thecapitol | [OPEN]

Entry tags:

[OPEN]

Who| Sam Wilson + open!
What| Trying to figure out wtf is going on after just arriving
Where| Around the Training Center
When| After the arena
Warnings| none yet!

None of this was what Sam'd expected when he woke up on that cot, and was all but dragged out of the room by a group of guards. Not that he had all that much experience with kidnapping or being taken prisoner, but he was pretty sure they didn't normally include a kickass suite and free run of not only pretty much the whole building, but whatever city they were in. And he was definitely sure prisoners usually didn't get handed a map of the damn place and a credit card.

It didn't make him feel at all better about being grabbed, of course. If anything, their determination in treating him like he was supposed to be some kind of honored guest was making him twitchy, almost as twitchy as being told he'd been picked up off the streets to fight to the death like some kind of gladiator.

...it's also making him wary about just how good their security has to be, if they're actually letting prisoners have free range like that. Not enough not to test it, but definitely wary. So he waits a little bit after the guards leave him alone, exploring the room and giving them long enough to actually get gone, if they're really going. Then he's out, intent on seeing just how much leeway he has, and if he can figure out where he really is.

District 5 Suite

His first stop is the rest of the suite they'd dropped him off in, of course. He lingers in the kitchen - not really for food, though he is kind of hungry. At the moment, he's not willing to risk eating anything that might be available, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to check it out.

Which is why he's opening cabinets and peering in the fridge, eyeing the kitchen knives he'd found and wondering if they'd do anything if he grabbed one to keep on him.

Training Center

He has to admit, the place that gives the building its name isn't bad. In fact, it's pretty damn good, if he'd had a place like this back home, he'd probably have been there every day. It makes sense, he guesses, to give them access to a place like this, if they're supposed to be gearing up to participate in a battle to the death. But it also means their captors are either stupid or really, really good, and he doubts it's the first.

Rooftop

By the time he makes it up to the top of the roof, he's feeling a little overwhelmed. He'd gone up to clear his head a little, get some air, but he's not up there long before he's wondering if it wasn't a bad idea. Just looking out towards the edge makes him miss his wings; he sure as hell could use them right about now.

He stays anyway, sitting on one of the benches to look up at the sky, and keep an eye out for any fellow prisoners - or any of their captors - that might be up there as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'd play some of it for you, but I don't have any kind of music device and my piano player's off somewhere."

Jet's stance relaxed more and he held his arms out as though he were helplessly trying to plead his case, although his smile and tone were all wrong for it.

"No points for just having the music in my head? I'll just have to try again some time when there's music playing."

He came closer and offered his hand to the other man.

"Jet Link. I don't think we've met. I guess it could've been under worse circumstances." He just would have preferred not embarrassing himself.

Sam chuckles at that. "The point five was for having the music in your head, I rarely give someone more than an eight. I'll take that raincheck, though."

He grips the man's hand, firm and friendly. "Sam Wilson, I'm pretty new here. Gotta say, circumstances aside, I think you win for best introduction so far." It'd been nice, to have something to counter 'yeah we've both been taken prisoner to fight to the death, but nice to meet you.'

Well, he couldn't argue with that, it was probably the most interesting way he'd introduced himself to anyone so far.

"Glad I could brighten things up a little for you. I was trying to practice, but it's a little hard without someone to practice with, you know?"

Albert sure as hell wasn't going to and Felicity was busy and he didn't know if Venus knew how to ballroom dance.

"Anyway, mind if I join you for a bit? Think I've lost my groove a bit."

"Yeah, I can see that. Not a lot of dancers around here?"

Sam slides over an inch or so, gesturing to the bench next to him. "Go right ahead. Looks like you've earned a rest to me."

"There might be more, but I only know a couple."

Jet takes a seat with gratitude in his smile. It was a peaceful night, as peaceful as the Capitol got at night and while that might be nice normally, Jet found himself wishing it were louder. He missed New York nearly as much as he missed flying on some days and sometimes he could close his eyes and pretend he was home instead of here...but not tonight.

He turned to look out over the ledge, lazily resting his chin on his hand as he did.

"So what brought you up here, Sam? Fresh air or the view?"

"I'd say now you know one more, but I'm not much for ballroom dancing."

He gives a soft exhale at the question, looking out over the city. Honestly, he doesn't really care about the view - nice though it is - except that it's from up high, and out in the open.

"Both. Feeling a little too cooped up inside, I guess. I used to get a lot closer to the sky than this."

Jet could understand that feeling and his eyes drifted up from the buildings to the sky. It did make him curious, though.

"Were you a pilot?"

