thecapitol | [Closed]

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Who| Quintus and Emily
What| Quintus is sick and Emily insists on taking care of him
Where| Quintus' apartment
When| Backdated to the day of Quintus' broadcast
Warnings/Notes| None inherent

At 6pm Emily's waiting in the central commons of the Training Centre, a flask full of chicken soup under one arm. She's irritated at Quintus for insisting on continuing to work when he was clearly under the weather, and even more so for his paranoia over giving out his address. She imagined him leading her through all sorts of back alleys and taking the long way round so she'd have no idea how to get back there, and she's not sure she has the patience to continue humouring him. Her own paranoia has begun to set in too now, knowing that they'll surely be spotted leaving together. Gossip about her supposed love life was rampant enough without people thinking she was hooking up with a Peacekeeper, too.

She waves him over, looking him up and down, none too pleased. "You look just as bad as you sounded. You should be tucked up in bed, not sweating over your desk."

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"See, this is something that seriously concerns me. I don't think a lot of people here really get what it's like to live under a real threat. They're so used to watching all this violence in a controlled setting that they can't grasp how that might play out without a bunch of Gamemakers running the show. They think that we've barely got to lift a finger to stop anything that comes our way, when that's not the case."

He swallows some broth, then lets his spoon drop with a clink into the bowl, his frustration showing on his face as he speaks. "The danger's there. The danger's always there, and it doesn't disappear if we pretend it isn't. I used to get calls at ten at night, two or three in the morning back in the districts and have to grab my gun and go. I got notified about the Initiate around midnight here. Criminals don't wait to strike when it's convenient for us, don't fight fair and play for the cameras. And if we aren't ready, if we keep piling on hazard after hazard and most of the population's happily ignoring the fact, we're going to get jumped."

"The Capitol wouldn't let that happen." Her tone implies she doesn't quite believe it, but she's far too scared of what they could do to her to speak out against it. "The citizens might be complacent and naive, but the government and forces certainly know what they're about, and even more so after the Initiate. They're not going to let anything like that happen again."

He gives a shake of his head--a gesture conveying all that he can't bring himself to say, all the objections he can't acknowledge. It's less out of fear than the fact that no good can come from dwelling on what he cannot change, the ugly details making up this lesser of two evils. It's a dangerous exercise, thinking and hoping and deluding oneself into suspecting those details might not be so immutable after all. And he wants nothing to do with delusion.

"I sure hope you're right," he says.

Emily does too, more than anything. It wouldn't take much for the Capitol to clamp down on the Districts if there was even the faintest whisper of another uprising, and she'd given too much of herself to protect her family in Seven to have some selfish offworlders jeopardising them now.

She glances down at the table and then back up at Quintus. "You're not eating."

"Yes I am." He takes another spoonful, this time of some of the noodles and chicken as well as broth, and makes an exaggerated show of chewing and swallowing it. "Did you parents always fuss over you like this?"

Emily's about to respond confidently that of course they did, but she's not sure if he's asking to deliberately be facetious or not. "Well, medicine was always in short supply out in Seven. My mother's soup and fussing over us probably saved us through more winter sicknesses than we can count."

The corner of his mouth tugs into a smile. "My mother could be the same way. Well, unless it was a minor injury from something stupid--then she wasn't so sympathetic."

"Infection can set in with even the most minor of cuts," Emily says quite seriously, her brow furrowed over. "Especially given that we work with axes all day."

"Yeah, you can get some nasty injuries from those," he says, his smile tensing. "I wouldn't call my family rich--not compared to most people here--but my parents didn't have trouble buying antibiotics or anything for us if we did get sick. We didn't have to worry about that."

"Us?" Yes, she caught that, and she's not about to leave it unquestioned. She adores her own brothers so much that hearing about anyone else's siblings makes her day. "I didn't know you had siblings."

"Not 'siblings', just--" He stops short of stammering, breathes, and tries again, annoyed with himself for letting that detail slip. "I had a brother."

She's about to enthuse about her brothers and ask a hundred questions about his, when she notes the tense he's used and pales, her face falling. "Oh. I'm... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

He shakes his head. "It's fine. It's been--man, almost fifteen years. And it wasn't completely unexpected at the time."

