thearena | Backdated to before the Volcano eruption

Entry tags:

Backdated to before the Volcano eruption

Who: Eponine and R - closed
What: Eponine begs R to turn her into a zombie
Where: Floor 2
When: Early week 3, before the volcano eruption especially.
Warnings: Talk of death, zombie transformations, biting... blood? Maybe? I dunno. It's not nice, anyway, so proceed cautiously.

This arena has already felt like it's gone on forever. Three weeks in, and Eponine's exhausted. Not physically. Physically, Eponine is doing the best she has ever done in the arenas, despite her run ins with Homura and Suzanne and Cuthbert. No, it's emotionally that Eponine's exhausted.

In the last few months, she's seen the only man she has ever loved marry the girl who used to be her servant. She's lost her boyfriend, and any hope of Marius loving her. She's seduced her ex's best friend out of desperation, and taken his virginity. She's blackmailed R. She's been called worthless and nothing and likened to an animal. And now she's a murderer as well.

All she can see, all she can feel, is pain. Pain, worse than any ache in her body. Worse than thw wounds from last arena before Katniss shot her. Worse than Draco's slow torture in her very first arena. This... it's red hot, always, in her blood, in her head, in front of her eyes, to touch, tiny pinpricks of burning heat everywhere. And she's a touch desperate. Before today, she hadn't even stopped crying.

But she still needs to eat. Still needs to survive through her pain. So she goes to see R, looking for something to fill her belly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He isn't having a good week. Sure, he's managed to actually hold his own but it hadn't been with his eloquence or his survival skills - it'd been his mouth tearing into flesh, just like it'd always been. At least he snagged some supplies.

R tries to block out the look on that kid's face when he got bit.

R spends most of the time on the second floor because it seems like it's safe-ish and he spends all of his time away from the elevator. Sometimes he swings by the gift shop, his feet padding against the marble tile and sounding oddly loud despite the fact he doesn't shuffle (much) anymore. It's been raided multiple times, R almost running into someone a few days ago: he'd wised up, hid, folded his body behind a display of baby toys because who would bother looting those? Now he's picking his way through the gift store again, looking for blankets, Howard, Julie. Anyone, really. Even Perry.

The last person he's expecting is Eponine.

He doesn't see her shadow at the store's entrance. Not at first, anyway. His back's turned to her, R bent at the waist and going through a clearance bin. Compared to their last meeting, he looks like shit: old and new blood painted across his front, a few splatters of it across his face from where he'd missed trying to clean up. The bags under his eyes are darker, more pronounced. He even hunches over unconsciously. From a distance, he might even look like a zombie.

Edited 2014-02-14 02:08 (UTC)

"Monsieur?" She begins, hesitantly. Is it R? But of course it must be R. There is nobody else who hunches forward in such a way. She starts towards him, her bare feet almost silent on the floor.

"Do you have food for me, Monsieur?" There's no energy in her voice at all, no command as there had been only two weeks ago. No, in front of R is a broken girl, a blood splattered and scarred and worn down murderer of a girl, clutching her empty belly, repeating a familiar cry as if on auto pilot.

It takes him a long second to place that voice. Between being killed (twice) and trying to remember his body can't go without the essentials like it did when he was a zombie, R had completely forgotten about his promise to Eponine.

Shit.

He turns, dread rising in his throat like bile. Eponine stands there dwarfed by the doorway, her mousey brown hair hanging in limp tangles, splattered with blood. R doesn't have it in him to ask if it's hers or anyone he knows. She's clutching her stomach like it's trying to shrivel in on itself.

He knows that feeling all too well.

"No," R steps away from the bin. "I'm sorry."

"No?" She repeats, blankly. No? How could his answer be no?

"But... but you promised you would. You promised." It comes out more as a sob than an angry accusation, and Eponine finds that her tears are dyed red with the blood caked on her face. She can barely understand why she's crying: it's just... everything. Everything that she's been through. The knowledge that she'll have to live with it forever and ever.