He'd met plenty of pilots while part of the Air Force who'd felt like he did. They didn't know the feeling of the wind through their hair or how freeing it was to break the sound barrier with no effort, but that didn't mean they lacked a connection with the sky.

Edited 2014-10-10 19:14 (UTC)

"Air Force," he agrees, without technically saying yes or no to the question. It probably doesn't matter much here, keeping a top secret project secret - especially not after he stole the wings and flew over half of DC on camera - but old habits die hard.

"Pararescue, but I've been out for a little bit. What about you?"

Just hearing Sam was from the Air Force he knew made him warm even more to the man. It was nice finding someone he had something in common with from his old life and not 'hey we're both in a death arena for the foreseeable future, wanna be friends?'

"NSA, mostly, but I was a captain in the Air Force during most of that."

Seemed like forever ago, but the memories were right there as clear as day. He sometimes wondered what his life would have been without His Voice revealing the evils in the government Jet had ignored, he probably would have been screwed over by his superiors anyway, it just might have taken a few more years.

His smile faded ever so slightly at the memory. Void informing him the blame for Dubai's bombing would be placed on him and the other cyborgs...that way he smugly and insincerely thanked Jet for all of his years of service...sometimes Jet regretted the fact he accidentally dropped a chunk of roof on Void and sometimes he really didn't.

"Pararescue, though...that's cool, you saved people." His smirk returned in full force, eyes shining in amusement. "A regular hero."

His smile grows at that, changing a little to become just a bit more familiar. He's always felt pretty comfortable, among other veterans. "Aim high," he comments.

Sam's quiet when Jet's smile slips a little, because he recognizes that look. Not anything like flashbacks, but definitely a sign that the guy's focusing more on 'there' than 'here' right now. Sam's got his own memories like that, even if he's not thinking on them now.

But then he chuckles a little. "Nah, not me. I just did what I could, you know? When people needed to know someone was looking out for them."

"That sounds like a hero to me; sometimes that's all people really need." His smirk had turned to a small smile, his tone more sincere to show he meant what he said.

He'd fancied himself a hero for years when he and his team had been fighting Black Ghost and protecting the world from itself, he'd felt good knowing he could save people and protect them and maybe offer some peace of mind that there was someone out there watching over things. It was a feeling that had gone away as his work with the NSA turned more into covert-ops and dirtying his hands so the government didn't have to, a secret weapon sent out to stop but not necessarily save.

He generally tried not to think about it.

But Sam sounded like the real deal, the kind of airman Jet had dreamed of being when he was little. He often figured that little kid growing up in the late 40's and early 50's, hearing about all these war heroes from the big war would hate Jet as he was, but he'd probably get stars in his eyes for meeting Sam Wilson. Sam Wilson sounded a lot more 'Captain America' than Jet had ever turned out to be.

"Unfortunately, you're not going to find a new set of wings around here any time soon. What kind of plane did you pilot?"

"Where I come from, there's heroes a lot bigger than me." Ones he'd looked up to since he was little, reading comic books that very rarely had faces that looked like his, and ones more recently - though he had less of a starstruck view of those. Especially after meeting the man behind one of them. "But yeah, on a small scale, maybe."

Then he tilts his head a little, acknowledging that.

"Yeah." His voice is quiet, because he'd known that. It was true even back home. His wings were one of a kind, and they were sitting at the bottom of the Potomac. Sam'd already known he wouldn't find anything like it any time soon.

He pauses for a long moment over the second question, though. He could dodge it, he's done it before, but it's the kind of question that's harder to dodge without telling at least a little bit of a lie. "Didn't fly a lot of planes, actually. I was part of a more - specialized operation."

"Bigger heroes? Like what?" In his own world, he couldn't think of very many people more heroic than pararescue, the only ones even on par would be his teammates, they were all pretty big heroes. Then again, maybe there was something Jet wasn't aware of where Sam came from.

The pause before giving his answer does not go unnoticed and, once Sam has answered, one of Jet's own pauses follow. 'Special ops' huh? Funny...that's what he'd been called too, mostly cause they hadn't know what else to classify him as.

"What that'd mean to your version of the military? Did you have jet engines in your legs or anything like that?" He said it with a half smile in an attempt to play it like a joke, but it still came out with it's half serious edge. It wasn't like cyborgs in other worlds was impossible, this place had already disproven that.

"The kind that're larger than life." He gives a slightly self-deprecating chuckle. "We've got superheroes, where I come from."

They used to be the kind of thing that was mostly in comic books and history that was more like legend, but there's been quite a few of them popping up recently.

