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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"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."

"Fear, not shame," Darius points out.

"Shame also," Poins says, "for they die traitor's death, and those that do survive shall be, at first, all shunned and friendless. But when they are too many and take to the green woods to gather there, and simple people's minds are swayed by them, then the rebellion will be open and might win. But still, no man would want his wife or sister a martyr to his cause."

Darius laughs darkly. "No one survives. And no one goes to the woods."

Well, some people do, but not enough to incite a rebellion. If they started, the Capitol would put an end to it soon enough.

"That truly tyrannical a tyrant," Poins says, "deserves a rebellion just as fierce as he, that I know nothing of. What is his name?"

"President Snow," Darius mutters.

He doesn't know about this rebellion business. It seems to be going a bit far. Really, he shouldn't even be thinking these thoughts. Out of habit, he looks around for anyone who might be listening in.

"What is a president?" Poins asks. "Is it what future mankind calls its kings?"

Darius tilts his head curiously. "I don't know. What's a king do?"

"Rule," Poins says. "Make speeches. Judge. Declare war. Pardon those condemned to death, if he is so inclined. Have his people collect taxes."

Darius nods. "Yeah, that. That's a president."

"Rulers are named different things, in different lands," Poins says. "There's kings and emperors, sultans and khans."

He shrugs. "We've just got a president."

"It is just another name," Poins says. "I doubt that presidents are muck more tyrannical than any of the others that I named, for any ruler may go bad."

"Ah. You think Snow's the problem."

"Is it not ever the bad king, emperor, khan," Poins says, "that causes trouble for his underlings and subjects?"