If you ever get to the place where the sun is shining everyday

[cigne]

Who| Swann and maybe you???
What| Gotta shape up these Tributes. And maybe have a drink.
Where| D8 Suites and also the bar in the lobby
When| TODAY

a. District 8 Suites
Swann enters the Suite with her heels clicking on the floor, peering around for any sign of life in here. She carries in her shopping bags, each labeled with the name of her Tributes. The bags overwhelm her tiny frame, the sheer amount of them and their size. Even her sky-high stilettos can't balance it all out.

She approaches the sitting room and carefully arranges the bags on the coffee table, placing them just so, very intent on the appearance. She wants everything to look just right when the Tributes come in, wants to see their eyes light up at how pretty the bags are, with their pristine edges and rich black shine and ribbons on the handles.

They have to show up first, though.

b. Lobby bar

All she needed was a single lemon drop martini, and she has it. Sitting on the high barstool, Swann looks out over the lobby, watching people come and go, watching the crowds ebb and flow as the Tributes enter and leave the building. It's interesting enough, made nicer by the drink, and the screens replay all the best scenes from the past Arena.

She occasionally fiddles with her communicators, checking emails and messages and the tabloids, making sure everything's in order while she dares to lounge for just a few moments.

Comments

[cigne]

There's a moment where Swann just sort of blinks at her hand, unprepared to take a foray into smoking a sort-of cigarette, or whatever it is. But... well, Jason wants her to, and if she doesn't do it, then he'll probably be angry and leave, and weren't they having a fairly nice conversation?

She holds the vaporizer delicately between her fingers, her pink fingernails clicking against each other as she adjusts it to put the end between her lips. When the vapor is released, she breathes it in the way she thinks she's supposed to, and it's not terrible -- it has a nice enough scent and flavor.

But she can't help coughing when she tries to breathe the smoke out, the back of her throat scratchy and irritated from the new sensation.

[whatisay]

Jason reaches over and takes the cigarette from her, wiping it on a kerchief from his pocket before putting it back into his mouth. He has the slightest smirk, although whether he's amused at her difficulty or just glad she played along is up to interpretation.

"Just a calming scent. You get used to it after long enough." He pushes his glass over water over to her. "Here, that'll sort you out."

[cigne]

Swann is still coughing into her hand when he gives her the water, and she immediately takes it up to drink like a beached fish. Only when half the glass is gone does she put it down and take a gasp for air.

She leaves a lipstick ring on the edge of the glass.

"That hurts," she says, her voice thick, looking at him like she's a bit wounded he didn't warn her.

[whatisay]

"Didn't mean to hurt you. I'm so used to it I don't even notice." And as if to prove the point, he takes a deep long breath of it, exhaling the vaguely brick-colored smoke out through his nose.

He glances at the lipstick ring, then back at her. "You can keep the glass now. I make it a point never to get a woman's lipstick anywhere near me."

[cigne]

She pulls a hanky from her purse, pink and embroidered with a pair of white swans, kissing so their necks form a heart. She wipes delicately at her mouth, arching her eyebrow high when he says that.

"You only like boys now, Jason?"

It's said without any air of judgement or even feeling -- the only real tone is mild surprise, perhaps. If the Compsons are known for anything, it's hardly their devotion to celibacy.

[whatisay]

This time, it's him who coughs on the cigarette vapor. He raises his eyebrows at her.

"No, that's not what I meant. It's just- I don't want to be tied down. Same as any man." He coughs into his fist again and knocks on the bar for more water.

"I couldn't date anyway. My mother would claim I was trying to kill her from the stress of paying attention to anyone more than her."

[cigne]

She only looks at him in return, like she doesn't really understand how lipstick marks on a glass he offered ties him down to anyone.

"Well, don't you think you're missing out on something?" She sips at the water. "I know you have some family troubles, but surely you'd like to have someone around. In fact, I don't really remember you ever being linked to anyone."

Swann's last boyfriend left a few years back, when she became a persona non grata. It hadn't helped with her spiral into depression, which only exacerbated her need for approval and love. She didn't need it to be romantic love, but it was nice enough anyway, and she'd been glad to have it at the time.

[whatisay]

"Of course I'm missing out on something. That just doesn't mean the old bitch is going to loosen her hold." He shrugs. "Whatever, she'll be dead soon. Then maybe I'll see what I've been missing out on."

It's always difficult to tell if Jason means it when he speaks ill of his mother. On one hand, the hatred is palpable; on the other, a few years back when the Compsons were audited, the records showed that every cent Jason made went right to Caroline's personal account. It had been such a surprise it had made the blotters for a half-second.

"What about you? Last I heard you were with Whatsisface, the guy with the big teeth." He contorts his mouth, pulls his lip back to sneer and make buck teeth.

[cigne]

"We broke up a while ago. Nothing important. It just ended."

