Guy Crood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
acroodawakening) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thearena2013-12-02 10:33 pm
acroodawakening) wrote in thearena2013-12-02 10:33 pm
Entry tags:
welcome to the Jungle, we've got fun and games [closed to Joan]
Who| Guy and Joan and then eventually Guy's killer
What| Teaming up and friendinating more while probably having sad feelings about humanity being all cruel to itself and junk
Where| In the jungle
When| Arena Week 6
Warnings/Notes| Probably gonna get Guy all dead up in here so murder time murder time blood blood blood
It was strange how much a few weeks could change a man. When Guy had been shoved into the arena, he'd been a panicked mess, but a well-fed, well-rested, able-bodied panicked mess with a good idea on how to survive. Now he'd gone far too long without food. He was feeling weak and losing muscle mass; it wasn't like he had much fat to burn. The poisoning and injuries certainly hadn't helped. A strange sort of apathy had settled over him. It wasn't the worst thing, because it meant he wasn't terrified absolutely all the time, but it was probably more lethargy from the hunger rather than any sort of zen calm.
Okay, maybe it was a little bit of zen calm. When you lived a life knowing every day might be your last and that every one you weren't dead was a blessing, death was still something to be afraid of, to be avoided, but its inevitability was something that could be accepted.
So inside, he really wasn't as much of a mess as he was on the outside.
Considering what a mess he was on the outside, though, that still wasn't saying much.
When Joan and him wandered into the same clearing, the sight that would greet her would be wildly different than the first time she'd met Guy. His skin was paler like he was - or had been - ill, and filthier because he'd often used mud to cool off and as camouflage. His hair was matted and even more unkempt. His nose and neck were bruised with nasty purpling bruises in various states of healing, and his body now sported countless small injuries. Cuts and scrapes, a nasty looking sore on his shoulder that wasn't quite infected but wasn't quite healing either...
One injury wasn't so small - the long gash up the right side of his face had left it a mess, covered in smeared, dried blood, and scabbed over. It had only narrowly missed his eye. Even his eyelid was cut slightly.
The moment he saw Joan's movement and heard the sound of the brush, he held his spear at the ready, a situation which begged an important question...
With the state he was in and the time that had passed, was he still the same, still as gentle, as when they'd met the first time? Or had he been pushed enough that pointless violence seemed a better way to respond to things in the arena?
"Joan," he said shakily.
He didn't lower the spear.
Maybe he had concerns about how desperate she'd gotten since he last saw her, too.
What| Teaming up and friendinating more while probably having sad feelings about humanity being all cruel to itself and junk
Where| In the jungle
When| Arena Week 6
Warnings/Notes| Probably gonna get Guy all dead up in here so murder time murder time blood blood blood
It was strange how much a few weeks could change a man. When Guy had been shoved into the arena, he'd been a panicked mess, but a well-fed, well-rested, able-bodied panicked mess with a good idea on how to survive. Now he'd gone far too long without food. He was feeling weak and losing muscle mass; it wasn't like he had much fat to burn. The poisoning and injuries certainly hadn't helped. A strange sort of apathy had settled over him. It wasn't the worst thing, because it meant he wasn't terrified absolutely all the time, but it was probably more lethargy from the hunger rather than any sort of zen calm.
Okay, maybe it was a little bit of zen calm. When you lived a life knowing every day might be your last and that every one you weren't dead was a blessing, death was still something to be afraid of, to be avoided, but its inevitability was something that could be accepted.
So inside, he really wasn't as much of a mess as he was on the outside.
Considering what a mess he was on the outside, though, that still wasn't saying much.
When Joan and him wandered into the same clearing, the sight that would greet her would be wildly different than the first time she'd met Guy. His skin was paler like he was - or had been - ill, and filthier because he'd often used mud to cool off and as camouflage. His hair was matted and even more unkempt. His nose and neck were bruised with nasty purpling bruises in various states of healing, and his body now sported countless small injuries. Cuts and scrapes, a nasty looking sore on his shoulder that wasn't quite infected but wasn't quite healing either...
One injury wasn't so small - the long gash up the right side of his face had left it a mess, covered in smeared, dried blood, and scabbed over. It had only narrowly missed his eye. Even his eyelid was cut slightly.
The moment he saw Joan's movement and heard the sound of the brush, he held his spear at the ready, a situation which begged an important question...
With the state he was in and the time that had passed, was he still the same, still as gentle, as when they'd met the first time? Or had he been pushed enough that pointless violence seemed a better way to respond to things in the arena?
"Joan," he said shakily.
He didn't lower the spear.
Maybe he had concerns about how desperate she'd gotten since he last saw her, too.
no subject
The hammock creaked a little when they both climbed onto it but it held. It'd helped that he'd braided the vines together to give them a little extra strength.
Guy flopped gracelessly on one side of the it, taking a moment to catch his breath and try to get some energy back into his limp limbs before he pulled Joan's pack up.
