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Entry tags:
et Dieu créa les mêmes; open
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.
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.
Early Week 6
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?"
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"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.
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"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.
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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."
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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?"
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"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."
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"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.
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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."
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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."
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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?"
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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."
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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."
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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."
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"And having faith that we will mean something after all." It isn't typical of him to entertain conversations in this vein long enough to reach that thought. It places them both on the threshold of something rather unpleasant. Her, not living, or not living justly under the assumption that life is meaningless, and him, living in the believe of something intangible which may or may not exist at all.
He's deep in his thoughts at this point, too deep to immediately notice the small tears dusting her cheek. When he finally does, he reaches forward, catching her hand as she dabs at them. It's a forward gesture, rather unlike his usual tightly wound reserve. His perceptions are all messed up, and everything is fuzzy around them in the damp jungle. "Sometimes faith is more easily held."
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She surprised when he reaches for her - between the two, she's always been the one to initiate any physical contact, an act she's convinced herself has been kindly encouragement rather that potentially invasive and assuming. She lets him take her hand and guide it where he will.
"I'm sorry. It's just been a long few weeks and I haven't had my medicine."
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"You do not have to apologize to me, Venus." And at this point he figures that can be taken as broadly as she wants, whether he's intending it for this particular conversation, or to their ongoing feud. "Descartes is a paranoid fool in any case."
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She pauses, then changes tone.
"Ugh, and long-winded. You'd think he was getting paid by the word." Venus rolls her eyes, trying too hard to once again be flippant. She wonders what the viewers at home think of this.
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In any case, he's busying himself weighing such lofty matters of self-perception when he discerns the shift in her tone. It's an unwelcome presence, and he finds himself abruptly aware of just how close they are, and the vulnerability, both physically and emotionally, their proximity creates.
"He was not, to my knowledge." Her obsession with the public eye would be the end of them, he thinks vaguely. He can't stand it. He can't stand even considering the fact that there were people watching them even now, making what they would of their conversation, perverting the things that he said, the thoughts they were sharing. There's a struggle, a need to make her understand that they don't have to behave that way. They don't have to put on a show, or get lost in the ridiculous spectacle of the Capitol. Ultimately, however, there's a crushing feeling creeping into his consciousness that tells him it's all for naught. No matter what they do or how they behave, someone will find a way to take it from them. "Descartes was only minimally even concerned with his audience. He knew enough to begin his Meditations with ideas grounded in Aristotelian thought, but I believe that was motivated by self-preservation rather than true concern for what his readers might think."
There's a stiffness that consumes him as he speaks because suddenly they aren't really talking about Descartes. Or at the very least, he isn't talking about Descartes. Self-preservation and concern for perception is the name of the game here, after all, and perhaps he's being unduly judgmental. Perhaps she's just intrinsically better at the game than he is. He closes his hand over hers, feeling the softness of her palm through the grime covering both of their skin. "That is to say that, in his time, men were unwilling to accept such ideas, so he likely found it necessary to trick them into examining them."
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"I don't know how anyone can only be minimally concerned with their audience."
It's not the stress of the Arena, she tells herself over and over. It's the loneliness, it's the fact that without her medicine her brain alternately deflates or claws at the inside of her skull for escape, it's the loneliness that stalks her in the jungle worse than any mutt the Gamemakers could manufacture. It's the fact that when she sits down and cries, the whole world can see it now - so she can't.
It's the trap they're in, an overgrowth of the one she's volunteered herself into, and the seed of righteous distaste that has so enveloped Enjolras starts to suck up nutrients in her too. Run as dry as she is, it only takes from her limited stores of energy now, but it may flower someday. If not stoked into bloom by any newfound affection for herself, then by the connections she forges here.
Here, in the Arena. With a man she killed, talking about books otherwise lost to time.
She gives his hand a slight squeeze that would almost be chaste, if it did not, at that moment, mean the whole world to her.
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"He was free," he responds simply, in a passive tone mimicking her own. It's not out of any real desire to seem emotionless, but rather out of exhaustion. He has strength to thing or to put on a show, not both at once. This is his second indication that he is pointedly not suited to such an environment. "Or rather, he was free enough to not feel hindered by what his audience might think."
