et Dieu créa les mêmes; open

[orestes]

Who| Enjolras and open!
What| Scavenging, reconnaissance! Adventure, terror! Nah really, I'm cool with anything.
Where| The Arena.
When| Weeks 4 through 6?
Warnings/Notes| Violence like you'd probably expect in the Arena, and Enjolras and proselytizing probably go hand in hand at this point.



Enjolras hadn't intended to make it this long. He'd hidden for much of the games, selfishly hoarding his Cornucopia-granted supplies. It wasn't cowardice, he told himself, it was pragmatism. While there was no doubt in his mind that he would go, there was no use in either expediting the process, or in bringing undo suffering upon himself. He would be found eventually, and he would surrender then to whichever assailant could be trusted to kill him quickly. There would be no honor or dignity in it for either party, but then it would be done and he could return to the Capitol and his real enemy, away from this distraction.

Some small voice told him that perhaps that's why he'd been spared for so long. He dismissed that thought quickly as paranoia brought on by the hunger and forced asceticism. The hardships endured within the Arenas were enough to put even the Pythagoreans to shame, and clearly, were playing tricks on his mind. That was it, a simple reaction of prolonged stress, both physical and mental.

The jungle stretched on endlessly and played hell with his nerves. Each tree looked the same, and as he rounded what was, at least to his mind, a corner in the foliage, Enjolras could have sworn they were mocking him. It was ridiculous, of course. Another product of his awful predicament. How dreadful it was that the human mind be rendered so useless for lack of suitable nourishment and stimulus! He tried counting his steps, but it was useless. Twenty paces in this direction or that made no difference and he was again decrying the infinite sea of green around him when the sky opened up in what he had begun to recognize as the daily deluge. He'd set out optimistic that he could find cover in time. Alas.

Comments

Early Week 6

[celebrityskinned]

It's this wandering through the greenery that brings Venus and Enjolras to cross paths.

Unlike last time, where Venus was at least making do with food scavenged off her victims and off Sponsor gifts, sustenance has been thin on the ground this Arena, and Venus' body is killing her from the inside out. While she walks with the same slinky grace she did in the last Arena, while she's been using the same tricks with charcoal and plant juice to keep herself looking 'fresh' (as fresh as one can look when wearing the same sweat-soaked clothes they've been in for a month), she doesn't look healthy. All the tricks in the world can't cover that she looks ragged.

The hunger stings, but over the last few weeks it's become obvious to Venus that the loneliness is worse. She's used to being part of a team, and yet, with good reason, no one in the Arena trusts her long enough to form an alliance. The feedback loop of feat and applause has been severed by the lack of audience participation in the Arena, and Venus has come to the conclusion that she's not a solitary creature but an isolated one.

It's almost a blessing to see a familiar tangle of blondish curls up ahead. For an instant, a smile hits Venus' face like a sunbeam, and her heart's spurred to hammering by the idea of a friendly face. She raises her arm to wave at him.

It's only when the context of the situation soaks in that she remembers that Enjolras' is not a face she can presume to be friendly these days. So she leaves her hand there, half-raised in the air, fingers wilting slightly, as what would be an amiable call dies into an uncertain whisper.

"Enj?"

[orestes]

It's only by chance that he even hears her voice over the rustling of the trees around them. Robinson Crusoe's senses supposedly adapted to his surroundings in time and so Enjolras figures, vaguely, through the haze of fatigue and hunger, that perhaps he shouldn't be surprised. Hardships sometimes bore unexpected gifts, and if not gifts than skills.

"Venus?" He calls, glancing to the side from which he thinks the sound might have originating. It occurs to him that it could be another one of those damned ghost images, like the one he'd seen of Marius some time ago, intended to trick them into attacking each other or otherwise harming themselves. It could, of course, also be her in the flesh, come to murder him again. He doesn't rightly know which he'd prefer at the moment.

"You know that I am no threat to you." He calls again, deciding to forgo a more pleasant greeting. Whatever her purpose here, Enjolras is determined to keep his principles. Attack only when attacked, and never if it would do more to gratify the Capitol than to serve justice.

