thearena | All of Our Flaws Are Laid Out One by One [Closed]

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All of Our Flaws Are Laid Out One by One [Closed]

WHO| Venus Dee Milo and Topher Brink, Venus and Wyatt Earp
WHAT| Venus kills Topher and chats with Wyatt about their dumb (pseudo-)boyfriends.
WHEN| Week 5
WHERE| Fourth floor
WARNINGS| Death by impalement.

Her route through the east wing of the fourth floor gets shaken up every day or so. She's never been one for routine, and furthermore she doesn't want anyone pulling a videogame maneuver and waiting on her to turn a corner to run past her and head for the cafe. Having Sherlock get past her shook her enough.

Today she goes through the hall with the elevators, a chamber full of fossilized dinosaur eggs, and ends up in the huge room with the prehistoric animals. The ribcage of the whale above her reminds her of a claw machine at an arcade, about to lower down and snatch her up while her leg is injured and she's all vulnerable.

She stops when she sees someone turn a corner in front of her - just the heel of a shoe, but enough for her to follow. Covering the slash on her face with one hand and taking the knife in her other, she pads after Topher into the dinosaur exhibit.

-/-

She doesn't like walking by the movie theater screen here. The chatter of voices from Tributes still in the Arena clutters the air around her, makes her tense, throws off her vigilance and turns it into paranoia. She tries to wander through her patrol here as quickly as possible, limping along, dragging her foot slightly.

She hears a familiar voice and her head snaps up. She shouldn't be surprised to see footage of Enjolras, but she's surprised that it's of him and Maximus, because until now she's only seem images of at least one Tribute still in the Game. She realizes when she looks beyond him, at the triangle of background behind his shoulder and curls, and sees that the Training Center is closed. That this was recorded during the Games. This is close to real-time.

She's watching the footage so closely she doesn't hear Wyatt enter. When she tears her face (reddened, under her slash) away from the screen, she jumps slightly as she sees him, his eyes also on the two pixel-borne faces growing more heated as they fight.

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Dinosaurs were a nice touch, especially as they weren't actually attacking anyone. Yet. He wasn't exploring exactly, just taking in the place while avoiding anything and anyone breathing. Topher vaguely recalled a zombie and added the non-breathers to his list. So far there was no sign of Punchy (was that actually a name?) and his supplies were limited to one sad rod from a car in the basement. At this point he would even go for some diarrhea candy.

The beige skeleton of a Velociraptor and suddenly he wondering if they had a copy of Jurassic Park somewhere out side of this place. He scratches the back of his head as he tries to remember just what was outside this place. This was possibly the worst fog he's ever felt and that worries him. It brings out all sorts of thoughts about the Attic and Alpha and other things that he specifically signed a paper that promised he wouldn't have to think about this sort of stuff if he did his job right. Of course that was before Sierra or Priya or whatever the House wanted to call her. Life was not suppose to be complicated for him. Turning away with a sigh, Topher decides that he needs to find something to munch on before he ends up looking like these bones.

It's a momentary glint of steel that alerts him he's not alone.

Damn.

Now that she's spotted him, she doesn't bother to sneak. She swaggers, making sure her knife is very obvious in her hand.

"I'm not here to murder you," she says. "I'm here to rob you and chase you off our territory. What've you got?"

The face looks familiar, and it takes a moment to place Topher Brink. She killed him once, a long time ago, and he never came back. There's a sick feeling in her stomach that she may repeat history here, that the Capitol may find it a running joke.

He holds his empty hand up while keeping a tight grip on the rod. "Hey, mugging a guy is poor form."

There's no recognition even though dying had been quite memorable. "And I'm pretty sure there's room for everyone in this non-celebrity deathmatch." That's a lie. Although he's currently suffering from a lack of remembering all the important bits, he does remember that finding a place that was yours was high on the list.

"Would you rather I just kill you? Because I can totally manage that." She raises an eyebrow. "I'm giving you a chance to run. How isn't that polite?"

She's within range now that either of them could make a move and strike the other. She waits for his response.

