#silia productions | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

purriteen · 10 months ago

Text

Ad victor spolia, chapter five

content warnings: incest, manipulation, eventual Stockholm Syndrome, toxic & dark!Coriolanus Snow (as if that isn't his default), named!reader, ANGST, eventual smut, non-con, age gap (5-6 years), somnophilia

author’s note: it's been like a month but have this double release I'm feeling generous (crappy proofreading/editing, be warned)

word count: 3,476

Previous chapter

Next chapter

Your head is throbbing from the hangover. You only vaguely recognise the room you're in, with the large Palladian windows and exquisite furniture you're pretty sure it's the master bedroom, and the arm that drapes over your torso as you realise your back is pressed against a warm, distinctly male body.

You're startled at first, and when you turn around to find that it's Coriolanus, in a pair of pyjama pants and a loose sleeping shirt, you hardly feel any better about the situation. It takes you a minute to register that he's awake, blush spreading on your cheeks like wildfire when his eyes meet yours.

You feel so exposed like this, groggy and hungover, in the now wrinkled black slip dress that offers you little coverage. You can't even remember taking your ballgown off in the first place.

"Silia? You're finally awake. I was worried about you, after what happened last night," He sighs, running a hand through his hair. Without all that product in it, his curls have returned. He must've had time to shower sometime between your blackout and now.

Your brows furrow, anxiety building in your chest at his words. "What do you mean, after what happened last night..?" You inquire, although you're not sure you want to know. The whole scenario looks so incredibly wrong. But you decide to give him the benefit of the doubt - how likely is it really that anything would've happened?

Even if it weren't so immoral and disgusting, your brother being intimate with anyone is just unthinkable to you. At most, he'd probably have attended one of those decadent gentlemen's clubs, if he didn't have so much to lose, being the President and all.

The thought appalls you - but it's not just the idea of him partaking in exploiting the less fortunate women in the Capitol, there's something more to it that you can't quite put your finger on. You push it aside for now; you have bigger, more urgent problems to deal with.

He appears deep in thought for a second, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows thickly. "Coryo? What happened last night?" You repeat, this time with more urgency in your voice. You shift into a sitting position, your thoughts running wild with ideas of whatever awful thing could have landed you here, making it impossible for you to stay in that half-asleep state.

He finally looks up at you, stretching out one of his hands to stroke your cheekbone. There's something about the look on his face that makes him seem pained, wounded.

"You got.. very intoxicated. One of my men found you in the corridor just outside the ballroom, with a low-ranking gamemaker. They caught him red-handed, trying to.. to take advantage of you."

His words start to sink in, and a wave of nausea washes over you at the thought.

Someone had tried to force themselves onto you.

Someone who was likely a friend or at least a colleague of Remus. Who'd possibly even worked with your brother at one point, when he was a gamemaker intern.

"I'm so sorry, Hersilia, I shouldn't have let you get so drunk in the first place, I had your glass checked for any trace of drugs, of being laced with anything, but the lab couldn't find anything. I should've kept a closer eye on you, protected you from anyone who might even think of laying a hand on you.." His voice trembles, and you're surprised to see your brother so raw, so different from his usually so very controlled self. You hardly even recognise him, but you can't help but think that you should be used to it by now.

You find yourself in a tight embrace, feeling both unsettled by his strong arms wrapping around you like a vice, a snake, yet somehow safer. It takes you a minute to muster up the courage to speak.

"Did.. did he do anything?" You try not to let your fright show, but your voice comes out a hoarse whisper. He finally lets go, and shoots you a concerned, puzzled look. He takes a deep breath before talking again. "How much do you actually remember of what happened? You were barely conscious when they brought me to you."

You try and think it over. But the last thing you remember is sneaking off to the powder room to gossip with an old classmate of yours. Idesta Harrington. She'd been a childhood friend, although you hadn't stayed in touch since you seemed to run in different circles once you'd gone off to the Academy.

Although a lot had changed, she was one of the few whom Coriolanus did not deem 'beneath the Snow name' or otherwise not suitable to be around you. You knew he'd been in the same grade as her older brother, nicknamed Pup, too. You couldn't for the life of you remember anything distinct about him.

"Everything after I went to the ladies room with Dessie is just.. gone. Blank. Don't remember any of it," You try to speak, but this time a sob gets caught in your throat, the shame and shock you felt threatening to spill over.

