thearena | Swallowed Waist Deep in the Gore of the Forest [Closed]

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Swallowed Waist Deep in the Gore of the Forest [Closed]

Who| Eponine, Sigma, Eva, R
What| Eva gets allies and finds a zombie.
When| First day, then later that week.
Where| Near the Cornucopia, then near the labs.
Warnings| Zombies.

Some part of her never left the Arena. It's that part of her that slips into survival mode like a lamprey over the rocks of a brook - fast, barely-seen, but there and deadly. It's in the way her head tilts at a natural angle to hear best, the way she doesn't much smile in the Arena. The way the tips of her fingers itch.

She's made a quick bandage for Eponine's wound out of part of the girl's shirt, and, after lumbering around like some three-legged monster a while, found a large tree where the roots make a natural cave. Eponine's exhausted by then, and Eva decides it's better she sleeps now than later, when Eva needs to take a sleeping shift, so she lets Eponine rest and camouflages the entrance of the shelter with fronds of ferns and leaves.

Her hands aren't clammy when wrapped around her spear. It's only humidity, the same thickness in the air that makes her hair twist and coil like damp reeds in flame. She stalks through the tall grass near the Cornucopia, hunched low as she finds the food that some people missed. She stoops over a crate of apples and, tucking in her shirt and pulling the belt as tight as she can, begins to stash apples down her front.

She pauses as she hears something, a rustle in the grass a few yards from her. She stays still, nothing moving except the breath over her lower teeth, except a bead of sweat snailing its way down her temple.

Point forward, ready to lunge, she parts the reeds with her spear.

And she stumbles onto Sigma.

--

With her allies guarding her considerable haul of supplies, Eva feels more comfortable fanning out over the Arena and learning the terrain. She makes a mental map of landmarks, of trees, but she doesn't trust the sun when the Gamemakers are involved.

It rains, and when the storm ends her clothes don't dry. She leans her spear against a tree only to wring out her hair.

She sees a series of buildings, and she doesn't trust them. The odds of someone else being in there is high; the odds of it being a trap is higher. She passes, melting back into the jungle.

She pauses when she hears a gurgle, a rattle. She changes how she holds the spear, using it to lead - if someone's dying, their murderer may be near.

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Does he help her up? Is she hurt? R scans her for obvious injuries and doesn't see anything as in your face as big splashes of red or ragged stumps. He sniffs tentatively her way as he starts to sit up. Life comes back at him, life and sweat and that scent that may or may not be an adrenaline rush still ebbing away that he tastes on the roof is mouth. It's one of those undead sixth senses most likely.

"Owe..." R shrugs. Fine by him. Friends help friends. He presumably lived by that motto and turning it over in his head, he thinks it sounds reasonable even if he's Dead. "Help...you...now?"

Maybe it's Eva showing motherly affection by straightening his shirt - he remembers it happening before but no clue if it's from his memories or someone he ate - or maybe he's just happy not to be pinned to the floor anymore. He starts to lean toward her before he realizes he better abort the Creepy Train while he still can. Right, right. Priorities. Paying attention to his surroundings that apparently includes looking down for plants. Focus on getting Eva to her feet.

Staggering to his feet sends a trail of black ooze down the entry wound from her spear, R staring down at the top of Eva's head and feeling the hunger perking up as it sends up flashes of want. Daydreams of cracking her head open like a walnut. Gorging on Essence of Eva Salazar right here and now. Swallowing, R waits until he's sure he won't jump her while she'd down.

Grunting, he stoops to help her up, his hands gentle but cold against her skin. There's a distinct lack of distrust in his touch that doesn't belong in the Arena. A few thick drops of what passes for his blood plops against the back of her hand.

She nearly brushes his hands away, but instead takes them, the skin in her hands cool and strangely feeling clammy despite its dryness. She gives them a grateful squeeze, ignoring the glob of slime that's now dribbling down her wrist. She gets up and wipes dirt first from her knees, then reaches up and brushes a leaf from R's hair with a tenderness that seems out of place given her recent actions.

"Have you eaten?" It's an important question for a variety of reasons, and to clarify, Eva appends "anything?" to the back of the sentence.

