thearena | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Donatello and OPEN
What| Hello, folks. Don is still around, and on the prowl. He is, however, injured.
Where| All over the Arena
When| Throughout Week 6.
Warnings/Notes| Possible violence, possible injury-related squick, etc. Possible death?

He was glad he had the first aid kit after he impaled himself. The salve helped greatly, so the injury wasn't quite as catastrophic. He had to wrap it, though, clean it, as it was still a nasty injury. It still hurt, still ached. But he still had his weapons, and some food left.

And so many questions. He really just didn't know what to do with himself. He was nothing, just a clone, just a puppet, a monster. And yet he couldn't stop feeling the guilt, the emotions. Why? Why? He couldn't...after Disciple's burning. He couldn't understand. What was holding him back? Was he even fit for this? What was he doing wrong? Everyone else had been strong, and he? He wasn't. He'd been the weak link back home ~~and yet without him, they were no doubt falling apart~~. So many contradictions and no answers. There was a right way and he didn't know it.

He'd let everyone down, he thought as he sat, for the moment, staring at the ground. He really was that monster trapped in the pit. And there was no way he could see to climb back up.

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"Why so glum chum?"

Harley seemed to appear out of no where, holding what appeared to be a cooked Dinosaur leg. Slightly burnt and greasy. She had some of the grease on her face and was idly checking...some kind of watch on her wrist. Leaning against a tree casually.

"You're lookin' pretty good for how long we've been out here." She added "Just glum. Depressed even."

Don looked up at Harley, frowning.

"I don't know why."

"Is it the clone thing?" She wondered out loud playing with one of her ponytails.

He paused.

"A part of it. Yes."

She gracefully tip toed over to him "Sure didn't take you long to go from being a cold heartless homicidal warrior of darkness to being the sad emo kid in the lunch room. When did this downward swing start?"

"I..."

Don stared, Just kept staring.

"I don't know. I just don't feel right."

Gently, ever so gently she lowered herself to sit next to him. Then put a hand on the back of his shell rubbing it supportively.

"Let's start at the beginning. What kind of guy were you back home?"

The response is quiet.

"Not this."

"Right, and obviously you went through a pretty big change just recently. I mean I haven't known you for that long but even I know that."

Gently she tried to guide him into laying on his side.

"And that's perfectly normal given everything that's happened. You'd be crazy if you stayed completely the same.

"But not into this." He shook his head. "Not...this. This is everything that goes against...all that I believed in. Even if that wasn't me...why would they give us these memories and feelings? Why would they mess with my mind like this?..."

Edited 2013-11-26 01:09 (UTC)

"Because it's fun." Harley reasoned.

"These guys are a bunch of control freaks obviously. If they DO actually have the ability to control your emotions and memories, then the reason you have them is because they want you to. They think it's more fun, or interesting or whatever to see you like this."

Now that he was on his side she gently guided his head onto her lap. It wasn't a shrink's sofa but it would do.

"It's all about the story Donnie. But the problem with this story is it doesn't have a finale. There's a bunch of little arcs, development. People come and go, new cast members appear for a few episodes and then vanish mysteriously. But the Capitol? They don't want the story to end. So eventually when our cast becomes too dull...when they've done all they can with us? Then we get shuffled out for some new shiny fresh faced twenty somethings who can pretend to be angsty teenagers with issues. And they start the process all over again."

She pouted looking down at him.

"Now doesn't that sound boring? A story with no ending where they just rehash the same ideas?"

"But that's just it. There are certain story arcs I don't..." Don trailed off. "My family wouldn't even know what to do with me. To know I did those things...It would break their hearts. And that's one thing I vowed never to do."

He stared up at the sky. His eyes are simply empty.

"To become the thing my family fought to protect themselves against. A beast with no honor."

For once, Harley's smile was soft and her touch gentle as she stroked the top of his head.

"Well...if we're lucky they'll never have to know." She explained. "So far as they know back home you're still the same. Heck for all we know they don't even know you left. I've read comic books I know how these stories go!" She declared with a grin.

"The real question is, are you gonna keep changing? Or stop now because you're afraid of what else you might become?"

There is a long silence before Don answers.

"...Whatever it is...I don't want to be a monster. That's all I know. I'm on the edge of that and I don't want to be that."

"Even if that's the only way you'll ever get home?"

She was idly watching his face and stroking the top of his head like they'd been dating for years. No fear despite the fact that in the last arena he'd sliced her in half.

There is a long, quiet silence.

"I don't think I'll ever go home. Whether I'm a monster or not. None of us will. We're clones, after all. We're not meant to last forever."

