I Ran So Far I Could Hardly Breathe [Open]

[clotting]

WHO| Temple Drake-Stevens and anyone in or visiting D8!
WHAT| Temple gives the D8 Tributes a very Temple gift.
WHERE| D8 Suite
WHEN| Before the reaping for the mini-Arena.
WARNINGS| Underage alcohol use, classist idiocy, Temple's special brand of stupid. Sexual assault topics will be warned within the thread subject headers.



Temple Drake would have hidden under the covers at the Mentor highlight reel that went up about her last night after she got off work. She would have stayed there all day, chewing on her fingernails until the manicure came off between her teeth, snot-nosed with her knees together and her hair in a mat of red curls and dried tears, knowing that every person who sees her on the street tomorrow will be thinking of how she was there on the television, helpless and violated and pathetic and scared.

But Temple Stevens, Temple thinks, that woman that the girl emulates more than she actually is, isn't fazed by the violence of the Games or anything that happened in them, and she has a job to do, or at least to pretend to do in valiant Capitol fashion. And so Temple, the person she is and the person she wants so badly to be together, gets out of bed in the morning and dresses in something not even a Mentor could afford on their own dime. Pearls drip down the dress and the fur feels as if luxury itself is giving her an embrace. Her impossibly high shoes, which with six-inch heels bring her to a grand total five and a half feet, click as she walks from her car the valet has parked to the elevator, and her five year-old son, on a leash and tended to by an Avox nanny, keeps the pace. She politely grins and waves at the few people between the curb and her workplace who tell her they saw her on TV last night.

Temple Stevens isn't fazed at all. She is the protective armor, fortified by wealth and fashion and charm, that no past can break down, no matter how many times it's regurgitated for the media.

However, for the sake of having something else to talk about when she gets to District Eight, she's had a gift for her Tributes (some of whom she hasn't even met!) installed in the Suite living room: a fondue fountain that, split into tiers, provides a constant stream of cheese, chocolate and bourbon, with Temple's favorite being the last one. It's not enough to keep burly men fed, but hopefully it'll cheer them up a little.

Throughout the day, Temple can be found letting her kid (who mostly sleeps and plays in Temple's private Mentor suite) sample bourbon-soaked angel-bread from the fountain, dropping little nuggets of wisdom like "I noticed when you make an Avox get down on all fours they have the same number of legs as a table - don't you think that means they were made to serve?" on anyone who wanders in, and very occasionally trying to order Sponsor gifts for the next Arena in between testing new pairs of shoes and trying out different earrings in the communal bathroom.

Comments

[dead_black_eyes]

He has no reply, on the subject of what Bailey's future holds and what's required of him by Temple's rigid and desperate expectations. The way he's shaping up, into the very portrait of a soft and spoiled Capitolite, Linden's sure that the Districter shaking and silent at Temple's core would be unhappy. Only the sparkling and hollow shell she dons like one of her dresses will smile at that shallow, easily distracted fascimile of happiness that lacks any true character or fulfillment.

He won't read their stories, hear their songs, and mourn the passing of their kin with any particularly deep thought. If, if Bailey was Linden's son, he would feel it hurting deep in his chest. But he's a nephew, and as such, it's not his to bear and he has to settle for a twinging ache.

He looks away from the pill coming out of her handbag. Even if he'll never flourish, the days when he would have asked for one are too close for comfort, and staring too long endangers his resolve.

"Because you're complicated," he answers, thinking of how horrendously uncomfortable his shoulder must be. He could stay here tonight, just like this, for hours, and feel like he was doing more good than sitting alone in his room in District 6's suite. A thin arm circles her shoulders, insubstantial but earnest reassurance and protection from the weight of all those problems and all that reality.

[clotting]

Temple at least doesn't offer Linden any of her sedatives. She learned that lesson well enough earlier today, even though the rage of the rebuke has been washed away in the soak of alcoholic haze. She doesn't seem to notice how bony his shoulder is, but slides to his lap anyway, not like two adults but like the teenagers they were arrested into for the rest of their lives. She looks up at him, eyes unfocused, and then settles in.

"I wish life were as easy as everyone here tries to make it," she whispers, falsies fluttering along her eyelashes. Her lower lip trembles as she takes a deep breath that smells of Linden's pants and the bourbon on her tongue. "Simple. It's like what they say about designs on the loom back home. The more complicated it is, the easier it is to make a mess of it."

[dead_black_eyes]

By this time, both their resolve and ability to hold up a front is worn out, faded and compromised. If she'd offered him a pill, he might not have been able to stay longer. As her red locks nestle into a lap that's only minimally more padded than his shoulder, his hand goes to her elbow, then smooths over her upper arm.

"You know," he says, absentmindedly stroking her skin with his thumb. "I'm not much one for embroidery, but what I do know the flaws pop out a lot more in the simpler designs. It's easier to see what's wrong with them. Those complicated, messy designs... for all most people know, unless they're looking really hard... it was always supposed to be that way. I don't suppose there's a saying that makes the point I'm attempting to in a conciser fashion... I'm so tired that I suspect I'm rambling."

[clotting]

"But the seamstress always knows where she mucked it up," Temple mutters, then shoves a hand down her bosom to pull a handkerchief from her bra, which she hasn't taken off even in her sheer nightgown. She crumples it in her hands and then flattens it against his bony knee.

"I haven't been able to stitch anything but birds since she died." The pattern is ornate, one of the most intricate Temple's done in a long time, a bird in a thousand colors with other fabrics stitched in. "Her life would have been complicated too. How could it be anything else? She was my daughter."

[dead_black_eyes]

His eyes follow her movements, startled at first and then softening when he realizes her intentions. Even though he's one of the people who doesn't always assume that Temple is going to be lewd and lascivious, it's still jarring sometimes when she isn't. Of course, the reason for it is clear enough once the handkerchief is laid across his leg.

