Chapter Text
Jasper Whitlock is initially under the impression that Victors go to the Capitol only twice a year.
As with many aspects of life, Jasper quickly finds out that he is wrong.
Just this year alone, he’s made the train journey to the Capitol half a dozen times. He’s been in the damned Capitol more than in his own home District.
With every visit, he finds himself missing District Ten more and more. Ten could not more different from the Capitol; he has yet to find a single similarity between them.
The plains of Ten stretched for miles and miles, filled with livestock and dust being kicked up from worn boots and thousands of hooves. Summers are harsh and winters even more so, with spring and autumn being little more than afterthoughts. The air is always dry. When Jasper was younger and would wake up at the crack of dawn to help his Pa with the cows, the sunrise was the most beautiful thing, the one thing that the Peacekeepers couldn’t fuck around with.
The Capitol, on the other hand, is filled with skyscrapers; Jasper can only see for miles when on a rooftop, and even then, the horizon seems to be artificially created. Every season seems to be tweaked to be the perfect temperature. When Jasper wakes up at sunrise, his viewpoint is obscured by buildings and billboards advertising products he would never want to use.
And then there are the people. Jasper feels an intense contempt for the unnaturally colored hair they all sport, the dyed skin that a select few seem obsessed with, the way they all look artificial. That’s what Peter had said about them, once, back before Jasper’s Games. Artificial. And that’s the word that pops into Jasper’s head the most whenever he finds himself in the Capitol. From the people to the food injected with hormones to make them thrice as big to the scents pumped into the streets.
He hates it. He hates it all.
He hates them, he hates the buildings, and he hates what he had to do to get here, to be sitting in a circle of Capitol people whose names he’s already forgotten, whose names he will never be able to keep lodged in his head.
They’re in one of the Capitols’ litany of clubs, the Mariana Trench. The entire place is tinged dark blue; there’s tridents and fishnets and lights on the walls that are supposed to mimic the bottom of the ocean. Jasper’s drink is a deep shade of turquoise. He’s been here, making conversation with a group of people who he’s been told have sway and influence over the Games, in the hopes that he will be able to call in favors in the future. What kind of favors, he’s uncertain of.
“Does everyone in District Ten have that funny way of talking?” asks a woman with skin that’s tinged a light blue.
Beside him, Maria laughs. “We sure do.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jasper replies, overexaggerating his drawl. For whatever reason, the Capitol people are enthralled by it.
The Capitol folks around them start to coo with delight.
Maria is five years his senior and is all too used to the inner mechanisms and workings of the Capitol. When Jasper was first Reaped, she took one look at him and said, “Ah, I think I could make a Victor out of you.”
Make a Victor, she did.
A Victor that the Capitol is absolutely enamored with, to boot. Enamored enough to be Sponsored in the Arena, enamored enough for him to have his face plastered across billboards and sponsored products, enamored enough to beg and cajole and plead for him to come back to the Capitol.
God-fuckin-damn.
Maria lightly taps on Jasper’s shoulder, a coy smile on her face. It’s a quick enough tap that none of the Capitol folks, who are surely feeling a heavy buzz from their drinks, don’t notice.
On cue, his back stiffens. “It’s close to midnight,” he announces, getting up. “My apologies, ma’ams and sirs, but I do have business to attend to in the morn’, and I’d so loathe to be too exhausted to attend it properly.”
They actually believe that everyone in Ten talks all stilted and overtly polite, too. It fumbles its' way out of Jasper's mouth, and he hates how forced it sounds, as if he's reading from a badly-written script. When Maria first told him to talk like that, he thought she was setting him up for failure, trying to make him sound like a fool. But no, Jasper has found that it’s a thousand times easier to just go with whatever she tells him to do; it makes life much simpler.
The Capitol folks all whine and bemoan that some of their favorite Victors are leaving them, but Jasper and Maria both promise that they’ll all go out for drinks again. Jasper has to wink and flash a grin at the women – and one of the men too, he thinks – but eventually the two convince them all into letting them leave the bar in (relative) peace. They say too-long goodbyes, and the women all insist on hugging Jasper for much too long, but they're able to leave Mariana Trench and the pulsating lights behind them.
Thank fuck, too, because he’s beginning to get a headache from the overstimulation of the club. The bars in Ten are much more subdued: the lights are dimmed, the television stations are muted and certainly aren’t replaying clips from various Games, and the drinks don’t taste like pure sugar.
Apparently, no one in the Capitol is particularly fond of whiskey.
Jasper considers himself neutral about Maria Trotter.
He was happy enough when she won her Games, sure. But he was also ten years old and the gravity of the Hunger Games hadn't quite settled into his brain yet. Sure, he watched them - it was mandatory, after all - but it was a half-hearted watch. And everyone in Ten was excited when Maria came home, the first Victor that Ten in almost forty years. They were especially happy to get extra rations.
The Whitlocks - Pa, Ma, and their seven kids - ate wonderfully for that all-too-brief year.
But now, Jasper Whitlock is eighteen and he has braved his own Games, and the seriousness of it all is branded on his brain. He wavers between being thankful and being resentful that she helped him win. Thus, he has decided to settle on neutrality. He has enough in his life to hate without adding Maria to the list.
Besides, she was probably lonely. There’s only two other Victors from Ten that are still alive; one is a total alcoholic and the other is so ridden with dementia that the Capitol no longer brings him around, not even on anniversary dates. He supposes she wanted someone who was born in the same century as her. You can befriend other Victors, sure, but it's always strange. There's an extra bond that comes from being Victors from the same District.
