A meeting between men Who: Roman Scherbatsky & Derek Hunt Where: Derek's RV - Dog Park What: Meeting to air grievances and start making plans for jailbreak When: After Ashfall plot (for lack of better term) and before Jailbreak
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Roman went striding through the camp like an oncoming hurricane. He still slowed down occasionally to nod to people he passed, but there was something tight and strained at the corners of his mouth, a shuttered look to his eyes that meant he wasn’t to be stopped or interrupted. The Dog Park was a changed place these days, more muted and quiet since their leaders had been taken away. More weight had fallen on the impromptu council in their wake. For his part, Rome found that people were asking him questions where they’d ordinarily have gone to Vic; possibly gravitating to the comforting look of one big, broad, bald Scherbatsky in lieu of the other.
It reminded him of an earlier time in a previous settlement, before Austin.
It wasn’t a mantle he particularly relished, but he’d do it if necessary. So he went picking his way through the repair yard, weaving past the gutted hulks of various half-dismantled cars, until he reached Derek’s RV.
Rome didn’t have that many tools in the workshed to pick from anymore, but this one had years of seniority. Hunt had been with the Hounds even longer than he had. He was top of the Russian’s list.
A clenched fist thumped against the mechanic’s door.
It took a few minutes before the door squealed open, hinges protesting the lack of oil over the years since Derek had parked it there. He leaned on the upper frame of the door in his typical outfit of a dingy tank top and jeans over his boots, looking Rome over for a moment before grimacing and stepping back to let the other man into his home.
"Hey," he said, a laconic greeting as he moved to clear a crate of pistons from the spare bench seat at the dinette. "Get you a drink? Got some piss in a jar that Herc brewed up. Close enough to Keystone piss, I guess it counts as beer."
While the camp was definitely gloomier without their leaders, Derek was finding it harder and harder to be bothered by the fact they were gone. He hadn't bothered trying too hard to show how his respect for the council had been plummeting since he'd gotten back from the outside, though his job keeping the vehicles up and running as best as possible at least kept him from having to publicly display his growing distaste in a way that would get him slapped down. But them running off on a goddamn vengeance mission when they had a breached wall and hurt and dying people at home deep-sixed what little respect he had left.
“I can never say no to piss in a jar,” Roman said, equally dryly, as he stepped in and shut the door behind him, leaning back against it while Derek cleared a space. Truth be told, his throat was itching; he hadn’t had enough to drink yet today, nowhere near enough to deal with all the shit that was about to hit.
“How you been doing, Derek? Sorry I haven’t been by as much.” Both men were friendly, but the older one had been swallowed up since the Dog King’s disastrous sortie; Rome was a lonely planet, his orbit withdrawing into hushed meetings and leaning on his family (or what remained of it). But he was looking over Derek closely now, trying to read and interpret the other man’s expression. He couldn’t really; both of them were too good at masking what they were thinking.
"Eh, you know how it is," Derek said, grabbing a couple mason jars of yellowish liquid out of the fridge and offering one to his guest. "Always something needing fixed around here. Cars and bikes don't keep running on their own. Especially not with the sort of crap we get falling out of the sky lately," he added, unscrewing his jar and taking a swig with a grimace at the taste. "God, I miss real beer. Didn't even drink Keystone when I was broke as hell before."
“Where’s the post-apocalyptic abbeys of beer-brewing monks when you need ‘em?” Roman said, rhetorically.
Derek wiped at his face with his arm as he kept and idle eye on the other man, dropping down in a seat and gesturing towards the other seat at the dinette. "Take a load off, why don't you," he said, setting his jar on the table. If someone had asked, he might have admitted that he wasn't completely surprised to see the elder Scherbatsky at his door. Vic was about the only member of the council beside Tegan that Derek had any use for lately - even if they had gone along with the stupidity that got them collared - and he'd been half waiting to see how his brother would handle his getting locked up as he worked on the vehicles under his care. "Surprised you got away from the dog and pony show for a few minutes to come by."
“It’s been busy, but kinda quiet sometimes, too. Like life’s been on pause since they got taken.” Roman sat down on at the dinette’s narrow seat, all large angles packed into a tight space. He was on edge, wired, until he took a sip from the mason jar—it calmed him, settling his restless hands and jittering feet.