Edited 2013-11-28 17:55 (UTC)

"Bah." She waved a hand dismissively. "Humans aren't meant to last forever either. It's just a matter of how good a clone we are. Heck don't turtles live like...forever already? Even as a clone you might outlive us all."

Meeting his eyes.

"Now what I think you're saying is you can't stand to face your family after what you became."

A sigh.

"Even if I never see them again...just the thought of having to explain this place...to show what happened to me. There are lines my family just doesn't cross. I think I've gone back and forth over the lines several times by now."

Edited 2013-11-29 01:21 (UTC)

Nice thing about an arena like this; plenty of trees. The Line of sight was bullshit, but you could see movement below, track it by the movement of the vegetation. Turians weren't natural tree-climbers, and that'd surprised her; with all the hardware hanging off the tips of Garrus fingers, he shouldn't have had much trouble. Not that it stopped him now. Hell, he was the best-fed out of all of them, and even Shepard was showing bones by now. She was close to risking the mystery lab for food, in a bit.

And then she saw it; the wounded gazelle. The downtrodden and unobservant. If he hadn't been green and brown himself, it would've been his stillness that saved him from notice.

"Dammit, Donatello," muttering was a terrible habit, have to break that one— later. She shimmied down the tree like the apes her kind had evolved from and slid across the broad branches until she was both lower and closer.

Like hell was she getting down on the ground with that hot mess. Not after his last performance under stress. Still, she couldn't have been more than a few meters above him when she called out, "Hey, stranger. Y'Gonna just sit there until something with teeth shows up?"

Don's head quickly went up at the shout; instinct and habit, really. When he saw who it was, however, his tenseness lessened, just slightly.

"...Not going to lie," he murmured. "Its a tempting thought."

Edited 2013-11-29 04:24 (UTC)

"Bullshit."

There really only was one reply to that kind of attitude, for her.

"If you wanted to die, you'd have done it. There isn't exactly a shortage of suicide methods, both here and in the Capitol, and yet you keep fighting," She remembered the moment clearly, the way she raised the gun to her head, with determination and resolve as obvious as the despair. Wasn't the first time, or the last, but...

"I've seen it happen. So do it, or don't. But this right here is pointless. Unless you're taking my advice anymore?"

"So why do you have to explain it?"

Watching his face, stroking his head gently, somewhere in the back of her head she knew that the crowd back home was loving this.

"Would living with the weight of what you've done be too much for you? Would you take your life once and for all if it meant you would never come back?"

"...I'm not sure why." Don looked back down. "Why I'm fighting...what I'm fighting for."

A bug idly buzzed by.

"I honestly don't know what I want anymore."

A long silence.

"I don't know. I...don't know anything anymore."

Edited 2013-11-29 21:31 (UTC)

Harley chuckled at the response and sighed.

"How old are you? I dunno how turtle years relate to human years."

It only now just occurred to Don how this was looking to the folks back home. Then again...he was at a point of just not caring. What's being "linked" to another woman at this point?

"Seventeen. Or eighteen. I'm not sure anymore with the way it is here. I was seventeen when I first arrived for certain, though."

Harley's giggle turned into a cackle

"Well there you go! Lucky you!" She declared. "You're still young! Assuming this whole Hunger Games thing doesn't kill you, you've got decades to figure out who and what you are!"

A quick kiss on the forehead.

"You shouldn't have to worry about such heavy topics. Soul searching. You should relax a little. You're allowed to make mistakes. Heck where I come from seventeen year olds aren't even old enough to be tried as adults."

"Have you ever even had a girlfriend yet?"

"I--"

But he'd been sure he knew who he was...wait.

"Girlfriend? What does that have to do with--"

The first thing Lin caught sight of as she neared Donatello was not the turtle, amazingly, but his first aid kit, laying in the forest floor like a jewel. The light it caught from the sun attracted her, and it wasn't until she was on the path towards it did the trees clear to reveal the turtle. Lin cringed. More monsters... now she was to assume that somewhere in the world, however long ago, they had giant bipedal turtles roaming about?!

Bug eyed and lacking reason from the hunger that clouded her judgment, she watched Donatello from a distance, wondering what he would do next. Did she have time while he was brooding to swoop in and steal it? (It wasn't as though she actually needed it, but a compulsion to hoard whatever she could was a trait the Cabin and the Games had given her.) She was relieved to notice he was seriously injured... at least if he spotted her, she had a good chance to run before he killed her. Or, perhaps, she mused sardonically, she could make an ally of him and they'd bond over their misery together. Suffice it to say, she wouldn't get her hopes up.

She grinned childishly.

"It's all part of growing up. Seriously you've been here a long time, but I'd wager a guess that your life wasn't exactly normal before you came here was it?"

