octavia blake + hilary becker
mention of killing | complete
“How do we know this is even going to work?” Octavia asked as she adjusted the bands of the training gloves that she wore. She stretched out her neck muscles by moving her head side to side and swung her arms around to help loosen herself up a bit. “This guy is a psychopath that likes to screw with people. For all we know, COS has put a protective spell on this ‘curse’ or whatever the hell it is in order to keep his supposed good side from coming back.”
She knew that some vampires could be complicated based on her interactions with them in Atlantis, but this soul or no soul thing made no sense. Well, not having a soul made sense for the guy to go on a rampage, but a spell to give it back only for it to disappear again? How many times had this happened and how many people had been killed because no one would end him for good?
Shaking her head, Octavia looked over at Becker before she approached the punching bag. She was staying away from the training dummies altogether these days. “We should just kill him and be done with it already. It’s not like he won’t still exist somewhere in his usual timeline.”
Shaking his head from where he was stretching he hadn't looked up at Octavia as she went on about how they should kill the vampire currently causing a problem. Becker understood it, hell on one level he thought just killing the bastard wasn't a bad plan. With all the shit from Breckenridge and now Atlantis he'd mellowed in his knee-jerk reaction to shoot first and ask questions later.
"We can't just kill the bloke." He said as he stood up and went to hold the punching bag Octavia was targeting.
"By all accounts, when he's good he's useful," it was a little matter of fact and sounded more like they wanted to use him.
“When he’s good,” Octavia replied and gave Becker a look before her next punch. She didn’t know all of the specifics, but from what she’d heard and researched, this wasn’t the first time he’d lost the soul. Besides, the fact that he had one in the first place said a lot too. Someone had given it to him for a reason. How bad did you have to be for someone to curse you with a soul instead of outright killing you? Talk about revenge.
“It just seems like a weak excuse to let someone walk around without punishment or retribution. He gets his soul back and then what? All is forgiven? The people who know him might be used to dealing with him, but not everyone is built that way.” She sure as hell wasn’t. There was a little too much Grounder still left in her. Octavia didn’t abide completely by the mantra of “blood must have blood” as the Grounders so often did, but she did lean that way more so than forgiveness. Not if the person had spilt too much of the wrong blood.
“I’ll go along with this plan, but if comes down to me or him or one of us or here, he gets a stake to the heart every time.”
Becker nodded, it wasn't that he disagreed but this guy might be useful. "With his soul, he might be willing to give up his contacts at COS and give us valuable intel, it's worth capturing, re-souling him or whatever the hell it is they call it and getting that intel." It might sound cold, but Becker had often wondered about the more dangerous among them and why the hell they were there, vampires especially.
"There are a lot of people around here who seem to be okay with forgiving horrible acts, the vampires who can turn off their humanity, hell the non-mortal varieties of vampires always seem to get away with a lot, part of life among the supernatural Blake." His voice was a little bitter, sarcastic. He wasn't lecturing her. He was telling himself it just as much as he was tell her.
"Try not to kill the arse if he comes after you, we could use whatever intel he's got." He added. "Yes, that's an order." Becker didn't give Octavia a lot of orders.
Octavia could admit that he'd made a good point about the guy being able to give over Intel about COS if they were able to give him his soul back. The whole idea of not having a soul was foreign to her in the first place. People, humans, did horrible and unforgivable things when they supposedly had their souls in tact.
“It's not just limited to the supernatural,” she said between hits and didn't look up at him as she said it. The truth was, she was guilty of the same thing. If others had been the ones to commit some of the acts both Bellamy and Clarke had then she wasn't sure what she would have done. Actually, she did know because Pike’s ghost haunting her had been proof. Though, she wasn't sure if she would go as far to say that she'd forgiven Bellamy. Tried to move past but not forgiven.
There was a slight pause in the punches to the bag when he gave the order. He didn't give her orders often, at least not the kind that she might have partially disagreed with for one reason or another. Usually they were on the same page. Her eyes glanced his way briefly. “Yes, sir.”
With one more hard than usual punch to the bag, she lowered her fists and turned away to get some water.