Slowly, the air seems to come back to her, filling her lungs like balloons that have had their skin distended. And not for the first time since this Arena started, fear spread along her veins and rests at the base of her skull. She's not capable like she once was. If winning her Arena was a long shot, this is nearly impossible.

And if she dies, her life will have been worth nothing at all.

"Thank you," she says, gesturing to her knees. "For helping me up."

R's happy to say he can shake his head for a change. "No. But...little hhggh...hungry," he admits, truthful to a fault. "Heads...up."

For now, at least, he thinks he's surprisingly good. Maybe it's a sign he really can change if he learns how to commit instead of zoning out and wishing things could be different, too little too late, while he shuffles behind the others with his head hanging down. Something that might be a smile fighting its way to the surface twitches across his face as he nods at Eva. No problem. Glad he can help.

He doesn't move out of the way as Eva plucks the leaf out of his hair. Who she's trying to straighten him out for is beyond him but he guesses maybe it's a reflex. Considering R doesn't get much voluntary close-contact, he'll take it. His eyes wander to some unknown point over her shoulder. The jungle plus even more jungle if you didn't get your fix yet. He'd never seen so much green in his life, even back home. His eyes slide back to Eva's face, lined with dirt and blood from the cut near her eye.

"Help you...home?" R says, chivalry suddenly lighting up the dark recesses of his skull. "Es...cort."

He'd hold the door open for her but seeing as there's no doors, the best he can offer is another meat shield if anyone guns for her from the trees. Considering how Eva handled herself with that plant, he doubts that'll happen.

"Have you eaten any of the plants here?" Eva's eyes are dark, hooded in thought. They aren't open and ravenous like they are when she's learning, not soft and deep like when she's listening. They're an opaque black wall, behind which she sorts and sifts through three decades of Games, finds the ones with poisons.

She realizes, there in the back of her head, that locked away inside herself is probably the safest place to be. And that's the moment when she makes certain that her heart is shut down to R, if not her mind.

With a false jocularity, she loops her arm around his, as if they were just about to step onto a red carpet and not wandering through the woods where both flora and fauna have reasons to want them dead. That twisted smile opens up like a flower on her face, scar on her upper lip like a leaf around the base.

"I could stand to have a handsome young corpse take me home. I have allies. We'll be making good on that favor soon enough."

"Don't...eat...greens," R shrugs. He would've said do I look like a vegetarian to you? but he knows without even trying he'll never get that one killer of a word out. Not with his stiff lips. The rigor mortis simply won't allow it.

After that plant trying to turn him into dinner, he's not sure he wants to. Seems like it's more trouble than it's worth and anyway, Eva smells so much better that his near miss is already fading into a distant memory in comparison. He shuffles along, telling himself he won't sneak little greedy sniffs her way every now and then and failing. She makes working on his limited control...difficult. Very, very difficult.

He shuffles wherever Eva seems to be going, reacting to any changes in direction by following along with his chin bobbing against his chest. It's both touching and a little too far for Eva to insist he's "handsome". If he was, he isn't anymore, R thinks. Death kinda does that to you.

"Will...do," R's groan starts to sound pleased. Doesn't seem so bad. He should - in theory - be able to get from Point A to Point B assuming there aren't any roadblocks like ladders or cliffs. "Hggh...happy...help."

For Eva, he thinks he'd do anything. It beats daydreaming about her blood pulsing hot and fresh into his mouth.

She takes her arm back. His discomfort may only slowly register on his face, but it registers nonetheless. Smart boy; he can tell when he's being buttered up. It stands to believe that she should stop underestimating him so much. She starts to recall that 'slow' may have a very different meaning than 'stupid'.

"Well, now you do." Eva walks back over to where the once-murderous plant is laying on the ground, like some kind of limp, deflated balloon oozing jelly and trailing tentacles of vines. She prods at it with her spear. "This can, presumably, digest us. We have a better chance of being able to digest it than anything else around here."

She stabs it and hoists it up, looping it over her shoulder like some traveler's sack. It drips orange liquid. The vines trail like some hideous wedding train.