[celebrityskinned]

Venus supposes, given Enjolras' proclivity towards using language, it shouldn't surprise her that he can make a simple sentence sound like a slap in the face. And yet, it does. She drops her hand to her side.

"For fuck's sake, Enj." She shakes her head, wearing an expression between angry and pitying as she pulls herself from the denser part of the woods. "You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

She's unaccustomed to begging forgiveness when she doesn't feel she's done anything wrong, when she's the one wronged, and she's not about to start with him.

[orestes]

"Enjolras." He snaps quietly, something of a knee jerk reaction to her nickname for him. He doesn't expect she'll pay much attention to it, she never does.

That thought abruptly sends a jolt of pettiness through him, and his expression shifts. A pout works it's way across his face, and his lofty brow furrows in a mockery of sincerity. It's a haughty look made ugly by the utter childishness that prompts it. Only she can get this reaction from him now, and between the stress and the hunger he hasn't the better judgment to restrain himself. "Are your games truly necessary now, mademoiselle? Kill me, if you must, but do not try my patience now."

[celebrityskinned]

"It's not my fault your name is syllable soup." Venus' tone gets equally sharp, almost mockingbird-like in how it takes on the quality of Enjolras' comment, if a bit louder.

She tucks the knife she's been using to hack through the woods into her belt. Suddenly all the beauty and attractive air that he once held seems gone from him, as much as her poise and grace has been scrubbed away by the Arena. Her next question is sincere, even though it has to fight past obvious sourness to break the surface. "You think this is a game to me?"

[orestes]

"Yes." He breathes, simply, dismissively. She's given him every indication that she doesn't value the lives of her fellow Tributes, and she's stated on more than one occasion her enthusiastic adherence to the system. Why on Earth should he believe anything less? Or more, as the case might be.

"I think that you are unwilling to face the reality of our situation, mademoiselle." As he continues, his voice deepens. It's harsh, hoarse and oddly flat, due to prolonged dehydration and the lack of proper drinking water in the Arena.. It's entirely at odds with his usual robust calls to arms and seems scolding rather than charismatic. "I think that you are unwilling or unable to let yourself imagine for a moment the gravity of the world in which we have found ourselves. It is uncomfortable to recognize one's own powerlessness, I will give you that."

[celebrityskinned]

A crinkle forms under her lips. A ghost of the fight they had, its grave walked over every morning when he'd get breakfast and she'd sit in the lounge glowering at him over some book she didn't have the background to understand. Unresolved anger finds places in the body to haunt, as always.

"I think I was in a world like this way before Panem snapped me up, honey."

Powerlessness? Venus doesn't think she cares about power. All the fame and wealth and lasers in the world was never something she mistook for actual power. That it doesn't bother her to admit she's fucked, she realizes, probably is a testament to never having been not-fucked. Venus was never under any illusion that she was going to form the world in the her image so much as follow directions and pout at the right people and show up on time and have her life go much, much easier for her trouble.

And before she was a celebrity, she was a black girl from the ghetto with a tenth grade education and the ability to wish herself to the other side of the globe.

"I didn't come over here to fight. It's just boring out there in the woods." She stumbles over the word 'boring', because she has to hurtle over 'scary' and 'lonely' to come up with a term that can save face.

[orestes]

"And I am to be your entertainment." It's not entirely a scoff, but it carries the same effect. The irony of his half-question isn't lost on him. They're both entertainment. Someone in some distant and impossibly ornate living room is probably watching their conversation with a rapt fascination, drawing twisted conclusions from his words to suit whatever end he or she might have in mind. It's enough to make him want to never speak again, to know that people are consuming his every thought, every motion. Simultaneously, emboldening and making him impossibly meek, but more than anything else, it makes him want to run far away from them if only to be able to jealously guard his thoughts and feelings for himself.

It's hard to block out that kind of paranoia. It's a rush that makes his heart race after hours of thinking he'd run out of energy for any such sensation.

