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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It was mostly heirlooms, things that have been Bascomb property for generations-" for all Caroline's insistence that Jason was hardly a Compson, somehow the will didn't devise him the belongings, not that he wanted most of them anyway, "-which, for the record, Maury is asking me to pay shipping on. Whatever. He's in for a surprise when he tries to draw from that auxiliary account Mother had set up for him. I emptied that one a week ago."

He sighs, then looks at Swann with a fond smile, one that comes from being able to honestly discuss these greedy thoughts not only with judgment, but with collusion.

"If I'd have known she was going to keel over dead, honestly, I'd have used that power of attorney and redrafted the will. No one would have thought anything of it."

"Hm." Swann looks thoughtful. "Maybe... if you can find a buyer that you can be sure he'd never see... well, things get lost in transit all the time, right?" It's not as brilliant a plan as she might otherwise come up with, but it's something. "All you need is proof of shipping and you're cleared. Which you can get from any old mail clerk who needs a couple of assi." She tilts her head a little bit, one corner of her mouth turned up. "Maybe those lost antiques were insured, even. Use some of that to pad out Ben's account, it's really no difference to throw a little extra in."

She squeezes his hand again and her heart flutters, and it's warm in her chest. She loves him so much.

"Well, you can't plan for everything. But it's easy to take care of these little problems. Honestly, no one's really going to come poking after Maury's portion of the will, your mother was the only person left in Panem who gave a damn about him."

"You know, honestly, if I just held onto it Maury would probably never come around for it. I'd just get occasional letters imploring me to take a little pity on his, because I'm his darling nephew." Jason rolls his eyes and spits those words. "We'll figure out something."

By now it's a point of vengeance to do so.

"Everyone knows the Bascombs were always just a family with one hand out. Just because Mother got a wedding ring in her palm instead of a fistful of cash doesn't mean that that's not what that side of the family has for a legacy."

That makes it worse, maybe, that Jason can't stand on his own, that he's never been expected to because of the lineages he comes from, that collision of parasitic and crazy. That any failure wouldn't even be his to wallow in, but the product of his breeding.

"Well, is there anything you do want to keep? You know, for wherever you move to?" As much as she knows Jason wants to just be done with it all, he doesn't own any of his own furniture. It might be nice to have a bed or a desk, flatware and things like that. "Keep that, sell the rest, and don't leave a forwarding address. Don't tell him where Ben is either, in case he goes and tries something funny."

It's true. The Bascombs were always a rung lower on the social ladder than the Compsons, and by the time Jason's parents came around, the Compsons had already fallen a few rungs themselves. Swann really doesn't know anyone with nice things to say about the Bascombs, at least not without going back half-a-dozen generations.

She brings his hand up and kisses his knuckles, purring with sympathy. "You're not like any of them. You're like the original Jason, the one who made the Compsons into something. That's whose blood you have, not the drunk, insane blood, or the needy Bascomb blood. You're a real Compson."

"No, not especially." Jason's belongings as an adult have been pretty spartan, especially by Capitol standards. He has a bed, a dresser, some suitcases and shoes, a rack of ties and a shaving kit, not much else. "God, Maury would. Maury's probably try and take money out of Ben's hands, too. He has no scruples."

As if they haven't spent the last ten minutes talking about how to fleece Benjy's inheritance or anything like that.

Jason exhales deep from his nose, thinking that even the original Jason was a maniac, just managed to focus it into being a war hawk and politician. But it matters for Swann to believe in him. If he had to choose between the world believing in him or just Swann, he'd take her. "I'm the last one, you know. Well, I mean, there's Ben, but presuming I outlive him."

Just like she's the last Honeymead.

Well, Swann can see a difference between them and Maury, because in their plan, Ben is still provided for, taken care of. He's not robbed blind and left in the cold -- it's just redistributing money that would otherwise sit locked in an account for the rest of time. And Jason may not care about Ben, but she knows he cares just enough to want to protect him from someone as terrible as Maury swooping in.

Or at least he hates Maury enough to want to protect Ben. Whatever, same difference.

"Okay, so we get someone to appraise the good stuff, then toss out whatever's left over. So that's a bunch of solutions planned out." It always makes Swann feel better to have a course of action, steps she can follow. She's gotten a lot accomplished in this short time that way.

She looks thoughtful, if in a sad way, and kisses his fingers again. "I know. Do you think it matters? You know, that we're the last ones?" She knows it matters, at least on her end, that if they don't run away like they promised, she'll have to have children, because she can't sell the company. And she's not opposed to children but it scares her, because she knows she has something dark inside her and she would never want to curse a child with that weight. "Sometimes it feels like I'm disappointing Daddy, that I don't have any kids."

