thecapitol | I Said This Life Ain't No Love Song [Open]

Entry tags:

I Said This Life Ain't No Love Song [Open]

WHO| Jason Compson and you!
WHAT| Jason meets his new Tributes and runs errands.
WHERE| D7 Suites, the elevator and lobby, and out getting groceries.
WHEN| After the broadcast.
WARNINGS| None yet.

LOBBY AND ELEVATOR

Jason Compson's never been the kind to get jitters on the first day of the job, and today's no different. It's not self-confidence so much as a sort of impenetrable aura of indifference, as if even the greatest catastrophe would be entirely dissipated before it impacted his ego. He's like a transient moving through phases in his life, dedicating himself to none. The task of maintaining the Compson name sucks all the concern out of him long before he can commit it to anything else.

Besides, he's done this before, wrangled Tributes for the cameras in District Ten. Seven's no higher up on the totem pole, and even if the Games have changed he doesn't expect the work will have. He's decent enough as an Escort, not particularly sociable but good with the connections he salvaged from his parents' name and quick to seize opportunities.

He has an electronic cigarette in his mouth before he even gets to the elevator, smelling vaguely of camphor and eucalyptus. The headaches have been better since he found vaporizers for those plants, and the white stick can be seen hanging off his lips near-constantly now. It doesn't look proper, but it's better than calling in sick half the time.

He doesn't walk across the lobby with the wonder or fear of one of the Tributes, nor is he dressed like one of the Stylists. He moves as if he has somewhere to get to, and any delay in getting there is a matter of his constitution rather than the importance of the place in question. His clothes are simple but contemporary, expensive enough to be fashionable but not enough to declare wealth.

The last time he was here, the whole place was different, the floors suited to a handful of people instead of a baker's dozen. In the elevator, he reaches for the button that says '10' in embossed text, then pauses, remembering his change in position, and hits '7'.

DISTRICT SEVEN

Figures that they're all sleeping in. That Jason arrived while dawn was still smudging light into the horizon doesn't really occur to him; the point is that he's working and his charges are snoring and drooling on themselves like pigs in a sty. He snaps at an Avox to start brewing some coffee and loosens his collar, resting on a couch with a device telling him about some more hubbub on Panem Nightly. He has no respect for people making fools of themselves on television, but he supposes that's why he's backstage, helping shove people into costumes and telling them to smile while he scowls.

When each waking Tribute comes to the kitchen, he doesn't get up from the couch.

"About time you get up and moving. You'd think we were running a coma ward with how much activity there is around here."

GROCERIES

If Jason had it his way, the Avoxes would be doing this, but the last time he sent them to buy food they got the wrong sort of seafood and he had to listen to his mother act as if she'd been poisoned for the better part of a week. If he really had it his way, he'd be living off of boiled noodles and toast, rather than spending his hard-earned money on fresh produce for his invalid mother. Instead, he's in an upscale market, examining turnips like some old biddy and brushing elbows with Avoxes and Tributes and all sorts of people beneath him. He can only hope that not too many people who recognize his face will see him here.

He makes a list of what items are on sale, what he can tell the District Seven Avoxes to substitute to save money in the Tribute budget for something else. When he's selected everything, he makes sure it'll be shipped home so he doesn't have to carry it through the streets. And when he leaves, it's back to the camphor cigarette, and for as desperate as he was to get out of that crowded and unpleasant store, he finds he's no more excited to go back home. He all but drags his feet on his way to his car.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The truth is...she doesn't really give a shit about what he thinks about her outfit. She's been wearing scrubs for weeks on end, and bloodstained clothes before that. She sort of just wants to feel even a little bit normal, no matter how unattainable that is. Which mostly means dressing like a farm girl again.

It's almost funny, how he equates almost dying for entertainment value as hard work. Wait, no it's not. It's actually just infuriating, and it's doing a lot to ruffle her feathers at this hour. Beth doesn't touch the breakfast laid out for her. She stares him down, arms crossed against her chest, chin tipped in stubborn defiance.

"Who are you? I'm not going anywhere until you explain what we're doin'."

She's spent a lot of time being ordered around by fake cops. It gets old.

He sighs and pushes his glasses up on his nose. He twines his fingers and rests his elbows on his knees, as if neither man nor machine will be able to budge him until he's said his piece.

"You'll go where I tell you to go, because you're a Tribute and I'm your Escort. Is that clear?" He raises his eyebrows above the rim of his glasses. "And I'm Jason. I'm taking over this shitshow and turning this District into something the media isn't embarrassed to report on."