"Wow, a polite killer. Totally forgot how full they just fill these Murder Are-" Her face, or, rather, her voice. That attitude is familiar in a way he really didn't want to think about. Suddenly his grip is tightening on the hollow pipe and he's looking for exits. "Running. Right. I'm going to go ahead and take curtain number two..."

"Ain't no curtain number two." As soon as his eyes dart away from her, looking for an escape, she makes her move. She lunges forward not with her knife, but with her fist, cocking a punch right for his chattery mouth.

"Worst game show ever." Topher isn't going to wait to be gutted, not this time. He swings his pipe at the hand holding the knife. The pipe is lost to him, but he doesn't care as he takes off in a full run. Why couldn't he have good dreams filled with puppies and candy?

Well, maybe not the candy part, but he was fairly certain puppies were always good.

She's actually surprised he fights back, unlike last time, and as such losing the knife happens before she's even fully registered it. She makes the millisecond decision to follow him rather than run over and grab the knife from the yards away where it's landed.

She's not fast, but she's been on the fourth floor for weeks now, and that means she knows where the hallways meet each other. She takes a shortcut and meets Topher right as he turns a corner.

The punch she throws at his gut should stop him in his tracks.

He finds himself sliding into her fist as he's unable to slow himself down fast enough. The air rushes out and he bends in half as he tries not to throw up on the both of them.

"Seriously? What about letting-letting me run?" One hand raises in surrender as the other is still clutching his sore stomach. Once he's sure he won't be chucking up, he raises...and then steps back. "Whoa. Who ate your face?"

"Someone's knife was hungry," she says, before kicking him against the wall. It'll slow him down while she finds a weapon. She could beat him to death, she knows. She could snap his neck now. But that wouldn't be terribly fair.

If she makes this memorable, they'll probably bring him back. It's not guilt she's afraid of so much as betraying her dedication to giving everyone a fair chance. The least she could do for this smart-mouthed wuss is make sure she gives him that.

She snaps a bone from a display of velociraptors.

He's already tired and wanting to go home. Or wake up. Waking up would be nice. He doesn't move from the wall as he's far too busy catching his breath and hoping he can reason with Madam Frankenstein.

"Look, I'm sure you have all sorts of angst over the loss of skin and- Oh god is that infected?" Concentrate, Topher. "Okay, what I'm saying is we should converse and maybe get to know each other. 'Hi, I'm Topher and I hate long walks on the beach and most other things that you do outside.' See?"

"Honey." She places a fingertip to his lips. "Shh. You're ruining the moment."

Then she drives the rib in her hand up through his stomach, pushing it so far back that after the squelch is flesh and organs giving there's a bunk! of the tip hitting the wall behind him and cracking. It's a smooth blow, no twisting, no torture. Dramatic and smooth.

She also whips her nails up and across the side of his neck, a calculated strike to slice open his jugular. A gut wound like she just gave him would bleed out slowly, but a slice to the neck will take him sixty seconds or less. Good. She doesn't want to draw this out.

She takes a step back to watch him die.

His eyes opened with shock even though this was expected. Well, not the whole gutting with a dino rib, but death, this death, was pretty much fated. His hand clutched at the bloody fossil even though he knew pulling the thing out would make things a thousand times worse. The sharp pain in his neck was far more of a surprise.

One hand reached up at the wound even as the other still tugged at the rib in his stomach. A memory pokes at him. A memory of dying slowly and painfully. Of being afraid and then of...oh.

"Pu-" There's no air or time for him to do anything more than mouth the word. He had a friend. Dying hadn't been so bad with a friend. Next time. Next time he'd have a friend again.

Wyatt also went out of his way to avoid the theater on the fourth floor. After his last encounter there, after the last little performance he'd walked in on, he had no interest joining the Capitol in their game. His fellow tributes secrets were just that, theirs. But he too, despite his intentions, was still drawn in by the familiar voice. Thick and hard, raised in anger.

He paused in the hall, trying to parse out the words being said from a distance, frowning at the biting sound of his own name.

Like a moth to a flame, he let himself into the darkened room, moving toward the seats, closer to the screen as Max's face twisted in a snarl.

He didn't realize he wasn't alone, that the woman wasn't anything more than a pillar, or a display, tucked in amongst the shadows until she moved. Jumping in surprise as she turned and found him.

