thecapitol | They're Telling Me That I'm Fine [Closed]

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They're Telling Me That I'm Fine [Closed]

WHO| Jason, Sinclair and Swann
WHAT| A final goodbye and a supplies run
WHEN| During the last battle
WHERE| Sinclair's home
WARNINGS| Just the usual for Jason.

His brain isn't wired this way. Every step of this excruciating plan worked against the very way he is, the skills he has, the coping mechanisms his head has. And yet he's done it. He's pulled together a plan for freedom out of nothing, when every part of him only wants to give up and wallow in self-pity, when he hasn't been able to concoct a plan for anything since he was a child.

Granted, it's a shitty plan. Jason will admit outright it's a shitty plan. The plan is essentially "stowaway, steal a car, drive off somewhere". The fact that he's managed to secure the safety of the pets is a perk he still can't believe he pulled off, and he's fairly certain both he and Swann will die. But as far as he's concerned, they're going to die anyway, and they might as well make it difficult for the long line of people who'd be happy to kill them. They might as well take off.

When the opportunity comes up, Jason and Swann smuggle themselves into a District Thirteen vehicle, and in the chaos they take it, heading off towards the forest to find themselves a new life away from District Thirteen or the Capitol or any of the chaos that's swirling around them. Snippets of what they've heard confirm that the Compson mansion is ashes, that Honeymead Manor is under lockdown so strict that they'd be missiled to death if they tried to get anywhere close to it. But there is one person they can go to.

Jason hates coming to Sinclair for help, but he's banking on Sinclair to be too in love with Swann to kill him. Jason pulls the vehicle at Sinclair's gate, then jumps out and slams his fist on the intercom until he hears it connect.

"Sinclair! I know you're in there! If you care about Swann you'll open this gate!"

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It is absolutely a shitty plan, and Swann is, quite frankly, surprised they aren't already dead. But they have her babies back, and she's spent most of the drive in the back with them, all three of them malnourished and sickly, but together. The time she spends with Jason in the front of the vehicle is mostly spent panicking over the way he drives, so she's really better off in the back.

She has an anxiety attack when she finds out that they can't go to her father, squeezes Marcel until he yelps and squirms to be put down. Only the mention of Sinclair being reachable calms her a bit.

She's right behind Jason, too small to reach past him, but just as loud. "Gus, Gus, let us in! Please, they're going to kill us!"

It's been months since Sinclair heard those two voices and for a second, he genuinely believed that he was hallucinating. He'd long sent Nina and the Solutions staffs to safety, with Delta going with his ever-loyal assistant. Ilar had been evacuated ages ago as well, Eta reluctantly by his side...

There's a pause, his finger twitching on the revolver trigger, before he silently unlocked the door for them. Sinclair's blood began to boil, to even consider these traitors to be let into his home. How dare Jason of all people come here! It threatened his conscious thoughts going up in flames.

But from the ashes there's a mourning and pathetic man. "What do you want."

It's strange to watch a Capitolite unlock their own door. Jason's done it, a few times, when people came to call and the servants weren't behaving. It's always been something he's had to swallow down, a mouthful of pride he's had to tuck into his guts.

It's a sign of how far the Capitol's fallen that this is what Augustus Sinclair, who was his own economy, has been reduced to. Just like the way Jason's driving has gone from smooth to erratic speaks to the panic they're in.

"Sanctuary," Jason spits out. "Enough supplies to get us up to District Seven. And a moment to catch our breath."

Swann peers from beneath Jason's arm at Gus, and she looks heartbroken. Heartbroken and sick, nearly wasted away, her skin greyish and her hair stringy. Exactly like the reality of her situation, that she hasn't eaten properly in months, that she was treated badly. Like the tool she was until they ran away, with nowhere else to go.

"Please," she says again, whispering, because she doesn't really want to say anything at all. She doesn't want to be stuck in the middle of their anger, of the fight that will surely erupt if Gus helps them, but Swann visibly needs the help, is obviously on the brink of dropping even as she just stands in front of him.

