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

[whittlingnickels]

"No one can every tell ya to be the socialite you once were, Swannie, an' I gotta say if Ilar's not proud of his baby girl runnin' a district like she has, he an' I are gonna have a talk about tha'," Gus chuckled, "It ain't right to have ya cooped up in tha' tower."

The dessert under the stars looks just as it would in those long discarded memories, a soft light to help the two Capitolites find their way here as soon as they arrived. No Avoxes, no assistants, just them and the heavens above. Their earlier meeting made Augustus sit up right at how cunning Honeymead could be, there wasn't a doubt that she had the guts and the drive to get what she wanted. Underneath the fair doll-like skin, there was a shrewd businesswoman and Sinclair almost believed that she sometimes feigned ignorance just so people would underestimate her.

Carefully, Gus led her into the kitschy plaid mat on the floor, "I haven't had one of these since I was six."

[cigne]

"I probably couldn't go back to that without dying anyway." Not just from the drugs and drinking and partying, which are par for the course for half the Capitol anyway, but from the stress and the people, the time she spent being pushed around and abused in every way, because when you have everything material in the world, the only thing left to get is the love of others, no matter the cost.

She lets herself be lead again, sits down on the blanket with her skirt settling around her, engulfing her folded legs. "Jason taught me to fly a kite, and we took a picnic, but before that, it was only when I was little. I used to go out in the garden with my dolls and my Avox, and once Daddy came out too. For tea." Of course, Swann had tea parties with heirloom china in a garden tended to by the same people who care for botanical gardens -- it's not on par at all with what most people think of for children.

Most little girls don't have their own gazebo draped in wisteria and honeysuckle, surrounded by every color of hydrangea, just to occasionally play in.

"I don't know what else I'd do if I wasn't always in the tower. It seems like it's either there or home. At least there are other people in the tower."

[whittlingnickels]

"Well, lookit that, Jason's got himself a tender spot for you. Not every day you hear a Compson take a loved one and have fun." Swann and Augustus had one thing in common besides their citizenship: the drive to be recognized by others. While Swann pursued love, Gus sought out respect and power, both going through great lengths and into the fickle void that was the Capitol. To make his family name mean more than the past decades of servitude...and even then, he could feel those old eyes judging him like he was on the same level as a damn Avox.

She was of the elite, and her heart, while well-meaning, was as fragile as the tea sets she played with. No more was this evident by the sheer exhaustion she displayed now. "Your daddy's lockin' himself up in there, in the office again?" Augustus shook his head and served her some of the wine picked out for her. "And your mother, well, here we are."

[cigne]

She smiles a little, almost sheepishly. "He owed me a kite, from when we were kids. He used to make and sell them but he wouldn't make one for me." That was the day they stopped being 'just friends', the day they figured out that there was something else there, and it took all of that because they were both being so willfully dense about it.

Swann isn't old enough to remember the Sinclair name before Gus, and even if she was, the Honeymeads are a bit more friendly to new money and power than many of the old families are -- working in media demands the ability to deal with those who have suddenly found fame and fortune, who have enough talent to catapult themselves past just their last name and birth station. Either way, both Swann and Ilar know well enough who to keep in their pockets, and Gus is one of them.

"He has to," she says, taking a slow drink from her glass. "There's always so much to do now, specials and interviews and Games footage. Everyone else's shows getting pre-empted every few months. He spent a whole quarter doing nothing but renegotiating contracts to deal with that."

Regardless of how Swann may have felt about the old Games, it's clear that she resents the new Games for doing this to her father. She's young and can handle this, but her daddy's heart doesn't need the extra stress.

[whittlingnickels]

"Now you've made me picture you both as little kids, runnin' around in your best," Gus chuckled as he took a sip from his drink, "I'll definitely put in some money in District 7 if Jason's word is that reliable that he'd remember a childhood promise." That and he knows it would make Swann even more relaxed and willing to take a break.

The friendliness of the old families to the new was a fact that Sinclair never forgot, hence their business deals to District 8. The Honeymeads were a name that you sat up straighter, dressed better and held in a regard higher than your own morals if you had to.