"No, it's not clear," she snaps, and to be honest, this news comes at a really bad time for her. Before Grady Memorial, she might have co-operated. Maybe. There's a chance. Now, after being cooped up in that hospital like a prisoner or an indentured servant, there was no way. If she has to go along with this, it's not going to be quietly.

"You still haven't explained what an escort is. So I'm not moving."

Jason looks surprised for a moment, and then angry, and a little muscle in the side of his face tick-ticks away as he sucks his own tongue. He places his hands in a sort of steeple above his nose, breathes deep, and then sits back on the couch, hands returning to pockets.

He really does have a lot of work to do here.

"I'm the person who manages you. I make sure you get interviews and merchandising lines and lots of people sending you presents in the Arenas. And I make sure that you and your crew of lowlifes don't cross the line with the Peacekeepers and end up executed on television. It's my job to keep you alive and within the bounds of the law. Do you understand?"

She's got a lot of displaced anger and she hates the way he looks at her like she's an annoying problem or a particularly petulant child who refuses to go along with the rules. Rules that include forcing her to watch the people she loves die on television amongst jeering crowds like they meant nothing at all.

"And if I say no? To the interviews and the merchandising and everythin' else? I don't want your help."

Beth figures the answer is probably execution or something. Because the Capitol is just so creative.

One foot comes up and rests on the rosewood coffee table. He looks past her now, at the shimmering hologram wall displaying clear blue skies smudged with clouds, not because he can't hold her gaze but because he doesn't feel it worth the time at the moment.

"Do I really have to elaborate for you the power the Capitol has over you? Over everyone you care about? Look, I don't want to get you in trouble, but I won't be made to look like a damn fool by unruly Tributes. I'm not above reporting you to keep you in line or get you out of my hair entirely." He pulls a hand out and waves it like a paper flapping through the wind. "If you want to engage in stubbornness, you can take that road, but it's a short one and not the one I'd prefer. And you're taking plenty of other people with you."

It's yet another reminder that Beth is not alone any more. Not that she was ever really alone, with all the other survivors from the same world. But it's different now. Rick and Daryl are family. She'd do just about anything to protect them, even though there's actually very little she can do. The Capitol probably knows that, too. They'll probably use it against her, because that's how power-hungry people work. She understands that now.

Beth is quiet for a moment, seething. It's obvious that she's seething at him, too. All too evident in her expression, because she's really not that great of an actress.

"So why don't you just go ahead and tell me what you want from me then?" she folds her arms against her chest as if that could offer her any protection at all. "You want me to go to some parties or somethin'?"

"I want to help you win. That's what all these Tributes don't get. We're working towards the same thing." He pulls a folded paper out of his pocket and checks the name on it - KAITO - and slides it back in, fishing around until he finds one with BETH written on it in sturdy, proper, inky handwriting.

He holds it out to her between his index and middle finger, as if it were the cigarette he's got dangling from his lower lip.

"We're going to have a long sit-down with your Stylist and get all your casual-wear tailored and come up with a strategy. Then I'm taking you for focus-group testing. I already booked a meeting for you with a mascara company, you got good eyes, so I'll need you to impress when I take you to meet their marketing." He's got eight other Tributes to juggle, too. "Now eat and talk to me a little."

He says it like he's doing her a favour or something. Beth wants to survive, but she almost doesn't want to win. Because she'd have to live with herself after, and that might be worse than dying. He holds a piece of paper out for her and she eyes him for a moment before stepping forward to take it from him. He booked her a meeting at a mascara company? What does he want her to do, bat her eyelashes?

Lord.

But she is hungry, and not about to turn down food after going without it for so long. She takes a plate and leans against the kitchen island, taking small bites because she's learned the consequences of wolfing food down too fast. "Talk to you about what? I'm no good at talkin' about myself."

"That makes two of us." Jason doesn't much enjoy talking about himself either. It's a little paranoia, a little insecurity, a lot just a general wish for privacy. He would be a solitary man if that were any way to survive.

"But the fact is that I have to know about you in order to figure out how to get them-" he gestures at the holographic wall showing the Capitol skyline- "to love you. You come out of this a winner, we both get something. I don't see the point in not being straightforward about it."

He puts away his cigarette with a little click of a button and a tuck into his breastpocket. She isn't one of the ones who'll force him into chaining it, into shoving the little vaporizers into the thing as if his hands will shudder to pieces if it takes him too long.