"And if not, at least it smells awful enough to keep people away from us."

-timeskip-

Traveling at R's pace, it takes the better part of the evening to return to the cave with Sigma and Eponine. Eva has to say she's somewhat grateful for the enforced reprieve. She pushes sticks and fronds away that block the entrance - the rancid stench of sweat and vomit wafts out. She hunkers down.

"Eponine, Dr. Klim? We have a visitor."

Whilst Eva had been gone, Eponine had fallen once more into her fitful dose. Still half drunk, she dreamed lucidly. Or perhaps they were the hallucinations that this arena seemed to project to her - Eponine couldn't tell. But whilst she had held Sigma's hand, brushing the soft wrinkles on the one side, and the metal on the other. He had sewn her leg. She could touch him. In this world where Howard peeped in at her, and Alex opened his mouth to silently condemn her for leaving him to the sandworm, and Cosette and Marius kissed passionately in front of her, Eponine concluded that Eva too, had not been real. She couldn't have been real. It was just a hallucination, or a dream.

So Eponine didn't immediately place Eva's voice when she heard it. Rather, she doesn't try to move from where she lies in the cave amidst vomit and bloodied rags. She doesn't try to waken Sigma. Instead, she just calls out.

"Leave us alone. GO AWAY! You're not real!"

Unable to keep his illness at bay, Sigma too had fallen into the sleep he had direly needed, though his fever only worsened as evening fell. Despite his suffering Eponine's hand around his had soothed him into unconsciousness - it had been a very long time since he had slept next to a child of his and so long as she stroked his hand, he could sleep the whole night.

He had heard Eva's voice somewhere far away, an echo through his dream loud enough to be heard, nudging him gently awake - then Eponine's shout wakes him like a cattle prod and he leaps up, remembering his duty, almost hitting his head on the base of the tree. His hands sink into the dirt on either side of Eponine's body and he shields her with his own, bracing himself for a sword against the back, turning his neck to snarl at whoever had appeared and startled her. Then his vision focuses to reveal Eva, and Sigma blinks twice, overwhelmingly confused. He does not yet notice R.

Putting the pieces together, his expression sinks apologetically - he withdraws back to his spot with a thud, exhausted from the overreaction, blood beating in his ears from his strained heart working harder than it can handle. He rolls onto his back and closes his eyes with a low moan.

"Eponine, my dear, it's just Eva," he drawls, equal parts sympathetic and annoyed, like scolding a child who would invent imaginary monsters under their bed late at night. If this flu didn't kill him, Eponine would. His eye still closed, and his cybernetic one shut down to save energy, he speaks to Eva now. "Who did you bring?" Their hiding place was already cramped, but he supposed another Tribute who could fight would take the pressure off of his partner.

He hears the voices of the last two people he wanted to run into: Eponine, the girl who thinks her life isn't worth anything at all, and Sigma, the man who couldn't protect her any better than he could protect himself from a Victor and a zombie. R feels his insides curdle. Even the maggots infesting his guts go still.

He should turn around and shuffle away before he makes it worse by opening his mouth and groaning. Maybe it's his imagination or maybe Eva senses he's getting cold feet - her arm tightens around his. Unable to put together the brain cells to extricate himself, R resigns himself to facing two of his victims. Eponine sounds like crap and the old man doesn't sound much better.

"Rrggh - " he pauses, tries again, trying to enunciate that one syllable. "Rrrr. Help-ing...Eva."

The stench of illness, dried and fresh puke, and blood fills the air, wafting out as he peers in. Does Eva not know their gory little history together?

R struggles to hold his breath, that urge to inhale the scent that tells him that these two would be easy prey, a red signal pulsing in his frontal lobe. He's here to help, he reminds himself. Helping doesn't involve lurching in there and biting out Eponine's neck.

She reaches a hand out and cradles Eponine's cheek and chin, strokes her hair. She glances at Sigma, irate that he's fallen asleep.

"I've brought us a taste-tester," she says calmly, watching to see how Sigma and Eponine respond to the intruder. Eva's well-aware of the grim history between the three of them, but similarly, she trusts in her ability to control the situation - or at least it's participants. She's in charge, and she won't let any of the three forget it.