His hand went for the revolver tucked into his pants out of instinct, but he didn't skin it. His palm rested on the hilt uneasily as he glanced between her torn face and the ones on the screen.

"...I ain't here for you," he told her, voice hushed under the raised ones that filled the room with heat.

Venus' hands go up, the classic gesture of wary amiableness. "And I ain't here for you. Just watching my idiot best friend here get yelled at my other friend."

Wyatt Earp. She's certainly seen his face enough in the Games' footage, and as such she isn't afraid of him. He isn't the type to attack without warrant, to try to make the survival game into a series of murders. He isn't her, cocky in her own dangerousness.

In the background, the footage begins to replay, from the start where Enjolras tries to look a little more put-together than he is while being directly addressed by the general.

"I'm a friend of Max's. We spent Christmas together," she says. She lowers her hands. "I'm pretty sure I told him to give you a hug."

If there was a magic word to ease Wyatt's uncertainty, it was calling Max a friend. Granted, it wasn't a cure-all by itself - Shepard was evidence enough of that - but it helped. It relaxed the grip on the revolver, loosened his shoulders, gave him freedom enough to take a long look at the screen.

To watch the fight start, a ball of shit starting a slow downhill roll.

"Yer Venus," he said, putting it together from the pieces laid out before him. Gossip and things Max had mentioned, and the name being tossed between the two men on screen. "I heard about it. ...An' he did, eventually."

"I see my reputation precedes me." She offers Wyatt a smile that is at first tentative, then overconfident, full of youth that shines out from beneath the grime of being a veteran of these affairs.

(Enjolras' words, Venus knows full well how I regard her, it with utmost respect, nothing more or less, slap against the back of her head like rain against metal sheeting.)

"And I'm glad." She'd noticed. "He's a lot happier when you're around."

"I owe ya my thanks," he murmured, eyes tacked to the screen behind Venus, watching Max's face grow cold and hard. The muscles around his mouth tightening as his eyes flashed, little lightning strikes on the edges of a storm. "For bein' there when...."

He trailed of, not really having the words to explain it, and not really sure he wanted to.

It was a dark memory he'd much rather forget. Those grey empty days where he'd tried to convince himself he could happy without Max.

"An' so I am, the other way 'round--" (Surely Monsieur Earp has benefited from you similarly.) His attention broke away from Venus, the sound of his name from the blond's lips like a shot in the dark.

Had he just... Wyatt took a step forward, eyebrows veeing - an unintentional step closer to Venus, just wanting to get closer to the screen.

Edited (html fail) 2014-02-20 22:13 (UTC)

Venus raises both her hands and covers her face. For someone who's well used to watching schadenfreude on the screen, this is a bit much for her to keep her eyes on.

"When I said 'idiot best friend', I should have put emphasis on idiot." She feels pained, watching Enjolras insist over and over that his affection for her is for her own political advantage when she's told him flat-out not to play into it. She feels like she's debasing herself to defend him. And yet...

She reaches out to touch Wyatt's shoulder, to try and defuse the anger there with a watery touch.

"He doesn't mean it the way it sounds. He's just got a criminal case of not thinking about how things he says are going to come off. Really."

Edited 2014-02-20 22:20 (UTC)

Despite the gentle weight of her hand, the muscle beneath her palm only tensed. A heat crawling up through his insides, pooling in his throat, as Max leaped, teeth bared, to the defense.

(If you dare to assume that I have done anything less than taken his affections and returned them...)

"I don't know him," Wyatt rumbled, his usual drawl clipped in the vise of his jaw. Wyatt knew him only in the distant way any of them knew the victors, their faces impossible escape - that one's especially, with the new statue sitting in the Tower lobby. "Where exactly does he get off even tryin'--"

(...you sell Monsieur Earp short. He is in more of a place to use you than you are him.)

He jerked, spine straightening and stiffening sharply, as if someone had just stuck him in the back with a sharp, hot blade.

"Oh, like you've never said something stupid when you feel cornered?" Venus almost makes that a hiss, almost goes on to recite the 'forget it' that Max had been so hung up about over the holiday, but she knows she would inevitably lose that righteous indignation of feeling irritated that Max intruded on her romantic life without her permission.

