thecapitol | Mass murder was the last straw [OPEN]

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Mass murder was the last straw [OPEN]

Who| Joan Watson and OPEN
What| Joan is talking to friends, and to people she hasn't met yet, looking for allies to help her bring down the Capitol.
Where| The Speakeasy, the Training Center, the park
When| After the revelation of District 3's destruction and Penny's predictable lies.
Warnings/Notes| If you would like Joan to approach your character in one of these places, tag in with what your character is doing and I'll have her initiate contact.

I. The Speakeasy

"The Speakeasy's theirs."

That's what Wyatt had told her when they had only moments to speak freely to each other while the Capitol was unable to look in on their thoughts. So when Joan goes looking for potential allies, she starts there. The dive is, as always, dark and loud, perfect for hiding lips and faces and drowning words. She goes to the bar, orders what passes for beer in Panem, and carries to a booth in the corner where she can see the whole room, as well as the door. She looks for people she knows, people she recognizes.

II. The Training Center

Joan has met a number of people in the training center. It's one place where she knows she can find Tributes without going floor by floor, which would be both time consuming and suspicious.

She walks into the gymnasium and surveys the stations. If she sees no one, she makes her way to the shelter-making station, and looks over the different supplies.

III. The park

Joan isn't exactly looking for anyone in the park. Instead, she's looking (without looking like she's looking) for spots that might be sufficiently free of cameras and microphones to make good meeting place for sensitive conversation.

Of course, that doesn't mean she isn't also aware of the people around her. Sitting on benches, passing her by...following her...

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"That makes sense."

She sighs and pokes at her pie. "I was about to be honestly shocked that they'd be willing to take that big a sacrifice over a District imposing a quarantine, but if they evacuated their people all they lost was collateral damage. What they see as collateral damage. That and manufacturing plants."

She glances back up. "See? I'm not as stupid as I look."

"You don't look stupid at all," Joan responds with a smile. "I have to wonder how many people they pulled out. It couldn't have been that many. A large influx like that, someone would have noticed. I'd think."

Although the Capitol is pretty good at hiding things...

"I wonder what they'll do about production, though. Considering the consumerist culture, I would think that they'd need to fulfill demand pretty soon." She smirks. "Or else the populace might riot."

"They could have spread the influx over the Districts, or taken them to safehouses and then staggered them into the Capitol." It's what Venus is good at, finding weaknesses and exploiting them. Once it was finding niches to flourish in, but life has become combat in a way it wasn't.

"You think this populace is actually capable of rioting?" She snorts and stabs her pie, still not eating it. "Have you met our Stylists?"

"Yes. Yes, I have. We have a truce now. I'll wear what they give me as long as they give me something I'll wear."

She presses her lips glances at the other people in the bar. "Probably not." The corner of her mouth twitches upward. "Although, if there's anything that will do it, it might be the hardship of having to stick with last year's TV."

"The Capitol will just claim it's vintage. Believe me, I know how marketing works." She eats a spoonful of her ice cream, if only because it'll melt soon. She can think only of anger and death and Kankri's tears and Joly's illness.

"Is that how you found out?"

"It's how I knew there was something going on with District 3. I didn't know exactly what until the radio broadcast."

True, as far as it went, even if she's keeping her own involvement in that broadcast out of it for the moment.

Venus nods.

"It's a lot to process, even just from a practical level. They have the power to get rid of a District but not enough to keep it from leaking. That looks desperate."

"It was bound to come out. Every person they spared was a potential breach in secrecy. Even if they had just killed everyone in the district, people would have known something was up."

She sighs and narrows her eyes slightly.

"I'm surprised they didn't say anything sooner. I mean, seriously...why wait until the truth leaks to try to cobble together a lie like that?"

"Because they thought they had a better handle on the truth, probably. They didn't expect one of their own would turn, I'm betting." More pie. The sugar starts to soothe her. She makes one of those little eyes-closed moans as she tastes the cherry and ice cream together.

