thecapitol | (no subject)

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Who| Emily and Beck, Emily and Quintus
What| Emily recognises the Peacekeeper who tortured her District six years ago, and reaches her breaking point
Where| Beck's apartment and then Quintus' apartment
When| After Quintus' broadcast, before the most recent District liberations
Warnings/Notes| Warnings for talk of violence, torture, PTSD. Note that this is the last chance for Capitol CR with Emily before her move to D13, so if you'd like a thread for your character on here, let me know at

viridianwings

a) For Beck
When she arrives at Beck's apartment, Emily is pale and restless, her eyes bloodshot from crying and lack of sleep. She feels terrible for what she has to tell her, what she has to do, but she doesn't see any other way forward. The Capitol have played with her life for so long that she thought she could endure everything they had to throw at her, but this was far too personal a betrayal. It served her right for allowing her to get so close to the Head Peacekeeper, of all people, to come to think of him as just another person trying to do a difficult job, another Districter caught between a rock and a hard place, when all this time he'd been looking at her knowing what he'd done to her people. She felt violated far deeper than she ever had been in all her years of bidding.

She knocks on the door, hoping desperately that Beck's not in, that she doesn't have to have this conversation with her. She's not sure she has the courage to face it.

b) For Quintus
She stares up at Quintus' apartment for a long moment, willing herself to become cool and collected, resigning herself to her fate even before she's confronted him. There are a million things she wants to say, a million ways she wants to hurt him. Her hand shakes as she raises it to press the buzzer, and she remembers the first time she came here, comforting him when he was sick and breaking down over his brother's death in the Games and her own ordeals, back when she thought they were coming from the same place, just two hard working people trying to wrest whatever control they could from their situation. Once she would have smiled at the man about to open the door in a genuine camaraderie that few had ever seen from her. Now she could only see him as despicable, the most brutal tool of the Capitol. Her first friend, her enemy, maybe the last face she'd ever see.

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Beck's just got out of the shower, and is towelling her hair off as she comes to the door. For a split second, her face lights up when she sees who it is, but then she sees the look on Emily's face, how wan and tired she looks, and the smile drops away. She steps aside, holding the door open for Beck to come in.

"What happened?" she asks, her worry clear in her voice.

Emily enters quickly, not relaxing until the door is firmly locked behind them. Even then, she darts her gaze around as though hoping to spot the Capitol bugs that are surely in every apartment by now. "I'm sorry," she whispers, trying so hard to keep herself from tears.

Beck's worry is quickly turning to genuine fear. Looking around so suspiciously, so tensely... there's no way this isn't serious.

She reaches out to put her hands on Emily's shoulders, to steady them both, and meets her girlfriend's eyes. "Hey. Hey, Em, slow down. Sit down, come on. I'll get you something to drink."

Emily doesn't move, but rocks her weight a little so that Beck's supporting her, and shakes her head. "I wouldn't be able to keep it down. Beck, I-- God, there's so much I need to tell you, but I don't know if I can."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Beck takes a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves, and closes her eyes. "You can," she says at last, sounding way firmer than she feels. "Sure you can. Come on, sit down, before you fall down. Start at the beginning."

That was easier said than done. Emily wasn't even sure where the beginning was any more. Did it begin with the broadcast Falxvale had made that afternoon, or the day she'd been crowned Victor, or the day she'd been forced to watch as a little girl as her friends and family were tortured publicly, or did it start 75 years ago with the terrible war the Capitol liked to remind them was all the fault of the ancestors of the Districts, or even before that? She leans her head on Beck's shoulder and whispers, in the hope that the bugs won't be able to pick it up. "I have to do a terrible thing. I'm sorry."

Beck can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, feel her heart stutter nervously. "It can't be that bad," she says, sounding like she's desperate to convince herself. "You can tell me, Em. Please. Just tell me."

Emily takes a deep breath, the air feeling like sandpaper scraping through her, her throat stinging from how much she's cried. "Falxvale," she says simply, almost spitting the name. "You must have seen his ... his broadcast."

"Sure." Beck frowns, not fully understanding. Not understanding at all, if she's honest. "It was... it was pretty fucked-up, I guess. But we're at war, Em. It had to happen sooner or later."

She shakes her head, knowing it all seems so clear to her but won't make sense to anyone else. She really does have to start at the beginning.

"It was about a year after I won my Games. There were riots in my District because of food shortages, bad working conditions, all the usual things. The instigators were rounded up, and we all had to watch while he tortured them."

Beck worries at her lip, listening, but clearly uncomfortable. "I never heard anything about that," she says honestly, looking away. "He. Who... Quintus?"

As soon as she hears his name tears fill Emily's eyes, and she presses her face into Beck's shoulder, desperate for any scrap of comfort she can get. "All this time," she manages through sobs, "he's pretended to be my friend, and yet he did that. And he deliberately kept it from me."

Beck puts her arms around Emily, holds her close and strokes her shoulder. How can she not? Even with the doubts buzzing in her mind, even with her own fear and upset and uncertainty, how can she not?

