Jason Compson IV (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whatisay) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2015-03-10 09:48 pm
whatisay) wrote in thecapitol2015-03-10 09:48 pm
Flecks of the Heavens' Spat Out Spit [OPEN]
WHO| Jason Compson and Open; Jason and Swann; Jason, Rick and Daryl
WHAT| Jason gets a migraine and is helpless; Jason beats an Avox; Jason gives Swann a gift; Rick and Daryl get the shotguns.
WHEN| Week 6
WHERE| D7 Suites; Swann's place
WARNINGS/NOTES| Avox abuse, migraines, general Jason awfulness. If you're going to tag the second prompt, please PP or PM me first so we can figure out where it's going and how far to take it, because Jason won't hesitate to put someone in jail.
I. Open
He knew he was going to have one of his headaches from the beginning of the morning, when every light seemed to have a ring radiating off of it and everything seemed to smell like rainwater. The one upside to the curse of these migraines is that he usually gets a few hours head start on them, with the feeling of deadly premonition, and so he spends most of the day trying to finish up everything as quickly as he can and clock out early. The calls to Sponsors and thank you cards to donors becomes a race against time, one which he sees himself losing too late to actually prevent disaster.
First he can't see, and then he can't move. Even breathing seems to put too much strain on him, and the throbbing, tightening hammering in his head gets worse with every exhale. The inside of his body feels like a live wire, sparking away inside his skull at camera-shutter speed. Nausea roils inside his throat and stomach, furling and unfurling like the tide.
When he opens his eyes the light is too bright, speckled with floating spots and halos, and he feels like the universe itself is trying to cram itself through his eyesockets and that his bones have made the opening too small to fit. So he keeps them shut and rolls over on the District Seven couch until he's facedown in a pillow, sweating slightly, trying not to whimper.
He has no hope of driving himself home, and even the idea of getting up seems a cruel joke. He tries twice, and both times a surge of nausea and a thunderclap of pain force him back down. So he lies there, hoping to whatever powers that be that his Tributes stick to their schedules and don't come bother him.
II. Open (please read note)
What started off as a strong Arena quickly loses those good odds as the District Seven Tributes die in the field and the District Suite gets repopulated. The worse it looks, the worse Jason's temper gets, until he's liable to throw something at the slightest provocation, which the Games video updates seem eager to supply him with. At least twice this week he's broken a glass, and yesterday smacked a table so hard that he has a ring of bruising around his finger like a wedding band.
With only Nick left in the Arena, Jason and Emily's chances are getting desperate, and the worst blow comes to Jason's ego when he realizes that no amount of fawning and flattery and networking seems to be enough to get Nick more supplies in the Arena. It stings to feel powerlessness, and to make it worse the only person willing to spot Nick a fire-starting kit's funds will only do it on condition that Jason go drinking with him - no sobriety allowed. Jason turns it down, but doesn't leave with his head held high so much as rankled and humiliated, and every ungrateful glance from his Tributes reminds him of how his family used to practically own this damn country and yet here he is, exposing his belly to anyone with money, helpless and inept and so, so frustrated with his life. Dressed in a suit he got from someone else's charity and supporting a home full of ingrates and lonely and with a fury as endless as the sky.
Whatever it is that set Jason off this time, it isn't sated just by smashing a piece of kitchenware. This time he backhands the Avox who rushes in to try and clean up the coffee mug he throws against the floor, sending them into the couch.
III. Swann
For someone who usually agonizes over every half-assi that goes to a necessary cause, Jason doesn't seem to mind spending money on Swann. He complains about it, at times, but it's more to go through the motions of complaining than because it actually bothers him. He buys her coffee when he can and tells her to save her money when they get lunch, getting sulky and defensive when she insists on splitting the tab. Sometimes he buys her a pastry on his way to pick her up for carpooling, although he doesn't let her eat it in the vehicle, and he has yet to ask her to help pay for fuel.
Today he shows up at her place with a large carrier in the back of his car, covered by a blanket, with a towel underneath it to protect the seats. Something inside is making scratching sounds. Jason looks a little frazzled, and shows up a few minutes late from a different route than he usually takes. He presses a button inside the car and the door opens for Swann.
"You coming, Honeymead?"
IV. Daryl and Rick
The rumors spread quickly after the Crowning, and all of them rub Jason the wrong way. A few photographs of him and Beth at the Crowning, him whispering into her ear, have made the rounds on tabloids, some of them even frontpage for the publications hungry enough to fabricate a scandal for readership. Jason's certain that he wouldn't ever touch a Tribute like that, but the fact that people are so eager to believe it of him leaves his pride feeling excoriated.