A winner. Could she be a winner? After what she saw in that arena, and all the tributes with their special powers, that seems doubtful. There are probably a lot of people in that audience that brush her off as too weak to win. Like Dawn, telling her that she was too weak to live. The flip side is that fighting just plays right into the Capitol's hands, and if there's a way to navigate this mess while still retaining a semblance of her soul, Beth hasn't thought of it yet.

Maybe that's reaching for too much.

"Well. What do you wanna know? I grew up on a farm. I can tell you all about how to brush a horse down if that's what you're interested in."

She's also conveniently leaving out the whole apocalypse bit. The Capitol already knows about that. And he's definitely not the type to dance around anything.

"That's better than nothing." Once upon the time the Compsons had stables before Jason's father sold them to fund his brother's education and his sister's sham marriage. "Never was much for horses myself, but I know some people who could lend us some thoroughbreds for shoots."

He was always too graceless, a clumsy child with no great love of nature or animals. He got kicked by one once, not hard, not enough to hurt him more than to leave bruises and tear-trails, and that was the end of that.

He pulls out a notepad and starts jotting things down. "What are you good at? Your file mentions the undead, so you must have some survival skills. Keep eating."

He's being serious. He's being 100% serious, talking about photo shoots and stylists when one of the last things she remembers is the feeling of having a rusty pipe sticking out of her stomach. For one crazy moment, Beth almost wants to laugh. She picks up the fork and eats instead.

She could tell him about her singing, but she doesn't want to. That's something Beth clings to as one of her only comforts in a world where everything went wrong. The Capitol would twist it. They'd ruin it. She doesn't want to sing for them.

Instead, she shrugs.

"I bake pretty good chocolate chip cookies," she replies, aiming for glibness instead of honesty.

Jason pauses on his notes, the skip of his pen coming to a sudden stop with a squeak. He raises an eyebrow; it seems bifurcated by the rim of his glasses. "Alright. That the only recipe you got?"

He jerks his head towards the Avox. "Add materials to the budget. Get a list of what she needs for it, but remember to go to the Seven-A for the flour, it's on discount. Take the funds out of this girl's makeup budget, Stig can do with a more plain-face look for her. If he complains he can take it up with me."

And Stig won't complain to Jason. Some people are appropriately scared. He turns back to Beth, one corner of his tight pulled tight like a purse-string.

"What is it you want? If you could get anything out of the Games..."

It's actually kind of weird to see him take her seriously. Most people in the Capitol don't seem to care about what the tributes think. The people who interviewed her way back when for that one magazine article certainly hadn't. They'd twisted her words until they printed the opposite of what she'd said. But at the same time...it's chocolate chip cookies and he's approaching it like a battle plan.

"We're gettin' something out of the games? I thought we didn't have a choice. Since we're basically prisoners and all...." to be honest, she probably wouldn't want anything the Capitol gave her anyway.

"You're feeding the people of District Seven. The children there. Every time someone from this District wins, the people there get food and supplies as a reward."

It's not that Jason really gives a shit about what the barbarians in the lumber District are getting to eat, but Tributes usually do, and some of them don't even know what it is that they're serving for.

"So. Baking." He waves the tip of his pen, as if physically drawing her back to the conversation they'd been having. "These home recipes or something?"

"Or, you know, the government could just give them the food. Because it seems like they've got plenty to go around," she can just press a button and get a full meal delivered to her in seconds. Those kinds of resources seem ridiculous when it turns out other people don't have enough. Especially coming from a world where there were hardly any resources to share, and witnessing the brutality that inspired in people.

Just fucking give them the food.

Beth doesn't really swear, but this is making her want to.

"They were my mama's. Why, are you gonna put them in a book and sell them too?"

"Does it look like I'm in charge of the government here?"

Jason nearly throws up his hand. He should be involved in the government here, and to be honest if he were giving food to the Districts would be an incidental concern, but as he isn't he has plausible deniability. A hypothetical, powerful Jason could be the most benevolent and influential politician Panem had ever seen, and no one can say it wouldn't happen that way.

"I was thinking videos, helping teach girls and boys how to cook so the Avoxes don't have to do it. Books don't have the longevity these days, and you have a pretty enough face." He makes another note in the margin of the schedule, handwriting crisp, the product of intensive tutoring he received as a child. "You know, Beth, you seem like the kind of person people should like, so I don't know why you're kicking against that so much when it'll get you food and medicine in the Arena."

