I'm going to take you out, I don't feel like it's wrong

[cigne]

Who| Swann and open
What| Her worst nightmare: people are talking about her mom
Where| The lobby restaurant
When| Several nights before the Reaping
Warnings/Notes| nahhh

Swann's done her best to hide the fact that she's obviously overworked and hasn't been sleeping or eating properly; she never does when she's stressed out. But years of covering up the same behaviors have left her an expert in covering it with makeup, making herself look so flawless that you can barely even tell she's a real person, rather than a doll.

Not unless you get really close.

Hunger finally cracked her, though, and she decided to take a break from her work, heading downstairs to sit at the bar for dinner (it's... a side salad, and something pink with flowers floating in it as a drink). The bar stools are always high for her, their rungs an inch too low for her to reach with her feet, so they dangle idly as she eats, occasionally flicking through her phone to check for messages.

With all the Victor retrospectives and Tribute exposés, pretty much every station on television has gotten into doing "where are they now?"-style specials, highlighting everyone from politicians to models to famous animals.

It's been a while since the last Arena.

The screen nearest Swann at the bar is turned on one of the music-based stations, and the program keeps telling her that they're remembering Lost Divas!!!!. She's paying it little attention until she hears the familiar beginning of a song she's been hearing her whole life, and her blood runs cold as she looks up at the screen in horror to see someone who could be Swann herself, with a few minor tweaks in the face. The girl on screen is maybe five or six years younger, less curvy, and far taller than Swann, but otherwise, they could be fraternal twins.

"The bombshell known by the single name Viatrix had only one hit before her star faded too soon," the voiceover announces, "and now she only appears in public once in a blue moon. Let's trace her comet trail and find out more."

There's a freezeframe of Viatrix in the video, and it morphs into the last picture of her that Swann knows to have been taken in the Capitol, when she was home at Christmas. She'd only stayed for two days this time, left before it was even Christmas Eve.

The food sits forgotten on the bar.

Comments

[drinkupmehearties]

Besides the incidental rabid fan or obnoxious paparazzi, the lobby bar wasn't a completely horrible place for Jack to frequent. It's not the same rowdy, loud, chaotic mess that he's accustomed to -- and most days misses -- in taverns, but the alcohol is decent and it's better than being holed up in the Suites.

He's spotted Swann from somewhere further down the counter, and it's not until he's swaggered over to take a seat beside her, a neat rum clasped in one hand, that the tense body language and exhaustion on her face catches his notice.

His gaze follow hers up to the television, watching the program and images flash across the screen. Then Jack tilts the glass in the tv's direction, indicating. "Family, I take it?"

[cigne]

Well, if he wants chaos, the Capitol has many other clubs where everything is deafening and a lot of people are pressed close enough to transfer body glitter between them. Those places also have alcohol, although usually you get jostled enough that you spill half your drink before leaving the bar.

Swann can tell Jack's coming from thirty feet away, having become so accustomed to that particular swagger that she can sense its approach two floors before it ever reaches her. She's still stiff though, fixated on the screen, and her hands are shaking.

"Um..."She sounds distant, like she's still processing Jack's presence, and she speaks slowly as she turns her head toward him. "Kind of. Yes. I guess. What?"

[drinkupmehearties]

"Kind of?" His focus comes down, away from the television, and over to her. Her reaction, the way she speaks, draws a worried crease to his brow.

" ... What's amiss, luv? You're not actin' quite yourself."

[cigne]

The network has somehow acquired a picture of the Honeymead family, taken when Swann was still a toddler -- even her grandparents are there, posed with her mother and father. On the screen, she can't be more than two, still miniature, and she's held by her father, short and round and looking utterly joyful. Swann's mother is the tallest of the group, willowy and vacant-looking. But even from the single picture, it's clear that these are tremendously wealthy people, draped in fur and jewels and gold. Even tiny Swann is in a fur-trimmed dress that must have weighed twice what she did, a tiny diamond-studded crown pinned into silver blonde hair that was long even at that age.

She looks away from the image, like it's foul to see, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, kind of. She's my mother. That's my father, holding me. They're not... I don't even know how they got that picture, we don't even have it framed anywhere..."

[drinkupmehearties]

He finishes off the rest of his rum and sets the glass aside on the counter, only briefly glancing upwards to get a better view of the family picture. It's easy to sense the tension she has about the subject; he's well-versed in family troubles himself, has had plenty of his own in the past.

So Jack offers a plaintive, subdued smile. "Capitol always has it's ways, eh?" There's the temptation to come out with something snide, too, to say 'doesn't feel great to feel exposed like this, does it?', but instead the pirate thoughtfully scratches a couple fingers over his goatee.

"I'm guessin' you're not much on friendly terms with 'em? Or, at least, her?"

[cigne]

Swann has been exposed before, willingly subjected herself to the limelight in exchange for love, but it's an entirely different thing for her family to be involved, for the danger of damage to their name happening. And to the Capitol's credit, they do tend to focus more on relationships the Tributes have now than the ones in their home worlds (assuming those people aren't here too).