Hypocritical, maybe, but there's a difference between counseling a friend and approaching a stranger.

She feels a sinkhole in her chest, one that seems to suck her flesh tighter than even the broken ribs. She needs to be stable to deal with all of this. She needs to be able to deal with her relationships with the same ease she approaches a stage or killing field or any combination of the two. Fucking tears start to leak. And her nose. She sniffs.

"Well, Wyatt, I hope you're not judging me by association right now."

He didn't go flapping his gums about somebody he knew nothing about, no. He didn't lie to try and push anger directed at him off onto somebody else, no.

Wyatt could have told her those things, and more, but his throat was too tight. Too dry. He heard her sniff, saw the movement, the wet glinting off her cheek in the shifting light, but he could do nothing about that either.

He could only stand there, a statue of mangled flesh and aching bone, as the clip played on. Max's cold decree, the stranger's hollow apology.

The little flicker as the scene reset, started again.

Finally, finally, he was unable to unstick his jaw. His blue eyes shifting over to land on her face.

"I don't know you either," he said. "But I know what ya did for Max. That's the only thing I judge ya on."

Edited 2014-02-20 23:23 (UTC)

She rolls her eyes as they repeat the clip. On the other hand, it's encouraging. They only have so much ammunition to play with her emotions.

"Good. I watch the Games, so I feel like I can judge that you're a pretty decent person." She wants to talk about Ellie, but that brings more tears, and she takes a moment to compose herself and fan at her face with her hand. Glittery pink nails flash in the screen light. "I saw what you did for Ellie. She's a friend too."

It feels gross, namedropping like she's trading currency, but she feels it's necessary to underscore what she says next. To make the heart in her voice sound as genuine as it is.

"Thank you, for saving her. That's how Enj won, you know. He was trying to protect her and was too late. And that's all I'll defend him with right now."

He took a breath, trying to slow the hard thump of his heart. Anger and hurt and a heavy sense of uselessness pulsing through him with every thick beat.

"Well, that's good of him," he acknowledged, but his face didn't soften. "But I'll still be damned if those lies of his'll be the last word said before I die."

He couldn't say for certain when this little spat had occurred, but it didn't really matter. He couldn't be there, couldn't talk to Max himself, couldn't make sure Max knew....

He'd have to use the cameras. Hope they'd show it, hope Max was watching.

(If might have been better, to let Max think the worst of him, to let anger replace loss if - when - he didn't return, but he couldn't let it be. Selfishly, he didn't want to die wondering if Max doubted him.)

"Oh, please." Venus rolls her eyes again, shaking her head. "The Capitol loves you two. You're coming back for sure this time."

Waximus is one of their most popular cash cows, if the merchandise in the gift shop is anything to go by. Venus knows how this works - they'll wait until the popularity wanes before adding real death to the mix.

"Trust me. I'm not just teasing. I work in this business." She doubts that's going to help her much in Wyatt's esteem, but it's honest.

"Can ya guarantee it?" Wyatt asked her, voice and eyes sharp. "For a man who's done this eight times now? A man that's passed up on their crown twice?"

A man who'd ignored the rules so consistently. A trouble-maker who'd been banded with a traitor's mark.

"I know what happens to the odds, every time ya come into these things. I know I might not get any other chance... an' I don't want him thinkin' I didn't mean it."

"I can all but guarantee it." Venus squares her shoulders, arms akimbo, certain in her knowledge of how the Game works. She has to be certain. It's vital to her on some core level, a necessary foundation to her behavior in the Arena.

"Anyway, Max doesn't look like that's what he's thinking. Give him some credit. You two are peas in a pod." She raises her fingers up in a tight '2'. "You don't want to waste time feeling bad towards other people when you can feel bad about yourself."

Wyatt stared at her, studying her face, direct and unblinking across from his own. That she believed what she was saying was clear, but despite how much he wanted to, he just couldn't quite get himself to swallow it.

Like telling Howard the Capitol might take them both, if they made it to the end.

What little faith he had left, after all this time here, he didn't put in the Capitol.

"It ain't a waste if it's true."

