thecapitol | [closed] Thunder shook loose hail on the outhouse again

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[closed] Thunder shook loose hail on the outhouse again

Who| Brock and Molotov
What| Reunion Take 2: ostensibly with less pettiness and alcohol
Where| Capitol Zoo & Aquarium
When| Weds., Oct. 29, around sunset
Warnings/Notes| probably language??? will edit if needed

Brock's starting to get antsy.

The information he's gathered so far indicates that Arenas happen on a pretty fixed schedule, and he's figured out that the last one ended pretty shortly before his arrival. So it'll happen soon again, he's sure, and though he usually isn't too bothered about rushing into the unknown, the political atmosphere is making him edgy this time. Brock doesn't do well with politics; it's all a little beyond him, but even he can tell that this whole world is on the edge of some kind of civil war, and it makes him nervous.

Liquidation is always an option for remnants of an old regime.

He spends most of his time gathering what information he can out of his fellow Tributes. He doesn't dare write anything down because he's not an idiot, but he's starting to piece a very large, very frightening puzzle together in his head. And sometimes he needs a break from that -- and sometimes kicking the shit out of holograms and futuristic punching bags just isn't good enough.

The zoo is quiet this time of day, and he's sure they'll close soon. But it's alright; he just needs some time to clear his head, and mindlessly looking at animals is good for that. It reminds him of the zoo in Colorado Springs, the mountains in the distance and all, which he always liked, even though the boys always wanted to go to the one in Denver. But Cheyenne Mountain didn't have polar bears like this place, the kind you can see through the glass as they swim in the underground part of the grotto, all illuminated blue with chlorine and fake ice. It's calming and melancholy all at once, but the artifice upsets him, just like the rest of the Capitol. There doesn't seem to be any escape, and he supposes that's the point.

Brock lingers by the glass for a few minutes, watching, then turns to go.

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Being alone at the zoo is nice because Molotov can find some privacy there. No one chases her or screams for smiles when they don't recognize her, when she doesn't have Tom at her side as a marker -- she can put on sunglasses, wrap her hair in a scarf and don normal clothes, or at least as normal as Capitol clothing gets. Leggings and some kind of huge, sequined sweatshirt dress, nothing she particularly cares for, but innocuous enough to keep people from looking at her.

She sits on a small ledge, built for children to lean on but empty now, her arms wrapped around her knees as she watches the polar bears, absorbed in their movements, the way they swim around and ignore her entirely. Leaning her head on the glass, she is bathed in the blue glow, peaceful and calm and utterly silent, content with the way the world is in this moment.

Not enough velour and zippers for Molotov's tastes, huh. But no, Brock doesn't even bother trying to disguise himself when he goes out; he's so huge that he's always going to stand out unless he goes all out and gets a prosthetic face or a hump or something. People look at him and they whisper and take pictures, but he doesn't get approached too much unless he's at a bar or something. And then it's fine, because those are usually slightly tipsy Capitol girls all starstruck.

But for all his espionage skills, Brock is stupidly susceptible to disguises himself -- possibly due to the emphasis that Hunter put on them during his training, like a learned mental block -- and he doesn't even notice Molotov right away, all bundled up like Thelma and/or Louise like she is. He walks past, eying her surreptitiously, and he's still appreciating her legs before he stops in his tracks a little ways away, squinting, and then turns back around.

"Is that your new look?" he calls, hands on his hips.

Molotov sees him before he sees her, as she always does, but she ignores him, assuming that's what he wants anyway. Who is she to try and force any communication between them when he's made it so clear that he doesn't want anything to do with her?

She sighs and squeezes her eye shut, moving one hand to rub at her temple, then glances over her shoulder at him. She doesn't deign to be so loud as he is -- instead, she answers in a normal voice. "I can't want to sit in peace for a little while, without being interrupted?"

Wow, he's not, like, screaming. He's some distance away; it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize it was her, okay.

"Didn't you all lecture me about how important it is to be seen, and blah blah," Brock says, rolling his eyes up and staying where he is. His tone is light, teasing, perhaps overly so. Whether that's to make up for before at the Crowning or because he's not sure they're not being watched, well, it's hard to say. The distance he keeps between them speaks well enough toward caution, though, an overt unwillingness to appear more than casual acquaintances.

