thecapitol | What a Mess I Leave to Follow [Open]

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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.

Threaded | Flat

Linden can't help but stare at the way she simply hasn't changed. He fluctuates between being merely pale and appearing grey, merely thin and being gaunt, and merely drawn and looking nearly dead, but since marrying Gowan, Temple really does seem like she's suspended delicately over time, safely out of its ravaging reach. But Linden's noticed that that's the way of Victors; depending on their interest and their access to the surgeries and treatments the Capitol has to offer (or, alternatively, the devastating vices), they either age very well or extremely poorly.

He's torn. He wants to be happy to see her, as he would any old friend, but his dark eyes, alert and clear, recognize the trouble she could be bringing with her. Doesn't the lipstick hint at so much? The sign language books behind him spread over his desk seem so wholesome and chaste by comparison, an attempt to build and nurture rather than grind pain into dust with someone else who feels it the same way.

His shoulders probably feel a little more substantial in her grasp than he did the last time they held each other, when they were knobs of sinew and bone and the rise and fall of his chest was barely perceptible when he slept. He was in terrible health then, actually horrifying to look at, and it had been a miracle that he'd survived the overdose that had happened shortly after, stopping his stressed heart and landing him in rehab for months so he could scrape together something like vitality again. He'd given it the old college try then, but something else is motivating him now, something like what he had as a precocious child. Perhaps it is envy-worthy. Considering their relationship has always been based on pity and loneliness, perhaps Temple does have reason to be alarmed.

"I was awake," he says, sounding almost as surprised as she does about it (though much of it might actually be intentional affectation to put her more at ease.) "I understand it's been difficult, since..." he glances at the corner by the fireplace and the ashes that haven't been swept from the hearth yet. Clearing his throat, he continues as pragmatically as possible. "I sent a letter when I heard, and I don't know if it reached you or not, but I am truly sorry."

Children have never been Karkat's thing. Even in Sgrub, in the lab he stumbled into on one of the meteors of the veil, the grubs he made then were a process of slamming buttons and doing what time had foretold for him. He didn't like the process, and it was utterly bizarre observing all his team at an age before they'd even pupated, including his own bright, mutant self. But the thing is, they were trolls. Even the strange second set that he later learned were his team's ancestors were trolls.

Not one of them is some small, human child, motioning up at his horns in a bid for a chance to touch them.

"Look, no, you don't..." He's looking around, searching for whoever might look like this child belongs to them, because surely humans don't let their young run off alone, do they? They have their biological human parents to serve as custodians, a concept still weird to him, and weirder still now that he's in a position to have to deal with it.

He's in a bookstore, waylaid before he could get to the section he wanted by the insistent attentions of this kid who doesn't look more than 3 sweeps old, if that. He'd measure by years but age always comes in the Alternian system to his eyes.

"Does--Does anyone--? Who owns this kid?"

Is that how they even say it? God, human family is weird.

The worst of it is, he can't just tell the kid to fuck off and go on his way. He'd like to. He craves to. But when his early death has turned into frequent public appearances and humoring his fans, he can't run the risk of alienating Capitolites by making a 5-year-old cry.

With the exception of tributes, children were typically beneath Wesker's notice. Particularly the especially young. Like animals they seemed to be able to sense the nature of things. Their instincts not yet overwritten by societal expectation and their own sense of self-importance.

So he paid no mind to the urchin scampering about the cafe terrace until, quite suddenly, there was a tug on his coat.

Looking up sharply from his communicator, then down, he found the boy at his hip, stare wide-enough for Wesker to see himself staring back.

"Ah, lunch at last," he said, just cool enough to make it uncertain whether or not he was serious.

Cyrus has finally, finally been here long enough that he's begun to register new faces, to follow the cycles of people in and out. It's still bizarre, that the most permanent residents of this place are the Tributes, and it's their staff who come and go like flocks of birds switching homes with the seasons; but he can tell, better than he used to, who belongs to a new crop of unhappy offworlders, and who's a seasonal Capitolite come home to roost.

He does the thing he always does when he meets someone he remembers best from television, when Temple waves at him - takes the necessary split-second to recontextualize her, to take her out of the screen in his mind and put her here, back in the real world where she belongs. He's seen her off the screens before, at social gatherings she wouldn't have been at if she hadn't married up; putting her in the cafe the staffers frequent, catching her eye as he moves past her table (glancing between the embroidery in her hands and her face), takes him a second to make real in his mind.