"...I'm a mutant turtle. It wasn't normal. But..."

Seriously, what did he know about normal?

"It was still my life."

He heard the snapping branches and leaves. He knew someone was coming. So Don frowned, and called out.

"I know you're out there, so just come out."

Harley nodded and tapped him on the nose gently.

"So you were living your life, growing up as any teenage mutant turtle should. and suddenly you're thrust into this place. Of course you're going to go a little kooky. It's the only sane solution to abandon your sanity now and then or risk losing it forever."

"Especially at your age. You know what human kids your age are doing? Working part time jobs to pay for crappy cars. Stressing out about graduation and SAT scores. You'd be getting ready for college in some worlds."

Don stared as his beak was booped.

"Wait. You think..." He was a bit stunned as her words sank in. "You're saying its a good thing I went the way I did?"

Those were dreams he'd never had even back home. But. even then, Splinter had always preached calm, and emotional control. Leonardo's own spiral into anger and self-hatred had been frightening, and no one had actually died. Donatello's, meanwhile...

Was Harley really saying that was a blessing? It was quite clear the idea was completely foreign, both to Don's own belief system and...well, just to Don.

~~And yet...and yet...~~

Edited 2013-11-30 03:42 (UTC)

"Right a roonie!"

Harley grinned brightly as if he'd just won a cash prize for following along.

"What kind of a sane teenager would go through all of this and stay the same? Only a real sociopath that's who."

She took on a more zen appearance.

"We adapt to our situation as best as our minds and hearts can. If you are rigid and inflexible in your ways like a stick? You snap. But if you can bend and flow like a river? You keep moving. And before you know it the obstacles are behind you."

The woman did not move her feet, but didn't pretend she wasn't there, either - or else he would come and investigate and that would be foolish. Peeking her head out from a tree, Lin called back, sounding as ferocious as she could feign. "If it's a fight you want, I could just run, and you can park your ass right there and save us both the trouble," she answered, hunting knife clenched in her fist. She needed to know if he was as bloodthirsty as she imagined a creature that looked like that could be.

Shepard watched him quietly for a long moment, searching for the lie. What a load of crap, this life. She heaved a sigh and started levering herself out of the branches. Sometimes Jane had trouble discerning where among the tributes there lay the group of people both smart enough to set up an ambush for her and stupid enough to try. Donatello was unpredictable, but if he'd fallen in with that kind of element, then he was concealing it better than most.

Her landing was light; the leaves were always wet.

"Listen, you want a reason to fight," It was decisive, thrusting purpose on him like a weapon. She was so bad at this, no matter what people said. But if Don was going to survive this, he had to care, and if he couldn't do it on his own, it was her job to make him, "There are people who have no business being in this arena, not for any reason, and you are not one of them. This is going to end. And there's going to be an after."

It was dangerous at any time, but now? Deadly. More than deadly, for both of them. But then, she'd always been the kind of woman t taunt her betters, even when strapped to an interrogation table.

"Right now, your fight is to endure. So straighten up, soldier, we have work to do."

Edited 2013-12-09 19:22 (UTC)

"I don't care," Don replied, slightly annoyed. "I'm not feeling like fighting right now, so I guess you can consider yourself lucky."

Everyone here was an enemy. Ruby knew that. She recognized that everyone here was desperate to live, and that they would do anything to keep living - even kill. It wasn't beyond her,e either, if her life was really in danger... she made no pretense at that. She drew the line at using lethal force first, still, but she would defend herself.

Some people, though, it was harder to think that about than others. Particularly in moments like now, where she had no one to protect... Well. Ruby didn't know Don, well... but he was a floor mate, if nothing else. She had to live with him after this. Hopefully, then, they could get through the evening at least without killing each other...

"Hey," she offered, quietly - keeping a distance. Friendly hello or not, taking someone by surprise in this place tended to be deadly for someone.

True to form, Don was up on his feet, looking for the source of the voice. When he saw who it was - Ruby? Rachel?...No, Ruby - he calmed. Slightly. Given what he was capable of, he knew that the possibility that people would make an attempt on him was inevitable.

"What do you want, Ruby?" he asked warily.

She was trying to go by Red, actually - but it was hard to shake twenty eight years of cursed habit, even if most of it was a fuzzy blur. Besides, Snow was gone and she didn't find herself caring quite so much whether everyone knew her for a fellow fairy tale.

"Can't a girl just say hi?" She asked, mildly exasperated. "...You look hurt." Another reason to come forward. Injured people were more desperate, more likely to lash out to prove they weren't easy pray - but also easier to fight off, if it came to it. In case this didn't work out peacefully.

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