thecapitol | Shame Can't Be the Home Where You Live [Open]

Entry tags:

Shame Can't Be the Home Where You Live [Open]

WHO| Jason and semi-open
WHAT| Caroline Compson dies and Jason exists in the aftermath.
WHEN| At least a week prior to reaping for the mini-Arena.
WHERE| Compson Manor
WARNINGS| Death, grief, emotional repression.

Jason stops coming to work on Monday, with no more warning than a text to Swann saying can't drive you today and a text to Peggy home from work. After that he lets his phone battery run down, and the few messages that get in before it dies pile up in his voicemail or inbox. He doesn't contact his coworkers, nor does he cancel the meetings with Sponsors he was supposed to be present for.

The servants are all fired. Jason tells them to vacate the premises but they don't, for two main reasons: the first being that they doubt, validly, that Jason would keep Benjamin and the horses fed and cared for, even for a few days, and the second being that Jason doesn't even seem to notice that they're there. He grabs a whole pack of caps for his vaporizer and takes up a sort of vigil on the couch in the moldy, once-beautiful living room, and smokes, at first with a kind of furious intensity and then out of a mechanical inertia, as if it's easier to just keep refilling the cap and staying where he is than to get up and perform any of the many tasks that have laid themselves out at his feet.

When night falls he doesn't even get up to turn on the light, just sitting there on the couch until sleep ambushes him and then retreats in the morning. Freedom is a ball and chain that keeps him stuck here. A few times he feels something like a fist twisting in his gut and he gets up, paces, runs his hands through his hair (which has gotten greasy and lank), and actually putting his body in motion helps to release that tension. His eyes sting and so he smokes more and tries to sleep again, passing between waking and resting with little acknowledgment for when he crosses each border.

Outside the gate stays closed, accessible only by fingerprint or intercomming to the house. The potholes and rotten belongings in the yard stay where they are, leaving patches of brown, muddy, dead grass underneath them if removed. The whole building sags a bit, as if it were sighing.

Jason's out of work for five days.

-/-

In the news, there's an obituary with ebullient recitations of the virtues no one who knew Caroline would ever say she had. It goes on to say that she's survived by her one son, Jason, as if Benjamin were shuffled out of reality when he was corralled up on the property, excised from the collective memory of the public.

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"I didn't sleep all day, for one." He didn't eat either, but he doesn't tell her that. He curls up with her, pulling her against him so that she's resting her head on his shoulder. He still lies like a sack of cement, boneless and lifeless and with about as much warmth as a computer programmed for the bare minimum of physical affection.

"If you all don't miss me I may as well not come back at all."

"That's good."

She sighs and lets her weight lie against him, her arms locked around his waist, running her hand along his side. She's still not expecting much affection, feels better to simply lavish it on him instead.

"No one said that. I just said things are under control. Wednesday won't talk to anyone without you, you know, and really, no one else can keep Ruffnut in line. But it's okay, it's not so bad that you need to rush yourself. Like I said, nothing special is happening. Just the ordinary."

"Try talking to Wednesday about torture and plague. She likes those topics. And try putting sedatives in Ruffnut's cereal. That's what I do." He's joking, but not by much. As much as he isn't ready to go back to work, knows he isn't ready to a level even he can't deny, he still wants to be essential. With Caroline dead, Jason's job is in jeopardy, because his attitude problems and propensity for property damage were always excused by the Compson name and the existence of someone old enough to remember it.

He doesn't think Swann knows that, realizes what's at stake, and maybe he doesn't really know it either in any way that changes how he acts. He's been an Escort a long time. He's had a lot of meetings that stopped just short of disciplinary.

"How are the funeral arrangements?" He seems, suddenly, barely able to get that sentence out, like the question has up and died and staggered those last few syllables to completion not out of will but gravity.