For his part, Jason doesn't treat Beth any differently, except for being a bit more stiff and cranky with her than he might have been before. But whispers swarm around them like a plague of mosquitoes, making a to-do out of something as simple as him Escorting her to a photoshoot with horses (A PONY FOR A PRICE?, a headline questions; another goes even more outrageous and wonders if Beth will say 'neigh' to marriage). He can only imagine the explanations she's making to the passel of Southerners who seem so eager to protect her.
Right now he's in the District Seven kitchen, glasses parked precariously on the tip of his nose as he writes by hand some math for the District budget. He's taken to putting most of his notes on his phone lately; he used to be able to leave writing around, but that was when most Tributes were entirely illiterate. His suit jacket hangs over the back of a chair and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. A cup of coffee, long-cooled, sits beside him, and he occasionally asks his phone to answer some percentages questions for him.
WHAT| Jason gets a migraine and is helpless; Jason beats an Avox; Jason gives Swann a gift; Rick and Daryl get the shotguns.
WHEN| Week 6
WHERE| D7 Suites; Swann's place
WARNINGS/NOTES| Avox abuse, migraines, general Jason awfulness. If you're going to tag the second prompt, please PP or PM me first so we can figure out where it's going and how far to take it, because Jason won't hesitate to put someone in jail.
I. Open
He knew he was going to have one of his headaches from the beginning of the morning, when every light seemed to have a ring radiating off of it and everything seemed to smell like rainwater. The one upside to the curse of these migraines is that he usually gets a few hours head start on them, with the feeling of deadly premonition, and so he spends most of the day trying to finish up everything as quickly as he can and clock out early. The calls to Sponsors and thank you cards to donors becomes a race against time, one which he sees himself losing too late to actually prevent disaster.
First he can't see, and then he can't move. Even breathing seems to put too much strain on him, and the throbbing, tightening hammering in his head gets worse with every exhale. The inside of his body feels like a live wire, sparking away inside his skull at camera-shutter speed. Nausea roils inside his throat and stomach, furling and unfurling like the tide.
When he opens his eyes the light is too bright, speckled with floating spots and halos, and he feels like the universe itself is trying to cram itself through his eyesockets and that his bones have made the opening too small to fit. So he keeps them shut and rolls over on the District Seven couch until he's facedown in a pillow, sweating slightly, trying not to whimper.
He has no hope of driving himself home, and even the idea of getting up seems a cruel joke. He tries twice, and both times a surge of nausea and a thunderclap of pain force him back down. So he lies there, hoping to whatever powers that be that his Tributes stick to their schedules and don't come bother him.
II. Open (please read note)
What started off as a strong Arena quickly loses those good odds as the District Seven Tributes die in the field and the District Suite gets repopulated. The worse it looks, the worse Jason's temper gets, until he's liable to throw something at the slightest provocation, which the Games video updates seem eager to supply him with. At least twice this week he's broken a glass, and yesterday smacked a table so hard that he has a ring of bruising around his finger like a wedding band.
With only Nick left in the Arena, Jason and Emily's chances are getting desperate, and the worst blow comes to Jason's ego when he realizes that no amount of fawning and flattery and networking seems to be enough to get Nick more supplies in the Arena. It stings to feel powerlessness, and to make it worse the only person willing to spot Nick a fire-starting kit's funds will only do it on condition that Jason go drinking with him - no sobriety allowed. Jason turns it down, but doesn't leave with his head held high so much as rankled and humiliated, and every ungrateful glance from his Tributes reminds him of how his family used to practically own this damn country and yet here he is, exposing his belly to anyone with money, helpless and inept and so, so frustrated with his life. Dressed in a suit he got from someone else's charity and supporting a home full of ingrates and lonely and with a fury as endless as the sky.
Whatever it is that set Jason off this time, it isn't sated just by smashing a piece of kitchenware. This time he backhands the Avox who rushes in to try and clean up the coffee mug he throws against the floor, sending them into the couch.
III. Swann
For someone who usually agonizes over every half-assi that goes to a necessary cause, Jason doesn't seem to mind spending money on Swann. He complains about it, at times, but it's more to go through the motions of complaining than because it actually bothers him. He buys her coffee when he can and tells her to save her money when they get lunch, getting sulky and defensive when she insists on splitting the tab. Sometimes he buys her a pastry on his way to pick her up for carpooling, although he doesn't let her eat it in the vehicle, and he has yet to ask her to help pay for fuel.