"I've never seen this one," he says, staring at the exotic creature. "And for what it's worth, I don't see any mistakes, and even if I could, I can keep a seamstress's secrets. You know that better than anyone."

His hand moves to her hair, fingers winding and unwinding through her red curls. The gesture is fittingly chaste, more like soothing a child than teasing a lover. He wonders if his decision to stay or go has been made for him by the small woman using his presence to rest her collapsed body and her gutted grief.

[clotting]

"You don't have an eye for it. If I brought this to District Eight they'd laugh at how sloppy some of this is." It stings, to think of home. To think of how neither of them can ever go home, not really, not as members of the community but only as ambassadors for an experience they would not want to share. Maybe that's part of why she's burrowed so deeply into the guts of the Capitol, because the only other place for her is lonely and dry without even the creature comforts of luxury.

She traces her fingers over some of the thicker stitching, feeling the texture as intimately as if it were scar tissue along her arms, the heart carved into her thigh.

"You can't leave me, Linden," she says softly. "You can stop drinking, you can stay sober, that's fine, I won't hold that against you, but it can't just be me alone here, alright?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"'An eye' is overrated," Linden says quietly. "You can live a whole life, and a better one at that, without being able to see some flaws. And I'm sure there are people even in 8 who choose to overlook some things in favor of something realer and a little less perfect. At the very least, you can say this doesn't look machine-made."

Even if maybe Temple would prefer that, because the alternative is having her vulnerable humanity flayed open and raw in places that should be kind and gentle. There's an enormous range of different Victors, but almost invariably, they find a way to put distance between themselves and the weakness of humanity in some way. For Peggy it was lifting weights and building physical strength, for Linden it was a perfect game of chess and a numb body and mind. For Temple, it's appearing to be an inaccessible, elegant and aloof dream in an existence surrounded by demented waking nightmares.

He's silent for a long few seconds after her murmured plea. He has always had trouble saying no to Temple. "I want to stay," he answers sincerely. "I can tonight if you really want me to."

It isn't what she means, but he can stall by pretending that it is.

[clotting]

"You're sweet." She doesn't say he's right. She doesn't believe he is. And though she's good at agreeing to things she doesn't believe and then taking it a step further, conscripting herself into that ideology, she doesn't do that for Linden. Maybe that's love, or maybe it's the absence where love would be if she could feel it.

"I don't mean like that. I can't tonight. I just..." She's probably the one who would judge herself the most for being unable to, for lacking the capacity to trick herself for this night into believing she's never been hurt, for letting the memories ride in on every pulse of blood through her groin. But she doesn't realize that, doesn't see it, because what good is Temple Drake with shut legs and sobriety? "I just want to sleep. Stay with me until I sleep?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"Sweet" is the word he only hears from Temple's lips. Others don't see him that way, would find it absurd to even consider, but when she lies across his lap, soft and vulnerable and exhausted from a day of gaudy, cartoonish Capitolite aping, perhaps it's something she inherently manages to bring out in him. He knows that she won't agree with his reasoning, so he silently decides to let it go. It's no longer important.

Her answer to his offer makes him wonder if she assumed immediately that he was asking for the privilege of sex. Nothing could be further from his mind, and even if that wasn't the case... the idea of even trying to engage that way tonight is laughable. He's in the same place as Temple, actually, wanting to sleep, so tired after being out with Bailey and then waiting for Temple to wake up in the company of room-temperature cheese and crackers while the chocolate fondue grew an unappetizing, filmy skin.

He tries to keep from sighing, then he tries to keep from sighing too deeply. His eyelids want to close. His body is begging for a reprieve. He's hurting himself by forcing wakefulness at this point.

Giving it one second, he closes his eyes, pretends that he can take more. Then he opens them, and they sting with the effort.

"OK. I'll stay with you until you sleep," he agrees. He has a hard time saying no to Temple, so he reasons that he should save it for when he absolutely has to. He wants nothing more than to let his begging limbs sink into the oblivion of a comfortable mattress for a little while, but his will is still stronger. He doesn't have to, not yet.

[clotting]

She can feel the exhaustion in him. Few people are as attuned to bodies as Temple is. She used to be keen to the tiniest changes in posture or energy because these physical idioms telegraphed threats, but starting with danger, the human body became a Rosetta stone to her.

That's how she can tell how tired Linden is, and it cuts through the haze of drugs and alcohol that make her so heavy and stupid here and now.

She pulls Linden down beside her, with his skinniness and her diminutive size making the couch a tight but still comfortable fit for the two of them. She strokes his cheek. She rests her forehead against his.

"Thank you," she whispers. "Just sleep here with me."

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden wants to sleep more than he thinks he's ever wanted to come, he's that tired. Though he's surprised when she starts to pull him down so they're nestled snugly beside each other, he doesn't resist, sinking into the cushions. Their breath mingles as she whispers to him, and his is already even and shallow as she thanks him.

He can't ask about what's going to happen in the morning when Bailey wakes (hopefully without a headache) and wonders why his mother and Uncle Linden are sleeping closer than his mother and his father. He's beyond concern and reason and fear of consequence, and as his legs stretch out and twine with hers, he becomes officially comfortable enough to fall asleep long before Temple does.

[clotting]

She lingers in waking for a while, watching dreams play across his lips. They usually don't when he's drugged himself to sleep. She feels like an intruder, almost, as if she walked in on him relieving himself or showering, but she doesn't look away. For a while she is somehow too buoyant for the sedatives creeping through her system to free her of consciousness.

Before she succumbs, she gives Linden a kiss on the forehead and asks the Avox to bring them both a blanket.