milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: The tradition of a lifetime takes on a whole new meaning.]

Darius is very much subdued when he comes into the bar today, and he breathes a sigh of relief when he ends up here rather than in the Hob. He can't stand walking into another room where every single inhabitant hates him on sight.

He walks up to the bar, not sure immediately what it is that he wants.

Eventually, though, he asks, "Could I get some white liquor?"

He could stand to kill a few brain cells. He's drinking to forget today.

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"Cannot you afford a little liquid with your drink?" the man asks.

"Yes, but this seemed fitting today."

"You wish to eradicate your poor mind in very great a hurry?" the man enquires.

"Something like that, yes."

"Sometimes, a man must do that," the man shrugs. "Sometimes, a working mind is but a hindrance."

"I think that's the case most of the time, really," Darius says, sounding much more cynical than he usually does.

"It would depend on what you plan to do, good sir," the man smirks.

"I plan," he says, lifting his glass again, "to forget all about today. At least until next year."

"What was so bad about today that you must sluice your mind into next year with drink?" the man asks, honestly curious.

Darius has to take another drink before he can answer that. It burns its way down his throat, and he coughs a little.

"Today I helped send two children to their deaths," he says finally.

It's the first time he's admitted that to himself.

"Children?" the man says. "What was they crime, so they were punished thus?"

From what he looks like, he would be from a time when executions were common, and yes, not even children were exempt. Still, it was rare.

Darius does not know anywhere near enough about the history of Earth pre-Panem to have any idea what sort of time this man was from.

"No crime. They're Tributes."

"Tributes of who, for what?" Poins asks. In truth, it sounds heathen to him, like the old tales of Theseus and the Minotaur.

"Tributes of the colonies for the Games."

"Games in which the players would be killed?" Poins ask. "As if in Rome of old, where they would throw the faithful to the beasts?"

Pause.

"With children??"

That is too much, even for a hard medieval man like Poins.

"Yes," Darius says, taking another long drink.

"That is foul and heathen," Poins says. "Worthy only of a great tyrant of infamous renown. What cruel ruler is it that make a breathing, feeling man commit his soul thus straight to hell?"

Darius lifts his glass as though in a toast. "President Snow. Not the first and not the last."

"A good man would rebel, and make himself a copy of faithful Robin Hood and his green men," Poins says. "Alas, I'm not a hero either, my conscience is as blackened as my chin, prickly neglected, and I should not preach."

Pause.

"But still, it makes me shudder: even me!"

Edited 2012-09-11 23:27 (UTC)

"It's not so easy to rebel," Darius says, frowning. The spectre of District Thirteen is always hanging over them.

"'Tis what I meant," Poins agrees. "Rebels get hung, when caught."

"And their families and their friends and their homes and their neighbors," Darius adds.

It's the first time he's admitted that as well.

"Of course," Poins says. "As any tyrant knows, all must be done to quell rebellion at its very root. For sooth, how better squash a man than threaten all he loves with shameful death?"

"Shame has nothing to do with it," Darius says.

"It has," Poins says, "or why else hang them, and make a spectacle of it for all to see? It tells all that must watch, or hear about it: these have done wrong, and if you do the same, the same will then be done unto you and those that you love."