thecapitol | [Closed] You're gone, gone, gone away

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[Closed] You're gone, gone, gone away

Who| Clara and Alex Murphy
What| Clara isn't coping very well, so she turns to Alex. Which probably isn't the best idea, really.
Where| Peacekeeper Headquarters
When| During Arena 13, before Alex gets hacked
Warnings/Notes| Talk involving one really screwed up marriage. Will update as the thread goes along.

Clara's fairly certain that the first thing that crossed her mind upon realizing that Rose wasn't coming back made her a terrible person. It wasn't that she rejoiced that her supposed girlfriend was dead, not at all. In fact, the loss of Rose hurt. She had been a friend (admittedly with benefits) and was Dave's sister, but even then, it meant that Clara wouldn't have to be in an impossible situation anymore.

While she can't give Alex all the reasons behind it, she can at least tell him that Rose is gone and make her intentions clear.

Which is what brings her to the Peacekeeper's Headquarters. She'd much rather have this conversation somewhere that's quiet and private, like at the Tribute center, but she hasn't seen him there in ages and this is the only place where she's sure she'll find him at some point.

She sits on a bench in the large, marble lobby, waiting to see him pass through. The moment she sees him, she hops to her feet, practically marching towards him (and secretly being thankful that he isn't on a motorcycle this time) before calling out, "Alex, can we talk?"

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Alex returns with a few dings scuffed across his graphene armor. As Clara isn't authorized to know where they came from, he doesn't offer an explanation as he swivels and faces his wife.

"Of course."

Alex motions for Clara to follow. Generally having personal visitors during your shift isn't encouraged, which is why he leads her to a side room that's normally reserved for low level interrogations. The one-way mirror isn't as heavily reinforced here. The tables aren't bolted to the floor like the others. There aren't even loops in those tables for handcuffs to be attached to - in other words, it's a room that Alex has classified a "acceptable for socializing". He even closes to the door to give them the illusion of privacy. As he turns to Clara, he sizes her up without even that down-up flick a normal person would when they're checking someone out. It's unnecessary when he can rely on the emotional analysis programming to pick out her facial tics and compare them to the compiled database.

"What did you want to talk about?" Alex asks.

He has several possible subjects: Rose dying is at the top, the most likely because Clara was supposed to be engaging in emotional/physical intimacy with her. Rather difficult to do that with a dead woman.

Of all the places she had thought of them having this kind of conversation, an interrogation room, no matter how low level, is not what she expected. Maybe an office, or a tucked away hallway, or anywhere that doesn't make her feel like she's a prisoner. As much as she wants to say something about how she doesn't feel comfortable in here since it's even more obvious that they might be watched, she knows how suspicious that sounds.

"Us, mainly," Clara says softly as she leans against the table, trying not to focus on the mirror and instead pretend they're somewhere a little more familiar like their kitchen. "We used to talk. I know that things happened, but..." she trails off, trying to figure out to finish that sentence, "I miss you. And while I disagree with you on it, I understand why you forced me to see the doctor."

Which is the closest she can bring herself to saying 'I forgive you for tasing me' right now.

She looks slightly hesitant to say anything else at first before she finally says, "I think you deserve to know the truth about my relationship with Rose, we...there wasn't really anything there. We were just friends."

Alex doesn’t point out that she should be sitting or standing, not leaning against Peacekeeper property. Something, tact or his prioritization subroutines, stops him.

Probably for the best.

He can’t make himself lie and say he misses her. He would, he’s sure, if it wasn’t for the suppression doing what it’s supposed to. The average married couple is supposed to spend more time together than they have. Sometimes he wonders, in those seconds before they sedate him for maintenance, she hasn’t filed for divorce. At the very least she seems to understand that he had to “forcefully assist” her for her own good. The new eye is much preferable to the gaping socket from before.

“I thought you were going to engage in intimacy with her,” Alex says after a pregnant pause. His face might be devoid of all emotion like the muscles there have frozen, but his voice has a faint undercurrent of surprise the suppression didn’t quite catch. “What went wrong?”

And why hasn’t she found someone else to replace Rose? It’s becoming clear that she’s still agitated, uneasy. Not the optimal emotional state he’s sure they would both prefer she’s in. As he stands there, staring down at his wife, something spikes in his feed going to his handler. For a brief, two-second burst he actually experiences something that’s either relief or sadness. It’s been long enough that he’s not entirely sure which one it is.

For once in her life, Clara is at a loss for words. Sure, with the persona she had played up, she had never once said that she was over Alex. It had always been that she was conflicted when it came to trying to chose between the two, in the interviews where it had been brought up, she had always deflected that she didn't want to distract Alex from his duties as a Peacekeeper and that she was so madly in love with Rose while still being in love with Alex that she couldn't possibly choose between them.

Not that she thinks Alex ever watched those interviews, as much as she kept wishing he would and something would break through the suppression.

"We...did and didn't. It was all physical. There was never enough there between us for it to be anything other than that." Clara lets out a sad little laugh. They had discussed it in secret, that at the end of the day they both knew it was a sham that they both could benefit from, not that she's going to say that aloud right now. "We both had too much baggage for it to be anything other than that. She had someone back home and I..." she trails off, looking at him for a beat before focusing on a tile on the floor, unable to bring herself to say the words to his face. "I still love you. Even if we had tried to make something out of it...I don't think I could bring myself to."

She lets the words hang there for a moment, trying to figure out what else she could possibly say without burying herself deeper than she already feels like she has. "What do you want me to do next?"

