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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"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."

She's around him as soon as he slumps, her arms and her hands surrounding him, on his neck and in his hair, her cheek on his shoulder. "She was your mom, Jason," Swann says softly. "No matter what else there was between you two, there was love. Maybe not the healthiest, but who am I to judge? She loved you so much, in her way."

There's a brief pause, and she hooks her leg over his, just to be even more entangled together. "And she was part of your life, everyday. It's like missing a chunk of the routine, you know? Anything is like that, losing something you're so used to. You miss it."

If he wanted to be cruel - and to nearly anyone else he would be - he could say that Swann's the last person to judge about a healthy relationship with her mother, that damn right she has no foot to stand on. But even in this state he won't do that to Swann now.

"She was the only person in my whole family who ever gave a damn about me," he says quietly, wrapping himself around Swann, clutching at her. Words seem to hurt coming out of his throat, like they have to be forced out. There's one less person in the world who loves him, and the bastion of worth he worshiped at since childhood is fallen.

Yeah, that would actually lack the sting he's going for, because Swann is aware that she has a terrible relationship with her mother, if it can even be called a relationship. She's not stubbornly blind about it, the way he is.

Her hand runs slowly through his hair, keeping rhythm, her nails very lightly raking on his scalp. "I know," she whispers, nodding just a little. "But not your whole life. You still have people. Your mother would be glad for that." Or at least Swann hopes, hopes that she wouldn't want to abandon her son to an empty world.

Jason's taken pretending his relationship with his mother is fine and normal from a habit to an Olympic sport.

"I don't know that she would be. She wouldn't trust you, you know. She honestly thought there was no one that wouldn't try to hurt me, and God knows the rest of my family didn't do a damn thing to dissuade that." Maybe she didn't truly believe that; maybe it was just a convenient way to sever Jason's ties to anyone else, so he would be forced to rest all his weight on her.

He slides against Swann and buries his face against her shoulder, breathing her in as if he's trying to replace all the air in his lungs with her.

Edited 2015-08-14 23:17 (UTC)

Swann shrugs. The worse the problems Caroline had caused between the two of them, the less Swann cared what she thought. Besides, Caroline was crazy and also a Compson, and try as she might, Swann has some difficulties taking that seriously. Even with Jason, she can't bring herself to care about his name unless she's smearing it in the face of someone below him on the ladder.

"She didn't know me," Swann says simply, with a tone that implies that she just doesn't mind what his mother believed in her crazy head. "Because I won't try to hurt you. Ever." She's discounting barbs during fights, but everyone stoops to that, no one is completely innocent. "She still wouldn't want you to be alone."

Her fingers run through his hair again, and she rests her head on his.

He nods. His fingers clench and release at her clothing in a way that looks like a newborn child's more than anything else. And he doesn't believe her, not because of anything she's done or any threat she's made but because he's never had anyone on his side, had his mother hew them away when he was a child and forced them away himself when he was an adult.

It's all irrational, like the fuse that keeps him if not reasonable than practical has completely blown. He feels guilty for his closeness to Swann, for having spent the last few months (years, for having spent years) going behind his mother's back, for hating her and wishing she were dead and getting what he said he wanted.

"I feel alone still." He figures that each word is like driving a knife into Swann, but it's true. His eyes fill with tears and he tries to blink them back and wipe them away, frustrated and artless. "God. I miss her. Swann, I didn't think I'd miss her."

It hurt distantly, but not in an unexpected way, and so she can handle it. She doesn't mention that he's crying, just keeps holding to him, because that's the best thing she has to offer him.

"I know. It'll take time before you feel any better, before it starts to fade back some. All you can do is wait it out." She looks into the distance as she says it, because she can't think of anything else helpful, knows that anything else would be temporary distraction at best.

She combs out a little tangle in his hair with her finger, and nuzzles her cheek together. "And I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere."

She doesn't need to mention it. The tears keep coming, the wall down as he lets her in, as he fails to hide how much it hurts until he just stops trying, breath in sobs and gasps, tears running down over those cheekbones he inherited from his father, over the two day-old stubble and into her clothing, his clothing. He doesn't fight it anymore, doesn't choke it down with a towel or will or pride. He lets himself feel the grief entirely as it roars through him like a banshee.

"Alright. Alright." He grasps around for her hand and finds it, squeezes it hard enough to turn both their fingers red. "You'll stay here while I wait it out. You'll stay with me."

She wraps herself more fully around him, as much as she can, cocooning him like a blanket. His sobs wrack through her, shake her a bit, and she doesn't mind, only holds him tighter because it's all she has to offer him. She whispers to him, vague comforts, that it'll be okay, that she's here.

"Of course I will," she murmurs, and her hand shoots through with pins and needles as he squeezes it. "I'll stay with you forever if you want me to."

He lets her hand go and cries himself out. Soon enough there are no tears, only sound and jerking motions rolling from his throat and lungs. They hold each other tight enough that they may as well be wend together skin and skin. He feels like a puppet being animated by a force he doesn't know or understand, forced into this sorrow, body bending to an emotion too large and thick to fit inside him.

Then he's quiet for a while, letting her tend to the wounds (he is one gaping wound) with her words. He catches his breath.

"Yes. Yes," he murmurs. Yes, he wants her to stay with him forever. He needs her to. He resettles his head onto her chest. "I feel a little better."

It's not much. Maybe he's just exhausted. Maybe a crying fit like that is like vomiting up something bad, not enough to cure the body but enough to expel the immediate poison. Maybe now that he isn't full to the brim with it he can take in some of Swann's love.

Swann never lets go, just holds him as tightly as she can and never loosens her grip. She has little to give him or say that can fix the immediate pain, can only let him spill it out onto her through his tears and cries, like a child who's finally grown too tired and grumpy to hold himself together anymore.

In a selfish way, one that she tries to push from her mind, it makes her feel good. Needed. She's the only person in the whole world who can provide this for him. Who can be trusted.

"Shhh," she says, and nods, strokes his hair again. "I know, you'll feel better a little bit at a time." She sighs and leans her head against the back of the sofa. "I love you," she says softly, tenderly, her voice as gentle as a blanket.

She doesn't love him like Caroline loved him. He's not a possession or a life preserver meant to serve her. Jason is Swann's other half.

He goes loose, limp, completely without tension in his muscles anymore.

"I love you too," he says, for the second time this month because he can't even feel the fear necessary to hold him back from saying it. He just lets it flow out of him. He feels barely there anymore, just a conduit for moods stronger than him that come from on high and use his body like a marionette.

"I need to go home. I can't sleep here, I keep hearing her upstairs and I don't..." He doesn't want to miss it, to sleep in silence. Maybe he should be bothered and afraid of sounds he knows aren't real, but they're the closest he has to having her (and that life before she died) back.

It worries Swann, that he wants to torture himself by going back to the sounds -- it doesn't seem odd to her that his mind is playing those tricks, trying to adjust, but she doesn't want him to get addicted to that, something that isn't real and never will be. But she can't make herself say it out loud, bring it up at all.

"Okay," she whispers, and kisses the top of his head. "If you're sure."

Until he's ready to leave, she's ready to just lie here, holding him.

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