thearena | It's All the Same Monster That Nobody Faces [Closed]

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It's All the Same Monster That Nobody Faces [Closed]

WHO| Venus, Guy, Courfeyrac and Wyatt
WHAT| The respective death threads of the first three.
WHEN| Mini-Arena
WHERE| Throughout the maze.
WARNINGS| Death, probably some gore and suicidality.

She and Guy decide that they'll take District One, or at least, the District with the marble walls. That leaves them parting from Wyatt and Courfeyrac, who will take the path through the woven branch walls. Venus doesn't find that she wants to separate from her group, not out of fear but out of the comfort of company, but logically, splitting up and backtracing their steps are the best way to collect all the prizes in a timely fashion.

"Ugh, it's cold here." She shivers slightly, giving an empathetic look over to Guy, who seems to have even more difficulty with the cold than she does. He's probably from the tropics or the desert or something. She frowns as her shoes get wet with slightly-melted snow, as her breath dissipates in front of her like little ghosts. She wonders if it's her spirit leaving her body every time that happens. Certainly feels like it.

The walls behind them close. She turns around at the source of the sound, but sees nothing but the sleek marble face behind them. She takes a deep breath through her nose and looks forward.

Ice.

"So, do they have betting when you're from? Because I'm putting money on this being a trap."

-/-

She doesn't tell them how Guy died or why she's covered in his blood when she finds Wyatt and Courfeyrac again. She hopes they both trust her enough not to ask. It's a hope, not a certainty, and she tries her best not to think of all the paranoid thoughts that must be filling their heads. All the paranoid thoughts that may be somewhat right.

The walls here are made of hay. Experimentally, she tries to hack through them, but there's some kind of wood deep within that she can't cut through. Slivers of hay get caught in the sticky blood on her neck and hands and she scratches at them. She coughs on dust.

"Let's get out of here as quick as we can. I'm developing asthma or something."

They have half the tokens and a few hours left. All hope isn't lost yet.

-/-

Since Courfeyrac died, Venus seems harder. There hasn't been time for guilt, but she's set aside a place for frustration, for the shame that comes with knowing that he could have joined them in winning and that they didn't manage it. It's deeper now, knowing that no one else's chances were progressed by her friend's death. Previously had he died she could have rationalized it away as a step closer to winning for Kankri. Previously, had he died, she'd hope for his resurrection.

She says a little prayer for him that he made it back to the Capitol, that the threats the Escorts made were just jokes, and can't find it in her to believe.

The casual smile is gone, replaced by a sort of stoic professionalism that makes her look older. It's only been twenty hours in the Arena, but both she and Wyatt are exhausted. They don't talk much, which seems to suit Wyatt alright, since he isn't the most verbose man. The travel side to side, having collected eight of the twelve tokens and starting to feel the weight of the time pressure on their shoulders. Several times now Venus has imagined putting the machete through Wyatt's neck from behind, not out of malice, but to spare him the permanent death they'll face when the clock runs out with them four short.

And she's been taking the lead for the last twenty minutes or so, because she's tired of chasing those thoughts out of her head.

Behind them, the hide walls close. Venus whips around, machete clutched in her hand, and frowns. "Oh boy."

They've triggered another trap.

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As much as he wants to ask about Guy, he knows that doing so would only make their situation more dire and complicated. They have a job to do and there's no time to dwell on the emotions of their plight just yet. They'd all get the chance to grieve later, when they were safely outside the Arena for good. The idea that is is indeed Guy's blood which covers Venus refuses to take root in his mind. There will be no paranoia from him. Not this time. As Venus rejoins them, all he can do is shoot Wyatt a look and fall back into step.

The haystacks are tall and make his eyes itch. He has sudden flashback memories to his childhood in the country, to ideas of how countryfolk lived in the south, near his family's home. These aren't comforting images to turn to, they're distractions from their mission.

He tries to wipe some of the loose dust from his face, burying his nose in his elbow while glancing at the bloodstained and coughing Venus. "We can use the ribbon, perhaps, to mask our faces from the hay."

Wyatt looked at Venus for a long moment, eyes - narrowed against the sharp, drifting grains - taking in the still wet stains, the bells echoing in his ears, but he said nothing. He wanted to believe - she had good reason.

So he did.

And what was more, he wanted out of this district.

Yellow clouds hung in the air, fine and grating. They stuck to Wyatt's sweat dampened skin, made it itch. He scrubbed his arm across his forehead, tried to clear his eyes of it, snorting it free from his nose like a bull.

It clung to his mustache, pale flecks that made it look like he was aging before their eyes.

"Ain't big enough," he rumbled, the words muffled as he bunched up the hem of his shirt and pulled it up to cover his nose and mouth. "We're gunna have to push through."

With his free hand, he motioned for Courfeyrac and Venus to come closer.

"Stick close, try not to breathe it too deep."