"You an' Ilar are cut from the same cloth, I hafta say. Workin' yourselves to the bone and doin' your damnedest you win. At this rate, Snow's the only one who'll get him to slow down."

And that was even less likely.

[cigne]

She doesn't correct his image, doesn't tell him what a miserable child Jason was and how mean he was to her, how he wouldn't make her a kite because she wanted a pink one. How she suspects he only made the kite and taught her to fly it as an adult because he was already a little bit in love with her without even knowing it. It's more important that Jason get money for his Tributes.

"I can't imagine what other cloth I'd be cut from." Swann takes another drink and finishes the glass of wine, though she sort of just idly holds it. "President Snow probably couldn't stop him either. Daddy thinks hard work is best thing a man can do."

Of course, her ideas of hard work and her image of President Snow are different than even many Capitolites'; no Honeymead has actually done labor in generations, but they've all attacked their careers with shark-like focus and intensity. And Swann knows Snow is the President, almost mythlike, but her mental image of him is frozen back when they were all younger, when his hair had color and he came to Honeymead holiday parties that her grandfather was still alive to attend. He gave her dolls, beautiful porcelain ones, and always hugged her, leaving her dress smelling like roses.

"I like working, anyway. When I didn't have a job, I just made things all day."

[whittlingnickels]

"Maybe it's time you try and make something with your stress," Augustus suggested, "Or walk your babies around. Because that Tower?" he pointed to the imposing structure that loomed over the Capitol along with the many buildings that dotted the skyline, "That Tower will drain you an' you're living life now, an' with someone that is making you happy, right? Right."

The venture capitalist shot a smile towards Swann, "When even the President can't him to stop, you know he's overworked. You're the apple in Ilar's eye, an' when he passes his holdings to you, he knows he's puttin' them in good hands. But at this rate, it'll be sooner than later."

With Caroline Compson's death, it became clear that the old guard were getting on their years and try as they might, they couldn't live forever.

[cigne]

"They get walked," she mutters, only slightly indignant, and offers him her glass to refill. "I know what you mean, but... Gus, I can't just do less. I know a lot of people don't care, but the Tributes need help. They need me. If I worked less hours, it would just mean more things going undone, not less to do." Her whole forehead is knit with thought. "No one else in the world needs me like they do, and it's... you know, it's nice that someone does. I prefer that, I think, to not having anyone."

Sinclair is smiling at her but she only blanches when mentioned her getting the company. "He won't pass anything on until I either tell him I want the company, or until I marry someone he thinks should be running it." She laughs a little, and it's maybe a bit bitter. "Feel free to place bets on either option, but he'll figure out a way to live forever and keep working if I don't choose."

[whittlingnickels]

Gus remembered a time he would consider marrying Swann to get to the Honeymead Media Holdings but there really was no way to win over her heart now that it's dead set on Jason Compson. But this obsession? This needed to be nipped in the bud, "I ain't tellin' ya to work less, but I am warnin' you tha' you're pushing yourself to a limit that-" he pauses to refill her glass, "Tha' goes above an' beyond wha' the other Escorts do."

And that's a fact. "If those Tributes do care about you," and with those incentives, they will, "They can help back. I've already talked to Temple about their regimen."

Yep, that happened.

"She's gonna pitch in to help."

That last part about Ilar becoming immortal for the sake of keeping the company, "Yeah no, he ain't givin' that company over, though I'm pretty damn sure that you've proven you can wrangle hard situations."

[cigne]

Honestly, if push came to shove and her father forced the issue, she'd marry Gus in a heartbeat and let him have the company. She doesn't want it, and what's another old name marriage done for politics instead of love? Have enough money and power, and it doesn't matter where you spend your nights as long as you have the right person's ring on your finger.

"I know that, of course I know that I do more than the other Escorts." She frowns as she takes another long drink. "What am I going to do with free time anyway, assuming I did less work? I'd probably just lie in bed and think about all the stuff I'm not getting done for them. The boys tell me to stop doing so much, but what do they know? They're happy to take every gift and contract I get them. I'm overseeing construction on a pirate ship, Gus. Brightbee is giving Jack a ship, and who else could make sure it's a perfect, miniature replica of the real one?"