"Oh, please. There are people here who deserve to blames themselves for a lot more than you." She sighs. Her eyes are dry now. The tears come quickly, for little reasons, but they often vanish in as short a time. She feels like a ball of yarn going through the day, leaving more and more of herself behind each hour.

She holds a hand out. "Anyway. Since I'd rather not kill people I respect or get on Max's bad side, do you have allies you want me to keep away from?"

Another moment of staring, Wyatt trying to measure and then deciding that it seemed like she meant the bit about respecting him as much as she did the speech about knowing how the Game worked.

After all his encounters with Shepard, it was nice. Refreshing even.

"Howard Bassem," he told her, reaching out to take her hand in his. Sealing both deals. The one spoken, and the one not. "District One, young fella, 'bout so high--" He held up his other hand to measure Howard's height. "He's one'a mine."

Ellie, she already knew about, and Max, who wasn't here. The rest off the top of his head, like Ellie, were all already out.

Edited 2014-02-21 01:06 (UTC)

"Man, that kid's like what, forty pounds? I'd have to be a hell of an asshole to beat up someone I could lift with one arm."

She frowns, her gaze settling on something behind Wyatt. She's well aware that doesn't stop some people, and that's where the difference between her and so many of the other killers lie. Between people like her and Max, and people like Aunamee and Alpha.

"I hope you'll extend the same courtesy to Kankri, but I can't see you wanting to kill a harmless kid under any circumstances. He's one of the trolls, about this high, little horns like this." She makes a gesture at her chest height, and then of little devil horns.

He'd never met any of the trolls himself, but he'd certainly heard enough about the strange beings to figure he'd know one when he saw it.

He nodded without even having to think about it.

"I've managed to avoid havin' to hurt anyone this round," he said, releasing her hand and returning his palm to the hilt of the revolver - out of habit more than any sort of willful intention. "I certainly ain't gunna start now with a child."

Of any sort.

A beat passed, their moment of understanding a strange echo to the raised voices on the screen, then he spoke again. A soft, rumbling request. One he'd been chewing over for a while, but hadn't found anyone he trusted with it. No one who would understand.

He'd just met Venus, but in just these few moments he felt a kinship. She'd been there, she knew.

"...If it does go the other way, you'll keep an' eye on him for me?"

Venus' mouth tightens for a second, uncertain. "I can't promise to take him under my wing. That space is occupied. But I can swear on my life not to hurt him, in this Arena or any other."

She holds her hand out.

(Max's voice in the background makes her cringe. Talking about how she feels as if it's something fragile and porcelain that needs to be treated carefully.)

He took her hand, held it for a beat.

"An' him?" he asked, the pale blue eyes flicking over her shoulder to the man on the screen and back again. "If that guarantee ain't as solid as ya made it out to be?"

"I'd defend Max anyway."

She raises her eyes over Wyatt's shoulder. It's not that she and Max are that close, though she does care about him - it's not that she cares enough for him to die for him - it's that she can't imagine dying to a more worthy opponent, should Max get sent to the Arena. As such, any battle won't end with her victory intended. And keeping him alive to win again is a perfectly suitable result for her.

As for the Capitol...

"Someone has to keep an eye on all the people who can't figure out how to turn on their communicators, anyway."

Edited 2014-02-21 20:04 (UTC)

He was hoping for something a bit more certain, but he supposed it would have to be enough. It was more than he'd had a few moments ago.

"Thank ya." He nodded again and released her.

He looked at the screen again, still unhappy with the exchange playing out there. Wishing there was more that he could do than watch.

Wishing he could be back there.

...What would he give for this woman to be right.

"Good luck," he told her, pulling his gaze away again. "I -- hope things work out for ya, with you an' yer friend there."

Just because Wyatt wanted to wring his scrawny neck, didn't mean he couldn't see that Max was right. It wasn't politics for her either.

Edited 2014-02-21 20:23 (UTC)

"If I gave up on people whenever they stuck their feet in their mouths, I wouldn't have any friends at all."

She waves slightly as she limps off, continuing her patrol. She decides that she doesn't mind having Wyatt in her territory. The worst he can do is help.

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All of Our Flaws Are Laid Out One by One [Closed]

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