She ignores his tone, answers seriously. It could be that she hasn't forgiven him for the Crowning, and doesn't want to. It's always easier to be angry, to hold something against him, to have a distance.

"I didn't say twenty-four hours a day," she responds, looking back to the bears. "Wanting to be alone for a little while isn't a crime." There's truth in this -- Tribute Tower doesn't have many spaces where you're unlikely to run into people you know, unless you want to stay in your room all the time.

Brock doesn't exactly mind the distance. From what he's heard from Joel, the Capitol isn't above using personal feelings against them, particularly if they're people from the same world -- which is something he already assumed, of course, but it's always nice to have your theories validated. He'd rather not have Molotov used against him in some way, and though he doubts very much that she'd care enough to be an effective piece of leverage himself (which is maybe worse, he thinks distantly), he doesn't want to risk it either way.

Still, there's a difference between forced distance for the sake of a cover and the real thing. He doesn't trust her in this world practically build for mercenary behavior, but there's too much history between them for him to just pretend she doesn't exist. He tried that before. It didn't work. It never worked, despite his best efforts. This sullen, standoffish shit is so unlike her that he's thrown off, and he can't help but wonder if she's working the same angle as him, but in a different way.

"Uh. I guess not," he says a little lamely, unsure how to react to this, but decides that maybe he can get through to her in code. If anything, she must be missing the spy game just as much as him. "Though we're probably never alone. I couldn't even find a dry cleaners without getting hounded."

Some of it is angle, some of it is genuine hurt, still left over from not only the Crowning, but the last time they'd been together. How can you forgive someone you loved when they were ready to kill you, really kill you? It stung, even now. It never stopped.

She pauses when he says that, glances over her shoulder again, then casually lifts her sunglasses to let them rest atop her head. "Don't bother to keep looking for one," she answers. "They never get anything clean here. And no matter how hard you try to sanitize, the weird smell stays around anyway, not worth contaminating your closet with it."

There's a shrug. "Did you visit the petting zoo? Feed the chickens and you'll feel better, I think."

Brock is still asking himself the same question about how to forgive someone you loved for screwing you over and over, honestly. So far he hasn't come up with an answer. Then again, his way of trying to find an answer involved, like, squirreling away metal panties and then almost throwing her into propellor blades, so. Brock is not that smart in such matters.

"Yeah, I think I saw something about that in that dumb gossip rag of theirs," he says a little dryly. But he doesn't really want to get into it. At least now he knows Molotov wasn't just flapping her gums about their history; he's still a little skeptical that she isn't getting too caught up in playing socialite that she's forgotten how to spy. But Celebrus must have just made that up, knowing that they're from the same world and possess the same skillsets.

Either that, Brock thinks to himself, rolling his eyes up briefly, or that Irish asswipe's little display at the Crowning just made everything extra juicy for the paparazzi.

"Ah, I've never been good at that stuff," he says, looking back down at her again. He's still standing over here in the distance, and now that he can see her face without the big glasses, porcelain and perfect and blue in the weird light from the tank, he feels a familiar pang in his chest that he tries pretty hard to ignore. He glances away. "You know. What if I get bit or something? I don't trust the hospitals here."

Molotov snorts. All the Tributes hate Celebrus, but they do, at least, know how to do a photoshoot. Molotov has a newfound respect for that, given some of the other tabloids' lack of professionalism in that arena.

She smiles dryly, casts her gaze back at the tank. "We all have illnesses in this city," she tells him. "I guess you could call the whole damn place a hospital. At least it's a pretty nice one. I've heard there are worse ones they sometimes take the sickest of us to, for treatment. The nursemaids and babysitters can't take care of them in the cushy hospitals."

"It'd be nice to be able to go someplace clean without a nursemaid," he answers slowly, though he's pretty sure he already knows about a place like that. The first person he met with the Capitol brand took him there when he asked if they could speak privately, though he's not sure how clean it was. He hasn't been hassled for that conversation, but then again, he's had similar talks with Tributes out in the open, too.