"Why didn't you save me something?" But of course he forgot all about her. Of course he did. Why should he remember Eponine?

Between getting caught off guard and the tears, R's already lost before he knows it. He might've been Dead and a cannibalistic murderer once, but that doesn't mean that someone crying doesn't tug at his heartstrings. R gets a trapped look on hs face as he stares helplessly at Eponine. He wants to stop the crying. Preferably without ripping out the jugular.

"I'm...I'm sorry," he repeats, knowing it's no excuse but it's all he has. The fact is in the end, his hunger held out over any sense of duty. "I'll find something."

Except there's no sign of Hans or Howard or the others. No Julie. He's scavenged what he could from the cafeteria and the gift shop, but so have others - they're picked clean. R stands there awkwardly watching Eponine weep - she doesn't cry pretty-but-soulful for the cameras. She just cries, this ugly twisting of her face, the tears running red tracks through the blood splatters.

"Where?" She'd follow him blindly. She has nowhere else to go, and nobody else to turn to, not with Aunamee missing, and Diana possibly telling Orc that Eponine had used him, and Marius and his friends and that horrible Cosette laughing at her. R is the only person left for her now.

"Monsieur, please do not leave me. Don't send me away."

Oh no. No, no, no - R finds himself repeating it over and over, as trapped as when she turned on him last time over the donut and his inability to lie properly.

"Uh, I...I mean." R stammers, at a loss. "Look, I'll figure something out. But I can't give you what I don't have. And you really, really don't want to hang out with me."

That much he means. Not just because being in the same room with a girl he ate is awkwardness incarnate. There's also the murdering thing: R seems to be a magnet for Tributes looking for an easy kill.

"I do! I do, I do, I do! Please! Monsieur, please do not send me away."

She was absolutely desperate . Usually, Eponine didn 't mind being alone. She didn't like it, but she didn't mind. She could shift for herself. She could look after herself. But right now, she felt as if she was going to keel over, face first. Her head felt so heavy: all the thoughts about Marius and his friends laughing at her, and the knowledge she'd tried to surpress about how mad Howard was going to be, and how upset Orc was, and her fears for those she loved being hurt by the Peacekeepers, and the memories of her murdering Homura, allof it competed for attention. The images played on her mind in a sick loop, and it was allshe could do not to cry. So she begged.

"Please, Monsieur. Please. Help me!"

Why does it feel like he's fighting a losing battle? Her voice rises, shrill, louder than he would've liked and R starts to wonder who else might be on this floor. Who might hear and come investigate and maybe take a crack at Eponine. He tries to hiss at her to keep it down but she's on a roll, she's begging, and the fragile walls R's tried to set up start to crack.

He's never been good at committing, at setting his foot down.

"How?" R asks in a harsh whisper. "I already told you I'd look for more food!"

What else can he do? The obvious answer is to be more proactive about the whole murdering other Tributes thing but R's not sure he can do that.

"Kill me."

The words are out, before Eponine has even thought them, and in the split second after she says them, she wishes she could take them back. But no. She's said it, and there, her plan is out. She rushes on quickly.

"Please - please help me. You OWE me. You do, you know you do. And you would do it quick, so it wouldn't hurt. Please. Please kill me. I can't live - I can't keep seeing it. I don't want to remember it any more. Please, please. Please, Monsieur. I shall do anything. Please kill me now."

R looks like he got kicked in the guts, his mouth flopping open in a dumb gape. No way she's serious. No way. Maybe he's biased since this Living thing is new again to him, but how can anyone want it over? Eponine steamrolls over his initial protest as she keeps going, her eyes wild and staring in a way that scares him without being able to say why.

"No!" R blurts. He shakes his head, holding up his hands, backing away from Eponine a step. Suddenly he's all too aware of his teeth, still sore from ripping that man's shoulder to pieces. There's a chunk of old flesh in there, jammed in his gums. "I-I can't do that. I really can't."