"What shall we do, then?" He calls back over in a close approximation of a friendly tone. It's less rough, more practiced, but still flat and lacking any sort of real humor. The problem isn't her anymore, though, it's the entire game. "Do you miss your books? I miss mine."

[celebrityskinned]

"And I'll be yours. Since it doesn't seem like it's a ton of fun out there for you, either."

She raises an eyebrow and ducks her chin at his sudden shift into pseudo-camaraderie. She wasn't expecting asking him for his company to actually work.

"I do. At this point I even miss, like, Descartes. I was kind of getting into that whole thinking-existing um, what's the word. The word for that thing. Solipsism. I know I exist because I'm thinking about existing but you're an unknown quantity."

She pronounces it 'deskerts', entirely oblivious to how incorrect that is, but somehow manages to score a perfect landing on 'solipsism'. Such is the nature of Venus' brain - quite the trap for vocabulary, while the details have a tendency to slip through the sieve.

"Although really it's just got me thinking you're all figments of my imagination which, let's face it. My imagination could at least stand to give us a shower. Or clothes that don't smell like the ass-end of a rat."

[orestes]

"Day-Kart." It's another snapped correction, but one that carries more a sense of habit than irritation. He even breaks into a small smile at her albeit almost overly practical critique of the Cartesian circle. He'd never considered suffering, exactly, as a means to prove the worthiness or truthfulness of true existence, but then why not? If everything was some sort of involved fantasy, why would it not be a good one?

He sways slightly, the fatigue of standing for too long with no specific purpose on which to focus getting to him. It's only a minor comfort to consider that under this new train of philosophical thought, a death through suffering starvation might be proof that one was actually living in the first place. "Under Descartes' thinking, one can only prove the existence of himself and God, because Descartes declines to consider that humanity was an inevitability of our world. I myself subscribe to the believe that an act of faith, not necessarily religion, is needed to exist in the world. Because, you're very right. I know that I exist because I can conceive of my own existence. I presume that I was brought into being by someone else, ergo this other person must exist. But you, Venus, I haven't the slightest idea whether or not you actually exist, or whether you are a figment of my imagination. Or perhaps even the machinations of some supreme being tormenting me. I simply choose to believe you exist because it is more convenient than pondering it, and because if I did not accept the existence of those around me, whether I can prove them or not, I would very likely go mad."

He finally breathes, realizing he'd gone on for longer than was probably necessary. It's more than they've said to one another since that ill-fated party, despite spending far too much time in close quarters, and he's starting to wonder why. Other than egotism, of course. "Does that make sense?"

[celebrityskinned]

A crinkle forms right above her chin when he corrects her, and she makes the mental note to pronounce Descartes correctly from this point on. Not to satisfy Enjolras, of course, but to appear a bit more informed in front of third parties.

And she waits patiently while he talks, not because she actually cares all that much, but because he seems a little more animated when he is, a little less like he's about to collapse. Something human shines through the very animalistic trappings of the Arena, with its dirt and grime and hunger and need.

"Uh, yeah, that's basically what I said?"

Venus has never been the type to hold grudges. Her own self-hatred is a protective coating, so rarely allowing anger at anyone else to worm its way in without transmuting into guilt. She's held onto this one with Enjolras longer than she has nearly anybody else in her life, but her hands clasped over it begin to open.

She reaches over to touch his shoulder and guide him to an overhang of earth and roots, where they can sit for a bit and catch the breath the humidity seems to steal from them.

"I don't know, I feel like believing no one around me existed would be kind of liberating. There'd be no fear of judgment, um, the word, uh, reprisal. Reprisal wouldn't mean much. You'd be kind of insulated from grief, I guess. It wouldn't matter so much if everyone you loved died, for instance."

[orestes]

"If you consider futility liberation, certainly." He doesn't and his tone speaks volumes as to that. He's not belittling the vocalization of the thoughts, exactly, because it's a reasonable critique. If suffering proves existence in the scenario they're creating, then why exist? "No fear of reprisals because even if other people exist, nothing matters to you. You insulate yourself from living, from believing, from loving or dying, from dreaming."