"They just assumed they had absolute control of spinning it, so didn't bother to come up with a backup."

"They've gotten just as complacent as their citizens."

Bringing in Tributes from other worlds, Tributes that had not been beaten down or lulled to sleep by all this, was a serious lapse in judgment on their part.

She watches Venus eating her pie, and smiles.

"Good, huh?"

"Mmhmm." Venus repeats that for emphasis to the second question before swallowing. "Mmm."

She sets the fork aside. "Caloric therapy."

She laughs a little.

"You know, most people come to bars for a slightly different kind of therapy."

She holds a finger up while she's eating to make it clear that she isn't answer until she swallows. "I can't really drink. Medication. I mean, I can, but it's a disaster waiting to happen and the last time I did I brought home a Frenchman."

She laughs. "That's very specific."

Joan is aware of Venus' romantic attachment, because the Capitol is gleefully aware of it. But she's going to go for the other personal bit of information.

"What do you do about your medication in the arena?"

"Azula sent it to me last Arena." Venus' face gets very serious. "The first one you met me, I was off it. The fact that I made it as far as I did is because Kankri was taking care of me and I did the last few weeks of it manic instead of depressed."

Not that mania was safe, because off-kilter and sleep-deprived and unable to eat isn't exactly a winning combo for the Arena, but it beat out lying at the bottom of the stairwell crying and unable to get up.

"But," Venus lifts her chin slightly, "I'm sure it made for fantastic viewing, me going out of my head."

"A compromised mental state should never be someone else's entertainment."

She says it with both compassion and a thread of anger. She's seen police officers laughing at schizophrenic homeless men in the drunk tank, even a couple times when the schizophrenic homeless man was her own father. The issue was intensely personal for her.

"The next time you're in and I'm out, I'll send you your medicine if I can."

Venus doesn't answer that for a moment. Thankfully, the remains of her pie and ice cream provide a decent enough distraction that she doesn't have to make eye contact.

She should be grateful, and she is, but she also finds herself feeling smaller and weaker than she likes to be. She finally looks up, and while there's wounded pride in her posture, there's sympathy too.

"Your dad's- he's got something like that too, doesn't he?"

She understands that feeling of wounded pride, more than she'd like to. She gives a small bare nod.

"He's schizophrenic. And homeless. Sometimes he recognizes me. He didn't, when they brought him here."

He didn't have any idea what was going on, one of many reasons that there's quiet fury in Joan's tone."

"I'm sorry."

She's wondered what it's like to be on the outside, loving someone whose brain isn't wired right.

"I was institutionalized three times and homeless for a year, after, you know, foster care. It's-" She hasn't regaled many details to people. There's been no point. "Maybe it's better he doesn't know his daughter's fighting for her life."

"They muzzled him and took him away in chains. If he's still alive, he's probably dealing with worse right now."

She takes a breath, focuses on her glass for a moment, on the pool of condensation around the bottom.

"Did they bring anyone for you?"

She scrapes her fork against the bottom of her plate, a little V forming in her forehead at the description of Joan's father being taken away.

"Nope. Maybe I did my family a favor by blowing them up before the Capitol got a hold of them."

She nodded slowly, her lips pressed.

"Right. I forgot. They did one of those things on you too, didn't they?"

"Mmmhmm." It still stings. It still hurts in a way deep inside her, a wound she's managed to dress but not stitch or treat. "People seem to have assumed the best of me, at least."

They're more charitable to her than she is to herself.

"If it helps, I don't believe anything the Capitol says. Pretty much ever. Which has proved to be a useful attitude so far."

She really has had no reason to believe that Venus is actually like how they tried to portray her, any more than Albert is, or Carlos.

"See, that's the thing. They use just enough truth that you can't discount them entirely. I'm not saying their story about me was inaccurate, because it wasn't, except for the witchcraft."

It's all in how you remember things.

"That said, Albert's totally not a Nazi, but jury's still out on Shepard committing genocide."

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Mass murder was the last straw [OPEN]

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