thecapitol | Pull the Nail Out With Your Teeth [Closed]

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Pull the Nail Out With Your Teeth [Closed]

WHO| Jason, Swann and maybe Sinclair
WHAT| Jason got arrested for smacking Cassian around. He's spending a night in jail.
WHERE| Peacekeeper HQ Fancy Jail Annex
WHEN| After the Caesar Show
WARNINGS| Eh, just Jason being an asshole.

There are two jails that one can go to when arrested by the Peacekeepers, and the difference between them is like night and day. One is for persons suspected of treason, and the other is for incidents like the one Jason's found himself in: petty crimes, provoked assault, violence against anyone besides the government. Cassian, thankfully, doesn't count as a government, although Jason might argue at this point that they're just about as intelligent as each other.

Jason won't even be in this one fourteen hours. He'll be out by eight a.m. tomorrow. He's in a cush little cell for dynasty kids that he's sure half his childhood acquaintances ended up in at least once or twice in their teenage years as a drunk tank. Jacques is sitting on his lap and Jason's allowed to smoke, which he's been doing non-stop since he got here. The food is typical Capitol fair, a roast quail and some fish-egg soup with bread. He lets Jacques pick at it and stuff it in his ghoulish little face.

That doesn't make this any less humiliating, especially since there's no way in hell Jason's going to be able to afford the fine he'll have to pay to the Peacekeepers for their trouble. He's fairly sure if he tries to put it on credit his whole line will get canceled.

"You're allowed visitors, you know. They're here. You're not like one of those poor bastards down in Treason getting their skin whipped off right now," the custodian here says, before going to let the visitor in.

He hopes it's Swann, and than he feels guilty that his first thought is whether or not her father can make sure this doesn't make too big a dent in the news cycle.

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"No, but now... with President Snow..."

It's all she has to offer, that they have Snow now where they didn't before, and while Jason sounds angry, Swann sounds scared. A backup plan implies that there's a possibility of failure, of life changing and becoming something different that they're unprepared for.

"Like what?"

"Like what we always talked about," Jason says. He clings to her tighter, then releases her and sits up in the bed, running his hands through his hair and chewing at his lip as if trying to mull a cigarette that isn't there.

"Going to the Districts and just...living. Away from this. From politics and family and all of that."

She props herself up and looks at him with big eyes, like she never thought they'd have to seriously even think about that. It's a long moment before she says anything at all, before she can slow her thoughts down enough to sort them in any way.

"But what about Daddy and Eta and..." She's inclined to say Ben, but she realizes that's more her than him. "What about everything we have? What would we do in the Districts?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead." But that's telling as to how serious Jason is - he's actually thought ahead, reached out into the dark of the future and tried to grasp and grope and find something solid. He looks at her, but his gaze is preoccupied.

"Swann, do you know anyone who's committed treason?"

He seems like he's far away when he looks at her that way, and her forehead knits up with distress and confusion. "No," she says slowly, and she means aside from them, in this room, whispers that neither of them would ever admit to. "Like, you mean they said bad things about President Snow?"

"No. I..." He doesn't confess, not yet. He swallows it. He furrows his lower lip, then his brow. "Like actual treason. Explosives, for example. Or smuggling."

Her heart pounds, so hard that she's sure he can hear it, but she manages not to open her eyes wide, sparkling and scared like skittish horse. She maintains at least the veneer of calm, what's left of it.

"No." Her voice is barely more than a breath escaping her. "I don't think so. Not that anyone's ever said to me."

His own heart is slamming too, hard enough that he'd be surprised if she couldn't see it making a mad dash from his chest. He doesn't say anything for a bit.

When he does finally speak, it's with a tone that would be casual if it weren't half an octave pitched up. "Well, now you do."

There's a long pause, as if Swann has to translate what he's said from one language to another. She stares at him, her face slowly morphing with horror, her eyes enormous and terrified, her lip wobbling as it drops slightly.

"No," she says again, shaking her head, unconsciously backing away from him, moving backwards across the giant bed. "Jason, no, that's... don't lie to me. It's not funny. You wouldn't."

"And why the hell wouldn't I?" Jason snaps. It's comes sudden, harsh, not even angry at her but at himself, at the world and circumstances that led him down the road. "Everyone else in my family is a disaster, didn't you know it was only a matter of time before I was too? You had to know this would happen."

"No!" She barks it back, louder than she thought it would come out, and she stumbles out of bed to stand up, shaking. "You wouldn't because it's stupid, because you hate the Rebels, because it would make you the worst of the Compsons, and I know you'd rather die! You don't even have any reason to do anything like that, so you have to be lying!"

She's babbling, talking fast and loud, pointing at him in a useless and mildly accusing way. Her eyes keep darting back and forth, like she doesn't know where to look.

"And what reason would I have to be lying, Swann?"

He gets up out of the bed too, keeping his voice down only because he doesn't want any of the microphones in the adjacent rooms to here him. He sounds as wild and hysterical as she does, only it seems constricted, like the fist of reason has closed around his histrionics.

"Why, you think I enjoy telling you this? That I'm playing a joke on you? I drove Peggy Carter and Linden Lockhearst to a coyote in my car to save their lives and I haven't regretted anything more since."

"I don't know!"

She looks scared, her eyes welled up, and she doesn't even think about the other microphones -- she doubts they'd get anything more than raised voices anyway, just another fight between the two of them. No one would be surprised.

"Then why did you do it? Why would you risk your life for two traitors? They deserve to die!"

"I don't know! I don't know, alright? Because I didn't want to turn my friend over to the Peacekeepers, and maybe you'll be smarter than I was and just hand me over now, alright?"