Today he shows up at her place with a large carrier in the back of his car, covered by a blanket, with a towel underneath it to protect the seats. Something inside is making scratching sounds. Jason looks a little frazzled, and shows up a few minutes late from a different route than he usually takes. He presses a button inside the car and the door opens for Swann.
"You coming, Honeymead?"
IV. Daryl and Rick
The rumors spread quickly after the Crowning, and all of them rub Jason the wrong way. A few photographs of him and Beth at the Crowning, him whispering into her ear, have made the rounds on tabloids, some of them even frontpage for the publications hungry enough to fabricate a scandal for readership. Jason's certain that he wouldn't ever touch a Tribute like that, but the fact that people are so eager to believe it of him leaves his pride feeling excoriated.
For his part, Jason doesn't treat Beth any differently, except for being a bit more stiff and cranky with her than he might have been before. But whispers swarm around them like a plague of mosquitoes, making a to-do out of something as simple as him Escorting her to a photoshoot with horses (A PONY FOR A PRICE?, a headline questions; another goes even more outrageous and wonders if Beth will say 'neigh' to marriage). He can only imagine the explanations she's making to the passel of Southerners who seem so eager to protect her.
Right now he's in the District Seven kitchen, glasses parked precariously on the tip of his nose as he writes by hand some math for the District budget. He's taken to putting most of his notes on his phone lately; he used to be able to leave writing around, but that was when most Tributes were entirely illiterate. His suit jacket hangs over the back of a chair and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. A cup of coffee, long-cooled, sits beside him, and he occasionally asks his phone to answer some percentages questions for him.
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He reaches for Emily so he has some help getting to the elevator without his natural clumsiness and his impaired vision causing him to run into anything. For once, 'Districter germs' or whatever don't seem to bother him.
"Let's go. It's going to get worse before it gets better."
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Stig, for his part, dopily stares at the changing floor indicator, amused by something no one else can partake in and smelling vaguely of hemp. Jason thinks to himself that if Stig stinks up the car Jason will take the cleaning fee out of Stig's paycheck.
When they get to Jason's car - which is by far the nicest thing any of the surviving Compsons own, and is tended to with the sort of care that most people give to their firstborn infants - Jason climbs into the back seat and lies down, hands protecting his face from the light. He tells the GPS to guide Stig towards an address (nothing at all is listed as 'Home'). That leaves Stig to drive and Emily to sit in one of those self-warming seats that seems never used before, even though the car is twenty years old, and to examine all the unnecessary frippery of a really, really fancy vehicle.
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Emily doesn't really have much experience of travelling in private cars, and she finds it's quite different to taking the train, especially sat up front. She watches the Capitol speed by around them, poking at her seat as the heat emanates from it - feeling that even the car was altogether more sturdy and warm than the house she'd grown up in, with a twinge of bitterness - and slapping Stig on the arm rather sharply whenever he takes a corner too fast.
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When they finally get to the Compson manor - a half-hour drive - the automated gate at the front of the driveway swings wide for them. The house looks in all ways different than the state of the car; where the car is fastidiously, almost obsessively clean, the house looks like it's one strong wind from falling on itself, supported only because it was built by good bones than because anyone's cared for it. There's a window blown out and hastily boarded up, a pothole in the driveway that Jason breaks his silence just long enough to threaten Stig's life if he drives into it, weeds overgrown and what looks like a broken, overturned wagon on the patchy dead grass of the dead lawn so rotten that rust has eaten holes through its floor. One of Benjy's toys, a wet doll, lays by the front door and it smells like it hasn't been dry in years, and it may well have been out there that long. There's a hole on the front porch big enough to crack a foot through, and a stain alongside the front doorframe from water seepage that must have taken a decade to form, a decade where it could have been beaten back if anyone gave a damn.
No one's bothered to clean it up. The house itself speaks of lovelessness, the lack of tenderness or order necessary to tend a home for themselves or for each other. You can't see it from outside the gate, and that's why neither Jason nor his mother ever get around to putting up the facade, of even pretending for themselves.
From the backyard, where there are stables and a servant's shed that are somehow more tidy and tended to than the house proper, because the servants care more about their surroundings than either of the sane Compsons, there's the sound of Benjy yammering and bellowing and wailing.
Jason groans and sits up, eyes still squinched shut, breath still unsteady. "With any luck we can get in without running into my mother. But I bet she's sitting up just for an excuse to dramatically fuss. You'll see what I mean when we get in there."
