thecapitol | Some Nights I Thirst for Real Blood, for Real Knives, For Real Cries [Closed]

WHO| Eva and Wallander
WHAT| Something is afoot.
WHEN| Current week of the Arena.
WHERE| Wallander's place.
WARNINGS| Everything hurts and nothing is good.

Usually, when she comes to Wallander's place, she's a little bit drunk. She's a panther made alley cat, skulking and desperate despite all the trappings of grace. It's a walk of shame in, and a walk of shame out, and she keeps up the ruse because she needs him and she needs his security clearance, and, if she is to be truly honest, she's lonely.

She could have rationed out the nights spent with him a while back. She could have tried to spare him from crossing the threshold between hookup and relationship. She didn't need to play the game as earnestly as she did.

But tonight, tonight she is stone cold sober. She has a key of his by now, and she lets herself in. She walks to his bed with silent purpose. And she holds her phone to Wallander's head while her other hand holds him down in bed.

"Wake up." The voice he hears, while undeniably hers, isn't the sad scrape that usually whispers into his neck she presses her lips to his sweaty skin. It's militant and as pure as if hellfire itself had cleansed it of all the hoarseness she accumulated in forty years of grief.

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He'd only started making a habit of sleeping in his bed when Eva had started showing up more and more regularly. He preferred waking up with a warm body at his side, and it was more of a superstition than anything else, now. If he went to his bed, rather than his armchair, maybe she would too.

Kurt generally slept heavily, but even for his often sloth-like nature, he had the long practiced ability to wake very quickly when summoned.

And that tone of voice could only mean one thing. Trouble.

His eyes snapped open, to find Eva's swimming face above him, and his own instantly twisted in concern. "Eva? What's wrong? What's happened?" He tried to sit up - only to realise her hand was holding him down. His eyes snapped to that instead, brow furrowing, which was about the time he noticed the phone, too.

"What--"

Wallander's concern for her comes at her like a bullet, but she deflects it easily. She's untouchable. She's wild and outside her own body right now, high on the viciousness of what she's about to do.

High on righteousness.

"Don't move. Listen."

She shoves the phone against his ear and, in the dark, she could very easily believe that it were a gun. She straddles him now in some cruel ersatz version of the nights they've spent together in the past.

"You're going to get me into Peacekeeper Headquarters."

"Dad--" The wavering voice comes through the phone and his blood goes absolutely ice cold.

Linda.

His daughter, Linda, and he didn't need to hear more than that one wavering word to know she'd been crying.

"Dad, I'm sorry-- I'm so sorry, I couldn't-- I'm alright, I'm fine, I promise, Dad, but they--" She abruptly stopped for a second, her voice wavering again. "Please, Dad. Help me. I'm so so--" The sound cut out again.

Wallander had turned completely still, his blood running so thick and fast through his ears that all he could hear was its roar, and cold, hard eyes met Eva's face.

He completely ignored the demand, though he didn't move a muscle.

"Where is she." Not a question but a demand, his voice low, protective, and dangerous.

The fierceness in his voice, in his eyes, doesn't intimidate her, but she respects it. Understands where it comes from, because it's been lurking inside her own body for so many years. It's on every second of her footage from the Games.

She knows what he's capable of right now. She also knows she's an equal match to it.

"Unharmed for now." She places her hand over his mouth, imagining herself shoving away all the kisses she planted on it in the last few weeks. "And so she'll stay, if you do what I say. She doesn't have to get hurt. I won't do that to you unless I have to."

His eyes are ice, glaring at her from where he lies, still as stone, her hand on his mouth. His chest rises and falls and even his breath seems angry - the rage and fury building rapidly to conceal the fear. Not fear for himself, no, he never cared for himself. Fear for his daughter. Fear for Linda.

For the terrified girl, facing death again, where no one should ever have to face it once.

And of all people - of all people--

"If you so much as touch her--" He said, words muffled by the fingers over his lips, though the rage still poured through.

Eva, of all people, sobbing over her son, and then taking his daughter--

"How long?" He asked, the works short and tight and raw.

"Since the start. Since the moment you were unlucky enough to look my way." And it's the truth. She never started looking for a connection, she started looking for a backdoor to the enemy fortress. Anything that developed afterwards was just that: after.

After, and entirely irrelevant. She has greater plans than either of their sad lives. Her own flames were doused twenty-something years ago.

She talks into the phone. "Linda, he's going to cooperate with me. You'll be safe soon. Give the phone back to my associates."

She slips it into her pocket, muted. Gannicus and Nasir will be able to hear her and Wallander, but not vice versa. She takes her hand from Wallander's mouth.

"Let's go, then."

It isn't often that lumpy, awkward Wallander manages to look intense - but now he does. He's made only of heat and rage. It isn't even really for himself that he feel angry. He's well used to women not actually liking him very much, despite sleeping with him, for whatever reason. He's all too used to criminals and people doing things out of their own selfish desires.

But this one.

He'd seen himself, in Eva. Seen a dark shadow of something he would have become, if something had happened to Linda.

(And now, the threat, that something will.)

He doesn't say anything, his eyes hard as stone and his lips thinned so tightly that no sound would escape even if he wished to make one. He doesn't nod, but he doesn't argue, glaring at her before making a beeline to the door.

"Your car. Bring your keys. Bring all your clearance."

Her hands feel empty as she follows him. The gun she's holding to his head is metaphorical, and yet she thinks she should be walking him out there at bulletpoint, a metal and plastic symbol of the power she wields. The cellphone bounces in her pocket.

She's been in his car before, the unkempt thing that only just passes typical Peacekeeper inspection. It's been on the way home from the occasional dinner.

If she were a better person, she might not feel a rush now, but she's succeeded. Her purpose is so close she can taste it like the copper on her tongue. It's more than enough to drown out the guilt and sorrow that's come to roost in her breast.

He doesn't look at her again, each movement he makes purposeful and precise. This isn't pleasure anymore, this isn't socializing - everything now is work. Work, and fierce protectiveness. He thinks about the gun in his bedside table, but doesn't go for it. He thinks about the gun in his car as he opens the door for Eva, but leaves it untouched as well. As long as he doesn't know who's on the other end of that line - as long as Linda is in danger - he has to play along.

So he thinks about the guns at headquarters, instead.

He revs up the car in silence, the bucket of a thing zipping along at a good clip. He screeches to a stop and parks haphazardly, though it seems casual. It isn't. He doesn't park in his usual spot, and he's a man of fierce habit.

He doesn't signal the guards in any way. He doesn't know if she's gotten to anyone else in the building - anything too overt and he might endanger Linda. He leads her in without so much as a second glance their way.

She hums as they drive. It's some old field song from her youth, the kind that melted with the thrum of cicadas as the scythes and machines hewed wheat down in front of them. It seems appropriate to her now (she keeps her eyes on Wallander's hands).

The night air seems to vibrate around her when she steps out, when she goes with him into the headquarters. She knows she's going to die. If she has one regret, it's that she didn't appreciate the sun fully today, the way it kissed her skin.

One of the guards snickers as she and Wallander enter at such an odd hour. He probably thinks they'll be using his office for a quick hookup. She fantasizes about the look on his face when the network goes on soon.

She locks the door in Wallander's office behind them and takes a seat at his desk. His clearance alone wouldn't get her the information she needs, and yet she's spent years shoring up details, passwords, maiden names, the streets people were born on and their first pets. It doesn't take her long to get everything set up.

She doesn't dignify him with even a word before she turns on the computer.

Some Nights I Thirst for Real Blood, for Real Knives, For Real Cries [Closed]

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