He supposes it's also possible that the Capitol is just keeping an eye on him before they decide one way or another. A little bitching probably isn't enough for them to drag you out into the street in the middle of the night. Still, he'd rather be careful.

He looks up at the little cave they're in, the ceiling made of moulded plastic to imitate stone, and wonders. How many crevices could they possibly have surveillance in? Or is it more than that; are they themselves actually outfitted with surveillance? Trackers he can believe, and things that monitor biorhythms and whatever else -- but actual, honest-to-god recording implants?

"I mean I'm used to a little more autonomy."

A polar bear swims by peacefully, and Molotov leans her head to the glass, entranced. She's always loved polar bears, ever since she was small and could sometimes see them in the distance from the Arctic dacha her father raised her in.

"I don't know that it really matters what you're used to." There's a wry tone to her voice, like it's a bit of a joke. "If anyone cared, you wouldn't be here, would you?"

Brock's not really sure what compelled him to come to this exhibit specifically. The cave attracted him, he thinks, even though now he's not so sure it's as unwatched as his gut reaction assumed. There probably isn't an inch of the Capitol that isn't bugged.

He's also not really sure how to interpret that. He assumed Molotov was eating this shit up, a world where she was basically rewarded for manipulative behavior, but now he doesn't know. He never could figure her out; even when he thought he knew her, she always surprised him.

But he doesn't know how to ask without blowing this, both the secrecy of their conversation and his carefully constructed indifference toward her. So he doesn't.

"How much time have you spent at the petting zoo, anyway?"

"Not as much as you might think," she says, and shrugs. "The animals here always seem to find their own food, funny enough. Sometimes it's good feed, and sometimes it's just trash they mistake for edible. Usually I just drop by for a few pictures, a quick pat, and then I'm on my way without feeding them at all."

It's creepy, the way the Capitol can seem to dig through their past, can turn up video of events that were never recorded, secrets that were never shared. Even Molotov's poorly translated biography from the Arena had a few kernels of truth in it, when she fought through the gibberish.

Joel said something to the effect of the Capitol having dossiers on them, information and recordings from their own worlds of events that already played out. Which makes no logical sense from everything that Brock knows about super-science. Even if you did go into the past, recording that kind of stuff would mess with the flow of time, right? You'd see a big camera floating in the air and then you'd remember it in the present. He's running under the assumption it's all part of the trackers they've implanted, some sort of memory or dream recording. If the boys' memories could be recorded on reel-to-reel, why couldn't they do it here with little nanocomputers or whatever the hell they've got injected under their skin.

But he's barely thinking about that, more concerned with Molotov's answer. If she doesn't feed them anything, then what? She really was dating that stuck-up Irish guy? And Cyrus Reagan before him, whoever that is. She's moving on fast and she's moving on hard, and it shouldn't bother him as much as it does. And yet...

"I guess you're more interested in these guys, huh," he says, looking over at the polar bears swimming through the glass, his tone shifting to something a little more distant. There's nothing behind the question but genuine curiosity, genuine conversation unburdened by code.

Molotov smiles faintly at the bears, holding her knees closer to herself. She really does find something calming in them, even if she can't exactly point out what it is or why. The water casts little lines on her face as she watches the glass.

"I always liked them," she says faintly, as another passes by, close to the glass. "All bears, really. There were polar bears where I was born, and then the brown ones in the woods. I don't really know why, I guess they just make me happy."

"It's real Russian of you," he answers mildly, allowing the faintest note of familiarity to creep into his voice as he glances back at her again. Russia was the bear, isn't that how it went? He never spent all that much time in the wilderness whenever he went out there. It was always Moscow and Leningrad and secret passages underground.

Moving from where he's standing is a little awkward because he's been there for so long, but he does it anyway, coming closer to lean his back against the glass a little to the side. He has a better view of her now, but he can still look at the bears if he turns his head. For all intents and purposes, they're strangers having a conversation about wildlife and zoos; Brock awkwardly talking to the side of her head from a few yards away was more conspicuous than anything.