"That's fucked-up," she says at last, quietly. "But I don't... it doesn't mean you have to do anything stupid, okay, Em? It doesn't. It can't."

Emily shakes her head firmly. "You don't know what it's like to live out there. To live with that fear hanging over you every day, that if one person puts a toe out of line then you'll all suffer. I thought all that would go away once I became a citizen."

"And, what, you think it'll go away if you..." She comes up against a wall there, unable or unwilling to think what Emily's actually considering. Her voice is harsher, and it's mostly out of hurt, but, yeah, there's some anger in there too. "That's just how life is, Em. That's how society works. It's shit, yeah, but it's better than the alternative, okay?"

"Is it?" she asks quietly, not quite able to bring herself to look at Beck. "At least I can control the alternative, at least I don't have to smile and nod and play along with something that is sick and broken and that breaks me a little more every day."

Beck lets go of Emily abruptly. She doesn't think about it, just does it: Emily's words hit her like a punch in the gut, and in the moment, she can't get past that shocking hurt enough to think. If she did think, she'd bite her tongue, try to be gentle, try to be kind. But that stung.

"My home," she reminds Emily, her voice shaking with barely-contained anger. "Our home. That's what you're talking about. You're sitting there talking about sick and broken but I don't have anything else, Emily!" It's almost a shout, now, and there are tears in her eyes. Part of her realises she's being unfair, that Emily didn't mean that, and that yelling won't get either of them anywhere. But she can't help it, any more than she can help getting to her feet, any more than she seems to be able to help glaring. "All the stuff you've talking about, all the stuff they took away from you? I never fucking had it! Every damn thing I've got, I worked like hell for, okay? And you want to... to kill my friends, to destroy my home, my job, my life? You think they're going to march into the Capitol and give us all a pension cheque and a pat on the head? You think it's all gonna go back to how it should be, just without the Games?" She pauses, but only long enough to catch a breath, then she's in full flow again, her colour high and her eyes teary. "One side's gonna lose, Em. And the people on that side are either gonna die or wish they'd died, and the world won't magically be better! Don't you get it? All we can do now is end it as fast as we can, before it gets worse!"

"That's all you can do." Beck's words sting, and Emily knows how selfish she's being, that she's hurting the one person she's ever thought she could love. But staying in the Capitol with her would be just as much of a death sentence for herself, one that choked and corroded her a little more every day rather than giving her the mercy of a swift exit. "Don't you see? This is the only measure of control I've ever had. I need to erase myself from their narrative. I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't fucking fix anything!" Beck snaps, her chest heaving, tears dripping off the ends of her false lashes. "Sorry's not enough! You want to fuck me over, fuck us over, fine, you fucking do that, but don't you dare apologise! Sorry comes after you fuck up, or else it's a goddamn lie! Don't you lie to me, Emily, not at a time like this, don't you dare!"

Her breath rakes hoarsely in her throat, catching on everything that needs to be said and can't, everything she doesn't know how to feel. When she points to the door, her hand's shaking. "Don't apologise," she says again, more quietly. "Just fuck off. If you're going to anyway, just go."

He's only home on account of his wound.

The more the war drags on, the more incessantly he's driven to work, spending late hours poring over intelligence briefs and discussing strategy with equally sleepless commanders in the Districts. They've had their share of victories, but the overall campaign isn't going nearly as well as he might like, and the limitations imposed on him by his superiors aren't helping. He's frustrated with how out of touch they seem to be in spite of the reports he has drawn up for them, how they still seem to view this conflict as less of a threat than it is and keep denying his requests for additional resources. They ought to go out there and trudge through the wreckage themselves, he'd remarked to one of his advisors. Maybe then they'd get what we're dealing with.

He wishes they would, and he wishes they could experience the shock of this sort of injury too, he thinks bitterly as he swallows some painkillers. That might be the quickest means to give them some perspective. It certainly had taught him the consequences of violent unrest in short order.

The sound of the buzzer startles him, as he hadn't been expecting any visitors. He throws his robe on over his pajamas, tapping a touchscreen to see who's on the other side, then unlocks the door.

"Emily?" he says, his brow furrowing at the look on her face.

She feels the bile and contempt rise in her when she's faced with him, but she's learned over long years to keep that in check, at least until she's inside where there are no cameras. The Peacekeepers would be on her in minutes otherwise, and she can't let them get to her until she's carried out what must be done.

"Can I come in? It's important."

"Sure."

His voice is soft and concerned, but something in her body language--something he subconsciously recognizes from his years in policing--has his hackles going up. He lets her in without turning around, backing up a few steps to let her pass through, the door sliding shut behind her.

The second the door is shut, she leaps for him. The rage burns white hot within her - she's never felt like this before, this instinctive need to hurt, not even in the Arena, and she hates that he's the one who unlocked it within her. The only weapon she has is her woodcarver's chisel, something she'd thought appropriately symbolic, and something that she knows deep down she won't succeed at killing him with, but it might be enough to mean that he'd have to take her down himself rather than leave her for the Capitol's twisted justice system.

