Innocence is Not a Virtue in Times of Need [Closed]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus and Enjolras
WHAT| The good ship Panda Sex hits an iceberg.
WHEN| After the D3 announcement.
WHERE| Outside Joly's room in D12.
WARNINGS| None.



When is the time, Venus?

The good thing about having an answer is that it is the only tonic for the disease of a question. A solution is the only weapon that can slay a problem. And without that, Venus feels herself as plagued by Enjolras' words as they repeat, over and over, until she's lost the tone of his voice and remembers only the emptiness of her speechlessness. Her inability to respond.

When is the time, Venus?

It's shameful, inaction in the face of atrocity, especially when one actually cares. There's something almost artful and dignified about apathy, and Venus realizes now that it's because it's a costume that helplessness hides behind. Stripped of indifference, her smallness in the universe, in this political battle, becomes all too evident.

It's not only that they've been moving slowly; they've hardly been moving at all. Her maps are nothing more than drops of rain in an ocean. It's egotistical and naive to believe that she or anyone else here has done anything that matters at all.

And here she is begging for more time, as if they haven't been wasting it as it is with their complacency. With fancy parties and laser tag and the charming lie they tell themselves that they're forced to cooperate in every little way.

When is the time, Venus?

She stands with her arms folded and waits, eyes closed.

Comments

[orestes]

It's the pathological fear of inertia that has him making the fourteen flight climb up on the stairs rather than taking the elevator like a normal person. By the time he arrives on twelve, Enjolras is winded, Venus' bloody map crushed in his hand and starting to go damp from the sweat pooling under the cuffs of his shirt. His mouth is curved into an thin and unpleasant line, its disdainful appearance an expression of the misanthropic thoughts swirling uncharacteristically in his head. It's almost enough to make him question the benefit of civil society at all. Animals seem to get on well enough without politics and governments and economics ruining everything for them.

Seeing Venus, he walks over, for once at a loss of how to begin a conversation. It's less the idea of talking, and more the knowledge that like his ill-advised venture onto the network, there is nothing here that will end well. It's too late for any of that, and he's too angry to genuinely want anything better right now anyway. None of them deserve even brief moments of happiness, not when there is still so much left to be done.

"Joly knows that there is a cure now, does he not?" He asks, instead of snapping out the terse demand that they just talk, if that's what she truly wants. Even in his vengeful state he can see the benefit to not beginning this conversation on an explicitly negative note.

[celebrityskinned]

For a moment she's certain that he's just left her here, decided that this conversation isn't worth having, and each moment with her eyes closed seems to stretch into an hour of certainty in this fate. It's only when she hears his footsteps that she looks around her and sees him approaching.

For the same reasons he doesn't start off with a demand, she doesn't indulge her desire to chastise him for leaving her waiting instead of just taking the elevator. She understands the need to let the body do the moving while the mind's stuck in a room.

"Yeah. I told him." She takes the map from him and uncrumples it, aware now of how the hours and hours of watching footage has given her only a handful of places. A paltry contribution to their flaccid revolution. She points to a location and then heads for the stairs, figuring he won't want to take the elevator back down, either. "I was more worried about him having an acute attack."