Coriolanus takes note of this. He's relieved, but not particularly surprised that you believe him. It very well could have happened anyways - with how wasted and vulnerable you'd been. He'd have to figure out how to deal with the imaginary attacker later.

Perhaps he'd have to choose from one of the actual gamemakers to banish to the districts, or he could take one of the few Capitol-born traitors currently awaiting punishment. He'd have to probe doctor Gaul for which member of the team she'd be least upset about losing.

Whatever he needed to do to show you that he would always be the one to keep you safe, to reinforce what he already knew but had yet to get through your disgracefully thick skull. Truthfully, Coriolanus didn't know why he was so protective over you sometimes.

"You were discovered before he could do anything to really hurt you. I would've never forgiven myself if.." He trails off, letting you believe he struggled to even say it aloud. It worked as intended, and you practically throw yourself into his arms, gripping his shoulder tight.

"It's not your fault, Coryo," You insist, sobs wracking through you as you hold onto him.

He didn't necessarily enjoy seeing you so frightened, so distressed, but he felt powerful like this. You had never once made him feel unsure or lesser than in the way Lucy Gray did. You were so much easier, safer to love. He relished the feeling.

"I know, dove. But I was so worried," He sighs, petting your hair as your head rests on his shoulder, burrowing into his pale neck. You allow the almost overwhelming, but familiar scent of roses that followed him around to comfort you somewhat.

"I didn't want you to sleep alone, I'm sorry, I just couldn't let you out of my sight. My conscience wouldn't let me," He kisses the top of your head, and you nod in understanding.

You don't question even for a second that what he's saying is the truth. You hadn't seen him so distressed ever. Even when he sat you down and explained that he had enlisted all those years ago, or the prospect of selling the penthouse, he had been more so embarrassed and shut-off than distressed, like he was now.

You find yourself thinking that maybe you'd misjudged him. Maybe, he was just as damaged and conflicted as you, rather than evil through and through. Torn between his protective, caring instincts and the ruthlessness his career of choice demanded. You try to scour your emotions, looking for anything that stood out or suggested otherwise, but you find nothing tangible.

Something about the situation still feels wrong, though. You just can't figure out what. You chalk it down to the shock of finding out about the danger you'd been rescued from last night. Everything he'd said made perfect sense in your head - he'd even respected you enough to leave your clothes on, instead of giving you the bath you truthfully needed by now. And why would he lie about such an awful thing? He wouldn’t go that far.

As he cradled your trembling form in his arms, you knew that this, this was the Coriolanus you cherished and loved. The one who made you feel so safe and doted on and adored, even in the darkest of times. For the first time in many years he felt like the Coryo you remembered from your childhood again.

A couple weeks had passed since then. The two of you had grown closer, largely thanks to Coriolanus' unwillingness to let you leave his side. You couldn't blame him for that, though - he seemed perhaps even more traumatised by what happened that night than yourself. You couldn't bear the thought of worrying him even more, and since you didn't have much to do anyways, you complied. You figured the paranoia would fade sooner or later.

But he'd taken it a step further by insisting on assigning you security detail for whenever he wasn't around as well, even inside the house. You'd grown quite fond of the first one he assigned, Salomon, though you just called him Sal for short. He was around your brother’s age, short but stocky, with buzzed chestnut brown hair that appeared reddish in the sunlight. You knew because he'd always follow you around on the sunny afternoons you spent tending to the part of the garden Coriolanus had allowed you to make your own. You'd enjoyed listening to his anecdotes from 'back home', which in his case was district four. It was so unlike your life in the Capitol.

But one day, Salomon was gone, just as you'd started to really warm up to him. In his place was a tall, broad-shouldered man who appeared to be in his thirties, but his face was rough, hardened and his storm grey eyes, devoid of any pop of colour, looked as if he himself might as well have witnessed the chain of disastrous events that had led to North America becoming Panem. A cold, cut-throat military man. He was a man of few words, watching over you like a hawk and bringing an uncomfortable, prickly tension with his presence into your everyday life.

You attempted to bring it up with your brother over dinner. He'd coolly explained that it was for your own safety - Salomon had only been a placeholder until he had found someone better suited to keep you safe, someone he could fully entrust with your safety. Still, you'd pleaded your case of how you missed the company Sal provided, and Coriolanus promised you that he would find more time for you outside of work to make up for it personally.

He didn't seem to grasp the concept of you desiring a social life outside of him, which was beyond concerning, but for now you figured that was the best you would achieve. After months of feeling so confused and nothing short of isolated, you were much too exhausted to risk going back to that by confronting him.

