Marcus hung towards the back after arriving, and listened to Rodeo with his arms folded. He wasn't wired to see the world in shades of black and white. Us vs. Them mentalities were usually the ones that lobbied against him, made life more difficult than it needed to be. Turned people against each other, and inspired them to turn their guns on a man for sporting bite marks. He didn't care for hard lines and games of war, and the more embroiled he'd become with the Hellhounds, the more doubts he'd had about their organization. Us vs. Them was a common mantra thrown against the men in uniforms and the fucking drug addicts below the streets, and Marcus wasn't sure about a doctrine that could have so much hate in it.
At the end of the day, he'd always been more of a lover than a fighter, even with his temper.
So he stood, towering in the back like a bouncer, eyes narrowed and fixed on the ol' fearless leader. Trying to determine if this man was righteous or even right. It wasn't an easy call to make.
As Rodeo began, Marcus tensed. He had read the Capitol statement, and it hadn't pissed him off. Not really. It had made him think, though. That list of names had been long. People who'd had families, and here Rodeo was admitting to murder. Saying there wasn't righteousness or rightness to any of it. Confirming fears the nurse had been wrestling with since the bullets had started to come more from uniforms than crazed madmen. Reassurances that the uniforms were madmen, conspiracies about how the government wanted them all stamped out... hadn't exactly eased his mind any on that front.
It was hard to pinpoint what Marcus felt in that moment, but it twisted in his gut like betrayal. He'd let himself fall in love this camp, these people, and he felt like he'd been sold a bill of freedom written on a pack of lies. And here was the peddler, spinning a rousing a speech about how they'd do better, rallying them up for a war on a walled city, going to take down the Man himself.
But did it really matter if they were stealing from the armed or the harmless? Marcus hadn't signed on for a war against the living. Taking out cannibal raider fucks like Dugger was one thing, but going against a city -- where there were going to be men, women, and children -- was something else. He didn't know who Olinger was. Maybe the guy was the devil, maybe this was the correct path to freedom, but Marcus wasn't sure he could trust that.
Maybe the man spinning pretty words about reform wrapped in a blanket of revolution was a devil, too. Rodeo did have a way of making outlawin' look good, and he'd also decided to become a druglord with his fuckton of stolen Prax... so it was hard to trust the man.
Then there was the anger. He sees Teagan -- the Rattlesnake Woman once again -- storm off in what looked like anger at the end of the speech. There was a bubbling of disappointment from some of the attendees, and it wasn't over the drug-dealing or admission of guilt or any coming war. It was over the ceasefire. The call to clean up and do right first. A lot of these people didn't want reform, whatever that meant. They wanted a war. Wanted the conflict. Wanted the danger and thrill and self-destruction.
Marcus, having spent too many goddamn hours picking bullets out of men instead of treating bites since coming here, was sickened by that more than anything else.