He couldn't argue that it wasn't just the supernatural but it sure as heck seemed like they got an extra dose of chances that people in his world didn't usually get.
"Oaf," Becker sounded at her harder punch for effect rather than anything else. Becker had to play it up a little bit. He could tell that she didn't really like it, and he didn't blame her, but he wanted it clear that they needed to get the current vampire causing a problem in their world.
"Anything else on your mind?" He asked after a moment stepping back from the bag.
“About this Angelus guy? No. There's nothing else.” There was a lot more she probably could say about it but none would be helpful and none would have mattered. She didn't know the guy, so his ”good* self could have been the best person she'd ever meet, but she didn't know him. She just knew pieces about the vampire making everyone nervous.
Octavia finished the water and turned back around and shrugged. She wasn't upset about the order he'd given her even if she didn't fully agree with it. She still was mostly objective enough to get the bigger picture. It was just one of those things.
“Is there anything else you think I should know about him that I don't already?”
"In general," Becker offered as he watched her carefully. He didn't like it when any of his people had a rough time, but he especially didn't like it when those closest to him were a little on edge.
"Everything is in the files we've got, and we got more information out of Buffy and Fred, they're both very familiar with him and were able to give us a better picture than our normal files." There wasn't anything else that Becker could think of that they'd need to know but then again the whole vampire thing was never one of his favorite things to deal with.
At first, Octavia ignored the question of if there was anything in general that was on her mind and focused more on the mission-related topics. It was a lot easier to keep up the topic of work and missions rather than deep dive into other things that she didn’t really want to have to talk about with anyone but especially someone who knew her better than most people like he did.
She nodded. “Yeah, I read over some of the files from the info they were able to give. I’ll try to take a look through some of his source material and see if there’s anything there we might be able to use.” She had no idea if anything would come out of it, but there could be pieces of information that not even Buffy or Fred knew depending on their limited perspectives in their world.
He seemed to accept that but still had this look on his face that Octavia knew he’d noticed she’d ignored his earlier question. “And I’m fine. There’s been some shitty things the last couple of months, but you know how this place likes to screw with us.” She shrugged and started adjusting the gloves on her hands. “I’m fine.”
"Good plan," Becker told her knowing some had done looked through some of the material, he would always welcome Octavia's eyes on something and it seemed like she needed something to focus on anything to focus on. Whatever was bothering her he didn't like it, but he also wasn't going to be too pushy.
"Shitty things," Becker stated, didn't ask, didn't elaborate, didn't push. He simply nodded when she said that she was fine, he sure as hell didn't believe it, but he didn't see the point in pushing her at that moment either.
"Well, I'm hungry." Again it was a statement and not a question.
“Shitty things,” she repeated back. “Sometimes I just get tired of this place jerking us around.” That was all she said on the topic. If he wanted to ask then he could, but she knew he wasn’t the sort to deep dive into conversation which was fine by her because neither was she.
The abrupt change in topic wasn’t completely unlike him, but it still took Octavia a little by surprise when he brought up food. He usually got straight to the point without a lot of run around, and that was another thing she liked about Becker.
“I think food helps with that,” she said just as bluntly but with a hint of a smile. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Becker thought he should ask, but he also decided that if Octavia wanted to talk about it, she would, if she didn't, he wasn't going to push her it wouldn't do any good for either of them.
"Food," he nodded. "Come on, it's on me, this time only, don't get used to it." He gave her a small smile, yeah he was worried about her and he knew she could tell that he was.
“Oh yeah?” Octavia raised an eyebrow at him curiously. “Fancy.” She walked over to where he was gathering up his things and started to take off her gloves. “So, streak and what's that crab thing called? Lobster? I like the sound of that.”
She was kidding, mostly, since teasing him was like an old pastime at this point. She nudged him lightly with her arm. “You know me. I'll eat anything.” As long as she didn't have to pick it off a bush or kill it herself. She’d been done with fending for herself for a while. If she was ever sent back home and had to find her own food again, she'd probably be screwed. Take-out and delivery were the best things ever.
“Dream on Blake,” he muttered but smiled all the same as they headed out.