It's the half serious edge that makes Sam look a little closer at Jet, makes him wonder what that meant in Jet's version of the military. And it's what makes him answer honestly. "Not in my legs," he replies, his tone teasing but expression serious. "Would you believe wings?"

"Oh...yeah, I see what you mean." Super heroes existed in comic books only where he came from, it was only once he'd come here and met a few of those heroes he'd read about that it had even occurred to him they could actually exist somewhere. The closest things to 'super heroes' back home where the zero-zero-cyborgs.

Jet's expression and voice matched Sam's as he stepped out onto the offered common ground. Wings...now how cool would that be?

"If you're willing to believe cyborgs and leg rockets, I'm willing to believe wings...were they attached?"

There's a wry grin at that, as Sam tilts his head in acknowledgement. Yeah, it's a whole new world, when superheroes start getting involved.

Not that Sam has anything against them doing their thing.

There's a little extra light in Sam's expression when Jet says that. "I believe it, hell yeah. Not permenantly, but man, it felt like it. Not a lot of people know what it's like to fly under their own power, you know?"

"Yeah, I know...even when you take them up with you, there's something about the fact they're just a passenger that makes them not have that feeling. Like, because they aren't controlling it, they can't fully enjoy it."

Every single one of the other cyborgs had gone flying with him at least once and they all seemed to enjoy it, but no matter how hard he tried to explain, he couldn't tell them what it felt like to do the flying. Jet had always prized his freedom and flying was the most freeing sensation he'd ever experienced. He'd spend hours going as high as he could, as far as he could, as fast as he could, wherever he wanted to go. As long as he had a snack with him, he could go for hours upon hours. The wind in his face and hair, the feeling he'd get when he'd get really high and then just turn his jets off and let himself freefall for minutes before turning them back on and catching himself.

Nothing felt like that and it seemed no one understood it if they couldn't do it themselves.

But Sam knew and that was something.

"Tell you the truth, it's nice to finally meet someone who gets it. All of it." Including the utter pain of being grounded so completely that there wasn't anything beyond a fool's hope of getting that freedom back.

"Right? They get the rush, sure, but it's not the same. For some there's still a part of them that's terrified, no matter how much they trust you. And others, you know, they're just not really happy unless they're behind the wheel."

Sam'd had Riley, once upon a time, to share all of that with. Running missions together, saving lives, but more than that - letting loose, during training or just for fun, just the two of them and the sky.

When Riley'd gotten shot down, that was one of the millions of things that Sam lost, that he never thought he'd get again. And it'd made it ever harder, than he didn't have anyone who understood what it felt like, to lose not only his best friend, but the sky.

"Yeah. Yeah, same here, man. I spent a couple years retired, kept my feet on the ground, but right before I wound up here? Just got back in." It was like just getting a taste, of everything he'd once had, only to lose it again even more thoroughly than he had last time.

Especially as long as he was here.

He felt relieved listening to Sam talk, hearing in his words what Jet felt as well. He couldn't imagine retiring, though...not by choice, at least.

When he'd first woken up in Site-B, human for the first time in decades, he'd been grounded and just when it had started to drive him up a wall, they found out they could reactivate their cybernetics. But here in Panem, their ijiva was solid, they couldn't affect anything through their perceptions anymore and that meant his abilities were offline. At least they were offline as long as the Capitol had a hold on them, his and Albert's cybernetics had come back during the fog in the arena.

Still, for all intents and purposes his feet were just as glued to the ground as Sam's were and he hated it.

"What made you give it up? I can't imagine choosing that."

Sam’s mostly past the time in his life when a question like that would have made him shut down. He talks about it a lot - why he retired, how he lives with the decisions he made, who he lost and how he’d worked through it - to people who understand, because they’ve been through something similar, and to people who don’t, but are trying to.

But it’s a little different, here, somehow, it affects him a little more. He’s never had someone who knows exactly what he gave up, who’d be able to figure out the kind of state Sam must have been in to let go of the sky. There’s been people who could assume, who could put two and two together with how much Sam obviously loved it and how much he’d had to get out, but no one that really knew.

He could stretch the truth a little, just say it was pretty much a forced retirement and leave it at that, but he doesn’t. That’s not the kind of guy he is now.

“Wasn’t much of a choice,” he says eventually. “I lost my wingman, on a rescue op. After that, I need to figure some things out, you know, wasn’t going to be much good to anyone until I had myself sorted.”

Jet's patient and lets Sam think through whatever's on his mind without moving or pressing him. If there wasn't an immediate answer to offer, that meant it was a difficult one to think about. Once Sam's answer did come, Jet was glad he'd waited, he knew and could respect how hard it might be to talk about something like that, no matter how long ago it might have been for Sam.