She's afraid of becoming the kind of person who justifies the means with whatever made up end that happens to suit the moment. It would be so easy, and so incredibly convenient. It feels like something that would be difficult to come back from.

But he just sort of called her pretty, and she's not really sure how to react? Because Beth hasn't thought of herself as anything in a long while. And mostly because she's not pretty in the way the Capitol seems to like, all perfect and airbrushed. Especially not with the scars slicing across her cheek and forehead.

They like their beauty standards unattainable and painful. Which would almost be familiar if she'd lived anywhere but the middle of nowhere.

She's still sort of staring at him for a couple seconds more.

"...You're not gonna make me get any weird surgeries, are you?"

Not that she'd go willingly, but they also don't get much of a choice in anything.

He claps his hands together and slumps back in the seat, legs sprawling in a pose that's more catlike than professional. Something about Jason always makes him seem as if he's trying a little too hard to buck the idea of a servile, pleasant professional. As if this Escort position is a set of clothing that doesn't quite fit him and never has.

"Getting plastic surgery for you costs money from the District budget, and I can think of a hundred things we need before that." He doesn't see the issue with it in principle, though. "I've had surgery before, got my nose fixed. Like I say, it's not that bad. Weird place to put your foot down on."

It's not something that's hidden in the Capitol; if anything, some people flaunt it. That Jason comes from a family that had enough money to straighten his nose (had) is something he'd rather people know than not.

Edited 2015-01-16 06:30 (UTC)

"I meant more like...purple skin and horns," which is what some of the citizens of the Capitol seem to like. She's seen a lot of weird stuff since she got here. It's been kind of a culture shock the whole way through.

She finishes her breakfast, but everything seems to taste a little less delicious in light of all of this. Jason Compson literally has the ability to ruin the taste of food. It's kind of impressive. Beth looks around for a sink so she can do her dishes. But there isn't any dish soap or a sponge, and there's a tray where she's supposed to put her dishes so someone else can do them for her.

It's kind of funny how she was sort of looking forward to it. It's such a simple, normal thing. A regular part of an old routine. In the end, she ends up letting it get whooshed away by the machine with a sigh.

"So what do you get from all this? If you make me sell mascara for you, and I get supplies...what's in it for you?"

"No purple skin and horns for you. It's never going to look as natural as it does on the trolls."

He waves a hand and the Avox all but flies over to the kitchen, taking the dishes from the rack and placing them in a cabinet that will whisk them to the Avox workroom downstairs, deep in the guts of the building where the Tributes aren't allowed.

"I get a paycheck. If you win, I might get a bonus, or even promoted to one of the Career Districts. I got a family to support, so believe it or not, I actually like getting paid."

See, Beth. Win an Arena and you can inflict him on District One or something.

The avoxes don't look at her. She tries to make eye contact, just to say thank you, but they hurry along with their eyes cast downwards and they disappear from sight like they're constantly afraid of punishment.

It makes her angry to see them, and Beth has plenty of anger to spare these days. But it's really the mention of his family that has her expression softening. It serves to humanize him a little - or a lot. He's trying to support his family. In the Capitol way. As terrible as that is when you're looking at it from a tribute's perspective.

"Alright," it's the mention of family that ultimately has her agreeing to literally anything. Even though it's a tentative and delicate thing. "Fine. I'll do your...cooking thing, I guess."

At least it's the least-cringeworthy of the prospects.

Jason breathes the first honest sigh of relief of the morning, and he doesn't realize how tense he had been until he does. The Tributes have been ratcheting up his blood pressure all morning and he didn't quite realize the moment he expected to have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into every single thing he's had planned.

He realizes, dully, that it was probably him mentioning family that got to her, and that sits uneasily with him.

"It's not a settled deal. For all I know you get horrible stagefright and are as photogenic as roadkill. But it'll be a start." He passes the schedule over to her, rolls the pen. "Write down a list of things you'll need to make a few recipes. I'll have the Avoxes do a shopping run today and make some phone calls."

She doesn't know how photogenic she is. She's never had to think about that, to be honest. But Beth takes the pen and stares at the paper he's just passed her. She doesn't know if she ought to actually write down her mama's recipes. They're precious to her, and they contain cherished memories that she can't quite let go of.

After a moment, she writes: APPLE PIE in neat handwriting and underlines it. Then she writes down the basic ingredients - everything she can remember by heart before putting the pen down.

"Okay. Can I go now?"

(no subject)

whatisay - 2015-02-04 04:42 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only