Temple Stevens (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clotting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2015-06-06 09:31 pm
clotting) wrote in thecapitol2015-06-06 09:31 pm
What a Mess I Leave to Follow [Open]
WHO| Temple Drake and open; Temple and Linden; Temple and the D8 Staff
WHAT| Temple's back in town and being rich and obnoxious about it
WHEN| Week 2
WHERE| D8 Suite, D6 Suite and about town
WARNINGS| Anything darker than daytime alcohol use and usual Hunger Games fare will be warned for in the thread.
I. Open
The Capitol changes more in a year than the Districts do in ten, Temple knows, and yet it always feels as if she's coming back to somewhere that is fundamentally the same as it was when she left. It may get new technology and in this case, a bunch of offworlders, but its character is immutable. It's hungry and diseased and it swallows up poverty and defecates out the riches upon which the people living within it feast.
She slips into it like sugar into hot water and dissolves herself into the opulent atmosphere. She buys some new dresses, something appropriate for the weather and for living back in the fashion center of Panem, at a boutique and puts it on Gowan's credit card. She sips a fine-pressed coffee at a café and leaves the empty porcelain cup on the table for someone else to bus. She shops and loses interest when the salespeople speak of warranties, because she doesn't care if anything lasts her twelve months when she's probably going to replace it out of boredom in ten.
Occasionally, when she thinks no one's looking, she'll pull out a needle and thread and a handkerchief she's working on and add a few details to the embroidering she's doing. Birds have become a recent motif for her, although she doesn't want to admit why; on all her handkerchiefs lately they stare out at her, beady-eyed, or take flight holding, she imagines, her daughter's name in their talons. They named her after a bird, although Temple has yet to put that particular species to thread and fabric.
Aside from that nimble-fingered hobby of hers (aside from the skill inherent to how quickly and precisely she does it, which reveals that it once was never a hobby but a living), she seems every bit a Capitolite, bidding her Avox carry things or pausing at a store to examine the magazine covers that tell her belatedly the fashion trends she's already adopted. Bailey, her five year-old son, runs up to any of the already-slain Tributes he can find and pesters them, and sometimes Temple has to apologize for that. Occasionally she sees an old acquaintance (a Mentor, Staffer, a Capitol elite she's rubbed elbows with) and waves at them.
II. Linden
Temple's leaving when Linden's door opens, her dainty heels clicking away at the hallway tile, the sleek mechanical lines of the District Six decor. When she turns, it's with a familiar smile, none of the hesitation Linden feels upon seeing her. Temple's vices are not ones that other people introduce to her, but something innate, something that lies below her waist and under her breast; if it weren't Linden she acted them out on like some strange debased ritual feverish prayer, it would be upon someone else.
The smile only tautens a little when she sees how good he looks, and she hates herself for that, because she should be happy that he looks so healthy. And yet she can't deny that her first impulse is dread, and that with every flush of good pallor to his cheeks he runs away from her.
Temple, unlike some of the other Victors, doesn't seem to age. Maybe it's because she's merely twenty-five and has seemed twenty-eight since she was eighteen, but despite giving birth to two babies and drinking harder than most of the men she knows, plus using old tobacco cigarettes habitually, she appears exactly as Linden last saw her, aside from a slightly different hairstyle and makeup in spring colors rather than fall. Maybe it's that in taking her as a wife, Gowan has frozen her in time, removed her from the ravages of reality with a wedding ring that could feed her entire District for a decade.
"Oh, I wasn't expecting you to get my note for another few hours." She comes back for Linden, falling forward in her high heels with each step as if he is his own pull of gravity, and takes him by the shoulders and kisses each cheek. "They've called me back to Mentor and it's killing me already. I don't know how you do it."
III. D8 Staff
Like Swann, Temple announces her appointment to the District Eight Staff with gift baskets. Unlike Swann, Temple's giftbaskets are of a decidedly more adult flair. They're packed with hard liquor and packs of designer cigarettes along with one almost token jar of instant cakemix. Unlike Swann's, they weren't lovingly assembled by hand so much as placed together by a harried Avox, but they're glutted with the same sense of excessive wealth.