She finally looks away from him, to frown at the glass of water he left her, her hands folded in her lap. He shouldn't talk about her ex that way. He's so mean, but he's not mean to her, at least not directly, and she doesn't know how to feel about that.

"You shouldn't talk about your mother like that," she says quietly, still not looking at him. "Your mother loves you."

Everyone knows that Jason is his mother's whole world. Hell, Swann remembers it even from childhood, at the parties her mother never attended because she was always at the beach for sun, or breathing fresh mountain air for her head. Wherever it was that Swann wasn't.

There is a brief moment when she says it that she doesn't care if Jason gets mad at her or leaves, because no matter how bad he has it in other ways, he will never know what it's like to have a mother who chose the world over him.

[whatisay]

"Yeah? Look at my competition. She couldn't well give all that loving to my brothers and sister." Jason juts out his lower lip and then takes another long lungful of smoke. "She loves me to death."

Then he looks at Swann as he sucks in again, exhaling the smoke across the rings on her finger, across the perfectly-manicured nails when she brings her hands back up. He tries to see through her, analyze her, read everything about what she's saying and the girly makeup as if it were a checklist of all her secrets.

"Mrs. Honeymead wasn't a very good mommy, was she, Swann?" There's a smirk there, a little basking in someone else's unhappiness. "No worries. Grass is always greener. I would have expected you to be her little angel, though."

[cigne]

She takes her hands away when the smoke crosses them, balls them into fists that she presses into her skirt. The crinoline underneath the brocade silk crinkles from the pressure, folds and makes room in the dip where one thigh crosses over the other.

"Well you must love her just as much back, or else you wouldn't stay." It's still quiet, like she's intimidated to say anything but compliments loudly, and even the pitch of her voice has lowered, from the docile, sweet highness it usually bears. "The only thing keeping you there is you. So why complain? You could leave them to fend for themselves, if you're really so unhappy."

The whole time, Swann has kept her gaze fixed on the counter, as if there's a spot there that hypnotizes her.

"Viatrix is a fine mother," and it's a lie that comes easily, after all these years of telling it. "I couldn't ask for anything more."

[whatisay]

"Oh yeah, that's just what the Compsons need. Abandonment. It'd really complete the picture, wouldn't it?" But no, Jason thinks, Swann doesn't understand it. Jason himself doesn't understand it most days, when he gets up out of bed disappointed that the house didn't burn down in his sleep. "There's a lot of things that motivate people besides love. You know that. You reported on it plenty."

He makes a sound that's almost like a laugh, but dryer, and kind of sad. Like the remains of life in a pressed flower. He watches Swann, not lustful, not hungry, but maybe some echo of amused by the way she stripped out all that syrup from her voice.

"Okay. You always call her by her first name?"

[cigne]

"And you think you'll save your family's reputation?"

She finally flags down the bartender for another drink, her hand steady when she reaches for it.

"I did report on those things, a lot. Helps you learn about people and the way they tick, you know? And you're not staying for money, or because you have some dark secret lurking around, or because you're legally obligated. So all that you have left are love and pride, Jason, keeping you around. But maybe it's just that you secretly like it. Because you know that if you leave and go make some kind of life away from them, that you can't blame them if you're still angry and mean."

There's a long sip, and she finally turns her gaze back to him, blinking slowly over an intense look, her lashes long and dark but not fake like so many other peoples'. It takes a fair amount to make Swann drop her sweet little girl act, and she hates doing it, but she didn't become a television power player without a layer of shrewdness and cutthroat cunning behind it all.

"Sound about right? And my mother prefers hearing her name. Makes her feel young."

[whatisay]

For a good solid moment, he considers putting a hand around her throat. He never would, of course. He couldn't. But for a moment he considers what it would be like to watch that pale throat tense up, to flush red and mottled white, and that's what keeps him from getting up and walking away. That fantasy of a world very different than this one, where no one could sink their fingers under his flesh like that and walk away protected by the trappings of society or decency.

Because she may be right, on some level, and it's not like he walked into this conversation hoping for her to psychoanalyze him. Hoping for her to ghost her fingers over his brain until the static electricity made some of the sinewy little nerves perk up.

"Seltzer, bartender." His hand is steady too, but artificially so, almost stiff and rigid. Then he finally looks back at Swann, and her neck is still pale, her lashes low. "I must have hit a nerve to get you to retaliate like that."

[cigne]

She shrugs, takes another sip and then fiddles with her communicator, foot swinging idly. The diamonds that decorate her shoes glitter when they catch the light. Swann didn't want this, didn't even imagine it would come to this, but she can only be pushed so far before she has to lay down the law.

She took Joel's cookie earlier, and she'll take Jason's too, since he asked for it.

"Maybe I just got tired of listening to you be so mean for no reason. It's a little bit taxing."

