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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.
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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Or he'd thought they did.
Shaw had never felt that sort of desperation himself, that hopelessness where even the worst outcomes seemed worth it. But he'd seen it. Watched it drive men and women of all creeds and colors to all sorts of wet ends. (They're eyes wide and wild and always seeming to ask why before the lights went out.)
He gaze shifted back to the young man in front of him. No longer a child, but not quite an adult, and wanting to be neither.
"A pointless death is the worst. An end should always mean something."
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"Yeah?" Jason sounds skeptical, his cooling, molten teenage ideals starting to harden into an adult mindset. "What I say is it's all pointless. What's the difference, life or death, when they both suck equally?"
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"I'd say that sounds like a personal problem."
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He already knew the answer.
He didn't know Jason personally, but he'd grown up with his own litter of Compsons, and Reagans, and Honeymeads - even if that hadn't been what they'd been called. Kids with families with stories, with names, that had never let him and his brother forget that theirs was Shaw. That lot who'd never known what it was to really worry about anything.
"Or you could tell 'em go fuck themselves and get on with your life," he said.
That had been his mantra -- except for when Owen pulled him in to finish some fight he'd picked.
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There are certain parameters that comes with a family name like Compson, certain chains that, though gold-gilded, are just as tight a leash as what Shaw has around his own neck. (Jason's happens to be an umbilical cord.)
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Then his broad shoulders rolled beneath his dark coat, muscle shifting, and he let it go.
"Long enough to know that if I'm gonna be miserable anyway, I'm at least going to get to call the shots."
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"Are you really calling the shots?" Jason snorts again. "Because far as I see you're slumming it for chump change from my parents' pockets."
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That was exactly how Jason Compson IV would see it.
"I'm here because I chose to be, and at the end of the day I'm gonna walk away with something to show for it." His head tipped toward the younger man, tongue sliding along the inside of his bottom lip. "Can you say that?"
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"I wouldn't ever choose to work what you do. It's classless. It's one step above District work."
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I thought so.
"More for me."
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It's no small sum but for Capitol old-money it's not much.
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He licked the inside of one cheek. Swallowed it back.
"I'll find a way to endure somehow," he replied.
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"Where are the damn servants with my jacket," he hisses to himself, under his breath, feeling as if too much anger for the mere inconvenience is there inside his voice, because what he wants to do is scream. At Shaw, at his parents, at the gemstone that bears his brother's name, at his sister, at everyone here. But there are certain things you can't do.
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Shaw had thought Jason was 15, not 5. Whatever sting he'd landed with his previous jab, evaporated.
"I'm sure they're scuttling as fast as they can," he replied mildly, on roach on behalf o his others. "But if you're in a hurry-" to go nowhere, "-it might help if they had an idea of where to start. Do you recall where you were last?"
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Sulking, he leaves, hands jammed into his pockets and shoulders tucked up around his ears.
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It was a funeral, but that boy was above and beyond a ray of sunshine.