We are talking about a man who seriously considered leaving his brother by the side of the road in a box all week.

He nods, not as enthused about all the moving forward as she is but glad that she's at least settled into something. Her comfort buoys his up just a bit, and he's clinging to just about anything these days. "I'll want to rummage through everything before an appraisal man comes in. I know my grandfather had some materials I'll need to destroy or catalog with the government so they don't end up in a showroom somewhere."

Not that he actually plans on destroying them; there's a certain value, not even just practical but prideful, in having a bargaining chip for a shaky, hazy future.

"I want to believe it only matters if we let it," he says after a moment, because he knows that that's just a fantasy. It'll always matter who they are, all the names and deeds and heritages they carry on their shoulders, twined in their choked, polluted DNA, tucked into every wrinkle on the brain. "I'm never having children. I already raised one and you know how that turned out. Maybe that'll be what your father needs to decide he doesn't like me after all."

Hating Maury more than Ben still counts, it's already been said. Also, Ben is a huge guy, where was Jason even going to get a box that size without buying a new refrigerator?

"I'll schedule for next week, that should be enough time to get everything gathered up," she says, nodding, and it makes perfect sense to her, because every Capitol family with even a modicum of power in their family's history, even generations back, has things like that, things that even the servant class will cling to until absolutely forced to trade it for money or influence. Swann doesn't even know the extent of her family's documents and bits of evidence that have been hidden away in safes and secret cubbies around the family home.

She looks out the window with her brow knit, frowning, turning it all over in her head. "Don't you think there's a difference between raising someone else's child and raising your own?" she finally asks, and it's not that she's so determined to change his mind on actually having children so much as simply being willing say it's a possibility. Because her father will harangue her over it when he thinks the two of them are serious enough, will guilt her and put his weight into her until she relents and finds someone to marry and have at least one child with.

No one cares who you love as long as appearances are kept up. If she needs to live two lives, she can.

Who says he wouldn't use the refrigerator?

Jason feels his guts tighten when she's silent for that moment, when she doesn't agree with him instantly. He wants to jump in and talk over the silence, to erase her chance to disagree with a barrage of explanations, his tower of logic and reason.

"Do you think there is? My parents raised their own children and we all ended up disasters. I raised someone else's kids and she grew up into a worthless little bitch of a girl. What I say it doesn't matter. There's nothing worth bringing a kid into anyway."

But he knows, deep down, that she wouldn't stand up to her father for him any more than he would his mother.

It still necessitates spending money for a new refrigerator, which we all know Jason is way too cheap to do while he still has a functioning one.

"You didn't want to raise Quentin," Swann points out softly. "It wasn't like you were acting as a father to her. You took care of her, but you can't say it was the same as really raising her. I don't know. It just seems like something we're supposed to do, keep the bloodlines going. Not you and me specifically, all of us, I mean. Even the servants. Without our people having kids, Panem will just keep filling with more and more Districter blood, until eventually that's all that left."

She lets her forehead rest on the window, where the glass is cool and comfortable.

"I guess it's just complicated."

He could just eat dry ramen for the rest of his time at home. That's not a completely absurd possibility.

"It's simple enough to me." Where Swann's soft, Jason's voice gets hard, desperate, an exaggeration of surety to cover the cracks of uncertainty. "A few kids aren't going to outnumber all the Districters breeding like rabbits anyway. Besides, no child of mine would have a damn chance. There's too much bad blood in my family."

He chews on his tongue.

"Don't you think I'm right?" he asks.

"I'm not going to make you have kids or anything, Jason," she says instead of answering him directly. And she wouldn't, would never try to trick or trap him, though she'd also never get rid of a child if they happened to have an accident. Swann sighs and closes her eyes, tries not to feel overwhelmed by her conflicting emotions on this subject.

"It's not like it matters right now anyway."

"I'd be lucky if any kid of mine wasn't born with three heads or half a brain or something," he mutters, kneading his fingers into his scalp. "It doesn't matter now anyway. You're right. Marriage isn't even on the table."

There's a pause as he realizes that he's chewing long and hard on his own foot, smacking Swann's heart around carelessly.

"Right now, I mean."

In that pause, she blinks at him, feeling like he just socked her in the face, and she looks profoundly hurt. She doesn't cry, doesn't say anything at all, just glances at him with that pained expression and then turns back to the window, curling up tightly in her seat.

"Of course," she answers distantly, because she knows as well as he does that he doesn't mean it, that he doesn't want to marry her. Ever.