He stirs his soup, lifting a spoonful halfway to his lips and studying the reflection of the overhead lights on the broth.

"He volunteered."

Emily is silent for a long moment, unsure of what to say. She feels sick to her stomach. He'd had a brother in the Games. She detested the Career Tributes almost as much as the Capitol, but this was still someone's son, someone's brother, butchered live on television, and for what? He volunteered, a little voice inside her says venomously. Not to be noble, not as a sacrifice, but to kill as many as he could, to be the sort of Victor people expect me to be.

She pushes her bowl away from her and stands, feeling light headed and nauseous, mumbling apologies as she runs for the bathroom.

"Ms. Finch--" Quintus jumps to his feet, his chair scraping back against the tile. "Emily, what--?"

He bolts after her, his expression turning from awkward confusion to concern, the memory of her sudden dizziness the first time they'd met vivid in his mind. If she's going to pass out in his bathroom, he has to be there to catch her.

Her hands tremble, and she balls them into fists to try to stop the shaking. She despises herself for how weak she feels, how little it takes to trigger her off like this. Her desperate urge to run away and become a hermit deep in the forest returns, and suddenly the glare of the artificial lights off the glass and tile and porcelain of the bathroom becomes overpoweringly oppressive. She vomits up what little soup she'd eaten, rinsing the sink and splashing water on her face before sinking down against a wall, feeling mentally exhausted.

He stops short of entering the bathroom right away, watching her silhouette move through the partially tinted glass, swallowing back his own nausea as he hears her vomit. He's not sure what horrors must've run through her mind just then, what could've caused such a violent reaction, considering all the conversation about the Games that she must endure on a daily basis. He'd think she'd have to be rather desensitized by now, she'd have to have--

It gets harder as time passes, she'd told him that first day. Perhaps it would've only gotten harder for Lurio, too.

He takes a tentative step inside, spots her there on the floor, and seats himself beside her. It's an approach he'd learned from dealing with the drunk and distraught--lowering himself down to their level, rather than lecturing from above. But while he's always had the same pointed questions to fall back on in those situations, he isn't sure how to address this.

"I'm sorry," he says, at length.

Slowly the colour returns to her face, and she sits motionless, heaving deep breaths to clear the thoughts whirling through her mind, to stop her neck and ears from burning with-- what? Anger? Shame? She's not sure, and it makes her feel even more powerless.

"No, it-- it's not your fault," she manages to force out before forming words becomes too big a task for her right now. Her hands are wrapped around her knees and she presses her face into her arms, needing to become as small as possible so that these very big emotions might leave her be.

He's quiet for a while, not wanting to risk setting her off again, watching her curl up. Cautiously, he reaches for her, his hand hesitating in midair, then winds an arm around her shoulders.

"It was a..." he mumbles, trails off, and coughs to clear his throat. "Such a waste."

"He volunteered for it," she said quietly, and sounds completely bitter and disgusted as she continues, not caring for a moment that she's in the presence of a Peacekeeper. "To become fodder for the Capitol's viewing pleasure."

"He wanted the fame and the glory." There's no disapproval or defensiveness in his voice--just a hollowness, as though whatever emotion might have been there has long since drained out. "To be more than just a rank-and-file peacekeeper. I think we were all duped into seeing it as an honorable choice."

He sighs. "None of that mattered in the end. Not to me, not to my parents. The only damn thing that mattered was the result."

"Fame and glory. It's not all it's cracked up to be. You really think anyone wants this?" She gestures to herself, to the wreck she's managed to become in just a matter of minutes.

"It's sort of like I was saying before. We just--people are just brought up on these ideas that don't match the reality. Goodness knows I still get nightmares about this." He waves to his scars with his free hand--the visible ones as well as those hidden beneath his shirt. "They don't teach you about that in basic training."

"I'd trade places with him, if I could," she says quietly. She doesn't admit that often, and she hates herself for doing so.

Quintus tenses at that, withdrawing his arm and tilting her chin up so that she's forced to look at him.

"The victor ripped out his throat with her teeth. It took him ten minutes to bleed to death."

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