thearena | (no subject)

Who| Ellie and OPEN
What| Ellie is just trying to survive but that's kind of hard when you're starving.
Where| Wandering around
When| Catch-all for everything from the cornucopia through the second week.
Warnings/Notes| language, for sure. will update if anything else.

Ellie was starving.

It wasn't the first time she had starved, of course, and it was very unlikely to be the last. It was just the first time she had starved without anything she could really do about it.

She was pretty good with plants - knew better than to eat things she wasn't absolutely sure wasn't poisonous - and she didn't recognize any of the plants. So she'd made do with the rotten apples - digging out the rotten bits with her fingers and eating around the rest. It wasn't good, and she'd thrown up once, but any food was good food, at this point.

It simply wasn't going to last.

So she went hunting.

Not literally, of course. She was armed only with a piece of wood, and she'd done nothing but run from the wildlife and the creepy moving forest. No. She was hunting for supplies. She was hunting for people.

People she could steal from.

No way that could go wrong, right?

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Julie blinked. Oh. Well. Okay. Wow, really not what she was expecting. Felt like ever since that first Arena, she was still waiting for the guy with the lance. She'd kill that prick if she ever saw him again. Really lucky for him she hadn't.

"Yeah, I've got food." Julie relaxed a little, dropping her hand down. Not dropping the arrow altogether, though. She wasn't stupid. She remembered killing her first man at twelve. "You want some? I'm gonna kill myself with all this peanut butter. Unless you've got, like, a nut allergy or something."

Ellie for her part seemed to relax immediately at the offer. It wasn't that she was very quick to trust people, she just... didn't exactly have any options at the moment.

"Fuck no, I will literally take anything. Anything. I could eat a fucking horse. I-- I'll take whatever you're willing to give me."

So, sure, it was stupid as all hell to give away food, as rare as it was. Stupid as hell. Kinda the same kind of stupid that had her befriending a zombie, huh? Besides, she knew starving. It sucked. It sucked worse than anything else, and the memory was close to her after last Arena.

Besides, the girl was tiny. She'd need it.

"Peanut butter, potatoes." She tossed one of the latter over, putting the arrow down in her lap. She hooked the bow around her fake arm, though, a little defensive. The bow was the only thing gonna keep her alive later. "C'mere, I saved something special." She took out the fruit drink, something that promised balanced electrolytes. No idea, but the fact it was bottled made her think it was something a little extra. "It'll probably go down easier than the beer." She set it a few feet in front of her, just in case the girl wasn't trusting her in return. "What's your name? 'm Julie."

She approached carefully, but maybe a little more trusting than she should be, catching the potato and tucking it under her arm as she reached or for the juice.

"Thanks," she said, completely honestly as she struggle to get the bottle open. She knew better than to drink it down all at once (she had starved before), but it was still difficult to restrain herself. She carefully took a drink and then forced herself to wait before taking another.

"Ellie," she said when she could, wiping her mouth. "And- and thanks again. Really."

Yeah, she didn't regret this if that thankfulness was genuine. It sure as shit sounded genuine. She knew last Arena she would've done a hell of a lot for a couple of more bites to eat. It was almost a gift that she'd been devoured by a goddamn zombie at the end.

"It's no problem," she said, shrugging it off. And, hey, that told her a lot right there. Not a lot of people would pace themselves unless they'd starved before. Hell, even Julie was crap at it. It was a miracle she had as much peanut butter as she still did. The only reason the beer was still around was because she knew it'd make her thirstier. To be honest, Julie was impressed with -- ah. Ellie.

So, hey, you happen to be from my world? You know, apocalypse-ridden, zombie-infested? Sure would love to see a moderately familiar face. We could talk about the good times, when people only got sad to watch us die because they were missing out on a good meal.

"You haven't tried eating the stuff around here, right? It's shit. All of it. I mean, far as I can tell."

"Yeah, I know better," Ellie said, relaxing more as every second passed and she grew more and more sure that Julie wasn't going to jump her with a knife. "This isn't really my first rodeo, if you know what I mean. I stick to plants I know won't kill me. And this place..."

She looked around before taking another careful sip of the juice.

"I don't have any fucking idea where I am, to be honest."

Well, kid was still alive, right? Guess she did know better. Julie was just. Spoiled. Guess the hand-raised farms in the stadium had been a nice little insurance ticket. They'd only failed one year, when the frost had hit them hard and slithered in all the wrong cracks.

Despite herself, she cracked a smile.

"I'm crap at plants. I'm used to scavenging. There used to be enough Wal-Marts to feed a few armies, you know?"

And she's pretty sure this back and forth thing is messing up her instincts worse. Going from gorging at the Capital, right back to scavenging. "And I've never been to a jungle." She paused, a thought occurring to her. "You don't mean this is your first Arena, right?"

"Yeah I guess I should have been more specific. This is my first totally fucked up man-made rodeo. My last one was one hundred percent due to the apocalypse." She may has well have said 'one hundred percent due to the weather'.

"I mean, I'm good with scavenging too, but there wasn't really a lot left where I came from. I'm best at hunting. Give me a bow and I'll take down whatever you want. But I didn't get shit to hunt anything, and I haven't seen hair or hide of anything to eat anyway."

She hadn't met the dinosaurs yet.

The moment Ellie said the word of the day, Julie was even more all-ears. All on board for the potentially deadly company. She rolled a potato over -- they're raw, yeah, but it's food and it's not terrible -- and pushed her bow under a leg.

It's totally crazy to already itch to give her the bow, isn't it? It is.

With the fake arm, though, Julie wasn't that great a shot. And she was scared the damn thing would break the string, like she doesn't have enough things to worry about.

"Apocalypse? I mean -- are you from home?" Home. Like there's only one of those left out there. Julie was catching on. "Post-apocalypse? Zombies every five steps?"

As much as she'd enjoyed being around normal people for once, she kind of missed home. Go fucking figure.

Zombie was a new word. Well. An old word.

"Yeah. We call them the infected, though. Are you--" She paused, hesitated, but then pushed on. "Did you come over with R? You know, kind of corpsy but cute in a bumbling dead sort of way?"

Well. Shit.

Talk about the perfect cocktail of surprise. It wasn't just the realization that, Jesus Christ, there's a kid (not much of a kid, she remembered, because Ellie's about the age Julie was when she blew that guy's face off) from home, who's gone through the whole schtick. Dead family and a ruined world and nothing left to offer it but survival. Not just that. She had to go and mention R, too.

She rolled the girl another apple just to keep her here longer.

"I guess he's making friends, huh?" Admittedly, it was weird as hell for her to think that -- and someone like Ellie, shouldn't she have been trying to pop the zombie's head off?

Cute? Yeah. Well. Okay, he really was. "Yeah, he's... a friend. I mean, for years I've been popping his kind and then he kidnaps me to show me his snowglobe collection."

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FORGIVE MY HORRIBLE LATENESS

always c: <3

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