There's one for each Staffmember - Swann, Jolie and Samuel - and Temple's toyed with the idea of getting them for the Tributes before her attention span flitted away like some common sparrow. Now she sits in the District Eight common area, having practically marked the area with her perfume, which is heady and feminine. Her dress is tight and makes her look less like a grown woman than a trophy or an award, and she takes off her gloves only to readjust her slash of bright lipstick in a hand-mirror with pearl inlay.
An Avox scuttles back and forth, placing some of Temple's belongings in one of the Mentor rooms - including belongings for a small child, toys and miniature furniture, a rocking horse from rosewood. Bailey won't be living here, of course, and Temple herself will only be sleeping in the Tribute Center when it becomes inconvenient to travel back to the expensive neighborhoods in the Capitol for the evening, but she's a recently bereaved mother. Will anyone really hold it against her for wanting to occasionally take her surviving child to work?
"Oh, hello. There's something for you on the table," she'll say even before she glances up from readjusting her makeup when the elevator dings.
WHAT| Temple's back in town and being rich and obnoxious about it
WHEN| Week 2
WHERE| D8 Suite, D6 Suite and about town
WARNINGS| Anything darker than daytime alcohol use and usual Hunger Games fare will be warned for in the thread.
I. Open
The Capitol changes more in a year than the Districts do in ten, Temple knows, and yet it always feels as if she's coming back to somewhere that is fundamentally the same as it was when she left. It may get new technology and in this case, a bunch of offworlders, but its character is immutable. It's hungry and diseased and it swallows up poverty and defecates out the riches upon which the people living within it feast.
She slips into it like sugar into hot water and dissolves herself into the opulent atmosphere. She buys some new dresses, something appropriate for the weather and for living back in the fashion center of Panem, at a boutique and puts it on Gowan's credit card. She sips a fine-pressed coffee at a café and leaves the empty porcelain cup on the table for someone else to bus. She shops and loses interest when the salespeople speak of warranties, because she doesn't care if anything lasts her twelve months when she's probably going to replace it out of boredom in ten.
Occasionally, when she thinks no one's looking, she'll pull out a needle and thread and a handkerchief she's working on and add a few details to the embroidering she's doing. Birds have become a recent motif for her, although she doesn't want to admit why; on all her handkerchiefs lately they stare out at her, beady-eyed, or take flight holding, she imagines, her daughter's name in their talons. They named her after a bird, although Temple has yet to put that particular species to thread and fabric.
Aside from that nimble-fingered hobby of hers (aside from the skill inherent to how quickly and precisely she does it, which reveals that it once was never a hobby but a living), she seems every bit a Capitolite, bidding her Avox carry things or pausing at a store to examine the magazine covers that tell her belatedly the fashion trends she's already adopted. Bailey, her five year-old son, runs up to any of the already-slain Tributes he can find and pesters them, and sometimes Temple has to apologize for that. Occasionally she sees an old acquaintance (a Mentor, Staffer, a Capitol elite she's rubbed elbows with) and waves at them.
II. Linden
Temple's leaving when Linden's door opens, her dainty heels clicking away at the hallway tile, the sleek mechanical lines of the District Six decor. When she turns, it's with a familiar smile, none of the hesitation Linden feels upon seeing her. Temple's vices are not ones that other people introduce to her, but something innate, something that lies below her waist and under her breast; if it weren't Linden she acted them out on like some strange debased ritual feverish prayer, it would be upon someone else.
The smile only tautens a little when she sees how good he looks, and she hates herself for that, because she should be happy that he looks so healthy. And yet she can't deny that her first impulse is dread, and that with every flush of good pallor to his cheeks he runs away from her.
Temple, unlike some of the other Victors, doesn't seem to age. Maybe it's because she's merely twenty-five and has seemed twenty-eight since she was eighteen, but despite giving birth to two babies and drinking harder than most of the men she knows, plus using old tobacco cigarettes habitually, she appears exactly as Linden last saw her, aside from a slightly different hairstyle and makeup in spring colors rather than fall. Maybe it's that in taking her as a wife, Gowan has frozen her in time, removed her from the ravages of reality with a wedding ring that could feed her entire District for a decade.
"Oh, I wasn't expecting you to get my note for another few hours." She comes back for Linden, falling forward in her high heels with each step as if he is his own pull of gravity, and takes him by the shoulders and kisses each cheek. "They've called me back to Mentor and it's killing me already. I don't know how you do it."