"Viatrix -- Mother lives in District Four, at a beach resort. Brightbee, your big Sponsor, he actually owns it. She prefers the climate there, so she only comes back for holidays, usually. Daddy lives here, at the Manor. He can't leave, not with the Games always running now, there's too much to do."

She sucks hard at the straw in her drink, making suction-y noises because there's barely anything left in the glass anyway.

"That's why it's so nasty of them to run this, and not even tell the story truthfully. He works so hard and they all owe their lives to us and this is how they repay us? It's just mean."

[drinkupmehearties]

"Doesn't sound very fair o' them to do that, no."

But it's struck him, now, that for all the many months that he's known Swann, Jack hasn't been able to glean much information about her personal life -- besides, of course, the tabloid pieces that focused on the occasional drama between her and Jason. Color him intrigued, then, when she mentions other Capitolites 'owing their lives' to her family.

"If I could ask, then, what's the true story? I'm afraid I know little to nothin' about your family, meself."

[cigne]

"The true story? It's nothing special, same as most people's, I guess. Daddy met Mother at a party, took her out, and then they got married a year or two later. He didn't... hound her or anything, they're making all that up. He sent her flowers with a note asking her to dinner."

If there is any more to it, Swann doesn't know about it, but she thinks she would have heard something in her thirty years of being in the family.

Her brow knits, and she looks like she doesn't exactly know how to respond. "I'm... a Honeymead," she says slowly, like she's explaining that the sky is blue. It's a query she's literally never had to answer before, because everyone just knows who she is, who her family is.

[drinkupmehearties]

"The lot of like to do that. Make things up, that is." Not that Swann didn't already know that, of course, but his tone is sympathetic. He knows it sucks, that it's frustrating.

Jack doesn't look impressed, however, when she throws the Honeymead name out. Instead, as the name means nearly nothing to him besides being connected to her, she receives a blank look. "I take it that means you're important, in some way? Your family?"

[cigne]

She can only furrow her brow more and make a confused humming noise, like she's trying to figure out how to explain. The TV screen is not being helpful at the moment, and so she turns to her purse, pulling out a copy of Celebrus (it's full of little color-coded tabs, for notes she's taken) and opening it to the page where they list all the editors and things like that.

At the bottom of the page, there's a logo, and if Jack's ever paid attention to any form of media credits, he's seen it often -- it shows up in movies, magazines, books, at the end of every television show. Swann points to it.

"Honeymead Media Holdings, that's my family's company. That's what we do, we make all the TV shows and stuff. Well, I mean, we make them through subsidiaries, but we oversee it all, and we're the link to President Snow. We've been doing it since before the Dark Days."

[drinkupmehearties]

Jack leans forward to get a better look. He's definitely seen the emblem in the past, plastered at the end of shows and the like, but has taken little note of it beyond that. He hadn't really realized that her family had such a pervasive hold over the Capitol's media -- Swann has always just simply been the dainty, perky, basket-giving District 8 Escort to him.

"Blimey, I hadn't known that. I imagine whoever decided to put on that -- " He indicates with a short nod towards the TV, " -- will rightly catch hell for it, then, eh?"

[cigne]

"Mm, yeah. Daddy's going to be angry." She says it delicately, not much differently than she regularly speaks, but she knows the truth and so do many Capitolites; whatever executive made the poor choice to air this programming will, at the very least, never work in this city again. More likely, they'll never be seen in this city again.

They wouldn't be the first person Swann's known to just up and disappear after upsetting her father.

"But that's what we do." She perks up suddenly, smiling. "I used to have TV shows, and I wrote a book, and of course my mother was in music. I'll have to run the whole company some day, but I figure I'd rather do something else until then."

[drinkupmehearties]

With a family linked to Snow and so expansively connected to the rest of the Capitol, Jack could almost take a good guess at the fate of whoever's done this without her outright saying it.

The blunt shift in demeanor is welcome, at any rate, and Jack's brow lifts. "Running the whole company, bloody hell. That's a fair bit of responsibility. I don't envy you in that at all." But an intrigued smile perks at his mouth. "What sort of shows?"

[cigne]

Swann keeps smiling, even when she gets that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she always gets when she thinks about taking control of the company. She's never wanted it in her life, and she doesn't get a choice in the matter, because the Honeymead company stays in Honeymead hands -- the best she'll ever be able to do is marry the right man and let him take it over, once he's part of the family.

It makes her throat burn.

"Oh! Well, first I did segments about fashion on a tabloid show, and then I had a whole show about just fashion and stuff like that. I used to go to District Eight, you know, the factories. Then I had my own talk show, I interviewed people? Celebrities and politicians, and we had makeover episodes sometimes, other fun things." She does seem genuinely happier talking about this than she does most things. "I was on for about four years, five days a week."