“Good job,” she says on the way back to the primary complex that most Victors live in whilst in the Capitol. The driver of their cab is separated from them thanks to a thick panel of glass; if he can hear them talking, he doesn’t think it’s necessary to butt in. “You’re a natural at talking to them.”
Jasper notices that the drawl Maria lays on thick around non-District people is completely gone. She must’ve been born in the northern part of Ten, closer to the border of District Two. “My Pa always said that I was good at charming people.” He makes it a point to try and erase his own drawl.
She nods. “I’ve noticed, ever since your initial interviews.”
They stew in silence for a bit. Jasper always hates when she brings up any aspect of his Games; Maria can’t seem to go a day without mentioning it. But he understands. The Games are all they know, especially her, who seems to oversee everything related to District Ten and its’ mentoring. Ever since she won her own almost a decade ago, at the tender age of fourteen, Maria’s been embroiled in the Hunger Games.
“Well,” says Maria as the cab driver pulls up to their complex, “Rest up, Victor. It’s a heavy day tomorrow.”
“Don’t remind me.” Jasper grimaces. They both get out of the car; Maria slides the driver a bundle of bills, a hefty tip she is more than able to afford thanks to her Victor earnings.
She laughs, a pretty laugh, like bells and windchimes. “That’s my job, pretty boy. Welcome to the rest of your life.”
Welcome to the rest of your life. It echoes in his head as they walk inside, Peacekeepers on either side of the entrance scanning their IDs, as if they don’t recognize either of them. It echoes in his head as Maria bids him farewell, goes into her apartment. It echoes in his head as Jasper goes into the elevator, tries to ignore the Peacekeeper in there, and eventually fumbles with the key to his own apartment, the penthouse.
He lets out a quiet sigh of relief as the door shuts behind him; he takes off the denim jacket that he tends to wear when he’s out in public, kicks off his boots. It’s yet another facet of Ten that he parodies whilst in the Capitol: the denim jacket, the wide-brimmed hat, the boots with spurs. Sure, folks tend to wear that in Ten, but not every damned day!
But, whatever. This is the first time he’s been alone since he first woke up at the crack of dawn. The whole day has been spent with Maria and Ten’s escort, Gianna Veridie, making alliances, talking to folks like he actually cares about them, creating bonds supposedly meant to last a lifetime. Tomorrow will be even wearier: he’s supposed to begin filming a ridiculous number of interviews and television appearances that will be on air throughout the rest of the month.
Jasper can already envision what he’ll be asked. How do you feel about watching the Games, now that you’ve participated in them? Are you excited to mentor Tributes of your own? What do you expect the Arena to be like this year? Is there any sweetheart you’re hoping isn’t Reaped?
Bah. His sweetheart was already Reaped three years ago, but he’ll take that little secret to the grave.
That’s the one thing the Capitol can’t take from him.
And then, next week, the Reaping will happen, and Jasper will have to wonder how he’s going to train his Tributes. He’s still unsure if he’s going to even bother. He might, depending on their age. He won out of pure luck; he reckons that anyone who isn’t a Career won because of that. Pure luck and sponsorships and the all too human instinct of wanting to survive, even when he’s sometimes not sure if he should have made it out of that Arena…
At least the Avoxes are kind enough to ensure he has whiskey in the cabinet of his penthouse.
Well, the Capitol’s penthouse. It may be under Jasper’s name, but it doesn’t quite feel like his home. It never will, not when he knows it’s wired and bugged to hell and back. Every breath he takes, every word he murmurs, the Capitol – and by extension, Aro Volturi – will hear. So he tries to talk as little as possible whilst he’s there.
It’s just easier that way.
Jasper’s turned the television on, the volume down low, bottle of whiskey on the coffee table. The leather couch he’s lounging across sticks to the back of his neck, to his arms. The wide window in the dining room is visible from the living room, and it shows the vastness of the Capitol, the artificial stars they project every night in the sky. He knows they’re artificial; even out in the vast wilderness of Ten, the stars ain’t that bright.
He was hoping the news would show anything but the Games, but that just shows how fuckin’ stupid he is, because of course they’re going to be talking about the Games.
He has to turn the channel when they start playing a clip from his own Games. He sees enough of them in his dreams; the last thing he wants to do is see the manufactured and edited version of the bloodbath he went through in that goddamn Arena.
Jasper wishes, not for the first time, that he was never Reaped. If that were the case, he’d be in Ten right now, probably undergoing his apprenticeship. If he wasn’t primed to inherit Pa’s ranch, he’d probably be working under one of the butchers, probably under Buck Talmedge, who always liked the Whitlocks well enough. He’d be shooting the shit with Peter in one of Ten’s many bars at night, when he could afford a drink or two. Maybe he’d be fixing to settle with one of Ten’s many women; they were no Mary Alice, but Lottie Orford was pretty enough.
Even if her older brother, Garrett, is an obnoxious prick.
He thinks of Lottie Orford and the Whitlock ranch as he eventually stumbles into the too-soft bed. The clock on the nightstand says it’s a quarter to one; he has to get up at five-thirty.
Great.
Luckily, sleep comes all too easy for Jasper thanks to a combination of alcohol and plain exhaustion. He dreams of bloodied hands, of a child’s frightened gaze, of a knife pressed against his throat, Maria going, “Welcome to the rest of your life”.
The usual.