It's never occurred to Swann that his job might be at risk; even with his attitude and the damage he causes, he's still a good, reliable Escort, and so she never thinks they'd let him go. After all, it's not like there's a line of replacements waiting in the wings. Or maybe it's just so ingrained in her mind to never worry about these things, because her father makes sure she doesn't have to.

He'd probably keep Jason employed if it made Swann happy.

"I have everything lined up, we're just waiting for you to decide on a date and guest list so invitations can go out. The lily fields at the botanical garden for the venue, and the catering is already ordered. Her diamond should be finished next week. Do you want her set in something, or loose like your father and Quentin?"

No matter how bad anything gets, at least it'll be a beautiful memorial. Swann's made sure of that.

"Thank you." Ball's in his court now, coming up with the will to dredge into his mother's history enough to figure out the list of who should come and who shouldn't, a list less to do with friendship or worth than politics and debt. All the right families will have to be invited, which takes a certain social savvy, and then those families will probably send a delegate or two out of respect not for Caroline but for Jason Compson the Second, dead before Jason was even born, or find polite covers for declining. Most of the mourners who do attend will use the reception as a place to try and set up their sons and daughters for the appropriate marriages, or a gossip hub, a fashion runway for dresses and suits and fascinators in shades of black.

"Might as well set her loose. It saves money."

He still has to call Maury. He got a plea for money from his uncle this morning, asking why the funds Maury'd been drawing from Caroline's account hadn't been processed, and Jason had taken five minutes to block Maury's line of credit on the Compson name entirely. Even Jason realizes that he's better equipped to reckon with Carolne's finances than most sons would be, since he's had her power of attorney for nearly twenty years. He knows where the debt is, when the creditors will come to collect, how much is left in every account.

And that's why he has to ask Swann a question he already knows the answer to, because she wouldn't decline him, won't even understand why to even let the words out of his mouth feel like clots of blood from deep up in his gut.

"Swann, I...I can't afford the bill to have her pressed. I tried to pay it on credit and my outstanding debt is too high for them to take it. It's goddamn highway robbery, putting their hands in a man's pocket when his mother's body isn't even in the stone yet, and you'd think those damn bank sharks would show a little lenience to someone who has a house to sell them, even one that's half-rotten, the land it's on is still valuable..." He rubs at his temple with one hand, letting himself ramble as if each subsequent word erases the confession of his empty-handedness.

Swann doesn't understand how it feels to need money, no, but she understands the pain of asking for help when you shouldn't have to, don't want it but need it. When she was twenty-two, just beginning to truly gain steam on television and spending every night drinking and high out of her mind, she once broke down, told her father that she felt crazy and needed help.

He told her she needed sleep and sent her to a spa for two weeks.

She didn't say anything else as her life spiraled down, never said a word even when doctors were swarming around her, pumping her stomach and cleaning her blood so that she could live, not sure if she'd make it without brain damage.

Swann lets Jason ramble for a bit, knows that just getting it out will make him feel slightly better because he likes to rant, and then she gently takes his hand from his head, just holding it as she looks up at him. "How much do you need?" she asks, because it's true that she would never say no, but he's also the first boyfriend who's seen asking for money as a shameful thing, rather than thinking of Swann as a backup piggy bank, an eventual jackpot reward if they could just spin the right combination of slots. She's a prize to most people not because of who she is, but because of who she will be someday.

But Jason doesn't think about her that way. She knows he doesn't, because he never really thinks about the future that hard.

He gives her the number. It's not something exorbitant for a funeral cost, but it's also not cheap, not something most people could dip into easily, but they aren't most people; they're Capitolites, citizens of a world that throws money at people like them for existing, for being born within city limits and with the parents in the right hospitals. The stakes for presentation are higher for them than for anyone else because the stakes for every other thing are so much lower.

He doesn't kiss her, although at that instant he does want to, with them so close together and him hungrier for comfort than he thought, because that would really make this a favor, a gift, charity, Swann swooping in to rescue him when this whole last few days has seemed a slew of rescues and the future looks like more pitholes to fall down in and need help from. He doesn't say 'thank you', either.