Technically he had, but...you know. The new hunger had been at the wheels. With it gone, he doesn't he's half as good at murdering as Eponine seems to think he is.

No? No? Eponine's face falls.

"You have to do it. You've done it once. Sir, you ate me alive. Do you not remember? Do you not remember ripping the flesh from my leg even as I cried for you to stop? You must have thought I tasted well - and to eat my whole body... Sir, you don't care for me, I know. But please, please take pity on me. I need to die. You can do it. Please."

She begs R unashamedly, wrangling in as many tugs on his guilt as she can. She needs to end this, and end it quickly.

"Please, Sir. Help me. Let me just forget it all. Sir, please. I shall stay away from you forever more if you help me. Please, M'sieur, I cannot live... they laugh... I've... Do it. Do it now. Please."

You think after all the run-ins he's had with Eponine, he'd know just how good she is at hitting you not just with words, but with all the worst ones. She twists the knife in again and again as she begs and begs and begs. Even though R tries to interrupt with "no", she runs over him until he lapses into shocked silence.

He did eat her. He hadn't even given her the decency of dying of blood-loss first, just dug right in like a French-girl buffet. All true.

"You don't know what you're asking," R tries to talk her down. Seeing as he's never done this before, he's not sure how well he can do here. He's never been very good at standing his ground. "My bite. What if..."

He trails off. What if it turns her? It's not like he stuck around his last two bite victims to find out if they'd turned into zombies. And assuming he did go through with this, R knows he can't just bite her nearest artery out. Something faint inside him wants to.

"What if what?" Eponine cannot for the life of her understand why R is hesitating. Why is he not killing her? Why is she not screaming as he eats her even now? Is she too disgusting even for this foul monster to accept as food? Is she so horrible that he cannot stand the thought of her in his body? She grabs for his shirt, clinging on tight.

"Please, Monsieur. Please kill me. I cannot live with what I have done any more. I cannot stand for people laughing at me any more. Please, Monsieur. Have mercy on me. Please. Please! Let me rest!"

He has to tell her. Has to spell out just why a possible bite from him isn't something to shoot for.

"Eponine, please - could you, you're..." R trails off, stumbling over his words as if he's fresh out of the grave again. His cheeks are heating up, doing odd things as blood flows to them. His fingers feel cold. It could be that fight-or-flight sensation he gets these days, the same one that seems to go into overdrive around Eponine. Sweat beads on his forehead.

She's stronger than she looks, her grab jerking him forward a step despite the size difference between them. R reaches up and lays his hands on hers, trying to untangle her fingers from his blood-stiffened shirt.

"I might be infected!" R blurts. He can't seem to get the girl off him. "I don't want to infect you, okay?"

She refuses to let go: her bony fingers are strong and she clutches his shirt tight so that he cannot shake her off.

"Please, please don't send me away. What do I care if you have an infection? I am going to die anyway and you shall make it peaceful for me. Please. I shan't be sent away again. Please, Monsieur. Make it so I can die. Help me and I shan't bother you again."

She pulls him closer and closer so that her nose is to his chest, so that he is so close he can smell the dirt from her hair. "Please, Monsieur." She's crying, her tears soaking into his shirt. "Please."

Her hands climb higher, tugging his shirt up and up, until she reaches his neck. "please," She whispers, as she finally lets go, as she traces her hands up over his cool neck, under his chin, and cups it, pulling so that he is on eye level with her. She shakes her head.

"Look at what you do to me. I am a mad woman. She has left me a mad woman." She moves her hands up, over his cheeks, and digs her nails in until blood spurts, just a little bit. She is not letting R go.

"You see what she has done to my face? How can anybody love me? They laugh at me, all of them, jeering at the televisions and at me when they think I cannot hear." She rakes her nails down hard, so hard that tiny slithers of skin and flesh from R's cheeks are stuck beneath them.