She flumps the dead vine plant in between them all like it's a trophy. It lays there like a partially-filled organ, orange stinking fluid pooling around the edges and crusting at the wounds.

She crawls into the cave and sits, ankles crossed, palms up. "I'm sure we're all aware by now that the flora here is predominantly toxic. From what I gathered, no one's been able to find plant life that's edible here yet. This is our best chance here, but I imagine neither of you are in a state to experiment and if I were to, you'd be without someone to take watch."

She gestures to R, and the plant.

He owes her, and she won't let him forget that while she still has use for him. Her goal in this Arena is to survive, and then if it comes to the end reckon with whether or not she can kill Eponine. She refuses to plan that far ahead, although she's worked out everything up until that point.

"Eva?"
Eponine reaches to touch Eva's hand, to hold it to her hot head.

"Are you truly, truly real? I didn't dream you, did I? I dreamed Marius - I dream that the zombie is stood outside. Madame, it is but a dream, is it not? Say it is a dream - only, I do not want to die in such a manner."

Tears begin to seep from her eyes again, cooling her flushed cheeks, and once more, she turns her head and vomits.

"Please - I'll try it. I will try it - I want to die. Let me die, or let me grow strong with it's nourishment, Madame. Do not leave me to die so."

Sigma recognizes the intruder's voice and regrets backing down on his aggression. Lifting himself from the cavern floor, he forces his electric eye online to keep a close watch on R, disgust plain on his red face. Unfortunately he cannot struggle for power nor contest Eva's judgment in his condition, for it would be a short and fatal disagreement; his stubborn silence signals his resignation to R's company and he turns his face away from them in a tranquil fury. A buried and festering inclination towards vengeance is fed as R's role is explained to him... Sigma is starving, short of temper, and consumed by fever. Childishly he hopes the branch is poisonous. Could a zombie suffer?

As Eponine vomits, Sigma takes care of it this time, burying her sick quickly and unflinchingly. Eva is holding her ground, their strong and stubborn matriarch that would keep Eponine alive at any cost, and it is apparent to Sigma that she will not back down - and so the Doctor is the one who rushes to comfort Eponine from R.

"Shh, my dear. I've made it here, remember?" Equally offended, he is not afraid to tell her what he thinks she wants to hear this time. Even a veteran to suffering did not come away from that battle unscathed. "He cannot do anything. I will not let him." While he lifts a hand to trace the tears on Eponine's cheek, his words are accusatory. He bounced back and forth on his opinion on R as the situation warranted, and right now Sigma believed saving his life had meant very little if it only changed whose jaws ended up ripping him apart postmortem.

R watches the scene play out with a dull, slack-jawed interest.

He probably shouldn't groan that aside from Eva and her spear, realistically he wouldn't have trouble shuffling in and eating the two of them if he really wanted to.

(Which he did. It was a small miracle he hadn't).

The hunger gnashing its teeth at the sight of easy prey and howling in the back of his head, R stares forward. The smell of vomit, new and old, should be eye-watering. He has the idea that his gag reflex should be going into over time. Dry-heave. But his corpse refuses even that much, leaning forward slightly instead of rocking back on his heels. Eponine would probably go down easiest because she's not riddle with...parts like the old man is.

R bites down on the side of his cheek, clenching his jaw. He'd made it this far without killing anyone. If he can make it past today, past this cave with the weak and ill, then he can make it the rest of the Arena, right? Somehow he has to show them he's a monster, but he's not always a monster. Not a lost cause.

"Not...kill. Not...eat." A disappointed shudder runs up his spine. R guiltily squashes it down. "E-va's right. Want...to...help."

She winces as Eponine vomits, both in sympathy and frustration that she's been so unable to help the girl combat her flu here. Secretly, she wonders if Eponine has been sneaking bites of the wildlife here. It would make sense for someone as hungry and sick as she is to try to unthinkingly settle her stomach with poison. She reaches over and gives the bony hand a squeeze, nodding to Sigma.