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She'd grown up in poverty in District Seven, certainly, but this was something different entirely. Jason had all the privilege of the Capitol, this wasn't poverty - it was squalor. The tiny cabin she'd lived in until she survived the Games had been basic, poor, but it had been clean and well cared for, in the knowledge that it was the container for their family, the one thing they did have. It had radiated a warmth and love and dignity for which Emily felt even more homesick than ever as she cast her eyes at the rotten hulk of a building that she knows must have once been glorious.
"Let's get in as quickly as we can, in that case. Unless there's a back entrance if you want to avoid her?"
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He walks to the front door with the exaggerated care of a drunk but the deliberation of an old man, trying not to make too much noise on the porch with his feet or with the turning of the old brass doorknob his key fits into. His lower lip twitches a bit with the beat of his heart, as every shove of blood through his veins feels like it's amplifying the invisible spike driving through his temple.
"Don't touch anything," he says to Stig. Not to Emily.
They get in and the interior doesn't look that much better. Wallpaper is peeling at the corners, the ceiling flaking, the stairs a bit bowed. There are no family photos, only individual portraits in frames.
Jason heads to the kitchen and open the freezer, looking for an ice pack and finding that he forgot to replace it last time he used it. He roots around and grabs a frozen roll of some sort of dough, wrapped in plastic, and puts that to his head instead, leaning against the fridge.
"Jason?" they hear from upstairs, a woman's voice that manages to be both plaintive and commanding. "I saw your car pull up. You know you need to phone ahead when you're coming home from work, I get worried sick thinking there might have been some incident, what with the Mentors throwing riots all the time. You know I couldn't bear it if you were caught in the crossfire. I'm coming downstairs-"
"Don't," Jason calls back. "You don't have to. I'm just going to lay down."
"I can manage it. It'll hurt me, but that's my lot as a mother. I wish you didn't have to work at that place. You come home smelling like a Districter just from being around them," There are the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, slow and ginger. "Is someone else with you? Are you having one of your headaches? You know I worry-"
"No one. Co-workers. They drove me. I'm going to lay down. Don't get yourself worked up over it." Jason sighs and rests his forehead against the front of the freezer.
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The whole place feels bleak. It stands in stark contrast to the glittering celebration that is the rest of the Capitol, and in a flash Emily realises why Jason hates Districters so aggressively, when many of the other Capitolites she's encountered view her as more of a curiosity. In such undignified conditions as this house, it only made sense that he would dehumanise those socially below him, even if they lived far better and brighter lives individually. He needed to feel superior to someone - and Emily wondered how much he must hate himself to feel that need so strongly. Pity flickers to life inside her again, and once again she quells it down. The last thing Jason Compson would ever accept would be the pity of a Districter. It would probably crush the last strand of pride he had left.
The footsteps make the stairs creak, and the house sounds as if it's sighing wearily around them. Emily straightens up, hands clasped in front of her, moving away from Jason a little to emphasise that they really are just colleagues. The comment rankles with her, though she knows she shouldn't take idle comments of ignorant Capitolites to heart any more. Any pity she'd felt for the Compsons evaporates.
She attempts a smile that's polite and non-threatening, knowing better than to aim for friendly. "I'm glad to meet you, Mrs Compson. Jason looks a little better than he did earlier, I think the ride over did him good." If anything Emily was sure he looked worse, but anything to score points here.
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"You know if you have to cab back then I could do without my medicines for an evening. It's the least I could do for you, no matter how much I'd suffer or how sick I am. Sacrifice is my lot as a mother, especially when you're slaving away your life in that-"
Her chin tilts up and her face instantly stiffens when she sees Emily (Stig, apparently warrants barely even a glance). She doesn't even respond to Emily, instead looking both at her and beyond her all at once, like she's talking to a ghost.
"Jason. I thank goodness that your father isn't alive to see us reduced to bringing Districters into the house-"
"Nonsense. Emily's alright," Jason says suddenly. He winces and presses his forehead against the freezer more as Benjy howls outside. "Can't you get Luster to shut him up? It's not enough that my head's exploding, but we have to have him yammering on too?"
"The servants don't listen to me, Jason, you know they don't even listen to you-"
"Alright, alright. I'll just blow more of my paycheck on earplugs, won't I? That's what I have to do to get some peace and quiet around here."
Caroline makes no motion to help her son, instead watching with a long-suffering expression and then looking back at Emily with a slightly curled lip, at Emily's posture and bone structure. Stig, oblivious to the tension, examines a spider crawling up the corner of the kitchen.
"To see my son reduced to accepting help from a Districter- you know I always wanted you to have better in life-" Caroline's dark eyes get watery, teary.
"Mother, stop that," Jason snaps with a kind of impudent fury that he only looses in words, because he can talk back but he can never leave, he can never do anything more than snip and lie. "Emily's alright, I say. You'll make yourself sick. Go back to bed."
