Venus Dee Milo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
celebrityskinned) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thearena2014-06-26 12:56 am
celebrityskinned) wrote in thearena2014-06-26 12:56 am
Entry tags:
How Did You Expect Your Soul... [Closed]
WHO| Venus and Guy, Venus and Nasir, then Venus, Enjolras, Jet and Albert
WHAT| Death! Traumatic memories! Chain whips and bad food!
WHEN| Week 5 during the Hellrena, thread with Guy during week 4
WHERE| Throughout the Arena and then near the abyss.
WARNINGS| Bugs, death, some body horror, mentions of child-abuse, two gladiators slugging it out.
She goes looking for water before the Arena descends into Hell. The lake seems to have vanished somewhere into the fog, somewhere that she and Enjolras can't seem to locate despite their best attempts to retrace their paths. Eventually, it only makes sense to split up. They'll stay on the asphalt of the town road and hope that if they both keep moving in opposite directions, finding their way back to the meeting place in the middle will be simple enough.
She takes her chain and her boxcutter. She swings the former while she walks, and it cuts little trails of negative space into the cloud around her. She clicks her tongue as she walks, trying not to let dehydration or exhaustion look too evident on her frame in front of the cameras. Her head's pounding. Her throat is dry and crawling up the back of her mouth.
She stops when she hears something.
-/-
She finds Enjolras again when she's in less than ideal shape. Her fight with Nasir left her bloody, left her with broken bones and, she suspects, internal hemorrhaging. The Arena's already over for her, which would bother her if she ever intended to actually win one of these things. What actually does upset her is the fact that she's crawling back to someone else to slowly die, just like she did last time.
She's selfish. So sue her. She doesn't want to get lost in the fog and let the animals feast on her while she's alone.
There's a strange rage that pulses just beneath her skin, a hunger that creeps along between her bone and muscle that she can't explain. She itches at her flesh and some of it comes off, and her teeth hurt. She tries to not pick at herself, because she doesn't need to be opening new ones when the ones she got an hour ago are still oozing blood down her clothing to mingle with sweat.
The benefit of this strange setting change is that she has her powers back. She teleports back to the meeting place she and Enjolras had, landing with a bit of a squawk of pain as she puts weight on what is, in all likelihood, a broken ankle. She holds one arm close to her body, and the corner of her mouth has been sliced down to the side of her neck.
"Don't look now, but I'm a bit of a mess."
WHAT| Death! Traumatic memories! Chain whips and bad food!
WHEN| Week 5 during the Hellrena, thread with Guy during week 4
WHERE| Throughout the Arena and then near the abyss.
WARNINGS| Bugs, death, some body horror, mentions of child-abuse, two gladiators slugging it out.
She goes looking for water before the Arena descends into Hell. The lake seems to have vanished somewhere into the fog, somewhere that she and Enjolras can't seem to locate despite their best attempts to retrace their paths. Eventually, it only makes sense to split up. They'll stay on the asphalt of the town road and hope that if they both keep moving in opposite directions, finding their way back to the meeting place in the middle will be simple enough.
She takes her chain and her boxcutter. She swings the former while she walks, and it cuts little trails of negative space into the cloud around her. She clicks her tongue as she walks, trying not to let dehydration or exhaustion look too evident on her frame in front of the cameras. Her head's pounding. Her throat is dry and crawling up the back of her mouth.
She stops when she hears something.
-/-
She finds Enjolras again when she's in less than ideal shape. Her fight with Nasir left her bloody, left her with broken bones and, she suspects, internal hemorrhaging. The Arena's already over for her, which would bother her if she ever intended to actually win one of these things. What actually does upset her is the fact that she's crawling back to someone else to slowly die, just like she did last time.
She's selfish. So sue her. She doesn't want to get lost in the fog and let the animals feast on her while she's alone.
There's a strange rage that pulses just beneath her skin, a hunger that creeps along between her bone and muscle that she can't explain. She itches at her flesh and some of it comes off, and her teeth hurt. She tries to not pick at herself, because she doesn't need to be opening new ones when the ones she got an hour ago are still oozing blood down her clothing to mingle with sweat.
The benefit of this strange setting change is that she has her powers back. She teleports back to the meeting place she and Enjolras had, landing with a bit of a squawk of pain as she puts weight on what is, in all likelihood, a broken ankle. She holds one arm close to her body, and the corner of her mouth has been sliced down to the side of her neck.
"Don't look now, but I'm a bit of a mess."
no subject
"I ain't even thought of him since the exposé, I don't understand why they brought him here except-"
She searches Guy's eyes, seeing only her own reflection in them. Flashes of something lurks around her corners, inside her mind, right out of her reach, like the rustling of mice in brush that reveal no prey. Motion with no object.
"I feel so small," she whispers. She wraps her hands around herself, feeling the prick of invisible insects on her. "When I was a kid- when I-"
no subject
The how didn't matter, all that mattered was that she was afraid and he wasn't, and that was all he needed to decide that he was going to fix it.
He ran towards the monster, spear in hand. Attacking it this time wasn't as easy as when he killed the Eep monster. He'd tricked the monster that had been sent for him by pretending to sleep and attacking it right before it attacked him. This one saw him coming.