Venus pulls her t-shirt up too. Her eyes are red, and every time she rubs at them they seem to hurt worse. She pauses for just a moment, noticing that the ground beneath her feet has shifted to metal as she's gone deeper down this path.

"Why metal?" she asks. Every step seems to scrape. Her eyelashes seem coated in the fine grain, and she wonders how it is that farmers can stand the stuff. Every breath under her t-shirt smells like sweat and overpowering coppery blood, but she knows that it's tacky in the very least to complain about choking on the murder you've committed.

If she had had a second longer to process what was happening, to replace muscle memory with conscious thought, she wouldn't have struck Guy back when he 'attacked' her. She wouldn't have put a machete through her ally's neck.

Wyatt's presence is welcome. There's something almost fatherly about the way he takes the lead, letting her and Courfeyrac cope with their trauma without uselessly stewing. Venus would reach out now to take Courfeyrac's hand - she would reach out for a friend - except that she doesn't know if she's welcome to in the state she's in, which is ironic, given that he put a bullet in her head last Arena. So she just clusters around Wyatt.

"Guys..." She bends down, feeling the metal floor. "Guys, the floor is hot."

Courfeyrac muffles a cough into his hand, kneeling down beside Venus to examine the ground. She's correct, of course, and an overwhelming wave of dread washes over him as his mind leaps from conclusion to conclusion at a rapid fire pace.

He's standing upright again, sniffing the air, fighting to ignore the stinging scent of the hay when something dreadful hits him. It isn't just the floor that seams how. The air, already stifling from the mist of the hay seems to be unbearably warm, too. And more than that, there's an unmistakable scent wafting through the air, mingled with the heavy hay smell.

"Fire!" He hisses, reaching for Venus' arm to pull her to her feet. "Get up! We have to get out of here!"

It seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment the air was thick with dust, the next with smoke - with flames that came to life out of nothing. Once caught the fire erupted, a living thing that climbed over the straw covered walls of the path and reached out to them with burning fingers.

Wyatt ducked, pressing his shirt harder to his face to try and block out the smoke and ash, the now burning grain that still floated in the air. He couldn't see the path anymore, but he knew it was a straight away for the next several yards so he reached out, grabbing at Venus' other arm as Courfeyrac did, making a chain out of their bodies.

"Hold on!"

Venus lets Wyatt grab her, longing for her teleportation for the umpteenth time. It seems impossible how fast the flames have consumed the walls around them, and it's both smoke and the heat distorting the air that makes it difficult to see where they're going. She pulls her arm away from Courfeyrac and then reaches for his hand, but fails to find it. She grabs again and gets a hold, her hand in his.

She pulls forward, looking for the path out, hoping the fire hasn't spread through all of the District Nine section and knowing that they'll be dead quickly if that's the case. They make the turn but this path, too, is burning, and chunks of the straw wall are caving in and collapsing into the path. A hacking cough crawls out of Venus' throat and she pulls Wyatt and Courfeyrac low, trying to get beneath all the smoke.

There's a tug at her hand and somehow she's separated from one half of her allies. Her hand is empty but for the sweat in her palm.

"Courfeyrac!" she yells, although it's lost under the roar of flames and the pops and cracks of the straw.

He isn't sure how he lost hold of Venus, but it's soon clear to him that having lost her, he's now lost himself. The fiery barrier between them seems to have erupted from nowhere, keeping him distant and trapped from his allies and from his salvation. He's surrounded on all sides and the flames are advancing, and while he's not at all a coward, he cannot deny the solid and perfect sense of fear that comes over him.

"Get out of here!" He screams as loud as he can, which isn't very loud at all considering the lack of oxygen at his disposal. Screaming was a terrible idea in retrospect, because he's now out of breath and very certain that he won't have a chance at another clear one. "Save yourselves!"

Instinctively, he tries to shield himself from the heat and the flames, sinking to the ground, curling into a ball. It's so hot and so terrible and he feels the fire enveloping him in the most horrible, wicked way. This is what hell is supposed to be like. This version of death... this is his true punishment.

He can't bring himself to try talking again. He can't even manage a cry of pain. All he can do is take long, labored breaths and hope that the lack of air will kill him or at least incapacitate him before the fire has its way with his useless body.

Wyatt felt Venus stop more than he saw it. A tug on his arm as tried to keep going and she held her ground.

Courfeyrac's voice was tiny in the roar of the fire, his body nothing more than a vague shape, lost beyond the smoke and flames. He couldn't be certain what the young man screamed, if it was really anything at all, but he knew just the same what they needed to do.

"Venus!" He squeezed her hand, gave her a tug, trying to move her. "Venus, there's nothin' we can do! We have to go!"

She pauses for one moment, thinking of something, anything she could scream into the flames to give Courfeyrac a last word of comfort, but the smoke is too thick and her mind too scrambled, and she knows that if she stays longer she, too, will die. So she follows Wyatt and runs.

