thearena | Too Tired to Hold Myself Carefully [Closed]

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Too Tired to Hold Myself Carefully [Closed]

WHO| Venus Dee Milo and Clara Murphy
WHAT| A botched suicide attempt.
WHEN| Week 5
WHERE| The Bookstore
WARNINGS| Graphic depiction of suicide and depression, death.

Ellie and Kankri are both dead, leaving Venus with nothing but milling through the swirling reality of her medical withdrawal. She can no longer tell what's the depression and what's her; usually it sits over her like a dark cloud come to earth, or wraps around her brain like Saran wrap, but now it seems to be the entirety of her waking moments.

She's failed at the one thing that still had any meaning to her. She's lost, drifting, a pointless waste of carbon crashing through her life until she stops. She must stop.

She's tried to kill herself four times before. She jumped and taken pills and cut her wrists. She's never tried hanging.

She takes the rope from the sporting goods store, something good and sturdy enough to hold a rock climber up, and she wraps it around her neck. She doesn't need to know how to tie a noose to figure out how to make a basic loop. She climbs up on top of a bookshelf. She makes sure that the rope (blue and red, some kind of houndstooth pattern, almost) is securely attached to the lock on the gate. She steps.

Venus always closes her eyes when she tries things like this. Even when she knows she'll probably wake up on the other side of the television screen, that the Capitol will probably keep making her do this again and again and again. For a moment she feels her throat slamming shut, her own body weight crushing her windpipe, the rope burning as it scrapes up the skin on her neck.

And then, by either bad fortune or carelessness or Gamemaker intervention, she falls.

The crash can be heard through the entire mall floor. She hits the ground first, only moments before the heavy metal gate slams down on her waist. If she had any air inside her she might scream as it very nearly cuts her in half. As it doesn't bounce back from her or the floor but instead continues to press down on her.

She tastes blood in her mouth, coughs it out her lungs when she takes a gasping breath. She'll die slowly.

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Clara hears the crashing from down the hallway. She doesn't know who or what it is, but there's this tiny fear that it's Bro or Rose. Not that she knows either of them all that well, but she feels like that the best thing she can do by Dave is to help either of them win. So, on the off chance that her fears are right, she races down the hallway ignoring the fact that it could be something worse (or hoping that it is so it can kill her and she can be done with all of this).

What she finds instead is Venus. For all her anger towards her, for how much her betrayal hurt, she's never wanted to see her killed. At least, not really. Sure, there was a small, vindictive part of her that briefly toyed with the thought of wanting her dead for what she did to them, but it was never really sincere.

Knowing what she knows about Venus now, she would never approach her in the Arena, except Clara's pretty sure that she can't do anything to her at this point, especially considering she's coughing up blood.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Her voice is completely sincere as she sinks down to the floor so Venus doesn't have to crane her head as much. "I could try to lift the gate." She knows that, in the off chance that she can, it's not like Venus'll be able to go very far, but at least her death won't be as painful. She thinks.

Some animal part of Venus' mind hears someone coming and tries to squirm, to tense, to prepare herself for attack. She doesn't even have any conscious investment in her survival, but the human body often acts to preserve its life without any input from the brain. It's a meek, sad motion, her aborted attempt to rise, pressed down against the floor (blood is beginning to pool in her underwear, along her back, punched out of her by the gate and dripping from the slice the metal has made across her abdomen).

She doesn't recognize Clara's voice. When she focuses her eyes, it takes her a moment to place the blonde woman, to remember who among her competitors this was.

"Your eye..." Venus realizes with a start that she did that to Clara. Deadly fights no longer sear themselves into Venus' brain after so many years of combat. She could have easily forgotten the entire thing, though it clearly meant much more to Clara. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make a mess."

She lifts her head slightly to see the damage, apologizing less for the eye and more for the botched suicide that got blood all over floor and made all that noise. She slips her fingers between the rope and her neck so she can breathe a little easier.

"You can't lift it." It's still pressing down on Venus, trying to close. Venus gurgles and groans.

"It's alright, it can be cleaned up later." Because, really, it can. And it really doesn't matter right now compared to the fact that Venus is in the process of dying in a very painful manner and that doesn't sit right with Clara. And if Clara can do something, anything at all to fix that, she will.

