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It was time yet again to undertake an onerous chore: deciding what to wear for the Feast of Fools. Claudia glowered at her closet, wondering how much trouble she'd get into if she "accidentally" tossed a lighted match inside...after dousing the contents with gasoline. Probably more than she'd care to handle, really. So she merely sighed, strode determinedly forward and dove in. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, or so the saying went.

Two hours later (and with all sorts of clothing scattered everywhere), she'd narrowed the selection to two choices: formal, and ultra-formal. No doubt of which one she was expected to wear; her mother had sent up the latter just the other day, clearly Claudia was to take the hint.

--God, she needed a drink.

[ooc: Claudia Chareut, Nine of Diamonds, Assistant Director of HR and Pierre's half-sister. Info and such is in the journal; feel free to drop in to help out the poor girl's frustration! Also, can has tag?]

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Claudia...didn't have one. Or, she surmised, if she did, it was definitely vile. Dealing with her mother, Aunt, her half-brother and managing her own duties within the Suit certainly left no time in her schedule for levity. She feared she was doomed to become horribly sarcastic, in her old age.

"Oh, I find lots amusing, Ben," she told him wryly. "Trouble is, they're things I'm not supposed to find funny, simply because most people would consider them horrible." Like her matron's ever increasing degeneration into senility, or her Aunt's insistence upon wearing clothing tailored to the teenage crowd and sporting enough makeup to shame the most hardened professional clown alive.

"...who is Buster Keaton?"

Now, a vile sense of humor can be the very best kind. So far as Ben's concerned, at least. Life can be black enough that you could only really combat it with even blacker humor.

And besides that, he often hid a smile around Claudia's Britney Spears of an aunt.

"Humor's not meant to be proper, I don't think," he said as he sipped his whiskey. "If it was proper, it'd just be normal, run of the mill life. Humor is when things get odd."

As for the question, he just shook his head. "Sometimes I forget that a lot of the classics don't make it here. He was a film comedian. The first one, you might say, back in the silent era."

Claudia gave him a saturnine glance. "Have you looked around, Ben? Odd was born here, dear boy." She gestured, indicating the Outside and all its peculiarities. "It's out there that's horrifying." The whiskey was starting to loosen her tongue; for all her habitual sipping, the Chareut heir was still a lightweight.

Glass propped on her chin, she mused thoughtfully, "When I was going to college in New York, I saw things that absolutely terrified me. And everyone else just treated it like normal happenstance. But when I returned here, and slipped back into 'normal Deck life' and was forced to deal with this idiocy, well, that always struck me as funny, for some reason."

She slowly refilled her glass, adding, "Probably because it's more acceptable to snicker at it than run down the hall screaming."

"So I've noticed." He raised an eyebrow, though, dipping his head down for a moment. "Some things here can be fairly horrifying," he noted quietly, before giving her an inquiring look.

"What kinds of things Outside terrified you, milady?"

God, where to start? Claudia thought back over her time Outside, memories she'd tried not to visit for almost a decade now. Before she realized it, she heard herself saying, "...all those homeless people." The Deck had no such thing.

"The--ignorant violence they visit on each other." Drive-by shootings. She'd actually witnessed one, window shopping downtown. It was only by a miracle she'd avoided being detained for witness questioning. "Drug addicts, alcoholics, degenerates who seem not to care for their situation, just...eke their way through life, somehow."

Unconsciously, she shivered, then took another healthy dose of Scotch. Looking over at Ben, she asked seriously, "How can individuals...live like that?" A Diamond born and bred, she'd never known poverty, or the lack of, well, anything. Recalling such things firmly kept in the forefront of her mind the absolute absurdity of her mother's asinine schemes and other nonsense.

He nodded a little, looking away. He'd seen a lot of violence, of course - first as a cop, and then in his second, less legal career as a gun runner with IRA connections.

"It's not so different from here," he told her. "Not at the core of it. This is a smaller place, more stringently governed, and so the violence we've got is carefully contained. The struggles for power can be governed because there's not many of us. There's no desperation. But out there..." He grimaced a bit. "Not everyone has the same choices. For some, there's little else but desperation, and little to do but turn to crime to live."

Claudia shook her head, swirling the remaining ice in her glass. "It's...horrible. I can't--I just can't even imagine." It wasn't the squalor or violence or filth that unnerved her, but the acceptance writ on every hopeless face.

"How do they do it? Just--lie down and take it?" She'd been pushed, prodded, shoved along all of her life, striving for perfection; she'd never been allowed to simply stop. "It seems...a terrible waste. A hopeless ruin of, well, of nothing."

Rambling to a halt, she blinked, stared into her glass and realized it was empty. Then frowned, annoyed at herself. "Jesus," she whispered, propping her head on one hand, "I'm rambling, how bloody idiotic..."

He scratches the bridge of his nose, considers whether to say that they're clawing their way to survival as best they can, given the circumstances, and then just releases a calm sigh.

"It sounds like you've had a long day, Lady Claudia," he said.

Rather than finish the whiskey in her glass, Claudia stared at it for a moment, then put it on the dresser and pushed it away. It wasn't often she let herself imbibe unchecked, and she was acutely conscious of the need for numbness happening more and more.

"--you're quite right," she replied with a semi-forced smile. Kicking herself for this show of weakness, she felt her bland, perfect mask returning, despite her loathing of such a firewall. "There's been so much to do lately, what with organizing the coming Feast, this problem with individuals being unable to leave; it's been quite trying."

Decorum. Decorum she could do. "But I do thank you for your kind concern, Mr. Mackinnon." Despite her formality, she twinkled slightly. "And for the good Scotch."

"Not at all, Miss Chareut," Ben said with a matching twinkle in his, and a neat bow. "Enjoy the dress selection, if at all possible."

As for the rest, he certainly wouldn't be mentioning this conversation. He'd long ago learned the virtues of keeping his mouth shut, after all.

Claudia returned him a cool nod, glancing back at the two outfits with a jaundiced eye. Formality was so...time consuming. And pointless, in the long run.

"I'll make every effort," she promised, tucking a stray lock of hair behind an ear. "And even save you a dance, if you like." Wouldn't that just set Martine's blood pressure to volcanic proportions?

She wasn't worried about gossip; far worse had been bounced around before, thanks to the women of her family and their love for prevarication. Not that many would believe it anyway; Claudia Chareut? Baring her soul to a mere Five? What nonsense!

Edited 2012-12-29 03:57 (UTC)

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