WHO: Willa and Cal WHERE: Capitol Building WHEN: Directly after parting from Nate, Thursday 13 August, shortly after dinnertime WHAT: Anyone in the Capitol Building with ears could hear that there's a fight going down, and Willa's storming outta town
The butt of Willa's fist pounded ungraciously on Cal's door, calling back memories of when they were teenagers, and one or the other wouldn't get out of the bathroom.
Were they still teens, she would’ve been answered by a surly, disheveled boy shouting Hold on, hold your goddamn horses. But these days, an insistent impolite knock was a sign of nothing good, and so his mind immediately flew towards the worst possible alternatives, the emergencies that might lead to someone pounding down his bedroom. And so the Cal that showed up at the door when he ripped it open was Sergeant Calvin Davidson, stern and alert, ready to leap into action and hear why he was needed.
He relaxed only marginally when he saw that it was his sister—marginally, mind, because he’d also seen her expression. “What is it?”
"I need your help," she insisted, pushing him back into his room and letting herself in too, closing the door. For an instant Willa paused, sad to bring an end to the innocence of reuniting with her brother purely for the sake of familial affection. "I came here because I was ordered here," she admitted. "Coming to see you is the cover. And the perk," Willa added, tone as genuine as she could hope to convey, hopeful that he wouldn't be sore she hadn't told him the first night. "I needed it to look real, I had to wait to tell you."
His brow creased, furrowing as he stared at his sister: this curt barking of information, cutting to the chase, getting right down to business. It was a trait they shared, and one he’d seen more and more in her after the outbreak, but tonight was unexpected.
“You what?” It took a moment for Cal’s brain to catch up with his mouth, until he could formulate something more intelligent, honing in on what he saw as the most relevant question. “Ordered by who? The Rangers?”
"Yeah," Willa responded. "Apparently they're sick of you getting shot at and want someone to go in and find a way to tip the scales. And you told Nate Quinn I was here, and Nate's sure as shit going to tell Bode he saw me." She pushed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, starting to pace across the small expanse between the desk that served as Cal's table and the door. "So I need a reason to leave, and a reason for him to let me in."
When she said it, the realisation came like a gut-punch—the knowledge of what he had accidentally left out—and Cal took a step backwards. Bode. Shit. Oh, shit. He scrubbed at his face with a hand, momentarily unable to meet Willa’s eye.
“So, I gather you know Bode’s out there.”
Well, at least he hadn’t had to be the one to tell her.
"Yeah Cal," Willa responded, her tone as dry as most of the expanse between Richland and Austin. "I did gather that, when Olinger pulled his photo out of a file and suggested that I might already have a connection to get my foot inside their gates." It wasn't as though Cal had known that she would be coming, or had any other reason to dredge up her past relationships, but all the same, Willa wished she'd heard the news - that Bode's escape from Harlan hadn't included an escape from living on the wrong side of the law - from her brother, that first night, rather than from the closest thing she had to a DPS Director. "I didn't go to the trouble of explaining to your Mayor that we didn't really part on good terms, haven't talked at all in six years. So I'm pretty sure I'm going to be needing a better reason for showing up on his doorstep than just missing him, something fierce." Her tone contrasted her words, making it obvious that spending a considerable amount of time with her ex was not, in fact, something near the top of her personal bucket list.
A long pause drew out while he let that sink in, absorbing the new information. The cogs and gears were turning in her brother’s head, a frantic scrabbling to stay on top of the situation and follow the intricacies of her mission, this brand-new set of variables he’d just found out about.
She needed to go to the Dog Park. She needed reasons to be let in. Cal could latch onto that.
“Well, I mean, y’all almost got married." Willa's head tilted to the side along with her eyes as she watched him; a gesture of uncertainty, but she didn't interrupt. "That’s probably a good enough reason for him to let you in those gates, even paranoid as they are. But you’d need to sever yourself from the Capitol first, else you’ll reek of suspicion to ‘em. We’re not exactly their favourite people. And you have a brother in the Department of Resources, which doesn’t make it easier-”
"And I'm not asking to catch up over lunch," she interjected. "I'm asking for shelter, when he'll know I'd have it here with you, no questions asked." There were obvious differences between literally sharing Bode's bed and metaphorically sharing Cal's, but Willa didn't want to attempt to use the past to her favor, not with her current purpose.
It was a tricky, tangled web. Cal had been leaning against the closed door, his arms crossed as he mulled over the situation, but he soon broke into a restless pace over to his bed, then his makeshift kitchen area, then back to the dining table, watching his sister.
“It’s dangerous, you know. I wouldn’t be happy about you going there.” It was a reason to leave, and it was also the truth. His mouth had set into a thin line.
