Jason doesn't remember much about Linden, nor about the kid that Linden and his nasty little cohort killed. Tributes tend to pass through his mind like hotel guests, lasting only the while they need to for the sake of his paycheck before leaving without so much as a signature in a guestbook. If they've left any impression at all it's vague annoyance of various permutations: disgust that they fell so early, irritation that they wasted his investment in them, exasperation at ill-conceived bids for the Cornucopia.
He doesn't even remember what the District Ten male's name was, nor how he tried to market him. When he thinks of Linden, he remembers a District budget in the red and losing money on illicit gambling on his own Tribute, and then having to cancel going out to District Eleven after the Crowning because of how the funds weren't there. Instead, he'd spent it the same way he always did, wrangling his brother and niece and mother, listening to them bitch and scream and whine as if they were being paid handsomely for it.
After long enough, it sort of blurs into a long line of frustration, split only by the steady and mindless divisions of years, months and days.
Jason doesn't back away from the scared Avox, nor make any motion to clean up the coffee cup. He just knocked it over this time and didn't like the Avox reminding him of his own clumsiness by intervening. That's what set it all off. The coffee pools into a place on the floor where the floor's uneven, and Jason rolls his eyes at that, that the Tribute Center was so quickly renovated for the Neverending Quell that they couldn't even get the hardwood flat.
"I don't see what my family name has to do with how I treat the furniture." Nor does he see why this gangly slip of a man who looks like he hasn't even bothered to try fitting in with the Capitol's demanding standards of presentation thinks he has any right to even speak to him. He knows Linden's a Victor, one of the addicts, if Jason recalls, and it makes his lip curl.
"I hadn't heard you'd been released from rehab. That's where you were last, wasn't it? If not it should have been."
no subject
He doesn't even remember what the District Ten male's name was, nor how he tried to market him. When he thinks of Linden, he remembers a District budget in the red and losing money on illicit gambling on his own Tribute, and then having to cancel going out to District Eleven after the Crowning because of how the funds weren't there. Instead, he'd spent it the same way he always did, wrangling his brother and niece and mother, listening to them bitch and scream and whine as if they were being paid handsomely for it.
After long enough, it sort of blurs into a long line of frustration, split only by the steady and mindless divisions of years, months and days.
Jason doesn't back away from the scared Avox, nor make any motion to clean up the coffee cup. He just knocked it over this time and didn't like the Avox reminding him of his own clumsiness by intervening. That's what set it all off. The coffee pools into a place on the floor where the floor's uneven, and Jason rolls his eyes at that, that the Tribute Center was so quickly renovated for the Neverending Quell that they couldn't even get the hardwood flat.
"I don't see what my family name has to do with how I treat the furniture." Nor does he see why this gangly slip of a man who looks like he hasn't even bothered to try fitting in with the Capitol's demanding standards of presentation thinks he has any right to even speak to him. He knows Linden's a Victor, one of the addicts, if Jason recalls, and it makes his lip curl.
"I hadn't heard you'd been released from rehab. That's where you were last, wasn't it? If not it should have been."