whatisay: (Basic - Sprawl)
Jason Compson IV ([personal profile] whatisay) wrote2015-04-07 06:55 pm
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PSL: Quentin's Funeral

Capitol funerals are oleaginous with wealth. Today they assemble to commemorate Quentin Compson not just with tears, but with commissioned oil paintings, fireworks, an orchestra playing some lugubrious dirge, with wines ages two hundred years and flowers genetically engineered to have the deceased's initials appearing naturally on each petal. The young man's body is no longer a matter of sodden, lifeless flesh but ash compressed into a shimmering jewel, set at the middle of a wreath of designer oleander at the base of a portrait picturing him more present than any who knew him ever saw him. The painted eyes look aware, like they're taking in every detail around them, while in life Quentin always seemed a step out of time, thinking of something else, half-listening to the conversation.

Jason, fifteen years old, hasn't seen his father sober since the older Jason went to identify the wax-white, water-bloated corpse in the mortuary. This Jason, in a new suit with a tag on the back of his shirt that itches his neck, had stayed home with his mother, listening to her mewl about how could this happen to her, how could Quentin have done this to her. He'd expected to feel something when his father came home, either relief or grief, because everyone was supposed to feel something when a sibling died, but the only emotion that had surfaced was a strange sort of unease that he'd quickly choked off with disgust that his father didn't even bother to come straight home, and instead arrived drunk.

"Did you drive like that?" Caroline had asked. "Did you want me to have to identify a body today too?"

The older Jason's drunk at the funeral, too, trying his best to stand still and not sway next to his black-clad wife and eight-months-pregnant daughter and her new husband. Benjamin's been left home; his crying would be "upsetting". Uncle Maury's had a few too; Jason's starting to suspect that maybe he's the only sober one, sharing company with Caddy's fetus. When the eulogy ends, having described a person Jason's certain never actually existed, there's a reception with pay-per-plate seating and photographers and fireworks in the background.

His mother pretends to faint from crying, although her face is dry, and calls for Jason, her 'last remaining son', to come help her. Jason slips outside just out of her eyesight, not wanting to engage, hoping she just assumes he didn't see or hear her while Maury props her back up. He heads round the back, slouching on a bench in sight of the parking lot, reconnoitering every half hour or so to see if things have died down. His nose, fresh from a rhinoplasty, is straight now, but there are fading bruises under each eye, covered by slight makeup. He undoes his tie and unbuttons his jacket, then finally just flings the latter off onto the lawn somewhere.

At some point his father goes to a microphone and starts rambling about the nature of time and his daughter's wedding and then Jason's just done, incapable of anything but disgust with everything here.

He heads back to the bench and picks up some pebbles, chucking them at the pigeons just to see if the birds will fly away.
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-08 04:25 am (UTC)(link)
"I just don't think it's very nice to run around and play games at a funeral. Besides, Cyrus never lets Stephen play alone."

Cyrus is too old and too serious now, not inclined to spend time with the smaller children but not willing to let Stephen go his own way, either.

Swann watches after Jason, the toes of her shoes idly tapping each other, and folds her hands in her lap, as she's been taught to do when she doesn't have anything else to occupy them.

"It isn't very nice of you, to throw rocks at the birds. They didn't do anything."
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-08 02:29 pm (UTC)(link)
It takes her a moment to get up in her giant dress, but she manages and leaves her doll in the grass to rush over to him and... well, she can't do very much, because he has five years and nearly two feet on her, but she intends to defend these pigeons that she didn't even really care about until he started being mean to them.

"Stop it! Leave them alone, they're just birds!" She sounds a bit like she might cry, and in lieu of being able to stop Jason, she runs toward the birds to scare them away to safety.

When she turns back to him, she's teary-eyed. "You're being so mean, Jason. It's only one day for you, but Quentin fell down and now he'll be gone forever. He would be sad for you!"

She's too young to have heard the truth, anything but a simplified tale of a boy who fell in a river and drowned.
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-08 10:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Swann looks back at him for a moment, at that hate and anger, then flops back down in the grass and starts crying, her fall cushioned by the mass of fabric. She wipes her eyes with her hands, and it becomes clear that not only has she been dressed as an adult, she's had makeup applied too, makeup that smears when she rubs, erasing the little porcelain doll look that someone took all that time to create.

"You're so mean!" she repeats, bawling and sniffling. "Why can't you be any nicer?"
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 01:27 am (UTC)(link)
She didn't even want to come here. She wanted to stay home with Eta and make cookies and play with her new dollhouse, and yet here she is, being treated like it's her fault that someone she barely knew died, that Jason is angry.

"I didn't do it!" Swann rips up handfuls of grass in her tantrum, fear and sadness and unhappiness and anger all mixed together. "I never did anything to you! Didn't... didn't anyone teach you manners, Jason Compson?!"
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
She sniffles and whimpers and sits there for a while longer, until she's not crying as much anymore, then gets back up and shuffles to her doll, her skirt tripping her up once on the walk. She collects her doll and her gloves and sits back down to where she had been initially, a few yards from Jason.