"Took me a whole day," he breathed out heavily. "The climbing was the hard part though. I've been making these since I was little. Your hands just get used to doing it fast after a while."
He wiggled his fingers at her.
"And that's the view I was talking about," he said, pointing to one side where the leaves opened up just a bit. There was a natural dip in the forest below so that the tops of the other trees were visible, now shrouded in mist. As the sun set, the stars were peeking out in the gaps between the clouds, sharp and bright.
"Do you think they're real?" Guy asked, dragging himself up to go over and pull up her pack before anything happened to it. "The stars, I mean. I can't tell with this place, what's real."
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She laid back, one arm up and under her head, the other over her stomach, as she looked up at the stars.
"I don't think any of this is real. Still. Beautiful."
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"The only thing I don't like about it," he said breathlessly as he hauled her pack up, "is you can see them doing the night's dead, but I just close my eyes."
He finally got Joan's pack up and hooked the straps over several branches so it was within reach but not at risk of snapping a branch and falling.
"Does the sky - does the sky look the same as here where you're from?" he asked curiously. "It does where I'm from and I keep imagining other places look like mine but then I remember they could be entirely different. Maybe - maybe the sky is yellow. Or - or the grass only comes in one color."
He pulled his shirt - the overshirt they'd been given since his t-shirt had been shredded for bandages and used as a cloth to gather dew - from a hollow in one of the branches, and then wiggled next to Joan. He tried to give her a little space, knowing she might be made uncomfortable by a stranger getting too close, but there wasn't a whole lot of room, so his shoulder was pressed lightly against hers. He tossed as much of the shirt over her that he could manage.
no subject
It was weird and uncomfortable, having someone she only barely knew laying there so close, shoulder to shoulder. But the benefits, a safe, comfortable night of sleep, outweighed the drawbacks. She thought of Sherlock, her Sherlock, teasing her about being so Victorian about such things.
Then counseling her to have sex with her host. Maybe a good thing he wasn't around after all.
Guy spread his shirt over her, and she frowned.
"Hey. Aren't you going to be cold?"
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"I'm fine."
He didn't usually wear much above the waist and that meant his skin had gotten desensitized to temperature variation. It hadn't been dipping cold enough here for him to really notice much difference.
"Just green?" he went on, stuck on that. "It comes in bunch of colors where I'm from. Green, yes, but blue in some places - the same color as water, and brown, and gold like the sky in the morning. One time we went through this little valley and it was red there. It was this fiery orangeish-red, almost the same color as my mate's hair."
He smiled a dopey smile as he looked up at the leaves above and added, "Which is a really pretty color. And it's sort of - it's stick-uppy." He made an amused humming noise. "She looks like a little poppu flower."
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Besides. Her allegiance was to Sherlock and John, even if she would always be the outsider to their bond.
She smiled as he spoke of his mate.
"She sounds great."
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He lifted up his hand to show Joan the smooth bone bracelet around his wrist, carved with its little design of a warthog and a tiger, chasing each other's tails, a ring with more rings attached to it.
"We carved these for each other. She has one just like it, only hers doesn't have the rattle since I spend a little more time with the baby. People might stay with someone their whole lives, but sometimes their feelings change. Sometimes they find someone else or want to be alone again. We wanted to make it a promise, that we'd always love each other through everything. That we'd face whatever came our way hand in hand. We felt like there should be some kind of special promise."
He lowered his hand, still looking up at the leaves, nodding slightly, perhaps lost in one of the last conversations he'd had with her.
"We were still working on a word for it. I'm thinking of calling it 'marriage.'" That's how the word he chose translated to Joan, at least. "I still need to see what she thinks of it."
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If she were being honest, there was only ever one person she could possibly see spending the rest of her life with, and Sherlock wasn't even close to a romantic partner.
Still, she had seen her friends in happy marriages, seen marriages in trouble where the parties were sincerely working to stay together, because they sincerely loved each other. She had deep respect for it, even if it might never be for her.
"I think marriage is a good word for it."
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"Do you have family back home?" he asked. "Unless you don't want to talk about it. I'd definitely understand why."
For some people, talking about what was missing kept it alive in their minds and made it feel close. For others, it made them miss things ever more.
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His tone wasn't mocking, though. He'd meant it when he told her that she hoped he'd come back.
"So what's your Sherlock like?"
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The tone of her voice was deeply fond and clearly sad. She missed her friend, very much. Joan would never wish for Sherlock to be brought there and have to die over and over like that. But that didn't mean she didn't wish she was with him.
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"I'm not going to lie and say that you'll see him again. That's not really reassuring when none of us know really, if we're..."
He trailed off. Part of that was sleepiness. It seemed he was finally starting to drift off a little, the day's agitation finally winding down and giving way to exhaustion. Part of it was that the words 'if we're going to die' didn't need to be said when that was their ever-present reality.
"But don't ever forget it's not impossible, either."
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"I won't forget. Thank you."
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In sleep, he still loosely held her hand.
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