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
"If you don't mind me bringing him down to Six, I'm sure he'd love to meet him. Besides, he misses his Uncle Linden." Bailey's paternity is something that could be much speculated between them if they ever brought it up, but by some unspoken pact they never do. The boy has dark hair, wide eyes, but so do Temple's brothers, so did Gowan's father. His pale skin could be anyone's, including his mother's.
"You can tell when I'm lying, Linden. You look good. Your face looks...full. Like the moon." She absentmindedly fiddles with her wedding ring. "Gowan's staying in the District for a while for business. We've...well, neither of us are in the space to be good spouses right now. He blames me, you know. I can't say I'm not blaming him too."
no subject
Linden would be lying if he claimed that he'd never wondered about Bailey, as more than a few have as the boy's aged from a typically ambiguous baby to a more specified portrait of a human being. Whether it's familial resemblance or evidence of a cuckold, though, Gowan would be blind not to notice and question and resent that his child looks more like one (or more) of Temple's illicit lovers than he does like the man who signed his birth certificate.
He still seems uncertain, and he raises a hand to experimentally pinch at one of his thin cheeks. Then his eyes follow her absentminded movements, watching the ring turn on her slender finger.
"If anything, it is his fault," he says, blatantly and unabashedly picking a side. "It was a congenital heart defect, wasn't it, on his side of the family? Nothing you done could have done would have prevented it."
And I'm not wicked or cruel enough to say this out loud, but if anything, that heart defect is proof that the daughter, at least, was his.
no subject
And because every time Bailey throws a tantrum and tells Gowan he wishes Linden, or any other of his many 'uncles', were his father instead, Temple feels a surge of sick and proud satisfaction that burns its way through her like a shot of good whiskey.
"That's what I said. He says it's my drinking. Maybe he should try carrying a baby around for nine months in his body and see if he doesn't want a sour then, but of course, he says he never wants it anymore. The liar." She glances back up with that peppy attitude again, as if the light switch to sorrow has gone off and been replaced by the glow of a sudden idea. "On that note, we should have a drink. Just a little one, toasting to seeing old friends again."
no subject
He gets along well with Bailey as that bauble or toy; he usually has a gift for the young man, which is another reason he wants to have a little bit of a warning before visits. He is looking forward for him to be old enough to learn chess, and it's a bittersweet thing to see a child who is permitted to be a child, and not put to work cleaning machines in District 6 or scooping up bobbins in District 8.
His eyes widen when she tells of Gowan's accusations, and then narrow as he allows it to sink in. "That's ridiculous," he says flatly. "No wonder you're wanting to be away from him, now... give him a chance to miss you and fret before you go back, the idiot. And yes, I'd like a drink," he's quick to agree, but he's stepping outside of his room and moving to close the door.
"I'm thinking at the bar, though, just... because my room's not really the happiest place right now. Kind of stale."
no subject
"I think if I were left in a room with him a day longer he'd have learned what it feels like to be a Victor." To be so intimately acquainted with violence - when Temple makes comments like that, it's as if her vocal cords belong to an entirely different person, one whose tone is deep and dark as a chasm.
Someone who isn't so good at blending in, chameleon-like, with the airy and vapid society of Capitolites might insist on drinking privately, but Temple's actually relieved at the idea of having to force some smiles and laughter until it becomes genuine again. It's not quite as comforting as falling in Linden's bed, but they probably shouldn't do that anywhere near the Training Center anyway. And so she snaps out of that threat as quickly as she dipped into it.
"Alright. It's on me, though. I'm getting a bit of a kick out of running up the bill."
no subject
He laughs darkly at the hypothetical as he pulls his door closed and locks it, pocketing the ke along with the embroidered handkerchief. A symbol of intimacy and one of privacy side by side, as if challenging him to change his mind, unlock the door and invite Temple to get a little more comfortable and rub her rebellion in Gowan's face even further. But something stays his hand and his tongue, and he's offering a chaste smile between comrades as he's turning to lead on toward the elevators.
"If you insist," he allows, flattening his thumb against the glowing disc. "I'd be glad to make Gowan's eyes pop out of his head when he sees the bar tab. Making expensive liquor disappear is a talent of mine."
There's a joke in there about deep-throating, but maybe it's inappropriate at this particular moment.
/wrap with your tag?
Temple picks up the joke for him. "And I'm good at making other things disappear." She drapes her hand across his for a moment, as if a hand could wink and smirk. And she takes him by the wrist and leads him to the elevator, as if it'll take them to a merry and temporary hell with all the other sinners.
"Come on, I've needed this," she says, batting those large eyes so few people can resist.