thecapitol | so here's my hope, my tired soul. ( open )

She's been here for a day now, enough time to convince herself that this isn't some kind of awful dream. In a lot of ways, it's almost surreal. For one, she's clean for the first time in months - actually, truly clean. In part, thanks to the efforts of her prep team, who had tsked at the filthy and matted state of her when she'd been brought in.

So here she is, squeaky clean and sitting in the corner of the common area in front of one of the many television screens. Watching one of the programs that seem to run around the clock. This time, it's highlights from the last arena.

Beth's no stranger to violence. Her life has been full of it for the last two years, ever since the dead stopped staying dead. She's seen a lot of it. But this is a full highlight real of awful, grisly murder being narrated by people with chipper voices like some kind of sick sports event.

"I'm gonna be sick," she mumbles quietly, mostly to herself.

TRAINING CENTER RESTAURANT

They give her more food than she's ever seen in her life, and Beth looks down at it like it's an alien thing. Like it can't possibly be real. She's perched on the edge of the bar on a stool with a plate heaped high and for a moment, she doesn't make any move to eat it. Because even before everything went wrong, they never had food like this on a farm where they grew mostly everything they ate.

She sort of just looks at it, fork in hand, like she's in shock.

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Tom scoffs. She sounds like someone who's never actually been to prison. While he's under no illusions that he's a free man here in Panem, while he feels bound and chafed and caged by the surveillance, he's keenly aware of how much worse it could be.

"It's hardly unusual for prisoners to be monitored. In fact, prison's the place you have the least privacy of all." He gestures around them, to the food, the polished countertops, the plush chairs. "As for time on their hands, I'd say the surroundings indicate that there's a certain amount of leisure for them here, wouldn't you?"

She's spent a long time in a prison, but not as a prisoner, no. And given that the government has long since collapsed where she's from, it's unlikely that she'd learn how to be politically savvy at all. Blame it on the folly of youth, or something. Always so willing to speak their minds, always demanding to be heard.

Defiant, even when it's irrational. The way she crosses her arms , the expression on her face both scream of someone who's calling bullshit on all of this. On everything.

"But we're prisoners. We don't have power anyway. Do they think I'm gonna topple their city by disagreein' with them?"

Tom sees the flickers of Theresa in many of the young women here, ones who react to chains with anger, people who turn their tempers into hotheaded righteousness instead of just anger. It's endearing, but it's also dangerous, and Tom wants nothing to do with growing attached to people he's sure the Capitol are already slating for death.

He sets his fork aside with a muted clink.

"Far be it for me to put ideas in your head, lass." He rests his chin on his hand. "Regardless, I would keep an eye on what thoughts I voice aloud. The people here aren't keen on your civil liberties."

She pauses for a moment, regarding her food. And the mutilated avoxes that brought it to her. And the way she feels like some kind of prized farm cow, being fattened up for the slaughter. That thought drifts into her head, and she pushes the food away for a moment. She was ravenous up until a couple of moments ago, and now the idea of accepting this food makes her feel a little ill inside.

"We don't have a government, back where I'm from," she mumbles, not quite sure why she's divulging this. But it can't hurt, right? Beth, at this moment, is more or less guileless. "It's all gone. I never thought I'd miss that."

You tried, Tom. But she doesn't shut up until she sees some of the other patrons of the restaurant glance up at her words, watching her with shifty eyes.

"I can't say it's something one tends to think about missing when they're subject to it." Tom likes to think he's a bit more of a 'state of nature' man himself, but the truth is law and order is plenty useful when it applies to other people. He just sees himself as existing outside it. That the Capitol has seen fit to make it very, very clear to him that the rules here are non-negotiable doesn't sit well with him.

"From your accent I assume you're American, so forgive me for being curious- how did the United States botch up their government where you're from?"

"I don't think it was their fault," well. No one really knows how the outbreak started, or where it came from, but she's pretty sure it isn't. "There was an infection, and everyone started gettin' sick. People would die, and they'd come back to life. But they'd be different."

It's weird, explaining the concept of walkers to someone she assumed might never have heard of them. It's such a given, such a constant in her life up until this point.

"The government just...got overrun. Same with the military, and the CDC. They're all just gone."

Oh, Tom's heard this story before. It's never happened in his universe, but it's a standard for the alternate timelines.

"I'd be surprised if it weren't the government's fault to start with. You'd be surprised, lass," he gesture with his fork, "at what goes on behind closed doors, and at how much fire people play with when they don't realize they're flammable."

so here's my hope, my tired soul. ( open )

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