He gives her hand a squeeze and rests his head against her knuckles.

"That bitch stole everything when she ran off. Twenty years of savings. I thought I was playing it smart by keeping it out of the banks, with all the-" all the Rebel incidents- "all the scam artists out there, so I kept it in the house. I've worked since I was fifteen years old and they won't even loan me the money to lay my mother to rest."

He sighs and it seems to go down his chest and then just stop at his stomach like a creature submerging itself back in a lake. His life never spiraled like hers so much as sank, and the future is the depths. Swann exists in the present, because he feels like he's fighting every moment he has her to keep her.

Swann has her phone in hand, types in the right passwords to wire transfer three times that amount -- it's not automatic, it'll go through someone on the Honeymead financial team in the morning, but he'll have the money by nightfall tomorrow. She's already covered all the other costs of the funeral, the upfront stuff, and it doesn't bother her to pay for the rest of it. The bigger thought in her mind is that if he can't afford the funeral, he's not going to be able to afford everything else, even the minimum of care necessary for Benjy. He won't be able to afford to fix the house or demolish it, costing him probably a good quarter of the value either way.

He needs someone to care for him. He's spent so much time caring for her.

She squeezes his hand back, kisses the crown of his head, and clicks her phone locked, setting it off to the side. "It's not worth thinking about. We're going to take care of everything, your mother's going to have the funeral she deserves," she murmurs, letting their heads rest together. "What color pillows do your father and Quentin have? I'll order her case tomorrow, I was waiting to find out what you wanted to do."

Each click on her phone feels like a punch to the stomach, but he doesn't say any of that, just watches her with dull and dark eyes and then watches the wall and then watches nothing at all, resting his nose and mouth against the side of her head.

"Evergreen. There's irony in that, I'm pretty sure." He pulls her head to his chest so she's resting against his heart again, so she can hear that steady, sluggish thumping that doesn't seem to quit out of sheer spite. It's also all the better to wrap his arms around her. All the better to hold her tight and pretend that if she's the only thing in the world he can feel she's also the only thing that can exist.

"I'll come back to work on Monday. I promise," he says weakly.

"Evergreen," she repeats, nodding and cuddling against him, his chest, her whole body curled under his arm. "Do you want a single case, or big case for all three of them?" It's the Capitolite equivalent of a family plot, if the diamonds are loose -- otherwise, families can be mounted into a single necklace or bracelet, to always be together. There's little room in the Capitol for cemeteries, save for a few small, older ones, so most people are pressed, or just kept in an urn if they can't afford it.

There are Honeymeads and Compsons buried in the small graveyards, but they're generations back, long before either Jason or Swann were born. Some families still put new headstones out for deaths, to leave flowers and grieve at, but there's just not room for the bodies themselves.

Her arms around him are tight, like she's working to remind him that she's right here, with him. "Don't promise." Her voice is soft. "You should come back when you're ready. You can work from home for a while if you want, ease back into it."

He considers that, a joint case where all the dead relatives could be packed into and shoved away like a truncated tree branch, relegating his mother to the same place as his brother and father, but some of that divisive messaging he received as a child burbles back up and so he says "single", so the Bascomb and Compson gems won't mingle. So he can somehow keep his mother to himself.

The Compsons have a plot out in the cemetery, the one Caroline makes- made- pilgrimage to each weekend with Benjy, a small, mundane journey she couldn't convince Jason to join her on. If you want to work yourself up crying over Quentin and Father getting yourself to the mantle takes less money, he would say. He won't have to say it again, and he won't put up a headstone for her.

"There's no point in working from home. I can come back. I can come back so long as no one says anything to me." It's the pity he won't be able to stand, the prodding questions.

"Okay." She'll have the case and new pillows for all three ordered tomorrow, knows that the ones Quentin and Jason the Third are on must be practically rotten by now from neglect.

