{ wicked campaign | ravi + perch // @kay }

[aya]

well you know i'm a bastard and we only just met
i guess i probably shouldn't wear this big old sign round my neck

Pressed shirt, suede loafers, gold watch. Ravi La Torre knows who he is, what he wants, how to get it. He's never been one for an entourage; right-pocket revolver, he is his own menacing muscle for business calls as non-confrontational as this.

The soon-to-be-former mayor's house is on the larger end of unassuming, at least by La Torre standards.

"Mr. Perch." He scarcely waits for an invitation inside; he is Ravi La Torre, and this is all the invitation he needs. From his right pocket, he draws a palm, offered open in peaceful greeting. Firm, yet friendly, Ravi stands to gain nothing from putting on a show of force.

The key here is balance. A flaccid handshake implies impotence; an aggressive grasp betrays your insecurities. A man who manhandles his associates in greeting gives his mark the map to his destruction.

Ravi La Torre is no bitch, has no need to bully.

"What is it that a man must do to leave here with your endorsement?" A smile — increasingly smaller these days — stretches itself out between his mustache and his beard. It doesn't reach his eyes; it never has. La Torre couldn't displace the danger beneath his brow even if he ever wanted to. Joy feels so frivolous these days.

Single-minded, Ravi will — as he always does — get what he came here for, one way or another. In his left pocket, a thumb traces over a roll of hundreds, his security blanket, his good-luck charm. The businessman has little intention to put anyone else on his payroll if he can help it. Not when words cost him nothing.

tags - Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

She spoke with a voice that disrupted the sky
She said walk on over here to the bitter shade
I will wrap you in my arms and you'll know that you're saved

The Mayor's mansion is always a place of activity.
It's something he and Althea struggled with. She would have preferred quiet, whereas he never wanted the activity to stop. But it would, soon. He stared at himself in the foyer mirror,
wondering what he might look like a private citizen. Would he be more grey? Would the lines under his eyes cut more deeply? Would his stomach sag? He tightened his tie, fixed his smile,
and opened the door - to Ravi La Torre.

He barely got in a "welcome, sire" before La Torre was staking out the place. He, too,
felt something pass between them in the strong handshake. And then, before he'd even offered refreshments, it was down to business.

"What is it that a man must do to leave here with your endorsement?"

Fabian grinned, breaking the handshake and then opening his arm for Ravi to follow. He talked as he lead them to his private office. "I like your energy, Mr. La Torre, always have.
Here, have a seat. Coffee? Yes, you're quite right, no time for small talk. This is a very important election, and you're the first to come and see me about an endorsement. It's never too early for these things, as you well know."

Fabian slid easily into his desk chair and paused. Would they be taking the chair with them to their seaside home? What was his and what belonged to the government? He reached for picture frame, tapping lightly on the metal as he spoke. "I suppose my endorsement is earned, not offered. Why are you the best man to replace me? And why should I trust you to keep my children safe?"

He turned the photo around, showing Ravi his litter of children and grandchildren.

banner credit: this girl right hurr
lyrics: robert pattinson let me sign

[aya]

i've still got some opinions that i'm willing to claim
i'm gonna carry them around like they're some wicked campaign

Old habits die hard, and Ravi can't help himself from casing the mayor's residence. If moving into the current Perch residence was compulsory, Ravi would see to it that keeping the furniture was not. There was nothing wrong with it, per se, but Mr. La Torre was a man of specific tastes — and there was no arrangement of furnishings that couldn't be

"Coffee," Ravi agrees, not without manners. "Thank you."

He relaxed into the seat on the other side of Fabian's desk while the current mayor set up the hoops he had for Ravi to jump through. An endorsement is earned, not offered. Life had offered La Torre little but opportunity; it was what Ravi had taken that got him to where he is today.

"Your children?" Caught off guard by the demand, Ravi La Torre is too slow to suppress his scoff. He bites back the truth — that for all his efforts, for all his safeguards, he couldn't keep his own daughter out of danger. That from when she was old enough to hold a pair of pliers, he'd armed her with the tools of her own destruction.

He dismisses the concern with a furrowed brow, stares at the Perch family faces placed in front of him.