The scariest thing about the aftermath of her previous fight with Venus is that, over the past five weeks, she's almost gotten used to only having one eye. Not to the point where she'd say she wants to spend the rest of her life like this, but enough that she feels competent enough to do things without depth perception. Things like trying to cut a piece of rope off of someone's throat without causing them anymore damage than what they've done to themselves.

"Venus," Clara says softly in an attempt to try to keep her calm, "I'm going to try to cut the rope, so I need you to stay very still, okay?" Before Venus can give her a response, she gets down onto her knees and slips the knife between the rope and Venus's skin, trying to cut it free so she can at least breathe.

Obediently, Venus doesn't move. She waits until the knife's away from her throat to give that sob that stirs the blood in her lungs, that makes her cough again. Once she's got enough breath to talk again, she uses it to offer an explanation, an excuse riding in on that wisp of what her voice is now.

"It wasn't personal, Clara, it wasn't about..." Her chest rises and falls in strange stutters. "I just wanted a kid to win."

It's not that Clara deserved to be attacked or to die, and if Venus had ever been under that impression she wouldn't be now. It's not that Venus felt herself a valid winner, not even for a moment. And it was never for the sake of violence, the thrill of which Venus has never felt in all her years of blood and combat.

It's just that the decisions made in situations like these are not always good ones.

A question has swirled around in Clara's mind a number of times since that first night. Why? She's seen footage of Venus in the Arena before, but it's one thing to see it and another thing entirely to be jumped by someone who you're on good terms with.

Except, if Clara was ruthless enough, she could see herself doing the exact same thing to get Dave or Alex or Clem out of the Arena.

"There are better ways to go about that," she says softly. Because, yes, she understands wanting someone to win, but not enough to try to kill for it outright. "I wish you had said something before...I would've tried to help. I'd rather someone who deserves it survives this place."

"I didn't want the Gamemakers-" Venus' words are cut off by a moan of pain, a gurgle that manifests into a bubbling froth of red at the corners of her mouth. She grabs Clara's shoe, not out of a conscious desire so much as the need to hold onto something human, something that tells her she isn't alone. "Didn't want him to get targeted. To spite me. Because the brand."

So she couldn't say his name out loud, point him out, although it's stupid. They surely knew she was trying to protect Kankri.

"I couldn't protect him so I had to speed up the game." Clear the field. Kill enough people that he didn't have to last that long. There's a snap somewhere deep in her body, and she clings to what she can of Clara. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

There are things Clara could say to that. Other ways she could have made it clear without putting the Gamemakers on her trail. Convincing Tributes who wouldn't last long anyway to consider pulling out of the Arena early (which...is admittedly a terrible thing to think, but a suicidal forfeit seems kinder than murder).

But she knows that there isn't time and that Venus shouldn't have to spend right now being told off while being slowly crushed to death.

She reaches out, putting her hand on Venus's wrist and gently rubbing her arm, making soft soothing sounds. "It's okay. It's going to be...you're going to be out of here soon."

A terrible idea pops into her head. It would be remarkably easy to kill her and put her out of her misery. While she doesn't have her sword on her at the moment, she does have a pocket knife on her right now. "If you want I could..." She doesn't want to say 'kill you' because that seems so damn final. "I could end this right now and you won't have to suffer anymore."

"No, no, don't." It's not because Venus fears death - if she did, she wouldn't have wrapped a rope around her neck in the first place. Her eyes focus on Clara, and then slip past her, towards the ceiling, as if she hopes she can see the gates of Heaven there. She doesn't. Just mall ceiling tile and an air vent.

She doesn't want Clara to have a mercy kill on her conscience. Venus has done it before. It isn't glamorous. The sounds follow you to sleep no matter how justified you were. They curl in your ears and whisper right as you go into your hypnic jerks, right before you cross over, and then in your nightmares they multiply.

"I deserve this. But thank you."

"Alright." Clara has blood on her hands already, what's a little bit more? (More guilt, at the very least. Probably just as many nightmares as she'll have after watching Venus succumb to her injuries.) The only reason she doesn't is because Venus told her not to, even if it's the kindest thing she can do for her right now.

"No one deserves this." As much as she's tempted to say 'Not even you,' she doesn't. Venus doesn't need that right now. "I'll stay and wait with you, if you want. You shouldn't..." Have to die alone? Be in this situation in the first place? She trails off, unsure how she was going to end that sentence. "I don't mind."