"You have some nerve t' make demands, Compson," even his drawl had no real mirth to it, just the haggard shell of a man who has lost his fortune and his power in the span of days, or even hours. This was the last throes of the Capitol and Sinclair loathed the thoughts that came with it. This would all change...

In part because of traitors like Jason.

He pulled out his revolver, bullets still in their chambers, "You brought all this t' us an' you think I'll just hand over my supplies?" He would've pulled the trigger had Swann not intervened, one less rebel in the world. Her pitiful state moved that long-buried affection, even pity.

Jason doesn't move away from the gun barrel. If anything, he leans in closer, almost daring Sinclair to just do it, do him the favor of relieving this impossible task from his shoulders, this burden of having to survive and find a way for Swann to survive too.

"You think I brought this on you? Are you that short-sighted? Can't you see this bullshit-" he sweeps his arm as if showing off the city skyline behind them, damaged and smokey and masked by pollution this beautiful haven never saw before this year- "was put into motion long before either of us were even born? We were born cursed, you idiot. I just did something about it. Now let us in."

Jason almost whacks her with his arm, and she ducks under it to get in between the two of them, in front of the gun.

"Stop it, both of you," she says, and maybe it's a command, but it sounds more like a plea, desperate heavy in her voice and her expression. "You're not accomplishing anything, and the longer we stand here, the longer we're all at risk! Gus, please, I'm literally begging you for help."

She wraps her hand around the barrel of the revolver and directs it toward her own chest, ready to take the bullet if she needs to. It's so hard to care now.

"Shoot me instead, if you're going to shoot him. It'll do as much good."

A part of Sinclair wanted to pull the trigger, he wanted this horrid pain to stop. He knew that Swann would never leave Jason, especially now that they were in this mess for better or worse. He could deny them passage, let them suffer but she had a good point. The more they dawdled over petty arguments of the past, the more the rebels encroached onto the last bastions of the Capitol. This war was drawing to an end and unless Snow could unleash a final attack....

"Come inside," he grunted out, wrestling the barrel away from Swann's chest and pointed to the foyer, "Grab what you can and make sure you weren't followed. I'll be abandonin' this place soon enough."

These hollowed walls were raised with the blood and sweat of his work, of holding Panem's finances, now dust in the wind.

"For God's sake, Swann, just let me handle-" Jason reaches forward and grabs her shoulder, the dysfunction of their yin-and-yang sweeping up over the part of their relationship that's keeping them both from entirely falling apart as the whole world collapses around them. Around the Capitol. Around everyone. What they have is alive but poisoned.

But then Sinclair's letting them in. The mansion Jason grew up in was starting to rot in his childhood, but Sinclair's nearly pristine building still feels more like home than the underground prison of District Thirteen or the smog-choked desecration of the Capitol skyline now.

"That so? Where'll you go?"

Let me handle it, like he's ever been better at handling these kinds of things, like he'd have a prayer of negotiating anything with Sinclair unless she intervened. She wants to snap, her patience worn down and frayed, but in the end, she's just too tired, too tired to do anything more than bat Jason's hand away and follow Gus inside.

When she looks around, it's with the kind of keen eye that's learned to appraise the real value of things. Not the monetary value, not the sentimental value, but the value of things out in a wartorn world that doesn't care for gold and jewels so much as weapons and food.

"You have somewhere safe, right?" she asks softly, turning from a side table to look at Gus.

"Does it matter to you?" Sinclair spat back at Jason as he closed the door behind them. The world's falling apart and some bad blood needed to be cleansed but Augustus was a proud man. He'd rather die than let the rebellion take him for granted but not much can be done six feet under.

"I sent my assistant to District 2 a while back, to hide in friendly faces. I won't have that luxury for a while," he answered Swann's question that more civil, but still at the end of his rope. He can't rely on old favors if they're captured.

"No. I was just asking for courtesy's sake," Jason says, making it clear why they're here crouched at Sinclair's home, that it has nothing to do with Sinclair but with the resources deep in this household. The twenty or so pounds of supplies they can pack away before they start their desperate sprint up north.