“Thanks for everything you’re doing keeping things running, by the way,” he added, approaching the subject askance. “Normalcy’s important.”
"Normalcy is about all most of these folks have got," Derek pointed out, picking up his jar and taking another swig followed by a grimace before setting it back down. "Keeping food in the larder, clean water for them to drink, medicine when they need it, a safe place to sleep...that's the important shit these days. Not peddling death to junkies or pissing matches with out of town jackasses."
He grimaced, his brows furrowing over dark eyes as he shook his head, staring at his hands on the scarred surface of the table to avoid giving the other man a chance to see the anger in his eyes. He knew his opinion that they should have stayed the hell away from the damn Prax wasn't a popular one, but when things kept going from bad to worse - and all of it boiling right back to the damn drugs far as he could tell - it was hard as hell to avoid voicing it now and then. One hand curled into a fist on the table without him really realizing it as he shook his head again.
"We got responsibilities," he said, his voice tight with restraint. "People looking to us to keep 'em safe, Rome. What the hell are we doing if we're letting 'em down over shit that should've died with the old world? Why the hell we even here if we ain't gonna do right by our own people?"
Roman’s reaction was a rueful smile, at hearing some of his own reservations set loose into the open air. “Not arguing with you, brother. There’s a certain kind of life that I’d hoped to leave behind in the old world—but then one day you wake up and blink and you’re right back where you started. Worse off, even, ‘cause this time it’s my little brother in there. And his son out here.”
He shook his head. “We stopped selling. Might’ve been too little and too late to avert this, but we’re trying to do right at last. 2019’s on the way, and I dunno about you, Derek, but one more year alive means I want to do better this time. Get ourselves a clean slate.”
Derek's grimace turned into a rueful smile of his own. "Wasn't even my world before this all went down. I'd never even got collared for shoplifting before. I just kept my head down and worked my ass off, trying to build a better life for my mom and kid brother back north. Now..." He trailed off, lifting his hands to gesture vaguely around them. "I don't even know if my family's still part of the living, but I'm still trying to do right by 'em by being stand up as I can." He rapped his knuckles against the tabletop - a half-remembered ward against bad luck and jinxes. "I get family, Rome. Was a time I thought maybe the Dogs could fill that spot for me. Since I got back," he shook his head, "not so much. Feels like something went rotten while I was gone and I don't like it."
He sighed, reaching up to run a hand over his hair. "What was that thing people used to say? New year, new you? Hell, lately I've been starting to wonder if it might be time to take off my cut and go find what happened up north."
Rome paused for a moment, considering.
Any other time, he’d have encouraged Derek to hit the road and see what he could find: well-wishes and good luck, brother, and go find your family.
But Roman Scherbatsky has his own family to piece back together if possible, and that means he has to use the younger man while he still can. Selfish or not.
“If there’s any chance of you finding your mother and brother, I’d want you to take it. Seriously. But before you do, I need to ask one thing of you.“ He was finally arriving at the point, his whole reason for coming here, and so Roman ripped it off like a band-aid: “There’s a plan to break the officers out of prison. We’ve done it before, so we’ll do it again, just bigger this time—we’ve got maps of the insides, some contacts inside La Quinta, a corrections officer on our payroll now. We’ve got that DoR truck we stole a ways back, and all we need is a respectable-looking driver for it. Get a Capitol driver, get them to drive us—just you and me, if I have my way, keep it small and manageable—drive past their security, up against the walls of La Quinta, and blow it wide open.”
A beat. “But we need to get that driver. I know what this is asking of you, brother, especially considering this wasn’t your world, but… My own brother’s still in there, Derek, and I need him back. His son needs him back.”
Derek stared at him for a long moment, considering what Rome had finally laid on the table. He couldn't say he was surprised at the plan - it or something like it had been almost inevitable from the moment the officers had been captured. As long as they were still alive, something had to be done to get them out. It was too dangerous to let them stay captured after all. But it was so hard for him to find any real drive to get the majority anything but a helping hand on the road to dead so they wouldn't have to worry about them causing trouble any longer.
Vic, though... He reached up and ran a hand over his face, pushing his hair back from his eyes. Vic tried so damn hard to keep things running around the camp. Took care of his family. Hell, he was one of the last people on the council who actually felt like family. And that still meant something to Derek.
