On My Knees, Saying Prayers in the Streetlight [Open]

[nunpunching]

WHO| Punchy and open.
WHAT| Punchy wanders around and finds a pharmacy, dissects a walker.
WHEN| Before Hellrena, week one.
WHERE| Near the town green.
WARNINGS| None.

Punchy hasn't eaten in nearly a week. His body, though used to somehow pulling nutrition out of a diet of nothing but gummi worms and sports drinks, is running on fumes. He feels his skin starting to get tight over his cheekbones and his lips starting to chap, and what's worse, he's feeling unfocused. It's a strange and unpleasant feeling for someone who can sit down and hammer out a computer program overnight; it's the way he felt back in class, as if nothing is interesting and nothing matters.

Of course, given that he's in a death Arena, feeling detached and listless isn't exactly a proper response to the circumstances.

He's set up his hideout inside an old pharmacy, one that would no longer be deemed fit to sell drugs due to the sheer amount of mildew sprawling out over every surface. He'd hoped to find candy, but the mints and lollipops he found practically crumbled to pastel-covered dust in his hands. He really only comes here to sleep during the day, catching quick catnaps and escaping from the more suffocating part of the heat.

At night, he goes out and kills these weird machinations the Capitol has put here, these walkers and insects. He has burns all over his hands from one of the giant spiders, but he's dragged a walker back to the pharmacy and is trying to take it apart, to see if there's a machine inside. How does it hunt with no eyes, no nose? If it has a sensor beacon, it could be used to find his allies.

He's hunched over this stinking, hideous corpse and so enraptured with his study that he wouldn't even notice someone coming in.

Comments

[nunpunching]

Punchy's oblivious to most things, but not to that. Not to Joan and not to grief; he knows both much too well. He reaches over and gives her shoulder a squeeze, then wraps his arm around her.

"Poison ain't how I wanna bite it." He shrugs. "But it's better than starving."

*sigh* Sorry, damn autocorrect

[formersurgeon]

She doesn't like showing her sadness, doesn't like being caught out in it. But she trusts Punchy. Knows that she's safe, which as least dulls the discomfort of discovery. She slides her arm around his waist.

"So...cut it up for kebabs and build a fire?"

[nunpunching]

"Sounds legit. Sounds pretty gangsta, actually." He pats her hard on the back and then holds his arm out.

"You know, Holmesboy and I tried to hack out the chips last Arena, and the Gamemakers went fuckin' ape about it."

[formersurgeon]

The pat surprises her, rocking her forward a little, so she pauses a little to parse his next statement.

"I bet they did," she says, her voice softening with a tinge of sadness, although it wasn't entirely genuine. She's supposed to be sad about Sherlock, the one who supposedly threw himself off the Tribute Tower, so she makes sure she sounds that way, but it comes from a place of ache, for both the Sherlocks.

"What did they do?"

[nunpunching]

Punchy looks sad too. And a bit angry. He understands what might drive someone to suicide - understands it too well - but it's a sin in his religion. And he's seen what grief does to those left behind. He has a hard time forgiving it.

He's seeing it now.

"Set off all the alarms with the nitrous ox, blowing it up the rilla soon as I said I was gonna do it." He looks at Joan with raises eyebrows, expecting her to understand that as soon as the Capitol says 'no', his impulse is to do exactly that.

[formersurgeon]

She gives him a look, her eyes slightly narrowed, but more out of amusement than disapproval.

"...you're thinking of doing it again, aren't you."

[nunpunching]

"Duh."

He holds his arm out and points to where the chip is implanted under the pale skin. "But not in the Arena."

[formersurgeon]

"Because they can't instantly punish you outside the arena, right."

She takes his arm and looks at it more closely.

"I'll help you. I can do it cleanly, make it hurt less and be less likely to get infected."