thearena | ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

The Tributes are taken early in the morning, most of their support teams seeming in good cheer as they dress them in warm clothes, getting them to their tubes. There is obvious comfort in the familiar for the prep teams, and they chatter with, or in some cases, over the heads of their Tributes as they get them ready and load them up.

20

19

18…

If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.

Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.

8

7

6…

But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.

3

2

1

The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.

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"He seems like one of those fundamentally good people whose brains are a bit...potato-like." Wow, even Venus cringes saying that one out loud, as true as it is. "Very sweet, but just...not all the way there upstairs. Anyway. Grantaire."

She locks up the front, shoving a rack of shoes in front of the door.

"What's his deal?" Venus is good enough at reading faces that she definitely picked up on a little disdain in Enjolras' face, moreso than he occasionally directs at Courfeyrac and Joly and Marius (well, maybe not more than Marius). "Aside from being good company?"

"Potato-like." Joly mused, thoughtful now. "You know, I never would have thought about Marius as a vegetable, but if he WAS one, he'd have to be that, wouldn't he?" Poor Marius, though. It must be sad to be the potato of the group. Sure, you were a staple, but you were sort of boring at the same time. And just...bland. Predictable, usually.

He's moving to check out the windows, making sure no one can get in unless they're letting them.

"Grantaire's, good company, really." Joly couldn't help but grin a little, thinking of the man. "I've never met anyone who knew the city half so well as he does. If you ever needed a recommendation for dinner, coffee or dancing, or the best shoemaker, you need only ask. He's rather brilliant really, on almost any subject you could think of. All that said, it can be a little...hard to find beneath the protective layer of cynicism and alcohol. He and Enjolras are diametrically opposed so far as I can tell. Where Enjolras sees openings, Grantaire sees closings and so on and so forth. It is all rather sad."

"You can make a battery out of a potato, you know."

She shoves another shelf against the window and sits down, looking over their new domain.

"I think most people miss that Enj is an optimist. It's like, his secret or something." Venus smiles in that way that isn't for cameras, that shows a little too much teeth and a little too much squint, in that genuine way that makes it painfully obvious how in love she is. If she were aware of it, she'd be embarrassed. "I'd say I don't know how cynical makes good company, but it sometimes does. For his sake I hope I never meet Grantaire, but I won't be sad for my sake if I do."

"Really?" Okay, Joly looks pretty interested in that, though whether that has to do with actual potatoes or if he's thinking about some joke about Marius, it's very hard to say. Well, for a moment. Then the grin appearing on his face is probably something very like a warning.

"Well, I must admit I am a little shocked by that. Electricity itself, the ways that it is used continue phasing me a bit. But given a bit more time to understand, I am certain I conduit."

They roll off just like that, even as Joly finds a little crack in their window and tears off a quick strip of tape to seal it.

"He hides it very well, and most of the time, it actually has to be parsed out of whatever he happens to be saying, or doing." That smile and the whole LOOK right now definitely makes Joly want to smile himself. Enjolras has done extremely well, he decides, particularly because of how well Venus understands him. Both of them could use a bit more happiness, he thinks, which does not necessarily bode well when thinking of Grantaire, but, then again, the moment could be worse.

"He has that sort of humor where if you had a bad day, it can be refreshing, hearing him beat down everything in sight. Admittedly, there are those times that he vanishes entirely too far in himself, extends his metaphors too far, or gets caught up in them, or simply veers toward depressing, but overall, Grantaire is a good fellow. I dare say that it WOULD be bad for Enjolras, but for the rest of us...I cannot think that it would end so badly."

"Wow." She rolls her eyes, but laughs. "Wow, that was terrible. I mean, it started bad, but then it got terrible. I think you're reaching a new low for awful, awful puns."

She stretches her legs and straightens her shirt over the duct taped injuries. She leans her head forward, letting her hair dangle, the humidity curling the ends up around her chin.

"Oh, I meant for Grantaire's sake. To not be caught up in this could be a mercy."

"The spark of inspiration is growing a little thin." Joly had to agree, throwing that one in there anyway, because it was reasonable enough to end the puns on something of a high, or very low note. "I continue to reach for it, but I am met with such resistance. I can only imagine how re-volted you must be just now."

Grinning rather wickedly, he's taking advantage of the lull to pull himself up onto one of the counters, letting his legs hang free and dangle over the edge.

