looks at her eyes, not the brand. Not so much out of respect; it's more that he simply doesn't like the brands. He finds them ugly. The punishment too heavy-handed. Too visible. Another way to turn the citizenry against their Tributes, and another way to show the more dangerous of the Tributes just how many of them are on the same side.

It's made easier overall when he's allowed to turn his eyes to the donuts instead. He inspects the contents of the box, and pulls one out.

"Oh, I'm not worried," he says, and takes a bite. Chews, swallows. Smiles. "Thank you. On behalf of myself, and Officer Wallander's arteries." He doesn't think they'll argue if he speaks for them in this matter.

Another bite; another second's contemplation, this time with his gaze back on her face. The conversation isn't ending until he finishes this donut, is the statement he's going for.

"So are these a staple for questionings?" he asks, conversationally. "Or-- what has Officer Wallander done to deserve this?"

There's something in Eva's eyes that barely peeks out from beneath the veneer, something so honestly-meant and vindictive that she can't keep it from her face entirely. She's hoping he chokes. She's hoping he chokes even though he's done nothing to her personally, but because this is the hate she directs at everyone in his station, everyone in this nation, even her own charges.

When she was a teenager, she was an outsider, a 'free spirit'. As an adult, she's a misanthrope, and it's so much more pedestrian.

"I'm sure the office gossip can fill you in easily enough." Eva bats her eyelashes, almost like she's bragging, almost like she's just that shameless. 'Promiscuous' hasn't been one of the adjectives attached to her reputation, but she's trying to change that, if only because of the access it'll give her.

She takes a doughnut for herself, aware of how little Wallander minds the extra padding on her hips and stomach, aware of how soon none of it will matter. She should spend the next few days wrecking her body in ways that time can't catch up to.

"I just like to bring sweet things to sweet people."

Ah. There's understanding in Cyrus' expression, and disdain in his eyes. Not an active disdain, not even for her personally, but for-- the whole idea. Peacekeepers sleeping with suspected criminals. Citizens sleeping with District washouts. The lack of discretion that rumor implies. It's not an urge with which he has any familiarity-- the urge to anchor power in physical subjugation.

Because that's what it must be, of course. On Wallander's end, anyway. How could it be anything else?

"I learned a long time ago to ignore office gossip. I can't have heard even half the things that have been said about me." Wryly. You were on TV enough, and you weren't just the subject of your own office gossip anymore.

"But-- seriously, Miss Salazar--" And he moves a little closer, his hand coming up as though to rest on her arm, and not quite making it there - the idea of friendly intimacy, without the touch. "Everything I've heard about you here has been nothing but favorable. I can't convey how important your contribution to the investigation has been."

A shake of his head. "I wish more in your position would follow your example."

Edited (TYPO CITY) 2014-09-27 16:40 (UTC)

"Probably better for your self-esteem that way. The Tributes are wont to take out their bad attitudes on anyone in sight these days. Not that some of them don't have reason."

She doesn't lash out when he reaches to near touch her arm, although she wants to, although suddenly all that pent-up anger from years and years of being bid on and subject to humiliation and loss strains at the edge of its leash until the latch fastening it down groans. She only lets it show in her eyes, her lower lids lifting like the lips of a snarling dog, threatening and daring in equal measure.

But she knows she can't do anything, even if he does. If he were to put his hands all over her now, in the Peacekeeper headquarters, she would smile throughout. She would have to.

Her delusions of power don't stand that tall.

"I've been here a long time, Mr. Reagan. I'm much more acquainted with how things go than they are, but I had to learn the hard way too. They're just not quite there yet."

Cyrus doesn't react consciously to the look in her eyes. But he pulls back in spite of himself, suddenly perfectly content to put a little more space between them, and unsettled in a way he can't quite place.

Eva Salazar's history is something he knows better than most Tributes. She's been around long enough, and the circumstances of her learning the hard way, as she puts it, were... certainly special ones. She would know how things go around here. Better than many. Better than most.

"Well. That's part of a Mentor's duty, isn't it?" he asks, mildly. Not accusing, but curious. "Especially in these, our bold new Games." (It's not easy to say that with a straight face.) "It's not just teaching Tributes to become Victors anymore. It's teaching our visitors to become a part of our society." With a smile-- "Which is more than you signed on for, I'm sure."

An easy shrug, a little rueful. "But then, the new Quell's wrought a change in all our responsibilities, I think."

"It was never explicitly laid out for me when I 'signed on', no." Only Capitolites and Careers treat the conscription of Tributes as if it were a job you applied for. The District citizens may treat their Victors with grateful reverence, but they thank them for winning.

"I can imagine that all these off-worlders, with their special needs and their belief that they're above our rules, have introduced all sorts of snarls into your job."

There's a certain disdain with which she discusses Tributes, as if they're beneath her for some reason she can't articulate. The truth is there is no logical reason. She just needs to be in a position over someone, anyone. Back when she had a pet rabbit, she let it starve to death to prove she could. One week she stopped pretending to care about it enough to feed it and watched it go from healthy to malnourished to dead in a few days. Then she threw it in the yard and let the rain and weather rot it away.

She reaches into her box and takes a doughnut for herself. She chews a large bite thoughtfully, artificially slowly, as if waiting for a story.

Is it sad, that he relates to that disdain, as he hears it? Or is it just sort of predictable? The difference, of course, is that he's never had to force power over anyone. It's always just been... woven into him.

Really, it's difficult to resist launching into a story in response to that. He could start with This isn't my job - a novel-length autobiography, right there. He shouldn't be dealing with Tributes one-on-one. He should be dealing with the Districts, at the same comfortable distance he always has.

But he laughs. "Challenges. Not snarls. My job is to overcome challenges." (He glances into the doughnut box, while he's averting his eyes in the manner of one who doesn't believe what he's saying, and decides not to take another.) "Just-- some days, some Games, come with more challenges than others. I'm sure you understand. Especially now we're not rotating our challenges out every year."

"Yes. It's difficult to just get rid of a challenge with a well-timed mutt attack these days."

She raises her eyebrows, but in this case it isn't judgment - it's something that, since her Tributes transformed from terrified adolescents to stubborn offworlders, she's come to appreciate the simplicity of. How many times has she hoped for one of her current Tributes to be 'taken off her plate' and put on some laboratory mutation's?

She used to be sick with herself. She's long since burned out of guilt, though, and has been left with only apathy when she sifts through the ashes.

"Would it be presumptive of me to ask you a favor?" Of course it would be, but they're in a semi-public place. She's trusting on Cyrus' proper breeding to keep him trying to minimize conflict, to pacify her with empty, polite promises he has no intention of filling. And in that moment she'll try to put an idea in his head.

If there's one question Cyrus is growing sick of hearing, it's What happens to the Tributes who don't come back? He doesn't know. He doesn't know that anyone knows. He doesn't care. But it's just one more thing that's become more complicated since the Games changed - one more thing for the Tributes to hold against them, one more thing you just never had to think about before.

She's right, of course, that he can't flat refuse this. Of course it is is what he wants to say - she's got a brand on her face, after all, the fact that she's here, speaking with him, is presumption - but it is not his job to say so.

"...It's never presumptive to ask." He slides smoothly around making any promise, but pleasantly enough. "Besides, you've been such a help to us, Ms. Salazar-- I think you're allowed a little presumption, at this point."

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