He figures it's pointless to try and be clandestine about anything, but it's familiar to him and it's comfortable. He'll pretend for awhile.

"I think we had black bears where I grew up, but I never saw one. I'm pretty sure they're all gone now."

"That isn't why I like them, bald eagle boy," she says, refraining from snapping, but clearly offended that she's not allowed to like things just for the sake of liking them. Everything is a stereotype for him, hard black and white.

It's always made her crazy.

"That's sad. I thought you were from one of those states that only has four people in it and they're all busy watching the cars race around the same circle for four hours at a time."

She's so easily offended! It was a joke, lady, lighten up. You know, Brock likes hamburgers and shitty beer, he's so American, blah blah.

Still, Brock just snorts. "I don't believe you've never been to Nebraska," he says, because he doesn't. Brock has pretty much been limited to where the Ventures go for the past 20 years so he didn't get much of a chance to go to Siberia, but Molotov's been a free agent. She can go wherever she wants, whenever she wants. It's a sort of freedom he's often envied, but not at the price of conviction.

"There's cougars and stuff, though. I dunno. I kind of wish we could get out of this city sometimes, see what the mountains are like."

"Why would I go to Nebraska?" Molotov asks, because that is absolutely a legitimate question and she can't think of a reason she'd have ever gone there. There was no one there that she believed anyone would want to kill, not enough to pay for her services. "Do the people who live in Nebraska even want to be there?"

She shrugs, watches the bears for a moment. "It isn't the same, but the window in your room, it can be set to different places, I think to sort of remind the old Tributes of where they came from, make them feel at home. So they must have filmed in the Districts. There's beaches and mountains and forests and deserts. Everything."

Well, she'd have gone to Nebraska because Brock was born there, clearly. But he doesn't say that because it sounds stupid out loud. It's hard not to feel a little hurt that Molotov, with her infinite freedoms of movement, never bothered, but why should he care? It's stupid. If he could go wherever, would he have gone up to the Boonies Oblast and just like stood there and absorbed... all the Molotovness of everything? No, it's dumb. He moves on.

"It's not the same," he agrees, because he mostly just wants to go to the mountains to be alone. But also to see if this really is Colorado like he suspects, and you can't really get the feel for that unless you're in it. Forests all kind of look the same on TV.

"Anything remind you of home?"

Well, she'd also never been to Uzbekistan just for the hell of it, but he doesn't seem all that worked up about it. Molotov works a lot, it wasn't like she spent most of her time just jetting around to different sad places.

She shrugs and shakes her head a little. "Not really. Not the snowy footage, not the beaches. None of seems like anywhere I've ever known, or maybe... maybe it all seems a little generic, you know?"

Because Brock is not from Uzbekistan, though she should rethink that because they have delicious stew there.

"It's TV," he says, shifting his weight a little harder against the glass as he crosses one ankle over the other. "I mean, it's sci-fi world TV, but it's still the same. Flat. Nothing like being there."

This moment here feels more real than anything else he's felt in this place so far. He reasons it's because Molotov represents home to him -- as familiar as the mountains are to him, she's something he could actually touch. At least theoretically. It seems too dangerous now.

Still. He brings it up after a bit of a pause, clear sign of struggling with deciding if this is stupid or not. "I think this is Colorado."

Molotov doesn't look all that decided on whether or not she thinks that's stupid, either. "Why do you think that?" she asks, looking directly at him for once, her brow knit. "We don't even know if it's really Earth, why would we be in Colorado?"

Brock tilts his head a little, his own brow knitting with skepticism. "Does it make more sense for it to be some weird alien world? I think," he says slowly, "it's either some weird future or an alternate dimension... thing. But still Earth."

As for why Colorado, he throws his hand out in a vague gesture. "The mountains, the weather... maybe you haven't spent enough time there, but it looks like it to me."

She shrugs again. "I've never been to another planet, I couldn't say," she tells him. "It's all beyond me. But just because it's Earth, doesn't mean it's Colorado. Other parts of the world are like this too."

A bear brushes the glass with its nose, and Molotov smiles faintly at it when it swims off. "But you would know better than I would, I suppose."

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