"Don't be like that. You know what I mean." Jason feels like the floor's sinking down beneath him, like he's suddenly taken a step off a stair and found no ground. "We haven't even been together a year, Swann."

He feels panic - not like hers, not fearful but listless, angry - rising in his throat.

She wraps her arms around her legs, and she almost wants to laugh at his furious backpedaling, but she doesn't. She feels oddly numb, like hearing him say it out loud dimmed all of her many emotions, and she sighs. "I didn't say anything about marriage, Jason. You did."

Swann feels like hellfire's about to start raining down on her, courtesy of Jason being upset, but she can't resist pointing it out. That he was the one who jumped there, had his mind already made up on the subject, and she's not desperate enough to believe his attempt at fixing it. He doesn't want a family, not of any kind, and nothing she says will change his mind or matter to him.

It's a painful moment of clarity, like sunlight catching on all her sparkling fairy dust to expose it as just regular old filth floating through the air, reminding her that she's made up everything good to protect herself.

"It just- it was relevant to the conversation, because one usually leads to the other, so long as you're not some slut like my sister-" Unable to just fire away at Swann, he snipes at the ghosts of people who aren't here, spitting the anxiety he's funneling into rage at phantoms.

"Look, I didn't mean it like that and you know it. Don't do this to me right now, alright, Swann? Not right now. Please." His knuckles go white against the steering wheel. "Anytime but now."

His mother hasn't even been dead a week, and as far as he's concerned that gives him a free pass to lash out a little - not necessarily because it's justified but because he can't handle having the another person who loves him yanked away, dangled out of his reach, another corner of his foundation caving in.

She can only sigh again, more heavily, and she's starting to get a headache, pulsing behind her eye. It's like a rock and a hard place, because she's certain that even just acquiescing won't satisfy him, that she has to agree that he didn't mean it and that they won't get married, and she'll have to go back to building up her sugar cube castle around herself, just waiting for him to come kick it down again.

"I'm not doing anything." She says it calmly, almost dull, and rubs at the corner of her eye, pushing hard at the bone under her skin. "It's fine. I don't know why we're still thinking about it. No kids, no marriage, whatever. It's fine. We're both too busy anyway."

He's not waiting for her to agree. He already realizes that any mission to get them both on the same page about their future needs to be aborted quickly. Now it's a matter of doing damage control.

"No, I mean the shutting down and being sad. Please, Swann. I didn't mean it. I was just running my mouth. These are things we can talk about in a few years. Don't shut down on me right now." He started out this morning feeling alive for the first time in a week, ready to go fly kites with her and not spend the entire day holed up in his decaying house staring at the vapor trails of his cigarette against a water-stained wall.

He's not the type to plead, but he's already relinquished pride to her a hundred times.

"Please, Swann."

He's frustrating her, because she doesn't know how to just let it go, snap back to how it was when he's just popped all of her stupid little bubble dreams, things she knew were false hopes but kept around herself anyway, because they made her happy. Because they fortify the walls she builds to try and protect herself.

"I'm not... can I just have a minute, Jason?" she asks, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "I know you didn't mean it, but I kind of just need to recoup, okay? That's all."

"Right. A minute. Do you want me to pull the car over and just wait or- or what?" It toes the line between honestly curious and snide, because he's frustrated but wants to defuse this all somehow. "If I didn't mean it that should be enough to just...sort yourself back out."

He rubs at the bridge of his nose and then at his temple.

"Just drive. I'll feel better when we get there."

She'll never understand him, never understand how a man who's so perpetually upset and angry at everything can be so bad at empathizing when other people have those same feelings. How he doesn't get that she can't just instantly flick back like a switch right now.

That would be his persecution complex getting in the way. It's hard to put yourself in others' shoes when you're convinced all those other people are somehow colluding against you - even Swann.

"Alright. Fine. Feel better."

It's less a suggestion than nearly a command. He takes a deep, shaky breath and chews at his tongue. They continue in silence until they reach that part of the mountain on which they first kissed, where they'll fly the kites now.

She sighs, exhales hard, and leans her head back against the glass, eyes closed so she can try and clear her mind. By the time they reach their spot, she feels better, if not a hundred percent, and she straightens back up to look at him. She's not exactly smiling, but she doesn't look unhappy either.

"All right!"

He doesn't ask if she's feeling better, maybe out of some fear that that'll just start the whole thing over again. Maybe it's so he can stew without clearing it up. He gets out of the car and opens her door and then the back, so he can get the kites.

"I thought the weather would be better."

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

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