Swann nods again, because she understands that logic, but there's worry behind the nod. There's a very good chance someone will say something, possibly within seconds of him entering the building, and what can she do if he lashes out? If he costs himself his job?

Her fingers press a little bit into his side and she sighs. "I get that. Just try to rest this weekend."

"I've rested enough. I should be over it by then."

In a way, the few times he did imagine his mother's death he figured it a moment to unwind all those years of unhappiness, like his childhood's a tape measure that can be snapped back up into itself in the blink of an eye. But it's not like that. His misery isn't something on top of him that can be folded up and packed away but part of him, as much as bone and blood and skin.

"You won't tell anyone that I'm anything but fine, alright? Just taking time for arrangements." He gives her a squeeze.

"All I've said to anyone is that you have a lot to do," she answers, and it's true. Everyone is eager to buy the simplest explanation because most people don't seem to want to think about Jason as a whole person with an actual spectrum of emotions and relationships and the need to cope with such a major change. They want him to just be a single thing, a grouchy Escort who gets the job done, almost like he's a grade school teacher and his students can't fathom him outside of a classroom.

"You said Peggy is finding Ben's accommodations? Because I pulled up a few places too."

Because Swann doesn't trust a Districter, doesn't think she'll understand that even with his handicaps, Ben is still a Capitolite and a Compson to boot, and that means something. He needs to be taken care of the right way.

"We need to talk a little bit about him anyway, if you're coming back to work Monday."

He nods. Jason doesn't really want to break that illusion, doesn't want to show the facets of his personality that aren't hard and strident to the people he has to spend unwilling time around. Let them think he's run off on vacation, or searching for the appropriate institution for Ben. Better that than them knowing that he can barely leave the house the last few days, that he waits around the base of the stairs believing he heard his mother call for him, that he's been choked with tears that won't fall (that he hopes will never fall) for days.

"Good, I'll try and look at those. Peggy doesn't understand the issue of cost. She'd run me into the ground if it meant Ben got a nicer thread count on his pillow." Swann's right, too, about the need for a Capitolite's touch, someone who understands the political importance of these things.

"What's there to talk about? He hasn't starved yet so clearly he understands enough to feed himself until I get things sorted for him. Anyway, might as well send him where they put my grandfather."

"I found a few nice places, not too expensive, that I think would be good for him. One is a little ways out of the city, towards the mountains. It's small and he'd get his own carer, just for him. They have therapy animals." It's Swann's favorite of the list, because Benjy deserves better than a shared room in a place that will scare him. The institution may be different, but at least it can be comfortable.

She sighs, half out of frustration, and curls closer to him. "Jason, you can't leave him alone. I know you fired the servants but... well, they were still there, when I came over and went out back to take Ben something to eat, and I paid that boy for them to take care of him. Just to take care of Ben, they're to stay away from you and the house, and only until we get the arrangements taken care of. We can't just ship him off, Jason, there are admissions processes to go through, no matter where he goes. Paperwork and assessments. He needs someone to look after him specifically until then, and I figured they were there and already know how, and that way you wouldn't have to deal with it."

The words spill out too quickly for him to interrupt, she's rambling like she always does when she's done something she anticipates him getting angry about.

His eyes go cold when he watches her continue talking, not cruel but blank. It's not that he's angry, although that's there, somewhere, lurking in the background when everything else comes down, when the feeling of being overwhelmed hits a fever pitch.

Every time he feels as if all he has to do is put one foot in front of the other, to go back to work, to let someone else take the reins, there's a new challenge to lay on the table, a table that feels slick and overpopulated and unable to hold anything more not because it's too much for a normal person but because he can't manage anything right now, can barely manage to feed himself and stay awake.

He doesn't know how the one year that he finds something that makes him happy, finds Swann, also coincides with the most inexplicably difficult time in his life, now made all the more painful now that his mother's gone. And he didn't love her. He wasn't happy when she was alive. But he misses her, and he would go back to the way it was in a heartbeat, because at least it isn't this.