And the list could go on, but he leaves it at that, letting her guide him wherever it is that they're going. His head is spinning, and stitching together this nihilistic fantasy of hers is the only thing really keeping him together. It's a dangerous position to put himself in, considering their history. "When you question your own existence or validity, everything becomes meaningless. I refuse to believe in a world without meaning, I suppose. And I shall suffer for it here."

[celebrityskinned]

"Well, thanks for raining on that parade." They get to the overhang, and she lowers him down with herself. She tries not to think of the last time they sat together in an Arena, talking amiably right before she broke his neck. It's not because she regrets it, but because of what it led to.

The mud never seems to dry in this Arena. She can feel the water soaking into her underpants and socks, and she hates that.

"So I guess it's, you kind of...have to accept that if there's meaning, sometimes that meaning's going to suck. And it's going to hurt." She'd put blame on the hunger and exhaustion, but suddenly there are tears in her eyes, a crack in the poised veneer she presents to the cameras. She wipes them away and sniffs. "So here we are, suffering to mean something."

Late Week 4

[acroodawakening]

As Enjolras wandered, he would see a little man sitting on the branch of a tree up ahead. It wasn't that far up because Guy was no longer strong enough to climb any higher. He was still weak from the poison, starving, and while the constant rain meant there was no dearth of rainwater to drink, one could not survive on water alone. He scavenged some food from some of the people he'd killed, but most of them had been smart enough to hoard it somewhere and only carry a little bit of it on their person.

When Enjolras walked into view, he barely moved, simply shifting his grip on his spear so that he'd be able to jab at him if he tried to climb the tree.

That was why it was a strange sight the Frenchman would be treated to: a relatively short little man sitting on a wide tree branch with his legs sprawled out as if he was relaxing on a beach. His hair was wild in a way that was not just because of the wilderness of the arena; it had a thicker texture and it looked as if he never combed or cut it in general. The tan skin of his body had red-brown stripes stained into it, tattoos of a sort, though it was hard to tell on first glance if they were permanent or a temporary stain. On one wrist was a bone bracelet, and the spear in his hand had a spearhead knapped from flint, making it clear that he'd made it himself rather than getting it from the Cornicopia.

Right above the man's head, several of the large leaves were tied together with vines, grooves in them causing all the water to run off around the man. Where he sat on the branch, he looked relatively dry.

Despite the dryness, he seemed far from happy about his circumstances. Almost bored. It was the lethargy and apathy that came with starvation. A little bit of annoyance was practically vibrating off of his body, too.

His capacity-to-deal-with-bearshit was broken. So much had happened that it had just broken, leaving Guy sitting there rolling his eyes at all of existence.

"I know you can see me and I can see you, so you know that thing they want us to do where we try to kill each other?" He gestured vaguely with the hand that wasn't holding the spear. "Can we just not? It's been a long day."

[orestes]

Enjolras eyed the man warily, partially due to the oddity of the situation, but partially due to his own disorientation. After a moment, he nodded gently, then winced. The nodding had become uncomfortable. He made a noted to avoid the motion in the foreseeable future. At least until more food could be found. "I can agree to that. I have no desire to kill anyone."

Which naturally didn't account for what they were to do now. He didn't have any supplies to bribe the strange fellow with and even if he did, Enjolras would be more inclined to share with someone in need than use them to bargain passage through the jungle.

"I have nothing for you, even if you do plan on attacking me." He states calmly, as he trudges through the high, leafy foliage and rain soaked terrain. Perhaps that would dissuade his fellow Tribute away from any malicious efforts at least long enough to put some distance between them.

[acroodawakening]

Guy shook shook his head, his eyes rolling skyward slightly, as if he was just exasperated with life right now for creating situations where he had to reassure people he wasn't going to kill them.

"Yooou could be hiding a whole bag of smoked sand snake jerky down your pants right now and it wouldn't matter. Too much work." He squirmed where he was laying on the branch to get slightly more comfortable. "I'm not moving from this spot."