But Swann blanches when he brings up Temple. "When did you talk to Temple, Gus? What did she say? She's not going to do anything, she can't. She can barely read and write, and she can't keep a preschooler sober, let alone six grown men, at least one of whom I'm pretty sure she's sleeping with but that's not illegal and I can't stop her even though I've tried, oh my god I have to see if there are any other Victors, why can't I just get rid of her?"

The rambling stops only when she downs the rest of her glass of wine, and it's easy to see why this is what she turned to when she was younger and overwhelmed with fame. She looks like she might cry a little, because life was so much easier before Temple came to the Tower. Now, instead of six Tributes, it's like having seven.

Or six and a really horny, drunk monkey.

She doesn't give him her glass this time, just reaches for the bottle herself, though she's already starting to flush from the mix of alcohol, her tiny size, and the fact that she so rarely eats more than a bite or two of food.

[whittlingnickels]

The way Swann swooped in for the bottle and drank it as if she were in the same league as Temple Stevens caused enough of a surprise in Sinclair to watch in stunned silence. It's a few parts of a second that he replies, "That day you were nappin' I'm afraid an' she had that ridiculous chocolate fountain out. Though by the state I found Bailey...you have a point."

He gently took the bottle away from the already inebriated Escort, and corked it for good measure.

"I gave her a warnin' though: she fucks up, it's on her not you. I invested on Eight because of your good word an' your track record. But if she says she can produce a winner, I am holdin' her an' Gowan accountable for it."

That was the ultimatum Sinclair imposed on Temple, "She showboated that the District just needed a competent Mentor, so she'd better be."

[cigne]

She gets probably a good quarter of what's left in the bottle down before he takes it from her, which she doesn't fight the way Temple might. Swann just pouts and looks at him, her gaze only very slightly unfocused.

"Yeah, but what do you think she's going to do? Gus, you know what happened to her in her own Arena, her advice basically boils down to "don't die" and "hope you're lucky". I tried to tell her once that she must have more, that she used some of her own brains in that horrible Arena, and she shut down on me. She's detached from reality."

There's a cracker tray near enough to her, and Swann grabs one to nibble at a corner before tossing it back on the plate. "She can't even stick to a simple fib. She was supposed to tell you that I was in a meeting, not that I was taking a nap. But don't... don't punish Gowan. It's punishment enough that he's married to a Districter, isn't it? And that it's Temple."

Pouty and with her stomach churning miserably (alcohol is always a bad choice when you have ulcers and acid problems), Swann does what she always does, what she's spent a lifetime being trained to do, however unintentionally: she seeks comfort and babying, moving to Sinclair's side and curling up under his arm, head on his shoulder. There are few people that she won't just cuddle up against, having been treated very much the same by everyone her whole life -- she just expects that everyone will coddle her and tell her it'll be all right and placate her until she feels better. Her father, her nannies, her Avox, every boyfriend and friend, it's all the same treatment.

She doesn't expect Augustus to be any different, particularly not while she's impaired. Being drunk has never made anyone else treat her less like a huffy little girl.

[whittlingnickels]

Swann's instincts would be right on the money, because Sinclair opens his arms for her and lets her cuddle against him. Drunk or not, this tiny platinum haired woman wasn't going to be left out in the cold like some District whore. Speaking of...

"True, and she may be your coworker, but the woman's as smart an' alive as a mannequin," he added to the little barrage of insults directed at the woman who would be his temporary employee. All that nastiness would come in spades if Temple broke their deal. "But Mrs. Stevens needs to learn a lesson in gettin' back on this planet if you're gonna get any help. If there's one thing I absolutely despise, is people workin' on one of my projects that don't pull their weight. You're doing the lion's share from what it seems."

And that's totally not a Capitol bias here, nope.

[cigne]

She wraps her arms around him and nods, jerking for a moment as she hiccups uncomfortably. It's never been a problem for her to very neatly fit against the side of practically everyone she's ever known, and Sinclair is no exception -- if anything, there's extra room, with him being the tallest person she's curled up to in a while. Swann can feel her heart beating in her ribs from being drunk and upset, and she buries her face against his shoulder.

