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

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

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.

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Even the mob has something of an insistence on safeguarding wives and mothers from the public eye and the shady business, so Firo thinks he understands where this is coming from.

"He's the kind to take this stuff personally, huh? What's she gonna think about it?"

If anything, he feels the worst for the poor woman having her life paraded around on the screen, Capitolite or not. The plain enough signs that the diva could be more a participant than a victim are lost on him.

Swann shrugs as her drink is delivered. "She's out in Four right now, so she probably won't see it until later, but she's not going to be happy. She doesn't like the press to talk about her at all."

For good reason, considering all the unproven rumors swirling around her, mostly hushed up but there all the same, about why a woman might basically abandon her family to go live on the beach by herself.

Head tilting back, Swann downs the entire glass in a gulp. "He's gonna shut this whole channel down," she sighs, looking at the screen blankly. "At least until it can be restaffed. I hope he doesn't just play Trish's stupid Tribute songs back to back until then."

Firo looks out over the crowd in the rest of the bar as she talks, paying attention to the words even as his eyes wander.

If she's telling the truth, he figures the problem's pretty well fixed, assuming there are also some kneecaps being broken behind the scenes. Retribution heals all wounds.

"He's a bigshot here?" Or just has an open wallet and a sensitive ego, which Firo thinks of as a bit of a different thing. But it's less rude to ask about the first type.

There's a moment where Swann's look of despondence gives way to pure confusion and she stares at Firo, as if she needs to fully process the question. She's never in her life not had someone just know her father, her family name, the history. Literally, her family's history in Panem is printed in textbooks, and only partially because the Honeymeads are the ones printing them.

"You don't... don't you know?" she asks slowly, brow knitted, furrowed. "My family, well, just my father now... I mean... we kind of... make all the media in Panem, we always have. I'm sure you've seen it in the credits of things, movies and TV shows. Before the Capitol TV screen? The HMH symbol, that gear-looking thing, that's... ours. Honeymead Media Holdings."

Her speech is stilted because she's never had to explain it before, barely knows how to. It's difficult to fully express this power she was born into, that she never asked for or wanted, to convey the fact that everything Panem knows comes from President Snow and then gets filtered through her family's fingers until it reaches every corner of the nation.

"I mean, the logo didn't always look like that, a lot of books have the older ones, but they always say HMH," she quickly adds, as if it's helpful or clarifies anything.

He raises an eyebrow at her, arms held out in an exaggerated shrug. For all his time here, he hasn't exactly been steeping himself in the culture. "Who watches the credits?"

However unnatural it sounds, he listens to the explanation, glancing at the symbol when she indicates it. "So it's like Johnson and Johnson or somethin', just with movies and all that." Massive corporations aren't a very odd thing where he's from, even after the antitrust laws. That someone like Snow would let anyone else get their fingers in so many pies is strange, but he's not sure how to ask about that without getting his tongue ripped out.

He'll think about it. Phil and Roland have both been teaching him that there are ways to make your prying, dangerous questions sound pretty. Casually, even though he's mulling that other curiosity over in the back of his mind, he asks. "How come you don't work for 'em? If it's the family business and all."

Firo can't imagine choosing not to work with your family, though he knows not everyone lucked out in having a family like his.

"Well, no, I just figured you'd have seen it somewhere." Like in a magazine or book, but then again, Swann's never dug enough into Firo's hobbies to know if he actually reads. She winces, not liking how self-aware that sentence sounded.

She has no idea what a Johnson and Johnson is, and she would never rip his tongue out, but she does know how her family's company came to be, came to such power: it's easier to have one small, trustworthy group know your secrets than it is to control a large variety. It's the same reason that all the same families work in politics, in Snow's cabinet, in every powerful facet of the country. If the Honeymeads (or the Reagans or any other family) start getting out of hand, they can simply be taken out and a new group installed in their place, moved up the ladder, leaving everything the same except the name on the company. It's what Capitolites live for.

"Oh, well, I used to," she says, brow knitting back up. "I used to have my own TV shows, two of them. But I did that on my own."

His response on that matter is to shrug again--logos are the realm of legitimate business, not his.

But speaking of things that aren't his business... "Huh. So you didn't wanna work with 'em or what?" Only once it's out of his mouth does he realize how nosy that sounds. By way of explanation, he adds, "Pretty much everybody I know works with their family, if they've still got it."

That the people covered by that umbrella number about four is, he thinks, irrelevant.

"No, that's not it," she says, shaking her head. "Just... TV shows end, you know? Mine ended and there isn't anything else at the company that I wanted to do yet, so I got certified and became an Escort. And in a way, it's kind of like a role in the company, since we edit and broadcast all the Games footage and interviews, and we publish the advertisements and stuff. So I do still work there, kind of."

She takes a sip of her drink.

"But a lot of companies get handed down through family here, or else people tend to follow their family into career paths. Even out in the Districts, like if someone owns the town bakery, probably everyone in their family will own it and work there forever."

"But not right alongside 'em." It's not quite the same to him, being picky in these matters.

The way she describes it almost makes it sound like home. The similarity should make him happy, he would've thought, but he only frowns. "I guess that's one thing that never changes, no matter where you are. The people you rely on, I mean."

"Well, I was never right alongside him. Daddy's the president of the company, he only really directly works with the board of executives and his assistants. And that's not what I wanted for myself."

She nods, looks blankly up at the screen again. "Isn't that what family's for? To be there for you when you need them?" It's a funny statement for her to say while looking at her mother's face, a woman she sees in person maybe twice a year, who she hasn't lived with since infancy.