Funny, to think that if she were in the same position now as she'd been at the end of her Games, her marriage would be only dubiously legal. It's that, more than anything, that puts an ironic smile at the corners of Cyrus' mouth as he stops to greet her.

"Mrs. Stevens?" He knows her just well enough to address her, has taken her hand in greeting in other places just enough times that he can start the conversation. "I almost didn't recognize you." The use of her married name is a gentle, socially-appropriate joke, a nod to his recognition of her and a nod to the reason for his recognition of her.

As with most important news, Jolie doesn't hear a single thing about Temple coming back until there are people moving things in the suites. If a Tribute died, she doesn't want to hear about it, honestly. She doesn't need bad luck, she just wants to surround herself with miracles and good karma and all sorts of Capitol self-help nonsense.

She steps out of the elevator with a suspicious look on her face, barely alleviated when Temple talks. Curiosity prompts her to glance over at the basket and she can't help but nod in silent approval at the booze before she waves a hand dismissively at it and strides over with her heels clicking like she means business.

"I'm surprised you didn't throw it at me." She scoffs, inviting herself to lean down and kiss the air around Temple's face in a manner that is both affectionate and respectful of freshly applied make up. "I didn't know you were coming back, girl. You look too good to be here."

"That's a beautiful wren." Of course it's the embroidery that's the first thing Emily notices, with both her immense knowledge of birds, having spent her childhood at the tops of trees, and her respect and admiration for anyone who works with their hands, whether it's to make something plain and functional or an opulent extravagance. Emily admired skill, and this sort of skill could only come from one District. "You're from Eight, right?"

He's doing a little browsing, himself. Jason had been quite adamant that dolphins jumping through forests of stars wasn't a District 7 thing, and so, Cassian was trying to find trendy things that involved trees. Unfortunately, trees weren't something that Capitolites spent a lot of time worrying over--Maybe that would change if District 7 could get a few wins, but in the meantime...Well, he'd figure something out.

His puzzlements over decor went out the window when he caught sight of a familiar face, who waved at him, and he put on his best smile for greeting someone like a long lost friend. "Templllllle~!" He trilled out, fluttering over like a brightly colored bird, scarves and bits of jewelry and lace trailing behind him. He didn't hug her, but he clasped her shoulders, looking her up and down with a fond, but appraising eye. "So it's true, they managed to drag you out of the backwaters! And look at you, still pretty as a peach!" He turned to look at the clothing in the window she was eyeing, inspecting it as well.

Temple was one of the people that Cassian would probably into the shallow section of his friends--The leagues of people that he knew well enough to be invited to their parties, and invite them as well, to gossip and natter, but nothing important, no inner circle business. He wasn't against Temple getting to that point, though--She and him had radically different pasts, but in the end, they had similar goals--An almost neurotic need to fit into the high society and wrestle their way up the social ladder, while acting like they were already where they wanted to be.

And Temple was a lovely person to talk trash with.

"You're looking for a new wardrobe, aren't you? Oh, do let me help. I'm sure you read all about how I've finally made it as a real stylist, it was in Celebrus and everything, I think my father is going to hang the article that mentioned me, honestly, it's so embarrassing." That was a lie, but his father had been quite approving, and showed it to the rest of his family, and that was about on the same level, to Cassian. "But now I'm a real fashion expert. I'm going to set so many trends, Temple."

It wasn't actually all that long after his death in the arena, that Maxwell reappeared in his suite in District 8. Still and quiet but for the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, he was back, whole and unharmed, resting more peacefully than he had since his last death.

But it didn't last, and even though he was back in short order, it was far longer before he appeared again.

Upon waking, he had to force himself to rise - to even open his eyes. Lying in the silence, the room as hushed, the air as stale, as a tomb, he knew even before the last vestiges of sleep had slipped away that he was back and the thought of facing it again... The heat came suddenly, burning behind his tightly closed eyelids, and curling down his cheeks. All the pain he'd been denying, all the loneliness he'd been trying to hide releasing in sobs that he was helpless to stop.

Not that it mattered in his room, he would console himself after he woke again from the exhausted sleep his fit had sent him into. Here, he was always truly alone.

~.~

When he finally ventured forth from his room, Maxwell thought he had released enough of the pressure to able to control himself. But as he drifted into the common room, he spotted the rocking horse.

So out of place. So familiar, even in it's differences.

For a moment he imagined he could hear Blackwall's chisel - the tink of the hammer, the scrape of the wood.

He reached for it without thought, fingers working along the grooves of its carefully carved mane, mouth twisting hard. A thick swallow sticking painfully in his throat.

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