III. D8 Staff
Like Swann, Temple announces her appointment to the District Eight Staff with gift baskets. Unlike Swann, Temple's giftbaskets are of a decidedly more adult flair. They're packed with hard liquor and packs of designer cigarettes along with one almost token jar of instant cakemix. Unlike Swann's, they weren't lovingly assembled by hand so much as placed together by a harried Avox, but they're glutted with the same sense of excessive wealth.
There's one for each Staffmember - Swann, Jolie and Samuel - and Temple's toyed with the idea of getting them for the Tributes before her attention span flitted away like some common sparrow. Now she sits in the District Eight common area, having practically marked the area with her perfume, which is heady and feminine. Her dress is tight and makes her look less like a grown woman than a trophy or an award, and she takes off her gloves only to readjust her slash of bright lipstick in a hand-mirror with pearl inlay.
An Avox scuttles back and forth, placing some of Temple's belongings in one of the Mentor rooms - including belongings for a small child, toys and miniature furniture, a rocking horse from rosewood. Bailey won't be living here, of course, and Temple herself will only be sleeping in the Tribute Center when it becomes inconvenient to travel back to the expensive neighborhoods in the Capitol for the evening, but she's a recently bereaved mother. Will anyone really hold it against her for wanting to occasionally take her surviving child to work?
"Oh, hello. There's something for you on the table," she'll say even before she glances up from readjusting her makeup when the elevator dings.
no subject
"Bailey!" Temple appears from behind an aisle, dressed impeccably and head tilted back not as if to compensate for her small stature but to meet the world full-faced. She snaps her fingers and an Avox follows her; he reaches forward and tugs Bailey away from Karkat. Bailey obeys, but not without some pouting.
"Go get him a hot cocoa, please?" Temple pulls a credit card out of her purse and hands it to the Avox before turning to Karkat. "I'm sorry, dear. He gets a little excited when he sees Tributes. He's at that age and the trolls are his favorite. It's such a shame I don't have any in my District."
no subject
Which means it's a pretty good thing that the kid's mother shows up first. Karkat heaves a sigh of relief so massive he sinks with it. He doesn't care who this woman is; she saved him from a fate worse than death.
"Please," he says, straightening carefully, "teach him not to say that. It's a vulgar thing that I'm not looking to explain, but suffice it to say a tiny human shouldn't be spouting it like a catchphrase."
He rubs a hand over his face then through his hair. Even at full height he can't be much taller than her, even less if she has heels to boost her. He's only 5'2", and the rest is the fluff of his hair.
His mind catches up more slowly with the rest, but once it does he blinks. "Your District? Are you staff for the games?"
no subject
Temple's words are kindly, but she has a sort of wary air to her, a skittishness that makes her seem like she could clam up at any moment, retract all that amiability as if it were a cat's claws.
"Yes, Staff for District Eight. I'm back from a long vacation and only now getting the bearings of the new system." She tips forward on her heels to glance over the bookshelf and see that the Avox is taking care of her child appropriately.
no subject
He thinks there's some shirts with the longer ones, though. If he ever wanted any of his own merchandise, that might be it. He takes pride in his lengthier rants.
He notes her district with a nod, mentally penning her down as Escort because he hasn't met Swann, knows Jolie is the Stylist, and she looks somehow too Capitol to meet his concept of a Mentor. His example is Linden, after all.
"But sure, I'll take a coffee. Is there something specific you want signed for him? Hell, we're in a book store--pick out a book, even, and I'll get it and sign it for him." He's got that credit card thing they gave him, after all, and he's on a mission of PR and self-loathing. It feels immensely weird that this is what his life's become.
no subject
She waves a hand. "I'll buy it. I don't have to go in debt for it." Temple doesn't know what the Capitol plans for the debt the Tributes incur, but she's aware of what the government will do to its own citizens who abscond from their financial responsibilities, and there's no need to subject anyone to that when she can drain her husband's bank account like a particularly well-dressed deer tick.