Which isn't a criticism of her exactly, but it could be taken as such if she chose to do so. He's too tired for that level of animosity, however. And if it's a criticism of her, it's a criticism of himself as well. Maybe Venus is overly concerned with playing the game, but then he's overly concerned with not. "I envy him."
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"It's funny. It sees backwards to me."
She shifts her feet forward, to a more comfortable position, and tilts her head upwards towards the artificial sky. Some people might have once thought God looked down from the sky, but here it's very clearly the tittering masses. Her fans and detractors - everyone's fans and detractors.
"I'm the opposite of Dess- of Day-Kart. I spent so long wishing everyone would see me because I thought, maybe, that'd make me real. Or make who they saw the real me. Somehow."
That she no longer holds this view is evident in her tone. She turns from the sky to look at him, at the angles of his chin sunken by hunger and sweat and humidity beading on his brow, and his confession inspires not pity but sympathy.
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"To a lesser degree, even when we look in a mirror, we are only seeing a reflection of ourselves. In a very real way, we can never perceive of ourselves in a way that is meaningful." It's a tangent and one he isn't even really sure he believes. After all, one thing he can agree with Descartes upon is that the senses are sometimes faulty, if not altogether untrustworthy. If he couldn't rely on himself, he was hard pressed to turn to others for such things. However, the statement is ultimately less about reassurance than it is about how people perceive themselves in the world. If he put it in the context of neither validating nor invalidating the opinions held by the individual himself, then perhaps it was alright to consider. Perhaps it's the perception in conjuncture with that validation or invalidation that made the individual.
And so, then, it they return to perception and the manipulation there of.
"It all becomes quite convoluted, I think. Because the me that you know as me is just as true as the me that I know as me, but they may not be entirely the same person. I cannot know what my effect my actions have to someone outside of myself, just as someone outside of myself cannot know my intentions unless I tell them. They are both me, they are both the same, but then, they are not the same at all." There's a small, slightly sheepish smile that works its way across his face. It's such a basic failure of the human condition that he can't even put it into words properly. Maybe that's the disorientation and the gnawing hunger working its terrible magic and making him less than what he should be. Whatever it is, the failure to communicate properly weighs on him unpleasantly. "My apologies. That hardly makes any sense at all."
When they get out of the Arena, he thinks, still smiling absently, and studying the shape of her hair as it scrapes harshly against the shoulders of her mandated costume, they should continue this conversation. There is legitimacy to it, even if neither of them are in a condition to really examine it now. And she isn't terrible company like this. More tolerable, certainly, now that they are apparently actually speaking again.
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She never knew she was capable of murder until the day she took her family out in the revelation, after all.
He starts going over her head again, and she dog-paddles in the conversation. Unwittingly, she silently mouths his words back at him, as if committing them to her muscle memory as he says them. She rests her chin on her free hand, her elbow on her knee, some combination of The Thinker and a careless model for vacations to the beach.
"Until someday we're all mindreaders," she says, putting a glib and yet accurate finger on the cure to the human condition. She flexes her toes inside her boots and finds the squish of wet socks almost endurable now. "I mean. I have an image of you. I just feel like it's more incomplete, because I'm missing all the bits of you I'm not around to see, and even the bits I do see are filtered through what I'm thinking or, I guess, assuming."
She holds her hands out and pretends to be squeezing or holding something. "It's like getting a person as powder form instead of as a solid."
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"And, to answer your question, mademoiselle. I shall never know myself as you know me, just as you shall never know yourself as I know you. In effect, we all become different people to accommodate those we meet." His smile is more broad now, and he barely notices the way the collar of his shirt clings around his neck in the humidity. "Frankly, I cannot decide if it is fascinating or terrifying. It is immense, I suppose. That much cannot be denied."
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She pauses, realizing that no, that's wrong. What is exciting isn't determined by how scarce it is. After all, the Games seem to hold intrigue for the Capitol skill, and all the social savvy in the world has not given Venus the ability to navigate a conversation without feeling like she's stepping over tripwires.
"So who's the me you know that I don't?"
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