Although the both of you had warmed up to each other more as of late, he was still rigid in his decisions - Coriolanus always needed to have the last word. You tried to accept him as he was, and you even felt as though he might be letting up on his sometimes overly controlling tendencies on his own. Just a little bit, enough to give you a spark of hope.

However private Centho, as you'd come to find out he was called, even after a week, still brought malaise to your life every time you had to be alone with him. You couldn't bear it. Finally, you'd come to an agreement with your brother - inside the safety of the presidential palace, you would be allowed privacy. No more security detail. You figured the storm had blown over by now and that was that.

Yet, now that he could no longer station someone outside your bedroom door at night, the deal came with the condition that you would instead sleep in his every night. He had arranged for the staff to bring you a spare bed that was placed a couple feet away from his own. But somehow you always woke up to find yourself snuggled up to him every morning, without fail.

At first you told yourself it was just the winter chill. His bedroom was large and airy with massive windows, so you figured that made the most sense. But the snow had started to melt away bit by bit already, and regardless, you were provided with infinite warm pyjama sets and bedding. That was no excuse.

Perhaps it was the size and roughness of the mattress. It was of the highest quality you'd find in a folding bed, but it didn't compare to the comfort offered by the plush, extravagant bed you'd grown accustomed to. You wondered if you were starting to become spoiled.

The whole situation reminded you of a book you'd read when you were little, one of the many that you had been forced to burn in the fireplace to keep warm during the dark days. It was about a princess who'd been tested to see if she was noble enough to marry a lonely foreign prince, using a single pea that was placed under tens of mattresses stacked on top of each other. If she was worthy, she'd feel the pea when she laid down through all of those layers.

You'd imagined that one day, when your family was by some miracle no longer dirt poor, you might get to marry a 'prince' too. Of course, there was no such thing as royalty in Panem. That belonged in the old world. Here, you didn't need a title to be important - you needed money and influence.

Finally, you'd had to come to the conclusion that in truth, it was his warmth, his embrace that you were after. He was often too busy for you in the daytime, and although you enjoyed getting to spend more time with Eugenie again, you wanted him. It was his company you were after.

You'd missed out on so much when you were little - first, he was always studying, and then after he'd graduated the academy, he was all about both studying and building his career. You wanted to finally get a chance to bond with him, properly this time. The real him.

But once he brings you to the cell your supposed attacker is being held in, you begin to feel that perhaps, he's just as unpleasant if not more beneath the surface.

You vaguely recognise the man, although you can't quite put your finger on it.

Then it hits you like a bucket of ice falling over your head. Romulus. Romulus Dolittle, the youngest son of your former neighbours. He'd been your first friend, you first crush, your first and only kiss. Even if it had just been a quick peck.

Despite the glass wall separating you from the gaunt, bludgeoned prisoner you once called your friend, you can tell he knows exactly who you are, too.

"This, is Romulus Dolittle. You might remember him from the Corso, before his family moved away. Regardless," Coriolanus is clear-spoken and seems entirely unfazed at the sight of the bloody pulp right before your eyes, as if this was a daily occurrence for him.

You can feel bile rising in your throat at the thought that it very well could be - is your brother the one who did this to him? Had he personally made the poor man's life a living hell on the daily?

"You don't expect me to believe that he attacked me, do you?" You interrupt before you can even consider your words. Coriolanus' jaw ticks as he turns to look at you, and you feel as if you want to crawl out of your own skin.

He puts on a cold, thin-lipped smile. When he speaks again it's in an overly calm, smooth tone, as if explaining a complicated subject to a small, petulant child.

"If you had let me finish, you'd know that he is not here under suspicion of attacking you. He was involved in a rebel conspiracy." He explains, the disdain in his voice as he utters those last two words barely concealed.

Your fingernails dig into the skin of your palms as you resist the urge to claw your brother's eyes out. The hint of a self-satisfied smirk in his eyes tells you he knows just as well that the bloody pulp of a man was innocent.

"Why are you showing me this?" You manage to keep a steady tone, feigning nonchalance as best as possible. And although he plays along, you can tell Coriolanus is not buying it. He turns away from you again, facing the glass barrier separating you from the supposed traitor once more.

"Because, Hersilia. You must understand, that even those you trust the most, even your oldest friends, will betray you and everything that the Capitol stands for, if they believe it is in their best interest." He begins, and the urge to tear the flesh off of his smug face returns for a brief moment.