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She visibly jumps as Benjy starts up outside, her previous imagining of the house as a living thing creeping back in the corners of her mind before she realises that she's just being silly and paranoid.
"We can leave, if it's going to cause a problem," she offers tentatively. She's not sure how exactly, given that they drove Jason's car over here, but she didn't want to cause an upset, even if she hadn't done anything wrong.
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Caroline, simpering, walking with exaggerated slowness and feebleness back up the stairs, sighing every few of them, disappears from view.
"Where are we going to-" Stig starts to ask, but Jason cuts him off.
"Keep your voice down or I'll make you walk home." He sloughs his way to the kitchen table and takes a seat, head in his hands. "You can use my Uncle Maury's room. Emily, my niece had a room upstairs, just avoid the room that smells like medicine to avoid Mother. Anything you find in there you can use or have or whatever you want, I don't care. There should be towels and toothpaste and...all that."
Miss Quentin ran away from home six months ago and Jason hasn't bothered to clean out her room yet. She never had many possessions anyway, he tells himself, but really it's because any time he thinks about her for too long he gets hit by a thunderbolt of rage so intense he feels like he's been shot in the head, that he could drop dead of an aneurysm right then and there and all because of that bitch of a girl.
Gingerly, he gets up, still holding the frozen food to his head. "I'm going to lay down. I should be alright in a few hours." Not fully recovered, but not in the excruciating agony he is now.
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"Thanks. I'll make sure you're not disturbed. I hope you feel better."
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Miss Quentin's room hasn't been touched in a while - there's a layer of dust on the bookshelf. Stig, not very bright but ever a bit of a gentleman, starts wiping away the skin of motes on the nightstand for Emily, gazing disinterestedly at the high-heeled shoes that haven't been cleaned up from the middle of the floor, the bed that hasn't been made in months. Like the rest of the house, the room's in disrepair. The wallpaper's peeling and sunfaded. There are still some cheap lipsticks laying over like toppled chess pieces by the mirror.
Outside, Benjy continues screaming, upset at something only God can guess at.
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She tries to be as quiet as possible in Miss Quentin's room, feeling that if she spoke too loudly or stomped around the floor she'd disturb whatever ghosts the room held. It felt as though it was stuck in the past even more than the rest of the house - not dilapidated and slowly rotting like downstairs and outside, but completely frozen in one moment in time that had long since passed, waiting for the owner of the room to return to start up again as though not even a moment had gone by.
Benjy's scream echoes around the room, jolting her back into the here and now.
"Okay, what is the deal with Jason? All of this... I couldn't even make up how weird it is."
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"Well, you know they're rich, old money. About twenty years ago the oldest brother drowned himself and the sister got kicked out of the family for having a baby by a man who got Avoxed a little after. I always thought he was innocent, but...anyway, there were a lot of rumors, and I don't blame Jason or his parents for not wanting to deal with it. Lots of nasty gossip about incest and alcoholism and child abuse. Really cruel things. They pulled Jason out of school and then his father died a little after that and I guess the baby grew up here."
Stig strokes his chin as he looks around. "I guess it's true that she ran away. Miss Caroline looks better than I thought she would, though, lots of people have just been assuming she's dead for a long time. She don't ever go out of the house."
Benjy howls again. Stig heads towards the doorway in that slow, spacey shamble of his. "And that's Benjamin, Jason's little brother. He's got, um, something wrong with his head. Not like I have. Something from birth. He doesn't talk or anything, just bellows and cries, I hear. They gave his face all the surgeries so he looks normal but except for riding around with a servant and a pony he doesn't leave the house either. I hear he's sweet, though. Didn't do a thing to deserve these kinds of living conditions. Maybe I'll file a report."
Stig won't, because he'll forget soon enough, but he does mean to as he heads out the door. "You sure you'll be able to sleep here? I can pay for a cab even if he can't."
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She turns down the bed covers, kicking off her shoes but otherwise making no move to undress. It feels wrong wearing one of Miss Quentin's night dresses, as though she'd be dressing herself in the clothes of the dead as well as sleeping in their bed, and would wake up dead herself and never be able to leave. Even though Jason's niece had only run off, she felt like almost the biggest ghost of them all.
Caddy's spirit loomed larger over everything, but Emily didn't recognise it as such, just the sense that things had been grand here once, but those days would never return.
"I'll be fine. Jason's intrigued me tonight, I want to see how things pan out. I'll see you in the morning."
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"Okay. Sleep well, Emily."