Alex listens patiently. He’s aware in the detached back of his mind, as if he’s looking at a film strip or a catalogue, that he’s experiencing some inappropriate levels of neural activity (he can see the spikes in the graph tabbed to the side, just like his handler). While he should report that for correcting, for now Alex mostly analyzes and makes an error log. Flagged: relief, regret, agitation flicker across the bottom of his HUD, futility, uncertainty. Most of it doesn’t make it to his face. His mouth doesn’t twitch into a frown or a smile. But there’s something faint, borderline invisible, behind his eyes. He blinks a little too fast, like he’s trying to digest something he wasn’t ready for. His eyes never leave his wife’s face.

“I want you to be happy,” Alex says the first thing that comes to mind. The words feel familiar even if his affect is flat. “Maybe we’ve been going about this wrong.”

Although, he is forced to admit, he doesn’t see how. The probability of Clara finding her needs met had been high enough that he hadn’t tried to find her alternate partners in case something like this happened. While he’s compiling a list of Tributes, Victors, Peacekeepers and the population of upper-to-middle class Capitolite, he tries to come up with something else that Clara can do to take her mind off this.

“What about couples counseling? Maybe a tour of the Districts would be helpful. Getting away from it all might be something to consider.”

Clara's too focused on anything other than looking him in the eyes to notice anything that might be somewhat out of place with his suppression. And really, that's the only reason she doesn't try to pry about what he's feeling in that moment. She doesn't notice him blinking, instead she's staring at anything else, the peeling paint in the corner, the pattern of the tiles on the floor, anything that'll distract her out of fear that he'll say something completely tactless and hurtful by accident.

Even with how wrong those words sound in that tone of voice, it still wasn't what she was expecting him to say, not in the slightest. But she does look up at him, finally, as she tries to process that.

By now, Clara should know better than to be as hopeful as she sounds and looks. Of all the things she had considered that Alex might recommend, counseling isn't one of them. Hell, it's near the bottom of the list of things she'd expect. And, true, she never thought they'd get to a point in their marriage where they would need counseling, but she also never thought any of the past year would have happened to them, so it's fair enough. "I want you to be happy too," she says with a small smile. "Maybe counseling would do us some good."

And as for the idea of traveling to see the Districts, well, she isn't completely sure of that. "It'd probably do both of us some good to see what's beyond the Capitol." Which is the most unsubtle hint drop she's ever given, but it's what she can think of saying that makes her ideal version of a District Tour clear to him.

Alex waits a second longer than his emotional analysis needs to calculate Clara's facial muscle positions. It's not a long second, between two people having a conversation, but for him it's downright glacial.

"I think so too," Alex says, going with that. He doesn't commit to saying if he's happy, unhappy or anything in between, but he does go with [ VERBAL RESPONSE: AGREEMENT ]. "I’ll ask to take some time off so I can come with you."

For her own protection is the most obvious reason. With the rebels out there, there's the chance that they might see a Victor as a Person of Interest - they could decide to try to kill her or, worse for the Capitol, recruit her to the cause even though he doesn’t believe she’s their first candidate. Alex suppose that in order to negotiate enough time off to escort her, he could use that as a selling point. He shift unconsciously from one foot to the other, a vague throwback to his pre-car bombing days when he knew things between them were rocky that he knew they needed to work past. By now he’s notice that Clara is practicing the classic art of visual avoidance. Her eyes go everywhere but his face, something that he’s observed in the past; it started when she first saw his chassis and, over the months, has become only more pronounced, not less. He had assumed that she would get used to this by now, he’s forced to admit.

“Would two weeks work for you?” Alex says, his request neatly through his feed. “I’m supposed to give at least a week’s notice.”

Clara doesn't notice. Of course she doesn't, she doesn't have any sort of way to know how long the programming they've stuck in Alex's head needs to measure things. She likes to pretend it isn't there, that maybe he's looking at her face instead of trying to avoid looking at her because he isn't being chickenshit about it (like she feels she is).

These days it feels like hope and pretending is all she really has to keep her sane.

For a moment Clara really considers prying. Tacky as it may be, the thought of asking him how any of this makes him feel could draw something out. The only reason she doesn't is that she isn't completely sure if his answer would or wouldn't be positive, and right now she isn't sure if she could handle him saying that he really doesn't want to go with her but is only doing so out of duty. Which, of course, she knows is probably a dumb thing to worry about on some level, but that doesn't change that the thought's occurred to her.

"If you want, I could go in to make it clear that I need a traveling companion," she says, a real smile tugging at her lips, as if for a moment she's forgotten where they are and that the Capitol would pay her even the barest amount of attention.

Later, after she walks out of here, it might cross her mind to get into contact with someone with a connection to 13 to see if maybe they could rendezvous somewhere in the Districts and smuggle the two of them away from the Capitol's reach. But right now it doesn't occur to her at all, as she instead dwells on the thought of them actually having something resembling alone time for a little while. That maybe they'd be able to work through this wall that had been built between them that went so much deeper than the suit, or the typical marital troubles that'd pop up when spending time together isn't really an option.

"Yeah, that'd be great," she responds, the smile only growing a little bit, though not by much. "We could make this like one of those road trips we used to go on." Like the one they had been talking about doing on and off before the carbomb, now that David was old enough to sit in the car for hours at a time. "Maybe we could go see what's left of home."

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[Closed] You're gone, gone, gone away

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