"Maybe you could find him a book that would teach him better...troll language. And culture! Here, I'll help you find something he can read. He's still at the most basic letter combinations."
no subject
The comment about debt draws his interest. It's not the first time he's heard mention of possible financial issues over the costs incurred by their being here, but he doesn't dare comment about it. Instead, his eyebrows press down as she suggests the choice of book.
"I'm not sure what they would have for his level. I know there won't be anything about Alternian," he says, turning to look out at the shelves.
He's never bothered to look for books on his species, either. What would they say? He expects massive misrepresentation in general, but trying to think of something for a 5-year-old human is strange. Would they gloss over all the violence? Would they print it right in? The kid's already a fan of people who go off to kill and die, for fuck's sake.
With a small motion to follow, he sets off to try to figure out where the right section is.
"What kind of content would be alright for him? Society here is set up differently from that of the humans I knew before, and I have not one miserable clue what a child fan of the Hunger Games should be allowed to know about the way troll culture conducted itself. We were brutal, you know? Not like the Games, but other ways."
no subject
"The world is brutal," Temple says, and there's a heaviness to her voice that seems distinctly at odds with her floral dress, with the pin in her hair with a ceramic sparrow in it, with her smooth face and gentle features. "He'll have to know it eventually."
The troll world, she thinks, will hardly be more damaging than when Bailey grows up to realize his mother was a Victor, what happened to her in the Arena, when he learns that his parents have never loved each other and that when his mother comes home with her clothing ripped off or his father pours her alcohol down the sink it's because of shame and revenge.
"But I'll read through it to make sure it's nothing too harsh for him. I still read to him, you know. Avoxes are no good for that, obviously. Unless you have a child who's lulled to sleep by being stared at and occasional snuffling."
no subject
The way she speaks after only strengthens the illusion. Avoxes and reading, like he doesn't know that. Something about the phrasing feels almost defensive to him, though he can hardly put his finger on why. He's not knowledgeable of human child-rearing standards, and to trolls mother means the distant beast that laid their eggs.
It would probably be rude to tack on a good for you, so he doesn't, however much he'd like to.
Instead he takes to flicking through titles once they reach the right section.
"Trolls cull the weak," he explains as he searches. "Genetic defects, disabilities, debilitating illnesses. Disrespect for higher social castes. Failure to contribute properly to the progression of the species. Any other arbitrary reason, really." He waves a hand in a motion meant to encompass it all.
"The first thing after you pupate and climb out of your cocoon is having to survive the Trials down in the Brooding Caverns. There's a bunch of monsters and shit down there, right? You live through that, and one picks you to raise you, since our reproductive process doesn't involve easily identifiable parents like yours. And that's not always easy--some take something special to eat. Two of my friends were like that; one had to feed hers other trolls, and the other had to feed hers their lusii--those custodian monsters.
"And even after that, if you live and grow strong and avoid getting your sorry ass culled for something stupid, you have to be ready to fight and kill and join the forces that help conquer the galaxy and leave your home behind. No adults live on the home planet and haven't for so long it's been written out of history."
He's kept it to an overview, he feels, and a brief one when considering that his whole species has been around so long there's thousands of sweeps of film history alone. He doesn't care whether she's actually interested in learning; it's provided more as a warning for what content the book might have if it hasn't dumbed things down to baby trolls get raised by fuzzy animals and get to build their own house!!! :) He doesn't know if Capitol books would do that; they might, on the other side, focus on the brutality in order to buoy up their own way of life.
no subject
"How fortunate you've survived. I'd probably die on my first day out of the...cocoon, if I were a troll."
The books on trolls are a combination of Karkat's cynical predictions. Huge cartoon images of lusii, including ones with scratch-and-sniff technology or touchable fur, color the picture books, illustrating the cannibalism and extermination of the 'weak'. Cute animals devour bloody caricature trolls, which scream out info bubbles.
It's some Watership Down shit, honestly.
Temple kneels at a shelf and starts to flick through some of the books.
"He doesn't mind blood. Doesn't understand it yet, really. Blood's just the thing that his body makes when he scrapes his knee right now, not anything from violence. That's how you can tell he's been raised safe and protected."
no subject
He decides either way not to tell her about grubsauce. Or paint.
Or a lot of things, really.
The books read like an insult, a caricature of his species, culture, and planet. It's brutal but not enough, lighthearted but not sanitized. It's Capitol in every inch, and more so is Temple's easy admission of her son's view on blood.