"I need a moment." He pushes her off him, stiff but not roughly, and walks away to her bathroom. He closes the door behind him and rests against it. He grabs one of her towels (floral-smelling, soft, plush) and presses it against his face so he makes no sound as tears finally fall.

She doesn't say anything, watches him leave, and she doesn't start crying until he's behind the door. Her tears now are half stress, half confusion and fear, because she doesn't understand this reaction. She expected either anger or a complete lack of caring, not whatever this is.

Eta comes in with dinner, bowls of chicken and dumplings, although she's immediately alarmed to find Swann alone and crying. She puts the tray down on the table and takes Swann in her arms, stroking her hair and rocking her as Swann cries.

"I don't know what's wrong, Eta, I don't know what to do to help him," she whimpers.

He stays there for a while, teeth biting down into the towel and stuffed up to his face almost enough to suffocate him (and maybe that would be a blessing), until the feeling doesn't die but burns itself out. It takes a certain amount of energy to really feel something; it doesn't take more than half an hour for him to flatline again.

Nothing's gone, nothing's fixed, but the immediate mood has been drained like an abscess.

He washes his face and rubs at the puffiness around his eyes, which only really makes it look worse. He folds up the towel and sets it away again. He comes back out and waits at the doorway so as not to interrupt Swann and Eta.

Honestly, Swann's drained enough that she can't keep up the tears for long -- she just doesn't have the energy. Within a few minutes, Eta has her quiet, just curled up despondently, and keeps rocking her back and forth until she notices Jason in the doorway. Pulling back gently, Eta rubs away the remainders of dampness from Swann's cheeks and smiles at her, then get up and leaves with a polite inclining of her head toward Jason.

Swann sniffles and grabs her bowl from the table, curling back up in a ball to eat.

"Well. I don't want to interrupt you and Eta." Jason doesn't mean it, doesn't put any harshness at all in his words, just lets them fall flat and lifeless. He waits there for Swann to invite him to join her or banish him, too fried to make any decisions for himself and laying them all at her feet. The redness around her face only drains him more.

"Do you want me to stay or should I go home?" He asks that as if he weren't the one to go hide in the bathroom.

She knits her brow, and even with the very ends of her lashes still wet, she looks confused as to why she might want him to leave. "Eta made dinner," she says, gesturing at the other bowl, as if that's indication enough that she wants him to stay. She can't argue or debate with him right now, though, she can't fight invisible monsters with no help from him.

It's indication enough, and he curls up on the couch next to her, also avoiding any argument or debate because even his last and first resort of anger is failing him now. He takes the bowl and picks at a dumpling, eating just a little, finding more comfort in the chewing than in the tasting any of it.

He rests his head on her shoulder, trying to find the words to thank her, knowing logically that she's helping and kept this from being a complete nightmare but not feeling anything tangible. Reason has been cut off from the rest of him. He wraps his arm around her waist, knowing she can't see the plain fact of how much she helps.

She knows, logically, that she's helping, at least at the basest level of actually getting tasks done, but she doesn't feel like she's doing any more than that, any more than a personal assistant would be doing. He doesn't let her in enough to feel like she's actually improving more than that.

Swann strokes his head and then leans hers against it, takes another few bites of her food before setting the bowl off to the side and just curling up with him, her arms around his waist too. "I just want you to feel better, just a little bit," she murmurs.

"I'd like that too." He's dimly frustrated, because he isn't trying to be this unhappy, he just doesn't know what to do. He's helpless and tired and confused and hopeless.

He sets his bowl aside too and sighs so deep it changes his posture. Maybe it's something he should talk about. Maybe it's something he can, for the moment, just with Swann, if only to make Swann feel like he's opening up. He takes a deep breath and expels it all at once in a rush of words. "I miss her. I didn't think I would. I miss her so much."

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OUR POOR CAPITOL BABIES ;A;

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