[whatisay]

"I was trying to have a conversation. It's hardly my fault you're thin-skinned." He nods in thanks to the bartender and swills some of the seltzer water in his mouth before swallowing it down. He rests his elbows on the table, as if he's going to stubbornly stay here until she leaves rather than ceding anything himself.

He pulls out his device, scrolls through general Sponsor stuff, checks the tracking page that shows him in real-time where in the city his Tributes are, deletes a text from Lorraine. Finishes off his vapor cap and tucks the cigarette away.

"Aside from Joel, any other Tributes catch your eye?"

[cigne]

"I've been talking to you this long, so my skin must be thicker than you give me credit for."

She glances around the bar, eyes lingering on a huge but silent screen, close-captioned -- they're doing some kind of special on Thor, with experts going over what made him go mad and get himself killed. She thinks it's a little sad, and that he was interesting to watch in the Arena.

"Brock Samson is my best, I think, and Jack Sparrow could be a real wildcard. And Maxwell Trevelyan is a special kind of marketable."

[whatisay]

"Trevelyan seems like a good, upstanding type. There are people in this city who like to fool themselves into thinking they value that." Jason makes a sound that's like a chuckle, except it seems wiser than he is, and bladelike for all its cynicism. He glances up at the TV, sighing with relief that Thor wasn't one of his, as if it's all happening right now and isn't an exhumation of actions past.

"I wonder if Jack Sparrow detoxes." He raises an eyebrow. "I bet he's flammable from all the drinking. You're not going to be able to get him alcohol in the Arena, right?"

[cigne]

"He's like Prince Charming, in terms of marketing. Very, very easy, and even more palatable than that." Swann allows herself a happy little smile -- she's very pleased with some of her Tributes.

Using her glass, she gestures at the screen, at Thor's face. "I might be able to. Remember when they sent him all that gin in Arena 11? Hundreds of bottles of it? Besides, maybe Jack's more useful when he dries out. It would only take a few days of hiding to get him fully sober."

[whatisay]

"Don't tell me you're crushing on him, Swann. You know that kind of thing's a no-no." It's hard, again, to tell if Jason's joking or not, if he's actually teasing or just couching condemnation in good humor to avoid being taken to task for him.

He nods a little bit, more dipping his chin than anything. "Fair enough. Good luck getting him to do anything useful while he dries out, though. Believe me, they're completely helpless when you cut off their source."

Jason Compson the Third's death to alcoholism is common knowledge in the Capitol, and for his part Jason sounds more bitter than he does sad.

[cigne]

She rolls her eyes, because she can't fathom having a crush on Maxwell. It's like having a crush on an idea, and he's so proper. Swann might look and act like a living doll, but she's never really been after a fairytale.

"Helpless is fine as long as long as he does it up in a tree or something," she murmurs, gesturing vaguely. "I don't care if he wins by killing everyone or just by outliving them. All he has to do -- all any of them have to do -- is win."

[whatisay]

And Jason laughs, as if getting her to roll her eyes was the point, the same way he teased her when they were younger (only then, the point had been to make her cry).

"Which is easier when there's less competition. But your point's made." He alternates between the cinnamon vapor and the seltzer water, although the carbonation from the latter is enough to make his frown a little each time he swallows, despite having been so cocksure with the lemon earlier.

"I'm getting a Mentor shipped in, at least. So I won't be doing this alone. Stig's so useless as a Stylist he practically counts against the number of staffers."

[cigne]

Swann is surprised to hear him laugh, and she blinks once, in silence, like she's just heard a foreign sound and needs to decipher what it was.

"Didn't Stig's brain get all rattled around in his head?" She sighs, feeling bad for him. "Well, at any rate, you'll have help soon. I have Samuel, but he's not necessarily the most enthusiastic Mentor I could hope for. It's really more up to Jolie and me to handle them. Know who you're getting yet?"

[whatisay]

"If it did, that'd explain a lot." Of course, Jason knows about Stig's...disability, but he doesn't have a drop of sympathy for him. If he had ever had an open heart for the disabled, his brother would have tapped that well dry long ago.

"Samuel? Which one's Samuel?" Jason nods tightly. "Emily Finch, the one who won with a score of Five. Was kind of wishing we had someone who could toughen them up physically but maybe psychological readiness will last longer with the resets anyway."

[cigne]

"Oh, gosh, he won... nearly twenty years ago, I think? He had a very low score as well, but he just sort of made it through. I think his Arena was the one with the giant temple in the middle, remember that? He has lots of tattoos now, all over him, and a very low voice from getting hit in the throat."

She remembers his Arena mostly because her mother happened to be home that year, and they sometimes sat together in the same room to watch while the Games were on.

"Your Tributes aren't that weak, don't worry so much about them being tough," she reassures him. "Don't you even have a 12 in there? They just need someone to teach them to survive."