He puts the book back. He feels almost nauseous.
"I'm a mutant." The words drop out of his mouth, coins through a slot. "I'm a red-blooded mutant bright as any human, and I would have been dead if anyone ever knew."
There was later, during Sgrub and on the meteor, when it stopped mattering. That's how he tells her now: no one cares. It's an interesting factoid, a tool for marketing, a goddamn quirk. No one knows how terrified he was the moment Jack stabbed him, how much more important it was that his blood was showing than that a knife was just in his side. When they lessen him, and the Peacekeepers did, it's for species.
His voice is distant, his mind somewhere else as he says, "Pick one and I'll sign it. I don't care what."
no subject
Temple doesn't look at the books for any actual historical information, knowing full well that the Capitol has a tendency to reduce even the simplest of cultural phenomena to hardly anything more complex than color and shape. She finds one that's significantly more pictures than words, with stickers of the famous troll Tributes and one of Signless wearing a Victor's crown.
"Do you find it better here, where you don't have to hide your blood color?" She taps at her lower lip, painted bright red almost like a wound among her delicate features.
no subject
He hasn't noticed her scar. He's not looking, gaze set in the mid-distance of his own thoughts. When he does look again, it's to glance over the book she's selected, and then the lurid flash of her lip.
It's another question he doesn't want to answer, but one he can't afford not to.
"Yeah," he says, not really meaning it in any way so simple, but passably enough. "Humans here don't care, not the same way. It's a quirk or a point of interest for my fans or something like eye or hair color to you--just a genetic fluke. And that's when people question it at all, because red's the default for you all. No one wants me dead for it here. It can't not be better."
And honestly, he is glad in a removed way that it's such a nothing issue. He had it on the meteor too in the end, when his team was almost all that was left of troll society and no one gave a shit anymore. But an actual planet where he can get a cut or a scrape and not have to worry about covering, hiding, bandaging, not daring to let anyone see the ruddy hue of the scab as it heals--that's something he never could have dreamed of on Alternia, not seriously.
It's just the way that none of them really get it that grates.
"Come on, let's get that book checked out and I'll sign it. You'll have to tell me how to spell your kid's name; I'm no good at human ones."
no subject
Temple may get it more than she lets on, and it's for that reason that she doesn't proffer evidence of her own secrets, why she doesn't say that she, too, hides what she is for fear of people seeing; why she cloaks her District breeding in a wealthy surname and beautiful clothing and a Capitol Citizen for a child, as if piling enough of the Capitol onto her outsides would make them heavier than the poverty and deprivation of her upbringing.
"Bailey. Bee ay eye elle ee why." There was a time Temple couldn't spell it either, especially not the longer and more complicated Capitol name that shortens to that diminutive. Now the letters roll off her tongue with practiced ease. Bilanxus, for balance. Bailey, because their son being named after a famous alcohol is Temple's passive-aggressive way to rub Gowan's mistakes in his face. She holds the book out to Karkat, eyes impassive, as if they care very little for his comfort with the entire ordeal.
"Please let me thank you, at least, with a gift card or something."
no subject
He shakes his head out of his thoughts once Temple starts to spell Bailey's name. "Okay," he says, and takes the book as his other hand fetches a silver marker from his pocket. He's taken to carrying a couple around with him lately so he always has something handy, with the extras as backup in case one runs out of ink.
Inside the cover he writes,
Bailey -
Try not to use my catchphrases. They're meant for older trolls, not human kids, okay?
Your human mom and I picked this book out special for you. I hope you enjoy it.
- Karkat Vantas ♋
It's all in sharp caps, and he holds it back open for her to look over and judge. All mild, no swears, and not one ounce of the disdain he feels for the Capitol presentation of his species: in short, he hopes it's acceptable for a human child.
Afterward he adds, "I'll take a gift card, sure. Thanks."
no subject
"I appreciate it." Temple gives some instructions to her Avox, who returns shortly with a gift certificate for a truly opulent amount of money, enough to feed a family of four in one of the Districts for months. "Thank you. I'll try to keep him on a tighter leash."
And so she leaves, little heels clicking against the floor, Avox silently trailing her before departing to retrieve her child.