OPEN

[formersurgeon]

Who| Joan and OPEN!
What| Joan working in the detention center infirmary, keeping her head down
Where| Detention center infirmary
When| After D11 battle, before Snow's assassination
Warnings/Notes| Mention of violence, injury, death, and STDs



When Joan woke up in the Capitol, it was the first time in a long time that she had been brought back to life in Panem. Tough conditions and mandatory training in District 13 had made her whip-thin and wiry. Exactly how much her time with the rebellion had transformed her became starkly apparent when she woke and found herself soft, still thin and athletic but without the strength and toughness she had acquired. It gave her a strange sense of loss. She had struggled with the rebellion, with the initial attitudes of her erstwhile superiors, with being tested and punished, with finally reaching a sense of mutual respect and working hard to be ready, to be useful. The memories remained, but the physical proof was gone.

She fully expected to be interrogated, tortured, brainwashed. Sent to kill her friends. And maybe that would have happened months ago. But now they just sent her to work in the infirmary with a promise that any subversive activity would not go well for her. They needn't have bothered. Joan knew that her position at that time wasn't one where direct conflict would help anyone. And she would never take advantage of her role as a doctor to harm people. They must have known that, since she'd patched up many enemies in the Arenas.

There was one subversive act that she did indulge in, however. The moment she had access to scissors, she hacked off her hair, giving herself a rough utilitarian pixie-cut, like the one she had sported in 13.

Now she moves through the infirmary, quiet, her eyes downcast, taking care of the people who come in sick or injured. With other detainees she's gentle, kind. With their captors she's spare and perfunctory. She's keeping her head down and her ears open, and hoping some opportunity to reconnect with the rebellion presents itself.

Comments

[formersurgeon]

Joan noted the predatory stance, and wondered who he was doing it for. For anyone who passed by, making sure they didn't suspect there was anything going on aside from a Peacekeeper official gloating over a rebel captive? Or was he trying to intimidate her?

If it was the second, it wasn't working. She didn't look at him, focusing instead on the medicine bottles arrayed before her. She rolled her eyes at the scold, the sarcatic gesture muffled by her obvious weariness.

"Nothing about this is what I hoped," she said lowly. "Well. Except for one thing."

Punchy had, after all, been recovered.

Then, much quieter, she murmured, "Things are falling apart here. You see that, right?"

[president_evil]

It wasn't a darkened battlefield in the middle of a war-torn district, the sound of screams and gunfire to cover them. No one knew that better than the man who watched the Capitol's cameras.

He folded his hands behind his back and continued to leer.

Continued to speak softly.

"The Districts can't meet the Capitol's brute strength, but a thousand cuts bleed as deeply. They need it to end, and every day it doesn't is another blow."

[formersurgeon]

She glanced at him then, and it occurred to her that Wesker's predatory look, more of a leer than a gloat, was more sexual than she had first thought. She held his gaze for a silent moment before swallowing and looking down, her lips pressed tight. There was a warmth setting into her chest, her cheeks, that anyone watching may well take as discomfort, perhaps even fear. In reality it was a quite different emotion.

"They can drag it out," she says, a mutter underneath her breath that could be interpreted in any number of ways, from hostile to pleading, by someone unable to make out the words. "They have the practice, the means, and the determination. This place is going to come down."

[president_evil]

Behind the lenses of his dark glasses, his eyes narrowed. Back in the Capitol, his senses were once again dulled, restricted, denied him... but was that a little stutter he heard? A quickened beat of a heart?

Unbidden, he recalled the feel of her hand, light but blatant. (Cool and soft on his too warm skin.)

"I have no doubts they will endure to the bitter end." A different world, but all the same patterns. "Heroes are predictable."

[formersurgeon]

The intimate moment had been brief, but Joan found herself remembering too. How hot his skin had been beneath her hand. How still he had become, affected by the touch.

"And the self-interested?" She looked up, meeting those hard eyes again. "Are they predictable?"

Can I trust you? was the silent question.

[president_evil]

He might have been part of the architecture, standing tall and still, giving her nothing as her eyes moved over his face. Silent for a long, tense moment.

Slowly, behind his back, his fingers twitched and curled tight, leather squeezing over his knuckles.

"You say as if it's such a terrible thing. Fighting for one's survival."

[formersurgeon]

She could hear the squeeze of the leather, and hardly needed to guess how it was made, and why. The idea that her view of him could affect him like that made her chest tighten just a little more.

"I don't begrudge you your survival," she answered softly. "But you understand why I need to look out for mine."

[president_evil]

"Then it would seem..." he spoke slowly, and softly, thumb stroking over his knuckle, "we have an understanding, and nothing to fear."

[formersurgeon]

She nodded, knowing that there was no such thing as "nothing to fear" with Wesker. Still, she trusted him enough to know that he was, if only for the moment, on her side.

She looked away again.

"I've made sure that our agreement will stand. Even if I'm here when it happens."

[president_evil]

He was silent for another long stretch. Long enough even that it seemed as though he might say nothing at all.

Until--

"Of that, I had no doubt."

[formersurgeon]

She nodded, glad that he trusted her, even if she did manage to get herself killed and captured.

It was her turn to be silent, projecting an air of unease at being trapped with Wesker blocking the door. It was an act, of course. She actually felt more at ease than usual here.

Finally she spoke, low. "Anything else you want?" Again it could come off as pleading or defiant, depending on the possible eavesdropping audience. For Wesker it was sincere. Was there more to talk about? More to do?

Was there intended action behind that leer?

[president_evil]

He sighed, in his way, a breath pushing through his nose, nostrils flaring with the effort.

"You've always been a clever girl, Joan." Joan. No pronoun, no title. No carefully effected distance. "Don't disappoint me now."

And he did move. Enough to turn. Offering her enough space to slide by if she dared.

"We'll be watching."

Him, and the Capitol both.

[formersurgeon]

She took the cue, grabbed two bottles of the medicine she was supposedly there for, and sidled past Wesker, close enough that she could feel his body heat. She allowed herself to meet his eyes, appropriately defiant.

"I know." He's watching, and the Capitol is watching, and she had very different feelings attached to each of those facts.

Then she headed down the hall at a good clip, not looking back.

[president_evil]

He watched her retreat down the corridor, silent and still - safe for a twitch of muscle in his jaw. Only after she'd rounded the corner, did he turn and move away, in the opposite direction.