He sure as hell isn't going to invite Sinclair to join their little campaign.

"Are there friendly faces for people like us? If you know of any, it'd just be neighborly to share." Jason collapses into a chair, rubbing his temples, trying in vain to stave off the migraine that's been attacking like a crow every few days, as soon as fresh meat shows.

If it wouldn't make them look at her like she's crazy, she'd slam her face into the table. Listening to the two of them is like listening to two cats hiss at each other, and she doesn't have any patience left for it. While they snap at each other, she finds a decanter of brandy and knocks back a gulp in the hope that it'll steel her nerves even a little bit, help her limp along into the journey.

"Are you staying? We're going as far as we can."

Any comment or remark about being neighborly towards Jason was quelled; it was useless to fight him but they kept their pride in check. "District 1's probably the only safe bet, least amount of supporters for the Rebellion but after that, either head north or east. District 2 maybe...the others are lost causes."

Augustus felt cornered and the reflex to shoot and defend himself from the incoming torrent of rage was strong. "The whole world's gone mad but-" For this he looked straight at Jason, "You keep yer ass downlow an' find some podunk town. I dunno if I'll get outta here, made a lot of enemies."

He couldn't face Swann for that answer: he was born a Capitolite, forged his fortune with blood, sweat and broken backs of others. He would die a Capitolite.

"District One's a target. Too many Capitol sympathizers. They'd rather blow their own people to kingdom come than have that in their beautiful new utopia."

Jason doesn't know why he's sharing that information with Sinclair, the whispers in the halls of District Thirteen, information left on the screens of computers or handwritten as notes, left for the few not faithful to the Capitol but faithless to anyone to find. The people in District Thirteen didn't think to hide their stratagems. They treated the handful of Capitolites with the same infantilizing apathy as the Capitol often treated the Districters -- it didn't occur to the people of District Thirteen that Jason could read. Why would it? He couldn't handle a mod or bus a table without it being explained to him. "Don't go there."

He knows as well as Sinclair does that they're speaking of a death sentence, and somehow, against his deepest interests and instincts, Jason offers his opinion.

"If you leave now, there's a chance no one will recognize you."

"Gus, you have to go. Today."

Swann says it quietly, moves closer so she can look him in the face. So he can see what's become of her and why he can't just let them take him down; she's sickly and gaunt, her skin pasty and her hair limp. She barely even looks like the person she was a few months ago. And while she doesn't have the information that Jason gleaned in his time underground, she does have a kind of determination that he doesn't.

She decided when they ran that she was going to die at her own hand or not at all. Her faith is firm.

"You'll get out, if you leave before they get here. You can't just stay here. Please, listen to me. I've been out there with them. They're worse than worms in the dirt."

Augustus Sinclair wasn’t a brave man, his staying here as long as he did was an insane drive to stand his ground and maybe see Swann again before he was executed for the practices he’s done in the Districts. Some business dealings were probably soured even deeper now that the Districters seized back the control. Ads that ran for the Solutions’ various banking services made his face, his brand visible, now a curse to hide in the enemy lines.

“I’ll try to get the hell outta here but I can’t guarantee I’ll…not be captured,” he didn’t want to say dead, but the spectre loomed over them all. Swann and Jason had a boon he didn’t have: they blended in for longer than he could ever fathom.

“Take the exit through the emergency route, it’s a straight shoot outta this place if these rebels have some hubris an’ think a front assault."

Jason snorts, then tilts his head back to see if he's given himself another nosebleed. Since Bucky Barnes beat his face in upon their arrival at District Thirteen it seems Jason's sinuses are chomping at the bit to spew blood all over the place at the first excuse. But no deluge comes, and he faces Sinclair again.

"So bring a capsule of morphling. That way either you'll be in so deep they can't torture any information out of you, or you'll overdose and go out on your own terms. I'd offer you mine but I might still need it."

He breaks eye contact with Sinclair and goes to the nearest cabinet, searching through it for anything valuable they can hawk, any necessary supplies.

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They're Telling Me That I'm Fine [Closed]

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