"Cal, I'm not exactly a damsel in –" Willa interrupted her own thought, halting in her own steps and turning to her brother. "He knows that," she said, a delicate bubble of an idea forming in her mind; the same one she suspected was forming in Cal's. His mordant, tight-lipped smile grew as he saw her catch it. "He knows you know what they're doing out there, that you're on the other side of it." Cal had been trapped between Willa and Bode when they'd split, and even though each of them had done their best not to make it awkward, not to force him to choose, Willa knew that it hadn't been entirely easy for him.
Now, Cal and Bode were split, and she could put herself in the middle. "If I want to see him, and you don't want me to see him..." she smiled, a faint trace of hope at the burgeoning plan. "Everyone knows I'm a stubborn bitch - let's just use it to our advantage."
Something like a strangled laugh burst from Cal’s throat, shaking his head even as he could feel himself starting to agree, could feel the idea spreading its wings. The delight of a solution presenting itself like something glinting on the horizon, but there was also his bone-deep displeasure with this plan. With her mission at all.
“It won’t even be hard,” Cal said dryly, “‘cause all I have to do is say what I goddamn think anyway.” She had always been stubborn, and Cal had always been a hotheaded bastard—they could stoke that respective kindling, throw it together into a blaze. The arguments against her going to the Dog Park were already welling up on his tongue—it wouldn’t be a stretch at all to stage this disagreement.
But if the Rangers had ordered her to do it, she would do it. Cal would’ve expected no less from himself.
“I wish you had come for a social call,” he sighed, tipping his head back to stare up at the ostentatious chandelier decorating his room, the one he usually left unlit. She took advantage of the moment, moving to slide her arms around his torso and squeeze; a hug of gratitude and fondness and reassurance. His hands instinctively found her shoulderblades, pulling his sister tight.
"Me too," she mumbled into the bulk of his shoulder. "But I'll come back." It was dangerous to go undercover with these sorts of people, and Willa wasn't going to pretend that Cal was wrong to worry, or that she wasn't nervous to do it. They were both cut from the same Davidson cloth, and Willa could remember this same situation inverted, when Cal had been deployed to Iraq. For now she breathed in deep before letting go, pushing gently on his chest with her open palm. "You might mean it all," she said, warning tone to her voice, "but before we do this - don't get a big head, just - it does matter to me what you think, having you support me like this. It means something to me."
Who says I support you? he wanted to shoot back, a bitter churlishness. It was right there on the tip of his tongue for a moment, but the man managed to quash it back down, even as his fingers curled into the fabric of Willa’s shirt.
If she was going full-tilt into the Dog Park, this might be the last contact they had for a while. So he was memorising the moment, etching it into his memory lest something go horribly wrong: the sound of her voice, even the stupid smell of his sister’s hair (she’d immediately taken advantage of the Capitol’s shampoo supplies, much to her own delight).
“I support you because I know you’ve a good head on your shoulders, and you wouldn’t set yourself to somethin’ like this if it wasn’t important.” Cal’s voice came in halting fits and starts. “I don’t have to like it, but I can respect you doing it. My people get fucking killed by these men over and fucking over. Two more died last week. I have gunshot wounds from their pretty blondes. So I can understand—and support—wanting to find a way to take the place down.”
Willa's brow furrowed, upset to think that it could be Bode, trying to kill her brother. It wasn't anything she would have ever thought him capable of before the world had fallen apart. He wasn't overly fond of the law, especially those charged with enforcing it, and he'd had a temper even then, one that stayed smooth as a glassy summer lake up until the point when he could explode in the sort of rage that made her glad to be at his back, rather than his target. But murder, absent self-defense which wasn't really murder in her eyes, had always seemed to Willa to be beyond him.
"You're doing something brave, to try to keep people from starving to death," she said finally, balling his shirt inside her fist in kind. "I'm doing something brave so my baby brother doesn't get shot to death." Her hand reached up to muss his hair, and then her voice grew louder. "Did you think I just wasn't going to find out?" she started - by the time you could hear a fight, you were almost always coming in at the middle - "Or you thought you knew better, what's good for me?"
The fire was lit, and for one dizzying moment Cal couldn’t immediately tell if this was part of the act, or a genuine disagreement.
Because it was a little of both.
And that’s what made it so goddamned convincing.
“I was gonna mention it,” he said defensively, his own voice pitching higher. Sound carried in these tight hallways. “I just thought I’d let it wait a while instead of bursting your fucking bubble the first couple days you’re here. If you went on back to Richland, you wouldn’t have to come face-to-face to the fact that he’s started on something so much goddamned worse than moonshine. You didn’t have to know unless you stayed.”
"What do you think you're sparing me from, Cal?" she shouted in return. "You think I didn't know what he was doing the last time? That I was just that much of an idiot, and I didn't have anything to do with what was going on? I'm a grown fucking woman, you don't have to spare me from shit!" Willa squeezed his hand in hers, tugged for him to follow, and then made for the door, wrenching it open and into the wall with a bang, storming out on a path toward her own temporary quarters. She still needed to gather her pack together, and saddle up Juniper. He trailed after her, the door slamming shut behind him like punctuation, fuming in his sister’s wake.