"Mr. Perch, I have plans. By this time next year, everyone will have forgotten your name, much less theirs." The shipping magnate has no reputation for patience, has too much respect for his own time — and, for that matter, Mayor Perch's — to sidestep truths.

He eyes the family portrait, offers a polite smile and small nod. "Cute kids," he concedes. Right hand reach, he plucks a photograph from the inside of his suit. It does not live there year-round, but Ravi does his research, knows that Fabian Perch is every bit the family man no one would dare accuse La Torre of being.

The foreground features the billiards table in the La Torre basement piled high with cash — half in a scattered mountain; half in neat stacks. His daughter, seven years old, grins — both front teeth missing — at the bills in her fists. In the background, a mustache-clad and million-years-younger Ravi La Torre leans over her work to double check the count.

The picture is blurry, underexposed, off-center — taken by a shaky handed snitch hoping to sell La Torre and his fortune down the river for a bribe. Ravi had personally peeled the skin off of the traitor's fingers, burned the more damning prints and the negatives alike — he remembers the stench of the acrid smoke so clearly. Few other family photographs exist; certainly none this candid. And implications notwithstanding, there are none that Ravi likes better.

"That's my Little Gun," he mumbles, passing the picture to Perch.

Ravi clears the feelings from his throat, returning the photograph to his pocket and the conversation to the matter at hand. "You know as well as I do that Leon Krigel is not the only District Four success story." He grits his teeth, swallows the biting criticisms forming on his tongue. His opinions go down like acid. Fabian Perch is not the audience to hear arguments against excluding the Krigel boy from that category altogether.

His voice is smooth, his words, harsh: "The children vying for your office struggle to recognize that a larger world exists outside of the Hunger Games. You want your children safe from poverty? From crime? From the hazards of the sea?" He sips his coffee, shakes his head. "You won't get that from them."

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

She spoke with a voice that disrupted the sky
She said walk on over here to the bitter shade
I will wrap you in my arms and you'll know that you're saved

"That's my little Gun. You know as well as I do that Leon Krigel is not the only District Four success story."

The image fills his mind, as bright and loud as a firework. Fabian turns his family portrait around as he accepts Ravi's. Gunner La Torre, who really ought to be sitting across from him right now. Fabian had learned a valuable lesson that day, many years ago; no matter how friendly he was with the other Career District Mayors, he could never trust them. He'd been convinced that the Lyon girl had loved Gunner as much as everyone in Four; he'd been horribly wrong.

He ran his free hand over his stubble and then covered his lips. He stared at the picture of Ravi's daughter and decided it didn't look a damn thing like her; nothing as still and plastic as a photograph could capture Gunner La Torre.

"You want your children safe from poverty? From crime? From the hazards of the sea? You won't get that from them."

Such simple worries, but pressing ones never the less. Fabian returns the photograph and drops his hands to his lap. "You know, I used to think I worried too much as a father. But then I became Mayor and the worries just piled on and on and on. You can't protect everyone from everything, I've learned. Do you think you can live with that?"

Fabian lifted his sea green eyes to Ravi's. Because I can't any more.

banner credit: this girl right hurr
lyrics: robert pattinson let me sign

[aya]

i'm not dead but i misplaced the will
i'm gonna wear this smile like it's a hundred dollar bill

By Ravi's design, Finch has no comments about the La Torre family photograph. What does a father say to the man who has lived his worst recurring nightmare? Ravi doesn't need a response. He knows exactly what the retiring mayor is thinking, and Perch's next remarks confirm it. "I used to think I worried too much as a father."

Mr. La Torre had met his own worries with lessons, with experience, with wisdom, with responsibility. He'd made sure that his Little Gun could handle herself from the moment she was old enough to hold a knife, to heft a pipe, to pull a trigger. By the time she was sixteen, the kingpin had all but retired from running the day-to-day operations in District Four in deference to his daughter. He'd nearly been ready to abdicate the throne he'd built, gift her the empire he'd founded.

"You can't protect everyone from everything, I've learned. Do you think you can live with that?"

Ravi frowns. Danger and devastation fight for dominance in his too-tired brown eyes. But the answer comes to his lips without prompting. "I'm still alive, aren't I?"