Finally he sighed, shaking his head. "You ask me, most of those sons of bitches can damn well rot for all I care," he said, his gaze rising from the table to meet Rome's. "But Vic don't belong there and if I can do something to help break him free, I got to do it. So... for what it's worth, you got my help. What do you need from me to make this happen?"
“Rotting is pretty harsh,” Roman said lightly. But he gave the other man another look; he hadn’t been aware the feelings ran so deep. Something he ought to keep a better eye on, in future. Can’t let these sorts of things spiral out of control. “How long you felt this way, Derek?”
"How long?" Derek asked, scratching his cheek as he glanced out the murky glass of the RV's window. It was a good question, he supposed. At least, from the point of view of someone playing captain until the officers dragged their sorry asses back anyway. Finally he shrugged. "Don't really know. Can't say I've ever been happy about pushing that damn Prax. Yeah, maybe it kept the ghouls too high to be a problem, but combine pushing that shit on them with abuse damn well didn't make them go away. I mean, hell, Rome. I saw guys pissing on people just cause they were so damn strung out all they could do was beg for another hit. That's fucked up. Part of why I agreed to head out and try and find some new sources of parts and food and all."
Roman nodded, silent and attentive in the way that he did so well, still listening as Derek went on.
"Then I came back," he said, his brows furrowing again. "And I get everyone jumping down my damn throat cause I don't know why the hell we're trusting an outsider to be in charge of something as important as our food. When did we let people start buying their way into our trust, Rome? Hell, she could be a damn plant for all we know, but they just trust her blind as all get out cause Bishop used to fuck her? When I left, at least the damn cut meant something. Now we're playing pissing matches with sons of bitches from God only knows where that have fucking rockets and shit and they decide to run off and try and count coup in the middle of it? No way, man. I'm done. I can't keep playing cops and robbers like a little kid when dead people are getting up and walking again."
The older man exhaled, long and slow. It didn’t really make the weight feel any less, but Rome was able to gather his thoughts, reorganise them before answering the mechanic’s concerns. “Yeah. I hear you. One hundred percent. This world, it’s uglier than it ever was, and that’s no excuse to throw good behaviour to the dogs, but it means that I understand and that you’re not alone. But I’m committed. Our king’s got me, for better or worse, ‘cause I’ve got family here, real blood, that I can’t just pick up and leave. So if you’ve got a shot at finding your blood out there: I’m serious, it sounds like you’d be happier at least trying. Because meanwhile we’re one big damn kettle here, just waiting for the next time it boils over.”
Roman’s shoulders moved in a shrug, his big hands spread. “And I appreciate you still agreeing to help. As for what I’d need? You’re good with vehicles, we’ve both worked with the road captain—I need you to analyse their routes with me, find the best place to grab a agent. Set a trap to bust the truck’s wheels when it passes through, and then help me keep them subdued and driving for us until we’re safely through. I don’t want them to get hurt or killed, if that makes you feel better about it. We just need a friendly Capitol face at the wheel, and appropriate… incentive to keep them driving.”
"Whatever you need to get Vic out," Derek said, slugging back the last of his jar. "I'm your man, Rome. Tell me when, tell me where, and I'm yours. I can rig up a wheel trap easy enough if I have a route to slip it into. Or hell, an IED if it comes to it."
The Russian’s mouth twitched with something near a smile, but not quite. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” he said.
"You mean besides the fridge full of piss in a jar passing as beer?" Derek asked, raising his jar with a wry smile. "'Cause I always seem to manage to have that. The miracle of trade for repairs never gets old."
“Between your piss-beer and Bishop’s intestine-scorching moonshine, I think we all make do.” Rome’s own jar was empty now, too, poured down the bottomless gullet of his thirst. It helped, but didn’t entirely slake it.
But he clinked his jar against Derek’s, a half-hearted little toast, a cheers running on empty. “If or when it does come time for you to go on the move again, be sure to leave a forwarding address, alright?”
It was Rome’s little way of showing affection: an appreciation for an honest, straightforward voice that he would miss around camp.
"Such as anything like that exists anymore I will," Derek said with a shrug. "If I go and I find a place worth living out there, I'll try and send word back. Give anyone who wants out of Austin an opportunity to head for. Hell, might come back myself to lead folks there. Get the kids out of here at least."