"As much as I miss him, even as much as I miss Bossuet and Musichetta and the others, I have to agree with that. Everyone here, including you, already set me to fretting. At least this way I know that they are either home, or have managed to find peace in death. It is so much more comforting to think of that than hope to see them here to suffer. With Bossuet's luck, or Grantaire's lack of a bottle, I do not wish even to consider what an arena may be like."

"Revolted. That's one word for it." The smile she gives him indicates that she's nowhere close to such a negative emotion. 'Endeared' is likely the proper adjective. She wonders if he can usurp his reputation as the hypochondriac with that of the punster in the Capitol's eye - surely there's some children's show out there in need of a jester.

And yet it's with serene seriousness that she addresses him again. "You don't need to worry about me, Joly. If I die here, I'm set free. If I suffer, I feel like I'm paying penance for the things I did as a kid. No matter how it goes for me, I win."

Self-hatred lends itself to the most perverse forms of optimism. The human mind polishes even the ugliest emotions to shining in order to cope.

Joly just grins back in return, glad, at least, that this time around, he's managing to be relatively calm enough so early into the game. It makes a change from last time's full on panic anyway. And as for reputation, why not both? It's not as though they had been separate things in Paris. Making that the reputation people thought of first though, that would make for a nice change.

He's not sure he can entirely accept her assessment there, entirely. Dying and being set free, yes, all right, that would be rather welcome if it could be managed. Penance, though, is another matter.

"I do not think that anyone could do something so awful for this to be their cosmic penance." he muses, a frown spreading across his face. "Theology is not my strong suit but I cannot imagine any god condoning this as an acceptable form of anything."

"Well, you've seen the TV special on me. Even if you don't agree, I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from." For that moment, her tone gets somber, and she isn't unlike a candle guttering in its own wax. And then the mood disappears, buried like a footprint under snow. "I'm surprised you didn't have a priest in your collective."

She gets back up. "Do you want to rest first or should I?"

"I do, actually. Understand I mean." Joly adds quickly, lest Venus think otherwise and that he actually believes any of that trash. "I...we all have our things from home we are not proud of, I think. I certainly have a few."

He's not sure whether spilling them for all of Panem is a good idea, particularly when he speaks of things even his friends, even ENJOLRAS do not know of.But for now, well, better to keep it quiet.

"At times I wonder. Enjolras was quite a priest in his own way, just one of the ideal, of the republic, instead of anything else. And well, we had our poet. Even though he was more Romantic than a priest has any right to be, Jehan seemed, at times, to be touching the divine.

I should be fine to watch for now." He adds, not wanting to make Venus stay awake after what just happened, and really, a bit too keyed up to sleep, considering.

"Somehow I doubt that." She grins, imagining that the trouble he gets into at home is relegated to the more enjoyable, mutually satisfactory forms of debauchery she saw on the television, that he's told her about with a surprisingly laissez-faire attitude.

But she wonders, perhaps. She's assumed that people look at her and see the friendly exterior, the warm smile, and not the wounds. She wonders if she's as certain of what people see of her as she thinks she is.

Perhaps the same is true of him.

"Wake me up as soon as you're tired. There's nothing worse than a sleepy guard."

"Oh, not in the neighborhood of..." Joly's not even sure how to put it, entirely. He would tell Venus actually, but at some other point. His deepest darkest secrets, the ones that only another doctor, or another doctor who has worked under combat anyway, might understand, are not those that he wants to give to an entire nation. "Well, it is not for here, at least." He adds, though a part of him does want Venus to know. "Someday." he promises. "When cameras aren't there to catch it."

And no, in Venus, there is much more than that. The first glimpse shows all of those things maybe, but as time has gone on, there's been much more to it than that.

For now, he is smiling, and nodding.

"Of course I will. I am so glad we've found each other here, you know. I could not chance that for anything."

She, of all people, may understand best the importance of things that need to be hidden from cameras. Things that need to be defended at all costs from the prying eyes of the uninitiated, the people who won't understand. So she nods and understands that that trust is a gift, and when he gives her his secrets she'll respect the gravity of them.

"Me too." She grabs a tablecloth, moth-eaten as it is, to make a sort of bed from. And she lays down, wondering what things will emerge from the mists to ally with or threaten them.

It is true, that, and keeping what could make him a monster in some people' eyes, being able to keep it for now, is certainly a blessing, so Joly simply returns the nod, seeing no need to say more about the trust that lies between them now. It simply IS,and that is enough for now.

"Sleep well." He adds, simply, already glancing time to time at the windows, at corners more freakish things might escape from, prepared to do his job as best he can.

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ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

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