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

[celebrityskinned]

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.

Comments

[amoral_savior]

"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.

[celebrityskinned]

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.

[amoral_savior]

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?"

[celebrityskinned]

"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.

[amoral_savior]

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?"

[celebrityskinned]

"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.

[amoral_savior]

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.