"Thank you," Venus repeats, although the second word is swallowed up in one of those blood-phlegmed gurgles that turns into a cough. She doesn't know the way the body breaks down when it's crushed, which of her organs are going to fail her first, which have already given up the ghost. She feels like her brain left her long ago.

Probably a while before she attacked Clara. Probably in that prison cell when they beat her silly and made her weep and bleed what little information she had, when they branded her face and tattooed her untrustworthiness into her brain.

"This place breaks you down." It's such a simple statement and yet a warning that she wants to impart to Clara. "Don't ever let the Peacekeepers get you. They fuck you up- they-"

She can't talk after that, lost in coughing and gasping.

"I don't plan on it," Clara says, trying to keep her voice gentle and easy. She would rather die than let the Peacekeepers get to her, but she knows that there's no way to be completely sure that they'll never come for her and, if they do, when they'd do it. She's had nightmares about them coming for her in her sleep (or sending Alex to do it, which she's fairly certain isn't beyond their capability for cruelty).

The way Venus coughs and gasps makes her want to turn around and run. She doesn't have to stay, even if she said she would. She could very easily let go and walk away and pretend she didn't see or hear any of this. Instead, she lets go of Venus's arm and instead holds her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. "If you want I can tell you a story. Give you something else to focus on." She knows it's a dumb, naive thought, but it's all that she can come up with.

Turning her head to the side only helps a little. She feels a crack inside her, feels something wend together separate, the pressure the gate is putting on her not easing even as her body's resistance retreats. She wonders if by the time the roombas get her unwedged, she'll have been cleaved in half. She tries to answer Clara in words and only manages another meager gasp, a spray of crimson spit across the floor.

It is dumb and naive. And yet it seems right, it seems like not too much to ask, to take what has been offered. Isn't that what stars do? They tell stories? She remembers coaxing Guy out of a panic attack with a story way back, months ago.

So she nods. She wants to ask for a story where no one gets hurt, where no one ever dies for good, where bad people redeem themselves and everything's okay at the end. Maybe not happy, but okay. And she clings onto Clara's hand as if the very last of her life is in her palm and fingerbones.

Clara remembers her father reading her bedtime stories when she was a little girl. Stories of princesses and far-off kingdoms and all sorts of adventures where everything turned out okay in the end. She remembers hearing her mother tell him that he was only setting his children up for disappointment and that he should just tell them the real versions of the stories instead of the 'gutless, toothless' stories that were close to the ones she was already getting from Disney movies. When she was older, it was a tradition she carried over with David since there were enough things in their world that were terrifying. Especially after the bombing.

It's slightly bizarre, to be doing this for another adult, but it's all she can think of to make things a little better and help Venus go peacefully. "Once upon a time," she starts, keeping her voice even and gentle and trying to make sure that there's a comfortable rhythm to her words, "there lived a princess in a shining castle..."

Venus is soon past hearing, soon past being able to follow the simple, sweet tale that Clara weaves for her. The words cease to pierce the roar in her ears, the waterfall of blood inside her head.

But she feels Clara's hand around hers for longer, past all but the final flickers of consciousness. She hopes it's the last thing she ever hears. She hopes not to wake. She hopes to become T.S. Eliot's famed whimper as she slides into eternity, unburdened by the weight of hurting others.

There's a noise in her chest like feet being pulled out of sucking mud, a reverse death-rattle as the gate finishes off her lungs, and her nerves' last impulse is to give Clara's hand another squeeze, and then she's gone.

Clara doesn't know where she's going with the story. It's mostly her rambling about a princess who gets in over her head and has to solve her own problems for the most part. Somewhere in there she throws in a knight in shining armor and a dragon that they ride away on instead of fighting off. It's completely off the cuff, mostly so she doesn't have to try to find something else to ramble on about to distract Venus.

She isn't sure how much of the story's inspired by being stuck in the Arena or anything like that, though she's certain that someone will claim it is and try to spin it that way. All she knows is that this is the best thing she can do to keep Venus comfortable as she slips away.

And then there's a sound and a squeeze of her hand and Venus is gone. It's a blessing, really, that she didn't last longer, that her suffering wasn't as prolonged as it could have been. It's a kindness. "And the princess, the knight, and the dragon all lived happily ever after. The end," she says before slipping her hand out of Venus's and getting onto her feet. She should probably get into one of the stores soon, the rest of the gates will probably be closing soon.

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Too Tired to Hold Myself Carefully [Closed]

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