He sees the glint of the chisel before his brain entirely processes what's happening, and his response is a reflex action--he whips to the side so quickly as to almost lose his balance, slamming his injured back against the wall, then grips her by the wrist and jerks her arm down with enough force to yank her off her feet. Jamming a knee against her shoulderblade, he closes his other hand against her wrist as well, squeezing tightly in an attempt to make her drop the makeshift weapon.

"Emily, stop!" he demands, gasping between teeth gritted from the pain. "Stop it!"

"I won't!" she replies, her voice raw, and as soon as she hears the chisel clatter to the ground she lunges toward him with all her strength, flailing her arms uselessly in his grip and kicking out sharply with her knees as well as her feet.

He slams her back against the floor, shifting his position on top of her to keep her down and pulling her arms around to hold them firmly against her back, as though preparing to cuff her.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

"What needs to be done." She meets his gaze and wishes looks could kill. "You're just as bad as the rest of them -- no, you're worse."

"Are you talking about the broadcast?" he asks incredulously. "What are you so upset about? That man nearly killed me. I had to make an example of him to deter anybody else from trying."

Edited 2016-03-20 00:07 (UTC)

"And it's not the first time you've done it, either. Were we the first, or was your brutality the reason you were assigned to Seven?"

That remark renders him speechless for a moment. His grip doesn't loosen, but he straightens a bit, staring at her with his lips parted.

"Those men hacked my comrades to death," he says hollowly. "They almost did the same to me. I couldn't let that happen again."

"All this time you've pretended to be my friend." She almost spits the last word at him. "You're worse than anyone else in the Capitol."

"I was never pretending," he snaps back. "Do you think I hate you because you're from Seven? You weren't part of that revolt. What in Panem would I have against you?"

"I don't care if you hate me." It would be easier for her if he did. "I don't care what you think of me. It's how you pretended you were different from the Peacekeepers who brutalised my District, when all the time you were the worst of them all."

"Would you have wanted me to be sympathetic? Let those insurrectionists off easy? If we don't go heavy-handed against that sort of thing then it only gets worse. You've faced an Arena and a war; you understand how terrible anarchy is." He takes a breath, exhaling a sigh. "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Messages have to be sent."

"The message it sends is that the Capitol doesn't even regard them as worthy of basic human rights and dignity!" She screws her eyes shut, the only way she can keep herself from crying. "And you knew-- I told you about that day and you kept quiet enough then. You know it's something to be ashamed of. And now you've done it again."

"I didn't tell you because I--I didn't think you would understand and I guess I was right about that," he says with a shake of his head. "Those men may have been from Seven, but they were criminals. They started a revolt and killed people. They ambushed and killed people that had lives and dreams and families, and you think we should have treated them more kindly?"

He swallows hard, his voice wavering. "I have spent so many nights thinking of the people I've lost. I went out to your District to comfort the dying. So don't talk to me as though I'm some sort of sadistic bastard, because I have always cared--I have cared in spite of every tragedy, every abuse, every time I've had to sit back and watch this nation go to shit! I have cared and I have only ever tried to do right by my profession even when everything has gone wrong so don't--don't tell me I haven't."

"I think if you all had treated them more kindly to begin with, there wouldn't have been any revolt, there wouldn't even be a rebellion right now." He had no right to decide what she would understand or deserved to know. It made him no better than any other Capitolite oppressor deciding to show mercy to the feelings of a Districter who couldn't understand things he didn't deign to explain to them in simple terms.

"I suppose that's something we can agree on. You have always tried to do right by your profession. And your profession is one for men who listen to brutality and orders over their souls and consciences. You can all go to hell."

"What do you expect me to do, coming here like this?" he asks. "Answer for the sins of the past seventy-five years? I'm only one man. I can only work with what I'm given."

He grits his teeth, shaking his head again. "I'm sorry, Emily. You don't want to believe it, but this is the way the world is. It's not going to get any better. I believed, coming up the ranks, that I was going to be able to work some real changes and make up for the losses but this is it. It's this or lawlessness. I know you want more from your nation because I want more from our nation but it's not going to happen! This is all we've got!"

He breaks off for a second, choking with emotion, needing to gather himself. When he looks down at Emily again the frustration is gone from his features, replaced with a deep weariness.

"Do you think taking me out would solve anything? If I had died six years ago--would that have changed anything? Someone else would've stepped up and done the exact same thing and you know it. I'm not your solution. There is no solution."

"You don't get it at all," she hisses, glaring at him with eyes of cold steel, contempt winning out over the pain and despair for just a moment - contempt for him, for herself, for everyone and everything in Panem. "You don't understand anything. I know I can't solve anything, I've known that ever since they day they threw me into the Arena. I've lived for years carrying the weight of my District on my shoulders, of all the children who died on my watch. I can't do anything to change that, for any of them. But I can do something for me. I can quiet the nightmares you've brought me, one way or the other."

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ahaha hi have a wild rant

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BRACE YOURSELF this'll be terrible

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