It's almost cruel when the smoke gives way to clear air again just moments after they hear the Arena ring with the sound of death, when the fire is decidedly behind them and they are now in a maze of unburnable slate. When they're safely away from the inferno, Venus hacks and coughs, doubling over momentarily as she catches her breath.

"I was supposed to protect him. I told Enj..." But she isn't arguing for the right to go back. She's used to death, even the death of those she bears some responsibility for. Her face is hard and dark, her eyes blank. "He's a good man. A good friend."

She won't use the past tense, not until she's certain he's gone for good. Courfeyrac did better by her than she did by him, granting her mercy when she died. Allowing Kankri to take the supplies. Finding it in himself to fall in love in the worst of circumstances.

It's something she and he and Wyatt share in common. Were this somewhere besides the Arena, she might cry.

There were words he could have said, expected, easy - condolences, apologies, but even if Wyatt could have found his breath through the ash in his lungs, he would have said them. They didn't mean anything.

Not from him, who had known Courfeyrac for so short a time; and not to people like them. People like Venus, like himself. The guardians, the caretakers. The one's who make promises and gave so much to keeping others safe.

There were no words that could take about the guilt, the anger. The bone-deep knowledge that they should have done something.

Anything.

Instead, he gave her a moment, let her work through that first, hard, bitter wave of loss, leaning against the cool, smooth wall as he regathered his strength. Then he straightened and met her gaze with his own.

"He saved our lives, lettin' us go," he said, drawl rough from the heat, the flames, but no less honest. "It's on us now, not to waste it."

She nods. And then she dredges up something an agent told her once, something her therapist told her was an 'unhealthy coping mechanism' (sometimes, she wonders how much of her is genuine, and how much is a composite of life advice from everyone else).

Someone goes down in the field, use it as motivation to get those fuckers back. And make it look good.

She pulls up her anger and swings her machete, slamming it against the slate wall again and again until the blade blunts and parts of her palm grow red with blistering. It's something she hasn't touched in a very long time. She usually keeps her emotions at a distance from the Arena.

She knows Wyatt won't judge rage.

When she's done, she takes deep, ugly breaths and wipes spittle from her mouth. "We still need the District Nine prize."

His head turned, slightly, during the display, eyes narrowing as chips of stone flew from beneath the blade, but otherwise he was still and silent through her rage. Letting her burn through the worst of it.

By no means did he believe it was gone when she slowed, stopped, and turned back to him. He knew better, knew the feeling too well himself, but still he didn't comment.

Instead, he nodded again.

"We should double back while we still know the way," he said. "We know what's waiting in there, what to look out for -- maybe we'll get lucky and get through before they have time to reset the snare."

She shoves the machete through her belt loop again, swearing as it slices through the threading and renders the loop useless. She scowls and puts it through a hook further back along her hip.

"If we find his body, he'd want me to pray for him. I think." They hadn't talked about religion much, just enough to know the basics of where each other stood. "And we should get his axe if it's still useable. Need to get you a weapon, sheriff."

Her voice doesn't betray any mourning at all. She's all business, painfully professional, locked off from herself. And she prefers it that way.

"...Even if we don't find him," Wyatt offered after a moment's silence, breaking the quiet that fallen as they turned back the way the fire had pushed them. "Ya can still pray for him. My Ma used to say ya could reach God wherever ya were, whether it's yer kitchen table er a fine church."

Personally, he wasn't sure he bought that anymore. He prayed more now, when he did, out of habit than any true belief there was a benevolent Father watching over them.

"But, no, I wouldn't mind findin' the axe."

"It's a nice thought," she says quietly, with about as much conviction and faith as Wyatt feels. Her religion is habit rather than belief, truly, not so much sticking to anything than simply not having the energy to reexamine long enough to declare herself agnostic.

The floor is still warm when they reenter District Nine's fire-trap. Embers are still floating through the air, and the whole area smells of smoke. Venus quietly brings her shirt up over her nose again and walks forward without complaint.

"There," she says, pointing to a human-sized lump on the ground before them. She doesn't approach. She'll wait for Wyatt to confirm it.

The silence of the rest of the arena - no insects, no breeze, just their own voices too sharp, too loud - was even heavier here. Like a physical weight baring down upon them. Even Wyatt's footsteps were soft, muffled by the fine layer of ash coating the floor.

He said nothing as he followed Venus' gesture, moving forward and crouching at the corpse's side.

He made it as quick as he could. Jaw tight as he reached and took burnt flesh in one hand, the still warm steel in the other. He worked the axe free of Courfeyrac's desperate grip.

Finally, she approaches. She hates herself for wasting time, for pausing when she used to be so comfortable with death and walking through killing fields, but it's all become so different. She doesn't know when she became so fragile, so- human.

She crouches down next to the charred, mangled corpse. She says something under her breath. She touches her fingertips to the brittle remains of curly hair. And she gets up and follows Wyatt to leave.

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It's All the Same Monster That Nobody Faces [Closed]

COURFEYRAC AND WYATT

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