Then you watch as two peacekeepers enter the cell, dragging Romulus out in chains.

"Tomorrow, after he has been cleaned up, the very first public execution in the history of the Capitol will take place."

The whole encounter left you in a state of shock. Once you'd returned to the manor and finally calmed down a bit, your brother had played the recording of Romulus' confessing to the crime, although you could tell by how hoarse his voice that he'd been screaming before. It was likely brought on by torture at the hands of the peacekeepers guarding him.

You could tell Coriolanus was trying to twist the situation in his favour, as he always did. But this was all too much. You felt as if he was taking you on a sick rollercoaster that would only lead you into your impending death.

You knew you couldn't go on like this. You had to do something about it. But how?

Meanwhile, Coriolanus could feel you slipping away from him. He must've taken it too far, and above anything too soon, with showing you Romulus' fate. He thought he could take advantage of your inevitable breakdown to reinforce his status as being the one to comfort you and care for you no matter what, but it seemed that this time, he couldn't.

He did everything he could, against your will he held you as you cried until your eyes dried up, allowed you to wander about the house more freely, he had even given you permission to go into town without him again so long as you brought someone with you. And Centho was finally off your back no matter the unease he felt at being unable to watch over you through that man's observations.

He'd instead opted to give you a diary of sorts to write your thoughts down in, an elegant black leather book with a silver padlock and your name engraved in cursive. Hersilia Honoria Snow. He figured that if you were going to insist on shutting yourself off from him, you might instead turn to something else, and he would much rather see to it that he was in control of that variable rather than give you true freedom.

But, you refused to write anything, and the spare key he had neglected to tell you about only provided him with two hundred blank pages worth of insight.

You had stopped making small talk with him almost entirely. All you did was ask too many questions about Romulus, asking to see Tigris, trying to convince him to let you spend time with Persephone and Remus again. He had to remind you that Remus and his family was only spared from execution because of the scandal their deaths would otherwise cause, and that quickly shut you up. Coriolanus doubted the man would be keen on spending time with someone who falsely accused his little brother and got him killed regardless.

He on the other hand was pleased to have smashed two birds with one stone. No more cannibal friends, no more sleeping on your own and leaving him in the dark. But he needed you to trust him again. Everything had been going so well until now.

So he gave in. You would finally get to see your dear cousin again and get some well needed answers.

Well, you wouldn't get any of those, but you didn't need to know that. Yet.

taglist: @caffeine-addict-slug, @phoward89, @catesbaroquecasahouse, @priyajoyy, @euphemiaamillais @harvey-malfoy

#banner credit: @benkeibear #minors dni #dead dove do not eat #dead dove fic #dark!coriolanus snow #dark!coriolanus snow x reader #coriolanus snow x reader #coriolanus snow x female!reader #coriolanus snow x you #named reader #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas fanfiction #thg fanfiction #eventual smut

78 notes · View notes

ireneworth · 2 years ago

Text

In Beaton’s View: Number One Irene Worth

By Cecil Beaton

Plays & Players Magazine, January 1972

That such an actress as Irene Worth, with her depth and freedom of expression and dazzling intelligence, should not be cherished as one of the greatest ornaments to the English stage is a murky mystery. Clive Barnes has written of her as ‘one of the most illuminating actresses of the English-speaking theatre’, while Walter Kerr has it that she ‘is just possibly the best actress in the world’. Ronald Bryden considered ‘no-one has expressed Shaw’s image of the Eternal Feminine more exactly’; and Peter Roberts ‘her exceedingly glamorous and effortlessly commanding Mrs. Hushabye…she seems to take Shaw’s dialogue on the palm of her hand and blow it out into the auditorium like a feather’.

Although London is her home, English audiences see her seldom. It is iniquitous that she has played only less than fifty performances at our National Theatre since Olivier became its head. We are parched for wonderful performances in wonderful plays, and since we are so short on great leading ladies, why have we been deprived of seeing Irene Worth as Hedda, or as Silia Gala in The Rules of the Game? Why has she not been given the opportunity to play Ibsen, Turgenev, or Chekhov? Wouldn’t it be exciting if, under a different director, the new National Theatre building, scheduled for 1973, should be inaugurated with Irene Worth playing Cleopatra? She alone with her imagination and originality, her extraordinary range of voice, her strength, her powers if projection could do justice to the infinite varieties of seduction necessary for this most difficult of roles.