"At least mannequins do what you want them to," she mumbles, but everything else he says is nothing she can argue or demur from, because even an active Rebel would have to admit that Swann is doing more than her share of the work in District Eight. That she was doing all the world, because Temple considers giving the Tributes chocolate and alcohol to be 'doing her job', that even when she does part of the job (buttering up someone, probably on her back), she expects Swann to do the rest (talk to her father and his employees, figure out and put together TV spots and commercials).

"I'm just... so tired," she says slowly, sadly, and it's hard for Capitolites to admit that they're tired from work, actually tired rather than just making a show of it for peoples' attention and special treatment. They shouldn't be working hard enough to get tired, not unless you happened to be President Snow or the Gamemakers during an Arena (even in the Capitol, some things are inevitable), and throwing yourself into something that isn't partying, it's just not what's in their blood.

[whittlingnickels]

It's that admission that Augustus concedes and lets her rest wherever she needs to fall. Escort or not, Swann has been working to the point that even a workaholic like Gus is raising eyebrows. "Promise me one thing, sugar," he murmured, "Promise me you're gonna take a break come the next Arena. You're too young to be collapsin' like some overstimulated dog. Your name should not be in a rag magazine..."

And those rags would be destroyed if Ilar had his way.

[cigne]

Letting out a long breath, Swann nods a little and closes her eyes. It's harder and harder to sleep ever since Jason became obsessed with spending every night in his empty, withering house, and at this point, even just having another body close by is soothing enough to let her relax a little.

"It'll be better now," she sighs. "Jack and Rick are completely set, and the other three have a good pool between them. Plus I have you now. I don't have to spend every waking moment begging for more assi, I can actually sit and do what I need to. Try to sleep."

[whittlingnickels]

Gus lets out a chuckle, rich like a fine glass of bourbon before he whispers, "All you had to do was ask, sugar."

Swann is drunk and sleep-deprived and Jason? Nowhere to be found unless you went to the Compson manor. Great. It's with this exasperation that Sinclair believes the other Capitolite is either hung up on his past mommy issues or taking Honeymead for granted. There were plenty of ways to exploit that lack of affection Jason is giving off but even a venture capitolist like Sinclair wouldn't take THAT bait.

He'll be there in the good and the bad, in case the crash and burn happens.

"Let's get you back in the Tower for good measure. An' you're sleepin' in, sponsor's orders."

[cigne]

There's a moment where she hovers between being awake and asleep, but then she parses what he's said, and shakes her head, frowning. "I don't want to go to the Tower," she mutters. If she goes back to the Suite, it's just another night alone, where she'll wake up after an hour and then lie in the dark, crying probably. And besides, there's no one to explain things to at her place, no one to ask questions about her mother. "I want to go home, I want Eta."

She doesn't explain, and she's too tired and drunk to care whether Augustus is someone who's heard the closed-door rumors of her odd relationship to an Avox, that her father's enabled her whole life and protected her from the consequences of.

Swann does not move.

[whittlingnickels]

Sinclair doesn't question why Swann would want Eta, simply because he connects it to a child wanting a teddy bear, a comforting object that people grow out of eventually. The rumors are cute but he uses that as the same reason he keeps Delta close by, a loyal dog that should he turn rabid...well, there's always a gun in Gus's office.

"Let's getcha home then," he whispered into her ear as he gently picked up the tiny escort. "You wake up tomorrow, this never really happened. Just a bad dream brought on by stress." He can picture Ilar's reaction to everything that happened to his little porcelain princess.

[cigne]

He picks her up and she sighs, clutching at his jacket still around her, breathing in the smell of his shirt as her head rolls to rest on his arm. She already knows what's happening with her father, that there are network heads being called into Honeymead Manor from every other corner of the Capitol, so that Ilar can destroy them on his own turf, in one of his big, intimidating offices. Damage control will be delegated to the trusted and the capable, consequences doled out to the ones who let this happen. At least one of them won't be seen around the Capitol anymore.

He won't ever yell. He doesn't have to.

"Thank you, Gus." It slips out of her like a breath, almost lost in his shirt. Her feet dangle and bounce as they move, and she drifts between asleep and awake, never bothering to open her eyes.