He grabs at his hair and paces, because he wants to backhand Swann in this moment, again not because of her but because she's right, he should have done the simple thing. Done what any Capitolite would do.

But he didn't and now he's dragging her into it with him.

"You could have just thrown her out, you didn't have to help her!" There are tears on Swann's cheeks, but it seems more like they've just spilled over rather than her actively crying. She backs up again when he paces, a single step that she takes without thinking, and rakes her hand through her hair. "What... is that what you want, for me to turn you in?"

I warned you, says Sinclair's voice in her head, says her father's judgmental tone, all of her Tributes, everyone she knows. I told you so. He'll just bring you down.

Jason flushes with anger again, because he couldn't have just turned Peggy away. He had a duty to report her, one he could have been Avoxed for for neglecting, and once he was in that deep what did it matter? What's the difference between getting an Avox penalty and getting executed? The latter might even be preferable.

She put him in this situation, that filthy District bitch. But she isn't here, and he only got to bash her face in once for it. Now he's just left holding on to all this injustice, spreading it around for the one person left that he does care for, the woman standing before him that everyone told him he doesn't deserve and that he knows he doesn't.

"Well, if you didn't want honesty I guess I thought this relationship was different than it is."

Swann, of course, does believe that Jason should have turned her in, called the Peacekeepers immediately, but if his insistence is that she was his friend, then she'll pretend that turning Peggy away was an option.

And now she doesn't know what to do, because isn't he forcing her into the same situation now? She doesn't understand his goal here, because he's asking her to make an impossible choice -- turn him in and get him killed, or risk both of them being executed if she doesn't tell. He's punishing her for daring to love him.

"I didn't ask you to tell me this, Jason, I don't want us to be in danger! All I want is to be with you forever, and now I don't even know how long we're going to live because of this." She gasps and chokes, sobs. "We're going to be executed."

"We always were, because this city is falling to pieces and they're lying to us saying it isn't!" Jason shoves her comforter onto the ground, haplessly thrashing against inanimate objects. "Haven't you noticed? Haven't you realized that our backs will be the first against the wall no matter who wins? They're reaping Capitolites! They'll be sending Escorts and Stylists into the Arena next!"

He sits back down on the bed, face in his hands, tense in his shoulders until it becomes a spasm of pressure in his forehead.

"They reaped her because Cassian's a dumb fuck, and the Bouchards are a shit family! They won't reap us, there's no reason!" Or there wasn't, not until now, not until Jason put this on her. A boulder to carry on her weak shoulders.

She sinks to the floor and cries into her hands, not just for herself and Jason, but for all of them, for how fucked up everything became in such a short time. For the fact that she doesn't have any answers or plans, that she wants to just resign herself to death one way or the other.

"So what do we do now?" she mumbles after a moment, sniffling and wiping her face with her hands.

"You don't tell anyone I told you this. No one has to know. It's not like Peggy, I'm not dragging anyone else in my wake and no one's after me..." Jason mumbles, working it out to himself more than he is to Swann. He doesn't have any answers worth having. He doesn't have a plan, beyond a vague idea that it's better to escape than to stay put and be put up against a wall.

"They won't take you because of me. I'm man enough to protect you from that. You know it." He takes a deep breath, then gets off the bed and comes to crouch beside her.

He's muttering and she doesn't ask him to clarify, doesn't know enough about Peggy's situation to even want an explanation. Swann always assumed, with the rest of the Capitol, that Peggy simply couldn't handle the pressure of the Games anymore and ran off. It's treason, but nothing like defecting to be a Rebel.

"I know." She says it quietly, not looking at him, and she doesn't know that he can protect her from this. That anyone can. She already has a smear on her record, a black mark that her father managed to mostly erase, but not without leaving a dingy gray smudge behind. To again be involved in a situation beyond her control, dragged into treason by default. Even a Honeymead isn't bulletproof, not with this.

"I know."

He was born with a smear on his record, one which only darkened with his siblings' mishaps. He never knew what it was like to not expect the other foot to drop, and maybe that's what prepared him for this dire situation. Maybe that's what imbued him with the ability to make a decision when the time came.

God knows nothing else did.

He reaches over and then pulls her close, her head to his chest, staring wild-eyed at the wall as the weight of how fucked they are, how they will not be getting unfucked anytime soon, settles in.

"Just don't tell anyone. I'll never say you know."

She presses her face to his shirt, snuffling and getting wet spots on him. She nods, but she's scared, still trembling, because just don't tell anyone goes against everything she knows in the world. And not just that, but it's weight on her, stress and fear that she doesn't have room to hold inside her, and yet she has to.

"I wish we could go back in time," she whispers, blinking against his chest.

"Go back and never have been born. Sounds alright to me," he says, with some of that self-deprecating humor that bites because it's born from that restless, unhappy place where they are the same. That lost misery that they didn't even realize they saw in each other when they met as adults, that bound them together tighter than any physical matter ever could.

He'll hold her until she stops trembling, which he knows could take a while. By now they understand each other's cycles and temperaments. They've turned friction into a sort of codependent symbiosis, where he doesn't even threaten to leave anymore because they both know it's a lie.

But he does drag treason into her life like this, and now she has to live with it too.

Edited 2016-02-02 22:33 (UTC)

She doesn't say anything else, doesn't make any noise except for sniffling, and she shakes like a scared puppy in his arms. It seems like it'll never end, like she'll never get back control over her own body, but then she's never had to handle something like this before. She doesn't really know what to expect anymore.

All she can do is wait, wait and drag this new baggage with the huge amount she already carries. It strikes her that she's not sure who's more of a danger to her life, the Capitol or herself.

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Pull the Nail Out With Your Teeth [Closed]

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