“They’re fucking killers!” and his voice was a raw-throated bellow at her retreating back. They were out in public and he could feel others’ abashed eyes on them now, this sibling argument spilling out into the halls. “Two more of my own men, dead a little over a week ago! A shelter leader shot four days ago! You can’t tell me you want to go see him.”
With focus, Cal was able to summon up an image of one of the Hounds (that dusty blond hair, his opposite, like seeing himself through an inverted rippled mirror) and easily pour withering condescension into his voice, clenched anger into that word: him. He remembered the searing pain of a knife slammed into the meat of his arm, the month of painful recovery after. The other man had literally twisted it.
He couldn’t think the same about Bode; despite everything, there were lines that weren’t crossed. Damned by inaction maybe, standing aside and letting his cohorts run rampant, but not entirely the same.
Cal stalked after her down the hallway, reaching out to catch her sleeve. “You’re staying here, Willa. Just forget about him already!”
Willa's stomach sank as she stormed down the hall toward the open air of the rotunda that would carry their fight to every set of ears in the building. It was worse, hearing the pain and desperation in her brother's voice and knowing that he meant everything he was saying, that she had to make everyone believe she cared more for the bastards who had shot him than she did for her own brother. He had to know it wasn't true, not for her. If she did this, maybe it would mean an end to the danger for Cal, and the other resource agents, and the shelter leaders.
When his hand found her arm Willa swung around with a tug that sent her hand crashing into the wall, eyes narrowed and venom in her voice. "You don't get to decide what I do," she spat, her glare turning on a stranger as a door opened and a curious face peered out. "Mind your own fucking business!" Willa demanded, doing her best to prevent anyone coming to Cal's aid in his efforts to keep her in the building. Her brother was a likeable guy - loveable, really - and if she didn't make herself equally undesirable, there would surely be someone willing to take his side and keep her put. She stalked away from him again, the sound of her footsteps fading some as the hall opened out to the rotunda, though her voice carried just fine. "You really think he's going to hurt me, Cal? He's gonna see me, the woman he lived with for years, come to find him, and he's gonna fucking shoot me?"
“Maybe not him, but you don’t know the rest of ‘em!” He tried to keep his eyes locked on Willa, though his shoulderblades were itching with the combined focus of public attention on them, his spine crawling from knowing that they were causing a spectacle. Were this any less than a necessary fight, a required volcanic eruption, Cal might have turned around and apologised, a tip of the imaginary hat and Sorry for the intrusion.
But his temper was running hot, and they’d managed to strike against a genuine nerve, a very real kernel of rage vibrating through him.
Because no matter what he said, his sister was going into that den of vipers.
"Are you saying I can't handle myself?" Willa suggested, and the idea was so ridiculous that she laughed, a harsh bark of a ha! that resonated down the hall as they neared her door. "After Christmas Eve, do you really think there's that much difference between me and them?" Her challenge was generous enough to leave Cal's involvement during the horrible night out of consideration. Willa pushed open her door and turned, keeping one hand on the jamb and the other on the door in an attempt to bar his entry. It was becoming too much, hitting too close to home for her comfort, and Willa wanted to put an end to the fight in a hurry so that she might still be able to hold onto her belief in the love the siblings had for each other, during a time when she was sure to need it.
There was a pulsing heat behind Cal’s eyes and thrumming his skin, nearly blinding him—the familiar edge of anger that he’d tasted his whole life, but it wasn’t all the reason his hands were twined into fists. The man resisted the urge to reach out and touch her shoulder, a fleeting gesture of comfort; instead the siblings faced each other across that open doorway, and it might as well have been a gaping gulf.
“Fine. Have it your way,” Cal spat. “And come see me when they get you fuckin’ caught in their mess, or you end up on the wrong side of a patrol ‘cause you’re with the wrong sort of people, and I’ll try not to say I told you so.”
That was enough—surely, that was enough?—and so he turned sharply on his heel, as crisply if he’d been dismissed by a commanding officer, and stalked off down the hall.
"Fine!" Willa shouted at her brother's retreating head, slamming the door behind him. Her fingers splayed, palm pressed against the wood in a vain wish to have been able to wrap her arms around his waist one more time before they parted, a reassurance that this had been just what they had planned ten minutes ago, and nothing more. And then, because she was supposed to be furious, Willa channeled her energy toward hastily stuffing all of her belongings back into the pack she had brought, scooping up the bedroll that had been left tied up in a corner considering the luxury of the La Quinta queen-size, and storming from the building, intent on finding Juniper. If Olinger and Lansing were worth their salt, they would see her exit for what it was without question, but if they needed reassurance that she was still on the job, Willa was confident that just as it had always been since she'd punched Tim Chambers in the face for suggesting that she ought to cheer for Cal's PYFL team rather than learn to rope, Cal would have her back.