With his free hand he rubbed at his temple. He was getting a hunger head ache. At least he was comfortable, though, nice and dry -

Unlike that guy down there who looked completely soaked.

Well, that wouldn't do. The man was a stranger but then every person here was a stranger. Every person Guy had ever met was a stranger at some point. He didn't mind the strangers that didn't try to hurt him. If there were things he could do to help them have just a little less misery, there was no reason not to do them.

"You can use the leaves to get out of the rain, you know." Guy gestured up at the leaves above him. "The big ones with the grooves in the middle. If you tie them together with vines like I did, they funnel most of the water off of you."

He pointed upward at his little makeshift umbrella.

"And then if you're thirsty..."

He held out his hand, cupped, where the water was pouring off in a solid stream, letting his hand fill up. Then he brought it up to his mouth and took a drink.

"Tada!" he said, after swallowing.

Pull up a branch, Enjolras. Do you really have anywhere better to be?

[orestes]

Still unsure of quite what this man, this creature was up to, Enjolras watches him with an expression of mild, fixed curiosity. He doesn't seem harmful, at least, and that is something. The other Tribute had at least been honest enough to state his exhaustion. If Enjolras were being so honest, he would admit that he too was in no shape for a fight.

And there was a certain practicality to this man's demonstration.

He nods once, again, feeling the dull throbbing of his head as he moves. Hadn't he just resigned not to do that? His memory must be going a long with his good sense.

"How did you learn to do that?" He asks, not fully recognizing the roughness in his own voice.

[acroodawakening]

Oh, he was so lucky he didn't say the "creature" thing aloud. So so lucky. Not that Guy would have had much energy to do anything about it but he might have at least thrown something.

"Uh, well, one time it rained when I was walking through the jungle," he explained. "And I noticed the water running off the leaves. Like some of the leaves were really good at redirecting the water. And I didn't feel like being wet anymore."

A pause, as he tried to figure out how to answer the man's question.

"So I learned it from myself. I guess. Because it's kind of, you know, common sense."

He flashed a little grin down at Enjolras as if he thought the man was kind of being silly. It would maybe leave him with the impression of fangs - Guy's canines were a little more pronounced than they were for some.

"What, where you come from, do people just stand out in the rain?"

[orestes]

"They have umbrellas," he answers distantly, and truly, the idea of a ridiculously bourgeois black umbrella suddenly seems unbearably appealing in the jungle. To think he'd scorned them only so many months ago for their societal connotations. Clearly hardship brought with it practicality. He's only half aware of how he must sound. Somehow everything about this situation suddenly seems incredibly, ethereally absurd, and it's difficult to for him to focus on any one aspect of it.

Closing his eyes, he attempts to clear his thoughts before addressing the man-- creature-- man again. "Do you think you could string several of them together? Do these last you for very long?"

[acroodawakening]

"Oh, okay. We have those where I'm from - I invented them," Guy said brightly and without any trace of sarcasm. He was utterly serious about inventing umbrellas. "At least I did back home. I can't really claim credit anywhere else, can I."

He reached for some nearby leaves and a vine, slowly so he didn't waste energy, looking mildly irritated that Enjolras seemed to be asking for him to do the work for him.

But he still pitied the guy. Looking all wet down there. Wet and unable to make his own leaf umbrellas. Poor creature guy.

"They last a while when I'm sitting still. Since I keep most of them still attached to the tree. If you pick them, they last only as long as it takes them to wilt. Maybe a day."

He started to thread the large leaves together with the vine effortlessly, his hands moving with remarkable deftness even though the rest of him was staying still.

[orestes]

Enjolras had never actually pondered the origins of umbrellas, only that they existed and were used to block rain, so he nodded along as if this strange man's words were the god's honest truth. In actuality, they may very well have been. In his world, if nowhere else.