"Kill me, you useless monster. Kill me. Have mercy on me for once, please."

Edited 2014-02-24 10:38 (UTC)

It's almost hypnotic listening to Eponine beg. R doesn't even know how her hands go from his shirt to snake up to his face: suddenly he's trapped, his jaw gripped in a hand with a grip that's bruising. She drags him down to her eye level, R stuck in this awkward stoop and so close to her face he can watch her pupils dilate and contract.

He winces as she digs her nails in, really digs them in. Pain sprouts from his face, traveling in lines down his cheek and reminding him that he's still alive despite the two deaths. Maybe he's not really infected, he tells himself. Maybe he can just, he doesn't know, bite her and send her on his way. With the way she talks, he finds himself forgetting to breathe, his eyes locked on her face and her wild staring.

"Please," R says, but it's weak. Futile.

He finds the words escaping him. The idea of giving her a little bite and hoping he's not infectious like he fears resurfaces. His eyes still on her as he reaches out to take her wrist in his hand. Eponine hasn't been eating well, her wrist so thin he can easily feel bone. He might have to bite further up the arm.

"You could back out," R says, even though he knows that look and knows she won't.

She let him take her wrist: she was trembling, shaking so badly through exhaustion and fear and in anticipation of the pain to come from dying. But she glares at R and there is steel in her eyes.

"I am not going to back out. Just... just do it quickly. Please. Before someone else makes it linger."

The way her whole body shakes makes that look in her eyes stand out even more. It's a starting contrast, like a shock to the system. Just a bite. A little bite not even on the artery. R tells himself he just has to fool her.

He doesn't count to three. He doesn't tell her to brace herself. He positions his mouth against the meat of her forearm, right above the crook of her elbow, his chapped lips brushing her skin like a kiss.

R bites. Blood floods into his mouth and wells down her arm.

Oh it hurt. It hurt more than she remembered it hurting before - but perhaps that pain had just been forgotten, numbed by Marius and Cosette's happiness, and Howard's betrayal and her desperation with Orc and her trouble with the Peacekeepers. Eponine didn't know. But it didn't really matter anyway. The pain in the present was terrible, and she couldn't help but hiss through her gritted teeth, though she tried her best not to flinch.

"That won't kill me." she panted out. "Monsieur, it burns and the pain is... is good. But it shan't kill me. You need to kill me, especially now."

Time to see if he could sell this. Suddenly R caught himself wishing he was a better liar, that he'd made more of an effort to copy the white lies and lies-by-omission. There hadn't been a point when he was a zombie, surrounded by other zombies. He swallowed, trying to ignore the taste of copper and warmth in his mouth.

"It's infected. It'll happen fast," R lies - hopes he's lying - and pulls away from her arm. He reaches up to wipe the blood from his mouth with his wrist. "I can't do more. You just have to trust me on this."

"And I'll just..." She shrugs. She doesn't want to say it, really, that she's going to die. She clutches at her arm - oh GOD does it burn her - and the blood trickles down over her fingers.
"And you wish me to... to go? To die... by myself?"

R stares at her, his mouth parted in surprise, her blood glistening against his teeth.

"I don't think it'd be a good idea to stay with me," he says weakly. He's not sure he has it in him to watch the life go out of her, watch the color drain and her eyes turn zombie-silver.

Why did she even ask?

It feels as bas as if R had torn open her chest, broke her rib cage and ripped out her heart. She could be sick. In fact - she retched. But nothing came. Her mouth was dry and her head was spinning. He didn't want her. He was going to deal the death blow and leave her to drift off by herself, unloved, forgotten, not cared for.

And why should he care, indeed? Why should anybody care?

She studied R's face for a moment, before she resolutely turned her back, hunched her shoulders against the world, and wandered away.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Backdated to before the Volcano eruption

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject