thearena | et Dieu créa les mêmes; open

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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.

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"And sometimes it's kind of rough, not going to lie. I don't know. Maybe under that theory we all just have to mean something to ourselves, or - you know, nevermind."

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."

He settles their hands on the overhang between them, his slightly larger hand covering hers. The intimacy of the gesture doesn't actually register to him. After all, it's no more than he would do for Jehan or Courfeyrac, given the same situation. Those of softer character always seemed to appreciate more physical reassurances than he himself is prone to immediately.

"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."

She doesn't digest that statement - she caches it to tease apart later. It could be amnesty, it could be an apology, it could just be a way of dismissing her little outbreak as unimportant, but it's comforting at the moment, nonetheless.

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.

It is amnesty even if he isn't immediately willing to register it as such. There are few things which prompt such vitriol in him and even when they do, he ends up disappointed in himself for indulging it. His pride in his virtue and the vanity of his intellect are both vice and ultimately what make him what he is. He can recognize both facts and hold them as true while still being more than aware of the problems they create.

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."

Venus can feel the moment when Enjolras takes lift-off and leaves her intellectually on Earth, and it's right around the words 'Aristotelian'. She tries her best to follow, but by that point it's like trying to jump up and catch a balloon that's floating away, and all she can do is watch it go and mouth the words in mimicry. Maybe if she weren't so tired it would be easy enough to understand how Descartes used being obtuse as a means to avoid getting the Galileo treatment, but her grip on the conversation has loosened enough that she can't catch it back.

"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.

There are things at which Enjolras is incredibly skilled. In Paris, at the university, he spent countless hours honing his analytical skills and fluency of argument. There's a felicity to his penmanship that is unmatched, especially when in the service of his Revolutionary cause. But his arguments, though deft and fluid, lack appeal to any emotion other than those called upon by Right. He can conjure ire with words, and inspire righteous indignation with spoken rhetoric, but for all the freedoms to which he aspires, his world is limited. As such, there are things he misses, elements of human interaction which escape him entirely. As such, the meaning the gesture holds for her passes him by amid the stirring of his own thoughts.

"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."

She doesn't take it as a critique. She always knew, as much as she defended her lifestyle in the public eye, that it wasn't for everyone. For a while she tried to convince herself that willing celebrities were sturdier, braver, than people who wanted private lives to herself, but over the years (it's been so few years, she's only twenty) that perception has flaked away. Or been cut away in chunks, hacked at by how disappointed she's been at her peers or at herself.

"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.

"Do you ever consider that we only truly know each other through the perceptions of others?" He has an uncanny ability to look someone dead in the eye and ask a question with complete nonchalance. Enjolras very rarely engages in flippancy, and his tone isn't dismissive or frivolous, but rather casual. Perhaps its the familiarity of the slightly esoteric subjects, but the conversation is having a calming effect on him. It's a welcomed change from the way his heart generally races throughout the Arena, and a stark contrast to the stiffness he feels in his posture whenever he consider the eyes on them constantly.

"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.

She gives him a level stare, eyes not calculated to be honest but honest because the calculation permits that latitude. "Doesn't that kind of beg the question that we ever know ourselves at all?"

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."

"Exactly!" He agrees with a little more enthusiasm than is strictly merited by their situation. Though it's easier to forget when they're sitting here debating obtuse questions on the nature of existence and the human condition, they're still midway through a death match that will eventually claim the both of them. It isn't exactly the ideal place for human connection and reconciliation, but Enjolras will take it over nothing and lets himself be lost in the moment. It's been quite some time since anything was so intellectually stimulating.

"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."

"Well now you're just getting a little loopy." Venus giggles and rubs a hand over her collarbone, not daring to remove the other from Enjolras'. "Human contact is not that exciting. We live with it every day."

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?"

If he were a mind reader, as their conversation would naturally lead him to wish, he would tell her that it's humanity's ability to be charmed and find meaning in that which it experiences so regularly that is the true wonder of existence. The soul, after all, cannot be proved. That is, presumably, still beyond the skill of even the Capitol. But wonderment has to have enough anecdotal evidence to be worth something.

It's a heady, foolish thought when he stops to examine it, so maybe he just won't. Maybe he'll take it as it is and, for once, not pick something apart until all that remains of it is cold logic. Blithely, he gives her hand a friendly squeeze, regarding her for the first time not as merely a district-mate, but as an intellectual equal, and probably more importantly, a comrade. "I haven't the slightest idea."

And that thought makes him laugh lightly, which turns into a slight cough. His throat had been soar from disuse before they'd found each other, and now it's hoarse from exertion. He recovers quickly enough, but the sudden affliction causes him to break their contact, as he brings the hand that had been enveloping hers up to his throat. It's an involuntary and more than slightly useless gesture. "However, I would wager that if we described one another to each other, we would arrive at very different impressions from those we have of ourselves. You will not make me do this now, though, not when we have finally stopped fighting."

"Ouch," she says, injecting a bit of artificial levity into her voice, along with honest forgiveness. It's 'ouch', not 'how dare you'. A flicker of disappointment slips in under the doors of her calm when his hand goes to his throat instead, and it lets her know the moment is truly gone. "I guess recalcitrance speaks for itself, huh?"

But she can willingly choose to believe the first half of his sentiment, that they are puzzles to each other. There's still unfinished space in the sketches, still places where outlines need to be filled in and shadows deepened enough to transform trash into a portrait. Still ways to salvage those messy first impressions.

She can live with puzzling roommates and comrades. It's better than silence.

She brushes her hands on her hips, wiping sweat from her palms. "If you need someone to guard while you sleep, I could stand someone to return that favor."

"I think that would be a very good idea." For the first time since their conversation began, he lets himself take notice the lines and colors shading her face. They're both tired in a way that sleep won't entirely fix, but an honest rest, one without the need to constantly be looking over his shoulder would do wonders for him, at least.

"I had a camp not far from here." At least, he thinks it wasn't far from there. It's hard to tell by now. The jungle confuses him and the rain has made everything even more indistinct. The landscape of this Arena seemed to change every hour or so, and he finds himself longing for the candy coated houses of the last two Arenas. They, at least, had been comprehensible. "There is likely not very much left of it, but what is there I would share with you."

"That'd be nice."

She'll be gone by tomorrow - as much as she craves company, as much as she wants to reaffirm their truce to herself over and over again, she knows what she has to do in this Arena. Once upon a time she killed him, but now she doesn't want to come back to camp and have him know she has metaphorical blood on her hands again.

She can't just play defense in this game; she has to go out and try to win it, or at least look like that's what she's doing. Better she be out of sight and mind, rather than actively spoiling the seedling good image he has of her.

"I have some things left too. You can have my tent. Your hair needs it more than mine does." She tilts her head and grins. "Pretty sure when you dry off, you're going to be rocking a white-boy 'fro."

Her teasing tone is far more familiar to him than the words themselves, and it's with a not quite unpleasant confusion that he responds. "You shall have to clarify, Venus. My English is good, I think, but imperfect."

Context indicates it's not something he should care about too deeply, but he's growing too attached to their easy banter to let it slip away so easily. Camaraderie isn't something common in Panem, and he clings to it as soon as it appears to him. Against his better judgment though it may be.

"Come; We will make camp, and you will educate me." And it's with an implicit trust that he turns his back on her, offering an arm to help her off of the overhang. If his words before were not amnesty enough, then surely this simple action is.

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