Other theatrical managements without a thought but for the weekly receipts have whined: ‘Is she “Box Office”?’ But how can any actress become ‘Box Office’ if she is rarely seen? Some have complained that she is difficult. Most creative artists are invariably difficult, but that is surely an irrelevance. All that matters is the performance. No doubt Bernhardt was difficult.

In fact Irene Worth is not difficult. She is a perfectionist. She wishes anything with which she is involved to be under the best auspices. Once she has made up her mind to dedicate herself to creating a new role, she is totally professional. Although she trusts that the director will ‘allow the yeast to make a good loaf’, she will take his instructions implicitly even if she feels instinctively that he is at times at fault. Before the active preparations for each production she finds time to do a connoisseur’s research, reading all possible relevant books on the subject, visiting museums, and limbering up in gymnasiums and taking fencing lessons. If the play is a period one, in order to get the feel and the stance necessary to wear the clothes, not only does she study all possible pictorial documents of the epoch, but entices museum curators to bring out their costumes so that she can learn the cut and feel the texture of the stuffs.

It was when, at Swiss Cottage, Irene Worth gave grace and distinction to a tiresome war-play by Virginia Cowles and Martha Gellhorn that I knew here was a rare theatre newcomer. In the original production of The Cocktail Party in New York she had the opportunity to show her unique talent as a speaker of prose-poetry. Although she was acclaimed by all the critics, when the play came to London she was not at first in the cast. Another New York success in Schiller’s Mary Stuart brought her to the Old Vic in a translation by Stephen Spender. In The Queen and the Rebels by Ugo Betti, and translated for her by Henry Reed, she showed herself star stuff. In Durrenmatt’s Physicists, even in a part so alien to her as that of the hunchback Swiss doctor, to quote a critic ‘she could take a role and wrap it around her own soul’. In the Coward plays Suite in Three Keys she played three parts of complete diversity, and as the brash, blue-haired American her sense of comedy and caricature was astonishing. In Heartbreak House she made Dame Edith’s earlier Mrs. Hushabye seem a mere sketch for the part in comparison to the extremely rich portrait she created. By the sheer force of her personality, and her physical prowess she gave a cohesion to the entire production of Brook’s Oedipus.

She has not appeared on the London stage since returning over a year ago from Ontario where the critics wrote: ‘The big things she does in Hedda are staggering in their arrogance and the authority with which that arrogance is supported.’ ‘The fires of her intelligence are burning all the time.’

Irene Worth is a dedicated player who will sacrifice comfort or salary to appear in interesting plays as, when Coventry was still a ruined city, she worked with the Repertory in a rickety old barn, or travelled miles by bus to distant theatres. She will willingly perform in a tent—as she did at the inauguration of the Stratford Theatre in Ontario—if she considers the project worthwhile. She will gladly endure the winter cold of Finland or Russia, the dust storms and summer heat of Persepolis, if she considers that she is learning something that will be valuable to her career. ‘The best academy is experience,’ she says.

Irene Worth is one of the rare intellectual actresses. She started life as a kindergarten teacher with a degree in education. Then she trained as a pianist, and her love of music has never left her. She can speak several languages, has a great knowledge of literature, and her vistas of interest and taste stretch far in many directions. These attributes only add to her mien, and when she comes on stage the audience knows it is in the presence of someone quite special. Irene Worth has a quality that can make pigmies of others. Thespians jealousies and pettinesses are outside her range, but when she is deceived by others with motives less lofty than her own, she is sadly shocked. She is herself most generous to her fellow performers, and considers that actors should performs for the others in the cast and not for the audience. The stars with whom she has an affinity are Scofield, Gielgud, Finney, and David Warner, (‘Acting with him is like swimming in silk’).

From the performances she has already given we know how well she could play Pinter, Beckett (Happy Days in particular), Wilde and Pirandello. It would be good to see her as The Second Mrs. Tanqueray or raise the standard of musicals. (She is in excellent voice just now.) But while still hoping for these opportunities we must content ourselves that she is to appear next spring in a new play by Frank Marcus, Notes on a Love Affair, directed by the brilliant young Robin Phillips. If no suitable offer arrives for her to prove an unassailable position in the great classics, then she must be goaded to become her own manager, run her own repertoire, and show what greatness she has attained in the height of her maturity. It might well be that, by so doing, she would not only show herself again to be invincible as a great actress, but also become the enlightened theatrical impresario that the London stage at the moment so sadly lacks.

#irene worth #articles #cecil beaton #plays & players #1972

0 notes