"Quentin was nice. Caddy is nice. Only you're mean, so it's you, not your family."

Swann isn't looking at him, her gaze instead fixed on her doll, where she's carefully weaving the little yellow flowers into the blonde fake hair.
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 04:36 am (UTC)(link)
"Quentin was still nice before," she tells him. She doesn't know what 'slut' means, and so it's hard to have a retort, but it doesn't change the fact that Caddy is nice, always has been.

He's quiet for long enough that she dares to peek back over at him with a frown. She knows that face, the way his eyelids are pushed together just a little too hard, the way his lips press closed too tightly and narrow. She knows it because she has it herself, often, but also because she's seen it on other people, on grown-ups. On her father, during her mother's rare visits back home, after they yell in his office and then her mother stomps away to a different wing of the house.

That look makes her stomach churn, and so she can only do the same thing she does for her father: she moves to sit at Jason's feet. Though she usually puts her head on her father's knee, she doesn't dare touch Jason, just sits close and speaks quietly.

"It's okay."
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
She turns her head and looks up at him, seems to see through his expression like she'd see through a pane of glass. Her face is calm and placid now, serene even, and she blinks.

"My grandpa died."

It's the closest she's been to a death in her life, but she was six and left away from the funeral, put in a room with Eta to watch her. She was kept away from even the other children, treated like a little doll in mourning, brought out only to be held by her father so that he could show how sad they all were.

It took a while before anyone bothered to actually explain to her that Grandpa Honeymead wasn't coming back.

"Even if... even if Quentin did do that to himself, he was... he was just sad. You have to be sad to do that. It's not anyone's fault, so it'll be okay later. People don't hurt forever when they lose other people."
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 06:09 am (UTC)(link)
Her head cocks a bit to the side. Even this young, she understands some of the different politics and standings between the families of their circle, but she doesn't understand enough to see how this would make the Compsons persona non grata. Of course, she also doesn't know about the rushed wedding, the vaguely suspicious circumstances, doesn't understand the implications of the elder Compsons' behaviors.

"Why?" Her tone is innocent, the way only a young child's can be. "You have to finish. It's important."
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 01:25 pm (UTC)(link)
"Why is that embarrassing? You didn't do anything."

But then again, Swann doesn't really understand someone's parent wanting them around more, either. Even when her mother is home, the two almost never interact, and with her father burying himself in work, Swann is generally left to her own devices with only her nannies and her Avox around to even notice her.

"What about your friends at school?"
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-09 11:42 pm (UTC)(link)
He's still not being very nice, but the anger is no longer directed at her, and it's enough to keep Swann talking, even if she still doesn't comprehend a lot of it.

"Why did your family have to do anything to him? Maybe he was just sad inside. Sometimes I get really scared about things that aren't scary, and my daddy said that sometimes, people just feel a certain way. If things make me scared, maybe things made Quentin sad. Maybe he just didn't want to be sad anymore."

She's looking back down at her doll by the end of it, tightening the braids to make sure that the flowers don't fall out. She's been told a million times that dandelions are weeds, that if she's going to pick flowers, wouldn't she rather have the nice ones? But Swann has never understood why being a weed was supposed to make dandelions any less pretty or nice.

"Won't you be lonely?"
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-10 05:44 am (UTC)(link)
She goes quiet, her brow knitting as she taps her toes together again, thinking hard. It's not easy for her to understand that transfer of blame, or why Jason is so sure about how people will treat them. She thinks that people would be nicer because of their loss.

"You're not... you're not zoo animals. Quentin was sad, that's all. And you're still here, and Caddy. And she's going to have a baby soon, and people will think about that instead, people like babies."

Turning her gaze back on him, she looks concerned, about him. "So you're just going to stay in your house all the time?"
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-11 01:05 am (UTC)(link)
It's another thing she doesn't understand, and that makes it impossible to answer, the way he laughs and speaks sarcastically about Caddy's unborn baby. She just frowns at him.

"But what about what you want to do?" It's never occurred to her that his mother might just decide these things on her, wouldn't ask how he feels about it. It's rare that Swann's father asks her to do anything at all, let alone something so drastic and against her own will. Swann, at ten, essentially runs her own life, with her own staff to order around as she pleases, her only obligation being a more exclusive private school than any other in the Capitol, the one all the old money children attend.
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[personal profile] cigne 2015-04-11 04:15 am (UTC)(link)
Her brow knits, and she's so confused. She crosses her arms, holding her doll to her chest, and leans back against the bench. She's too short for anything but her head to hit the edge of the seat, and it's uncomfortable, but she doesn't want Jason to know that, so she tolerates it and doesn't say anything.

"You're not a grown-up yet, what responsibilities could you have?" She thinks about her family, her father and mother and grandparents, and she can't imagine them saying she has to do anything 'for the family', because the Honeymead name stands on its own and she doesn't need to defend it.

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