PSL: Quentin's Funeral

[whatisay]

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.

Comments

Re: Deckard Shaw| OTA

[whatisay]

They don't have to rely on mere Peacekeepers. The Compsons can afford to hire not just a security team for their events, but one that's staffed with actual Capitol citizens, the best of the best to make sure no one makes off with their fine china or, in this case, the sparkling stone that once was their eldest son. It seems fitting that the jewel of his father's eye eventually became an actual gem, when studiousness and obedience were no longer hard enough edges to protect him from the world.

Jason finally comes back from tormenting pigeons, his tie still loose and his shirt sleeves pulled up, his hands stuffed into his pockets. The nosejob, barely-healed, makes it look like he's been crying, which couldn't be more of a lie. He hasn't shed a tear in years.

He pauses, standing next to Shaw, hearing his father's speech in stereo from the way the sound travels in the air and the tinny recitation from Shaw's earpiece. The younger Jason is clearly still a boy - the cuts on his throat from learning to shave are barely covered - but he already looks like the man he'll become, consciously separate from his father not so much in facial features but in demeanor. It's highlighted by the clear discomfort he feels at his father's ramble, the abject humiliation making his neck flush red combined with a sort of disgust, that usual teenage need to distance themselves from their parentage amped up by shame.

"Aren't you going to stop him?" he asks Shaw.

[omnomgrenades]

His eyes moved, a quick flick beneath dark lenses, though his head was still canted slightly toward the crowd. He recognized Jason from the preparatory file, though he noted distantly, that the photo tacked to the thick sheaf of papers had been pre-construction. (A bit of sloppy work that, but he supposed that was the difference, wasn't it? The paygrade in action.)

His gaze moved to the stage, watching the older Compson sway to and fro like a snake-charmer, the podium an unimpressed cobra.

"I could." It's a honest answer, if brisk. He could have said that he was security, not babysitting, but the Compsons were signing the checks, and while Jason wasn't the oldest, he was, at the moment, the most coherent. "If watching him try and resist is a better option than just letting him get it out."

[whatisay]

Jason almost snaps something back, because security is supposed to protect the Compsons, not just the useless jewel sitting in a wreath, the older brother protected from all the disaster around him by death and ash and hard diamond surfaces. But he doesn't, because Shaw's right.

Jason's shaking a little, out of a kind of fury that doesn't fit his body and can't fit inside him, not at Shaw but in general. He feels like he's about to be ill. His head seems to want to explode.

And so he tries to treat Shaw like a servant. "Come help me find my jacket."

[omnomgrenades]

At 15, Jason was more than old enough to know that while they were all citizens, equality was not the same for all. But at 25, Shaw was old enough to no better than to assume anything at face value. (A few years in the districts, a few knives behind smiles, and one grew out of that sort of thing real quick.)

Almost as if he hadn't heard the request, he reached up to touch the piece of plastic and metal in his ear, murmuring to someone only he could hear in a low, tumbling voice like shockwaves bounding of the lowest ribs of in his chest.

"Send one of the service staff by my position. Mr. Compson the IV has requested some assistance."

Security and service might have both started with the same letter, but they weren't the same thing. And neither was he.

[whatisay]

Jason sees red, like a flash from a lighthouse in the corner of his vision, because he's only now beginning to understand what this sort of powerlessness feels like. He always knew helplessness a little bit, trying to get his father's attention, trying to argue his way out of getting a whipping, to keep up with his older siblings and to be constantly excluded, but the current impotence is something far deeper and more damning to dignity. He knows, on some level that he can't quite process or articulate yet, that his family has fallen.

"You can tell them what to do, you know. All you have to say is that they should find a jacket."

He folds his arms, hearing still his father's drunken words in the background like jeers.

[omnomgrenades]

There was a long, full beat, broken only by the echo of the elder Compson's grief and shame pouring from the stage. Then, a second voice bloomed, teeny and metallic from under Shaw's fingertip.

"You heard the man," he told it in turn. He eyed the young man, side-long, and added, "Black. Unattended."

And probably up by the rest of the family, he thought though kept to himself, that Jason hadn't been able to get away from fast enough when the show had started.

"They're looking, sir."

There was no sarcasm in the title, but neither was their any reverence. It simply was. Expected, and so given. It cost him nothing.

[whatisay]

"Good."

He stands there for a bit, still shaking, still grinding his teeth hard enough in the back of his mouth that it's sending shooting pains through his jaw and temples, and he decides to talk to Shaw because who's Shaw going to talk to?

"I'm the eldest son now," Jason says. His voice cracks, both from youth and because of the heavy weight placed on those words, on that sentiment. He doesn't sound happy about it, doesn't even sound indifferent. He sounds scared. "That means people have to listen to me."

But he knows that that isn't true. He'll never have the command his grandfather, his father, his brother had. He'll only be lashed to the wheel of a ship with a hole blown in the side.