"They would not make for very good long term shelter, then." His voice was still distant to his ears, either from hunger or exhaustion, and doubtlessly not helped by the soft pattering of the rain around them. Rain slicked the nape of his neck, rolling down his flattened curls and threatened to flood through his long eyelashes before he finally processed enough to slide an equally wet hand across his brow, a futile attempt to escape the inevitable. Still, he was already wet, soaked, at this point. So, while this was all well and good to remember for the future, Enjolras didn't suppose he really needed to concern himself with getting under cover just yet.

"Do you know if they are safe to eat?" Which wasn't to say that they looked appetizing, exactly, but something was always better than nothing at all.

[acroodawakening]

At that, Guy actually had to stop and give Enjolras a 'Really?' look. They were big, waxy, fibrous leaves. Anyone with an ounce of survival instincts should have knowm, without even knowing the name of the plant, that they weren't edible. And that wasn't even factoring in the possible toxicity.

Of course, he'd seen evidence so far that quite a few people here didn't have those survival instincts or that know-how, which was a new experience for him. People who didn't, well, they died in Guy's world. There were no grocers, there were no farms. Either you figured out what you could eat and ate it or you starved.

It took him a moment of considering that maybe there were worlds that were wildly different from his own, before the expression on his face faded from one of extreme incredulity to one touched with a bit more sympathy. Either this man was from a place where people could be soft, thrown into a situation where they couldn't be, or he was someone from a hard world where no one had figured out all the little tricks to survive yet.

Either possibility moved him to pity.

So rather than mocking him for not knowing what a child would know, he opted to teach him, instead.

"Too fibrous. See how waxy they are?" He held out the half-finished umbrella. "Anything that looks as waxy as this, that has a skin that feels a little hard - you're not going to be able to digest. And that's not even factoring in that they might be poisonous. Most of the plants here seem to be."

[orestes]

The incredulity in his burgeoning acquaintance's expression registered vaguely, breaking through the overall dreamy haze of the rain and the exhaustion, but he couldn't find it in him to be insulted. While there are no such things as stupid questions, because inquiry is always valid and always something from which new information can be derived, there are such things as impractical or unrealistic questions. The edibility of the leaves was probably one of them, Enjolras just didn't have it in him at the moment to care. Perhaps at a later date, after everything in the Arena was said and done, he would, but not now, not when things such as human interaction itself was at such a premium.

There was an irony to it, really. He'd never considered himself much of a social creature, and yet here he was, holding a conversation in the pouring rain with a person who seemed so utterly foreign to himself, and being comforted by the very notion of the conversation, if not its content.

"Cabbages often appear waxy as well," he countered, while nodding along with the man's point. One could agree and disagree simultaneously, he figured. "You are right in that it is probably poisonous. They are disinclined to leave anything so easily edible in plain view, but perhaps, if they were not poisonous, such a plant could be cooked."

[acroodawakening]

"I would agree or disagree with you, as appropriate, if I knew what a cabbage was," Guy said. "And cooking might make some things digestible but there's a different between being full and actually getting something out of your food."

Now finished, Guy held out the umbrella. He wasn't so high up that Enjolras wouldn't have been able to reach it if he moved a little closer.

"You sure you don't want to pull up a branch?" He nodded to one in a nearby tree. "You look - you look like the kind of tired that sleep doesn't help with. And sometimes other things can. Like a friendly face. Or at least a non-homicidal one."

[orestes]

He accepted the offering, nodding gratefully, despite the continued absurdity of the situation. It was impressively constructed for what it was, not very different at all from what he understood as a modern umbrella. Reflexively, he held it over his head to stem the water still falling around them.

"You are perceptive, sir." His voice was becoming hoarse and strained form the sudden exertion after so many days of minimal use. Cocking his head to the side to study the man, possibly to assess his moments, Enjolras decided to give him a chance. There was something to be said for company and camaraderie in reviving the spirit. Besides, it was unlikely that either of them would be alive for very much longer if the Capitol had their way.

"I have been very rude. My name is Enjolras," Moving finally, he climbed the short distance between them, making a consorted effort to keep his newly acquired umbrella aloft. "May I ask yours?"