He managed to stab it in the chest but it grabbed onto the spear with one hand so he couldn't withdraw it for another blow, trying to scratch him with its free hand. So holding onto the spear with one hand so it couldn't wrench it away from him, he used his other to reach for the rusty knife at his belt, using it to hack at the zombies arm until it was a mangled mess. Then he aimed for its neck.
no subject
(In the background, Venus whimpers and sucks air through her teeth.)
It struggles and throws itself forward, trying to use its superior size to bring Guy down. When Jamal bares its teeth, they're needle-like fangs, and it seeks to take a chunk from Guy's shoulder.
(Venus picks up a plank of wood and holds it like a baseball bat.)
no subject
"Venus, run! You need to run!"
This one was too strong, and he was starting to realize that he might not be able to take it head on. But that was okay. That was something he was always ready to deal with in these arenas and some things were just worth it.
What was important was that his friend got away from whatever nightmare this monster represented. Something about this person had hurt her once and he wasn't going to let it happen again.
He kicked it in the knee, cracking it but because it felt no pain, that only meant it bowed slightly.
Guy let out a pained yell through his teeth as its claws raked across his cheek.
no subject
It doesn't, she realizes, matter that she can't remember in detail what Jamal did to her. It doesn't. All that matters is that at this moment, someone is willing to try and protect her from it happening again, and she's someone who deserves that protection.
And in this case, someone who won't let her guardian angel be laid low.
"Get away from it, Guy! I'll take his block off!"
no subject
Her opening was there to take, and then the moment she drew away to give him one - provided it still wasn't down - that would be his opening again, too.
Until they'd worked together to hunt this thing down.
no subject
With it dead and a splatter of its brain on her arm, Venus drops to her knees, to her butt, and scrambles away, kicking the plank back.
no subject
It was very thoroughly dead in a way that he totally understand a dead thing could be. There were a few times that terror'd had him reducing a predator to paste or parts. That was how fear worked.
And it was fear. A different kind of fear than just facing something trying to eat you. That was why as he came over and sat next to Venus, he didn't move too close or try to touch her at first.
If she wanted a hug, it was there, but he needed to make sure she was okay first.
"Venus, I don't know what's going in here but what do you need me to do?"
That seemed the safest way to go about it.
"I can get rid of the body for you."
Get it out of her sight.
no subject
And yet it's just a body. It's locked in the cage of memory, barred by time's steel restraints and cuffs, a past tense beast. She can run into the future, into the rest of her life, and it can't follow her.
Some things can't help but be left in the past, and thank God for that.
She reaches over and takes Guy's hand.
"I think- I think we should bury it. It deserves to be buried." Not because it's good or should be treated like a human, but because it should be returned to the worms and damp soil that are its kin.
no subject
"Okay. Let me just find something to dig with. Yell if you need me."
With that he ran off to a nearby house he'd rummaged through. There had been some useful tools in it, including some that had looked like they were for digging.
Before long, he was back with two shovels and handed one to her. Then, wordlessly, he started to dig in a nearby patch of soft-looking earth.
no subject
When he comes back, she silently takes the shovel from him, starting on the wet earth, side by side.
"Thank you," she whispers.
no subject
It was very matter of fact.
"Running from stuff -" He grunted as he dug, following her lead on how to use the tool. "Fighting hungry predators together. That's what you do with your tribe."
And he had one here, filled with people that cared about him as much as his family back home, that he cared about in turn.
no subject
The shovel makes scraping sounds as it goes past stone and roots, as they make a grave for the things that have been done to her. For a while they dig in silence, and then she stops for a moment, and looks him in the eyes.
"No one was ever there for me as a kid." And so she didn't expect anyone to be there for her now, and yet here he is. Not only was, but is still, in the messy, sweaty cleanup.
no subject
To an extreeeme degree.
"I'm glad I can give you that now." He paused his speech but kept digging. "I don't think I'd have been the same person if I'd grown up in your world. I don't think the kind of person I am can be...can even come to be in a lot of worlds."
They all seemed so different, so alien, and so much of what he was had come of walking across sun-baked mudlands, and watching countless stars at night, and learning not to lose himself to the fear of the scraping claws at the opening of the caves he'd hidden in.
"But I like to think that if some very different version of me had been there, near you, that that part of me would've been the same. I wish I could have been there for you."
no subject
And it goes without saying - it's practically written in the air, invisible, some language they can both intuit without anything between them - that she wishes the same for him.
The hole becomes deep enough that they can drag the body in. They do, and she imagines burning it, but everything is too damp here. The earth will have to break it down the hard way.
"Guy, I know you're worried about if-" If the Capitol gets to his world, gets his mate and child and family. She doesn't say any of that out loud, not wanting to put the idea out there. "I know you're worried. I just want you to know that your priorities are my priorities. Your most important priorities. No matter what happens."
no subject
So he did. With the arm that wasn't holding the shovel, he hugged her gently in a one-armed hug, pressing his forehead to hers with the tiniest brush of his nose against her nose.
By now she probably knew what that meant. It was a familial hug. A "you are my tribe" nose rub.
It said more without words than most could say with a whole paragraph.
/wrap?
Yet they've found family here. Imperfect, desperate family, willing to protect and defend and comfort and love.
It's more than could ever be quashed by this government.