[omnomgrenades]

A need for patience wasn't something they'd told him about when they were signing him up. Neither was passive listening. But both had become invaluable talents.

Right up with multitasking and a damn good poker face.

Whatever he felt about suddenly become Jason's confessional, he didn't give it away. He simply stood there, silent and tall, the combination of buzzcut and naturally thinning not even leaving enough hair for the breeze to move.

"It means all the responsibility is yours," he said, almost idly, thinking unbidden of his own brother. Of himself. (What had their funeral been like? He could barely remember, to think of it.)

[whatisay]

"I wish they were all dead." Jason jams his hands into his pockets, talking as much to himself as to Shaw. "Hey, you couldn't do something about that, could you? No, I don't mean that..."

He doesn't know why he said that.

"Quentin's a lucky bastard."

The official story is that Quentin fell into the river after a night of partying at his prep school college, because a tragic accident from designer drugs and drinking is less humiliating than the fact that their eldest son tied weights to his feet and jumped.

[omnomgrenades]

There was a long, telling, pause. As if Shaw was weighing whether or not he could away with condemning the teen for even suggesting it; as if he were considering the logistics of whether or not he could actually pull off a triple - no, quadruple-homicide....

Then, with a small tilt of his head, he simply said, "That wouldn't get rid of the responsibilities, it'd just change them."

As to the brother... He glanced at the diamond. Innocuous enough, in its bed of flowers, if you didn't know what it was. What it used to be.

"Drowning's a bad way to go."

[whatisay]

"Maybe he should have thought of that before he tied weights to his feet."

Jason doesn't know, nor care, how much everyone knows. As far as he can tell everyone's looking at them with knowledge in their eyes, and the questions that knowledge sows. What did they do to drive Quentin to it? Which one of them will bring a scandal next?

"What do you think the worst way to die is?"

[omnomgrenades]

"Maybe he thought he deserved it."

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."

[whatisay]

"I'll bet he did," Jason mutters, hating his brother more now that he's locked inside a little gem than he ever did while Quentin lived. He gives Shaw a suspicious look, like he's advocating against Jason, like it's a conspiracy to trick him into believing there's a rhyme or reason to any of this.

"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?"

[omnomgrenades]

Shaw just stood there, unflappable, beneath the gently rustling leaves of the flowering tree. Petals dropping in the breeze, landing like snowflakes around him - Quentin's initials flashing as they twisted on the wind.

"I'd say that sounds like a personal problem."

[whatisay]

"Really? I say it's a problem with everyone else, not with me. I just got to bear it," Jason snaps, not liking to be talked back to by the help - security, service, doesn't matter.

[omnomgrenades]

One of Shaw's dark eyebrows twitched, arching above the wide, dark lens of his sunglasses, but he didn't bother to ask if Jason really believed it was everyone else.

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.

[whatisay]

Jason snorts, one of those cruel, knowing sounds that teenagers have when they suspect they've beaten their elders to a patch of wisdom. "How long have you lived here?"

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.)

[omnomgrenades]

The fingers of Shaw's heavy hands (scarred knuckles, callused palms, hands that worked, hands that had done things), folded neatly one over the other in front of his belt buckle, twitched. Tightened, just slightly on the lower wrist.

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."

[whatisay]

By contrast, Jason's hands are smooth, accustomed to nothing more difficult than smuggling cigarettes and razors in to gatherings with other teenagers. They stay in his pocket for the most part, so they do here.

"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."

[omnomgrenades]

Shaw actually smiled then. If you could call the way his lips pressed together, his chin ducking down as he snorted roughly smiling.

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?"

[whatisay]

Jason can't, and that's why his face flashes red, blood rushing up from below the neck like a surging army, pulsing underneath the little cuts and scabs from shaving.

"I wouldn't ever choose to work what you do. It's classless. It's one step above District work."

[omnomgrenades]

He watched Jason's face darken and fill, his head still tipped, mild amusement written in the slant of his mouth.

I thought so.

"More for me."

[whatisay]

"And not much of it, either." Jason straightens up, taking on the posture of his lineage that doesn't usually show in his sulking slouch. "I know what you're being paid."

It's no small sum but for Capitol old-money it's not much.

[omnomgrenades]

Even just a few years back, and the Compson's pocket-change would have meant a hell of a lot more to Shaw. Scraping by, trying to keep a roof over his and Owen's heads, food on the table. ...That was behind them now, but he could still taste it sometimes (when he was in the districts, when he in the Capitol, waiting for his account to jump). A bitterness like dirt in the back of his throat.

He licked the inside of one cheek. Swallowed it back.

"I'll find a way to endure somehow," he replied.

[whatisay]

"Sure you will. Cockroaches live through anything," Jason says, nose tilting upwards a bit even though he's still a little bit shorter than Shaw, will never quite get as tall even at full height.

"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.