"I got it. Sometimes, you gotta help yourself before you can try helping anyone else, especially after something like that. Not much good to anyone when you're still trying to find all the pieces."

He could relate to that just as well as the flying and he wouldn't wish it on anyone. How many times had he pulled himself back together after his father, Black Ghost, Jet's own stupidity, things beyond his control had torn away at him if not broken parts down completely? As for a wingman...he'd never lost Joe -still refused to believe he'd lost him to this place- Jet had always followed Joe into oblivion, it was how he'd died twice before ever coming here. But the memory of losing Albert, when he'd thought it had been permanent and the feeling of everything inside crumbling, leaving him hollow and cold. He'd been listless, directionless, unmotivated except in his anger and he had no doubt that was what Sam had been fighting when he'd given it up.

No, Jet couldn't blame him at all.

"Looks like you succeeded, though, not everyone can...that says something." That Sam was strong, even if he wasn't a hundred percent whole and never would be, he was still smiling and putting on his wings to help people. It was admirable.

He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, giving a little smile. It doesn’t surprise him that Jet gets that, too, but he’s still a little grateful for it. He’s had bad reactions to the admission before, soldiers who got pissed off at him for not being strong enough to keep on when he was needed. In a professional setting, he knows how to handle that reaction, how to probe for something deeper - but they’re not in a professional setting.

“Yeah, exactly. I’ve seen people keep trying to soldier on - pun mildly intended - and it never ends up well.” For them or the people they’d been trying to help.

There’s another smile at that, this one more genuine. “I had help.” The admission comes easily, because it’s not something he’s ashamed of. He’s had too hard a time convincing some soldiers that it’s okay to need help, and to ask for it, to be one of them himself. Well. For the most part, anyway.

“But even if I’d still had them, from what people’ve told me, doesn’t sound like it’d do me any good. The Capitol would’ve just taken them.”

Jet smiles back, glad to know Sam had had that kind of support. Sometimes it was hard to find and other times it was even harder to admit to needing. Whether either of those had been his case before, Sam was better for it.

Jet nods with a grimace. "Yeah, that's true. There're times when we get back what the capitol took from us -at their discretion- but I don't know that they'd've given that back even in those cases."

A man with wings probably seemed like too much trouble when they were trying to contain their captives.

"Maybe someday, though. No harm in hoping you'll get them back." They had some good tech people as far as Jet knew, maybe with the right opportunity and the right stuff, Sam could fly again. Plus, maybe that would mean Jet could as well. That was definitely a hope worth hanging onto.

His eyebrows raise a little at that. That’s the first he’s heard of it, the Capitol returning what they’d taken away, but - yeah, he guesses that fits with everything else he’s heard about the Capitol. Only when it can be used to their advantage, or for entertainment, of course.

“Unfortunately, they seem a little too smart for that.” Not that he could really do anything against the Capitol with them in an arena, but there you go.

Still, he grins a little at Jet’s comment. “Hell yeah, man, there’s always a way. Nothing could keep me grounded forever.”

There’s a reason that even back when he’d voluntarily given it up, he’d kept files he wasn’t really supposed to have lying around his house, and knew exactly where his wings were kept and under how much guard. Maybe not here, but when he gets back home - if he needs to, he can probably find a way.

“Has the Capitol given yours back before?”

"Yeah, once, a couple arenas ago." He gave a wry smile and looked down, embarrassment rising. "It was really dumb too because I had a fever at the time and wasn't in my right mind so...I kind flew myself into the barrier over the arena and got zapped like a bug. I didn't die, but it short-circuited a few of my systems and I couldn't do more than hover after that." That was when he'd run into Steve and told him in his fevered-haze that he couldn't be real because he was a comic book character. That had been pretty damn embarrassing too.

Of course, then less pleasant memories surfaced. His loss of flight meant he'd watched as, for the first time in the seventy years of knowing him, Jet had let Albert fall. His fiance had fallen from that cliff and Jet could do nothing but watch with Venus dying in his arms. If he hadn't fucked up to begin with, he could have saved Albert like he always did. Like he was supposed to do. Nevermind the whole thing with Fee and Kevin, if he could have flown Fee to safety, neither of them would have faced the nightmare of being eaten alive.

He kinda missed when his biggest concern was politics and whether there was a new organization plotting to take over the world.

"Next time I'll be a little smarter about it. Not that they warn you or anything, even that last time, it only happened when the air raid sirens went off."

Edited 2014-12-10 06:29 (UTC)

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