As he surveys the drinks behind the bar, Firo smiles without a hint of irony; here is something they can agree on. "Yeah. And for you to be there for them," he adds firmly. That's even more important, really. "Anything else and it's not family at all--just relatives or something like that."

The semantics isn't something he thinks on too much, but there's definitely an implied difference in his mind.

"Exactly."

She understands perfectly what he means, because she's lived a whole life having to deal with the neuroses surrounding the fact that the two definitions are so close and yet so far away. Coping with having the people who are supposed to be the most dependable not being that dependable at all.

"Would you like something, Firo? I'll pay."

Who knows how many other things they’ll find themselves agreeing on—and it’s rare anyway for Firo to get such agreement on this topic—so he’s beaming when she affirms.

But pride is a delicate little thing, and he turns away as soon as she offers, frowning like a wet cat. “I’ll get it myself. You don’t have to do everything for us, you know.”

Well-meaning it may be, the help is unfamiliar to him, and he can’t find it wholly pleasant. If his experiences were different, he’d compare it to being a kid again; as it is, his main frame of reference for such handouts is Alcatraz.

Swann blinks and frowns, terribly confused by the sudden change of tone, and she just looks at the back of his head for a minute. "I wasn't trying... I was just offering."

Her voice is quiet and she immediately withdraws into herself, folding her hands in her lap as if to make herself as small as possible. "I'm sorry. I guess I'll see you later then."

He turns around with an impatient sigh, eyebrows scrunched together. "I'm not mad, you know, I was just sayin'." Well, maybe he is a little bit. A lot bit. But, if anything, there's only a very small portion of it that has to do with her, and he's slowly realizing that he just might want to make that fact apparent at some point.

Nothing about their previous interactions or her reaction suggests that she's open to some unsolicited, ill-advised life advice. That's never stopped Firo, though, and he decides to share some when he sees her all shrunken up like that. Maybe it'll make him feel less guilty. "And you shouldn't let people know when they bother you, or else most people'll keep doin' it."

"It's only you offworlders, really," she says, brow knit as she looks at him. She wields too much power for most Capitolites to dare, and Capitolites are generally a rather genial bunch anyway, considering they do little but party and titter over fashion and harmless gossip. They're not as inclined to be sharp and mean just because they can.

"I'm sorry that people don't over to buy each other drinks in your world. It must be very unfriendly there."

He looks back, wondering if that's bait. Considering that it's her, probably not--and either way, it's not smart to let on that the remark bothers him.

He shrugs. "They do sometimes, but only if they're a creep or if they want something from you. ...Or if you're really good friends. Most people are assholes, but the ones who aren't are great."

"I spend all my time trying to support you and the others, and it surprises you that I'd offer you a drink?" She doesn't know how he can be suspicious of her after all this time, after everything she's done to try and help him, his Districtmates. Can't he tell that she's genuine?

"I suppose that makes me an asshole, then."

"You're doin' your job with all that. This isn't part of your job." He bites his tongue to keep from insisting that he never asks for her help either, because Phil's at least managed to teach him how stupid it is to do that. Stupid and mean, but Firo hasn't quite realized that second part.

"I was talkin' about people back home with that..." Kind of a weak excuse at this point, though. "If it makes you feel better, you couldn't be the worst asshole I've met. Like, at the place I was before, sometimes the guards would shoot off their guns in the middle a’ the night just to bother you. You don’t do stuff like that.”

That should comfort her, right?

She snorts, rubbing at her chin for a moment. "You really think all that stuff I do is part of my job?" she asks, and the expression on her face is full of almost nothing but disbelief that he could believe the gift baskets and baked goods and stocking the Suite on her own dime was just work. "Maybe you should ask Temple about her Escort someday."

"No, I'm a step up from that, I guess. Must be so hard for you, someone offering you a drink and taking care of you and pulling strings to make sure that the worst thing you have to deal with is photoshoots." She scoffs, blinks back some tears. Firo has no idea, doesn't know anything about her sleepless nights while they're in the Arena, how she plans meticulously and keeps notebooks full of information to help him and the others.

And she's realizing, more and more, that he doesn't care. That maybe the offworlders really are as self-centered and hateful as Jason always tells her.

He shrugs. "Fine. But nobody asked you to do all that, so don't get snippy with me." He doesn't know about Temple's Escort and doesn't intend to find out. Somebody as awful as most of the rest of the people, he assumes; he knows that not everyone is as outright pleasant as Swann, but that does nothing to make him more comfortable.

Catching a glimpse of those tears makes him feel guilty, much as he tries to brush it aside. That's her problem--nothing to do with him, right? He closes his eyes, tilting his face up to the ceiling in a gesture that's supposed to be casual. "There's no point in gettin' all worked up about it. Why don't you just come out and say what you want in return for all that, huh?"

"What do you mean?" she asks, and she looks confused. "I want one of you to win, but I'm not... blackmailing you or something. I like doing things for people, don't you have friendly people where you're from? I'm happy when you guys are happy, and if you're happy, comfortable, maybe you'll have a better shot in the Arena."

Swann rakes a hand through her hair, scoffs a little bit. "You really think anyone takes this job just to screw with you guys? Being an Escort is thankless and we might as well be servants, for what we get paid. Before, at least it was only once a year, a month of frenzy at most. Now... it's all the time, so the only people left doing this are the ones who want to."

And Jason.

To his credit, he does try not to laugh at her final comments. And being wholly confused by the previous stuff she said helps, so only a smirk comes out. "Servants?"

Come to think of it, he doesn't know what they get paid. But looking at the way she lives, he's not too willing to listen to her concerns about money, however merited.

"You never seem like you're enjoyin' it when I see you." The time when she was crying on the couch and eating jelly beans comes to mind.

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