[OPEN]

[drpsychosomatic]

Who| John Watson and OPEN
What| John's been having a lot of trouble sleeping and settling since waking up in the Capitol, and so is doing a lot of wandering for wandering's sake, catching up with friends (or at least people who haven't murdered him) and going on adorable coffee-dates with Effie Basically this is here to catch all
Where| Wandering around the capitol
When| Any time after his death, just let me know when you want to set things in the title of your reply pls
Warnings/Notes| Possible mentions of PTSD?

Death, John decided, was something no-one should have to live through. Where being shot and being absolutely certain he was going to die had been terrible, and had taken months of physical and psychological rehabilitation, dying and being brought back in a perfectly functional body was much more of a disorientating disconnect. He felt detached from reality.

Before Sherlock had rejoined him in the Capitol, John had spent much of his time trying to prove to himself that he was actually here, not always consciously. He walked as far as he could along the streets, visited strange little cafes and bars and hauled himself back to his suite, exhausted and burned out, hoping he'd be too tired to dream. His mood lifted a little once his friend returned, and there were a few notable people whose company he not only enjoyed but looked forward to enjoying, but the itch to get out for the sake of getting out only intensified the longer the days dragged on. There was nothing comfortable about life here, no routine he could settle into and feel like he had a handle on. The long and short of it was, he was useless here in the Capitol, and it was eating away at him.

Comments

[mannersmatter]

She looked up, a moment of damp appreciation, before gently dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a napkin. The hand he touche stayed still, Effie enjoying the contact.

"Oh, my, I'm going to mess up my make-up. Thank you, though. I...I am sorry, for all of you, but...I am not sorry to send home those two each year."

[drpsychosomatic]

Encouraged, he took her hand in his a little more firmly, stroking his thumb over the back of it in small, rhythmic circles while she gathered herself together, offering a gentle squeeze of solidarity as she spoke.
"You're fine," he reassured her. "Effie, I- well, I can't say I'm happy with everything that's happened. But I am glad that we can save those lives, and I hope we can win a better life for the people we represent, too. I don't want to die, of course I don't - but better that than you or anyone else having to bring out children for Games where they never come back. Always."

[mannersmatter]

She nodded.

"That is...how I feel, it is unfortunate but I wish there was-" She stopped herself before saying 'a better way.' "A third option. Maybe some day, but for now, at least this is...better than before."

Which was the company line, of course.

[drpsychosomatic]

He smiled, lacing their fingers together.
"Who knows. Maybe with all these people the Capitol has gathered, we can think of another solution for everybody. We've certainly got a lot of people far smarter than me from worlds all over the place here, and if we can learn from the people who've lived here long enough to really understand the problem the Games solve for you... well. We'll see, I suppose."

[mannersmatter]

"Well, I do certainly think you are undermining your intelligence, especially compared to the rest of these tributes..." She shrugged. She had watched enough to know they weren't all shining stars. But it couldn't be helped. "But I do think you are, generally, right."

It was a relief. Really, just talking to someone who understood was a relief. It felt like so few here did. The Capitol people...they didn't understand this side of the Games. And the Tributes, especially these Tributes, didn't understand how relevant they were to Panem.

[drpsychosomatic]

"Well, I suppose what I meant was, I'm not a politician," he chuckled, dipping his head slightly to hide the soft blush of embarrassment that had sprung up at her confidence in his intelligence. "And there are enough foreign tributes here that some of them must be. I think most of us are just too involved in how dehumanising it feels to be brought here to die for the entertainment of people we don't know to be investing much energy in coming up with sensible solutions."

[mannersmatter]

"It must be hard. Here, the children, they understand how important it is, and they know it is a part of life. It doesn't come from no where, they aren't just unexpectedly take away..."

It was, literally, her worst nightmare. One that had plagued her since she was a small child.

[drpsychosomatic]

"It must be hard, even for the children raised with the idea," John mused. "I can't imagine many of them want to go in to a death match. Don't get me wrong, I was raised in a military family, so I suppose I have a slightly different idea about serving your country than other people might have, but expecting children to have grasped it, especially when it used to be an almost definite death sentence..."

[mannersmatter]

There wasn't much she could reply to that, besides a nod.

"There are...benefits to how things are done now. Even if they are much more work."

[drpsychosomatic]

"I'd really like to understand the system better," he pressed, carefully. "But everyone seems too afraid to talk about it with me. I suppose they just might not feel like they know enough? A lot of it is tied in with history, and some kind of civil war, from what I understand- but if it was long enough ago that people don't remember it, I wonder why it's still necessary to keep the Games going?"

[mannersmatter]

"Well, it really wasn't that long ago. This is the 75th game, so some people still alive actually lived through the war...possibly not in the districts, as their quality of life is generally lower."

Oh, you've gotten her started, John.

"I am a bit of a history buff, so even though I, of course, didn't live through them, I'd be more than happy to share my knowledge with you, about the Dark Days, and why we have the Games."

[drpsychosomatic]

"Well, if you wouldn't mind, I would love to learn about it," John said, smiling. He'd never been that good at history, but he'd never quite had the immediate stake in it that he had now, either.
"As long as you won't be offended if I ask stupid questions, that is."

[mannersmatter]

"I really doubt you would ask any sort of stupid questions." She said indulgently, before trying to figure out the best place to start.

"Our world use to be similar to what many of you seem to come from. But something, or, likely, many somethings went terribly wrong. And the world ended up...broken. Badly. People were starving, dying, everywhere."

She was trying to find ways to compress quite a lot of history.

[drpsychosomatic]

He nodded. "We weren't doing so well back home. Messed up the environment, wars- though I suppose it wasn't as bad as it had been, in some ways. We'd stopped being certain that any minute now some idiot would drop a bomb that would start off a war we couldn't possibly survive--"
He paused. "Something like that? Worldwide nuclear warfare?"

[mannersmatter]

"We're not sure what exactly happened before, and to the rest of the world, though it's considered likely. We had lost a chunk of history, between what...runs parallel to your world, and where we are now, and there are several theories. But a strongly likely one is that a war broke out in the south Asian area."

She couldn't remember the exact countries, but it had been awhile since she'd studied this part of history. She was much more involved in Panem's history.

"The Capitol rose out of the dark days, uniting and streaming the Districts, organizing so no one went hungry, so resources could be shared."

((OOC- Also, since I know you're canon blind-ish, I'm trying to keep this pretty canon accurate since it's IC and OOC learnins o/))