"He won't hurt anyone here. He has his head about him." She holds a palm out. She wonders how much Eponine and Sigma know about R's humanity, about the rather intelligent boy seemingly crippled by the body he's in, and all those nerves that don't seem to line up right post-mortem. "He's a friend."

Maybe he'll apologize for having eaten them last time.

She looks at her motley crew and feels her guts sink. They're worse than a ragtag bunch; they're hopeless. Sigma is clearly still sick and only barely cooperative with her; Eponine, on her best days, is somewhat difficult to control, and R is a matter unto himself. For a moment she wonders if it would be better to try and win this Arena on her own, like she did so long ago.

But times have changed. There are more than twice the number of Tributes in this Arena.

"Madame, he ate me alive."

Eponine's tired - no, exhausted. And she can't fight Eva on this, verbally nor physically. She can't even get up and run. She will simply have to deal with R and Eva and Sigma and anyone else who wants to join possibly the most hopeless group in the arena.

"Fine. Fine - do as you will. But I still do not trust him to not nibble at my toes whilst you sleep, Madame. And if he is a friend, why do you risk trying to poison him. I do not care, but it seems an odd thing to do. Most everything seems peculiar today."

"Because he's already dead, in a sense," Sigma answers her. He'd seen R's type before in films and a real-life variant during his youth. "The toxin will kill us, but not him. At least, it shouldn't."

Exhausted as well, Sigma gives up on moderating the spectacle and curls up beside Eponine, ready to fall back to sleep guiltlessly now that Eva was around. "Well, good luck. We'll see how long it takes him to get hungry for Tribute," he retorts bitterly. If R went a few days without chomping down on Eponine's leg, perhaps he'd think to forgive him. Sigma suddenly turns away from Eponine and coughs hackingly into his arm, making a point of doing so as away from Eva as he can in their small space. He was furious with her for bringing R here, but he still respected her and wanted her to stay healthy. With a groan, Sigma rolls back into his depression in the dirt and closes his eye... tellingly, however, his bionic eye whirs to life and begins to watch what happens next.

Sigma has a good point - short of starvation or trauma to the brain, R's pretty sure he'll live through anything, if you can call existing as a walking corpse "life".

R bites back the urge to groan again. By the time he gets anything out, they'll probably be rendered obsolete. He sways next to Eva, aware of that odd glow from Sigma's direction and the way Eponine didn't even sound accusing: she sounded resigned, which, in a way, was worse. It reminds him too much of his memories of Perry. Being Perry.

"Won't," R says, his groan weak. He shifts - wobbles - his body half toward Eva, as if she'll vouch for him. A Living shield against the two people he's already murdered, because must've died a coward and there's still shreds of that boy somehow. "Start...now? Helping...you guys..."

He tries to ignore that little niggling feeling in the botom of his guts at what Eponine said. Actually, it is a little weird. R assumes Eva just knows what she's doing and she's a good woman, she'll get everyone out of this and back on their feet. She's looking out after these two, isn't she?

"Do you really think so little of my ability to keep things under control, Sigma?" Eva's voice is harsh as a bear trap as it cuts through the air at the old doctor. Here, in the Arena, looking like she's lost control is invitation for an attack, even in front of her allies. That it's her own personality defect doesn't really occur to her.

She hopes Sigma's explanation of her logic suffices. She doesn't want the calculation of strategy and debt out in the air, poisoning their already noxious space.

"If it doesn't work, then I'll have to go further each day looking for any natural source of food here - but the plenty at the Cornucopia tells me they're going to try and starve us out. It's how they force us together when they're being especially uncreative."

"Don't fight. Don't. I can't bear it. Mama, don't fight. If you do I shall scream, and I shall leave and never come back. Is that what you want?" Eponine half sits up, pointing at Eva. There's a pleain her voice, but she's shouting too. She is quite determined that her chosen mother and father will get on with one another.

(If she had her way, then Eva and Sigma would be married and that would be that. Happy families forever more.)

"Mama, I don't want you to go away. I want you to stay here with me. I don't want you to die. You have to win, Eva. You have to win for us so they don't send you back. You have to win so you can send me presents."

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Swallowed Waist Deep in the Gore of the Forest [Closed]

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Do I need to timeskip or anything?

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