thearena | Open

Current Mood: tired

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WHO| Team Crime
WHAT| Regrouping and planning
WHEN| Night following the second Cornucopia melee
WHERE| Q14
WARNINGS| Discussions and treatment of injuries, possible language

Eliot kept a gentle arm around Momoko, ready to catch and carry her if the need arose. Her complete silence ate at him. Yes, she was soft-spoken, but she spoke. He grieved, also silently, for the small piece of innocence the Capitol had stolen from her today.

He looked over at Ariadne. "You need me to carry anything?"

He paused and looked around. The setting sun cast long, dark shadows around them. They needed to find shelter soon before the nightly wind kicked up a dust storm. He flicked a hair out of his face and sighed. None of the buildings around them looked sturdy enough to risk entering. "Do either of you see some decent shelter?"

Hopefully one of them would see something he'd missed.

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Posture was important, Momoko knew, it was thugs and the like who slumped and slouched, but just at this moment she couldn't find the energy to keep her head up. Instead she lets her hair fall across her face, some semblance of a shield from the cameras, her arms wrapped around her chest. She allows the arm on her shoulders so that she won't get separated again then from a desire for comfort.

She does glance up slightly to scan the scenery in search of shelter. Anything to distract from the pain, the flashbacks she's stubbornly repressing, and the roiling mix of humiliation, fear, and even guilt that she can't quite push down. She doesn't see anything, though she does start to suggest maybe scavenging the buildings and making something of their own when this makes her throat flare up. She winces and falls silent once more, scowling slightly in frustration. She just shakes her head instead.

"I'm all right," she replies, shaking her head lightly to ELiot's first question.

Her attention is primarily on Momoko, rather than Eliot's words. It's partly for the cameras, partly for Momoko's own benefit, this show of concern: Ariadne keeps close to the other girl, her eyes locked largely on her instead of looking around like she should be.

With a quiet sigh, Ariadne finally tears her eyes off the blonde to glance around quickly, scanning the horizon for something suitable. "Over there," she finally murmurs, gesturing to a building around a corner - short and stout, with more chances of staying upright through the night than some of those already crumbling around them.

Eliot looks in the direction Ariadne pointed at. He gives her a tired smile as he leads them toward it. It looks like little more than a shack, but that's far better than a collapsing house. As he gets closer, he sees that the door has long since disappeared. There's a hole in the roof at the back of the small structure. At least the walls look stable.

He eases Momoko to the floor just inside the door. "So what did we get?"

He really hopes they got some water or at least some kind of canned food that would have some syrup. The mines are great but they'll die if they don't get water soon.

Momoko waved away Eliot's hands as he tried to help her sit, tamping down the annoyance in the gesture in the knowledge of the ever-present cameras. She may be helpless, vulnerable, and now injured in the Arena, but she could damn well seat herself without help. She seethed at being dependent on anyone, much less essential strangers, but she couldn't let that show, of course, so she simply drew her legs up to her chest, crossing her arms on top of them.

At Eliot's question she reached for the bag in her lap, having grabbed it as they left. After what she went through in taking and keeping the thing, she was loathe to let someone else handle it then. Now she opened it and let the contents fall out onto the ground. Another can, though at second glance it doesn't seem to have a pull tab, a...rock which seems like a weak joke even for the sadistic gamemakers and a water bottle.

Momoko's eyes widened. A full water bottle.

She kept her own distance, watching the pair of them briefly, trying to see if there were any other injuries that they weren't talking about just yet, settling in to sit opposite Momoko with her legs pulled up to her chest. Tucking a loose lock of her hair behind her ear in an idle gesture, she turned her attention down to the bag and its contents.

"Not bad," she murmured, frowning a little before reaching out and taking up the rock, her eyes moving from it to the full water bottle. She wasn't entirely sure how they were going to divide that, but it definitely a good haul. Between that, her own bag, and the mines they'd found, at least.

Eliot nodded to the water bottle in Momoko's hands. "Drink some," he instructed. "Not too much or we'll run out. It'll help your throat."

He picks up the rock and smiles. "Ariadne, do you still have that bit of metal plating?"

It takes a minute of digging through her own bag, shifting things around, but she pulled it out delicately, making sure not to cut herself on it. That's the last thing she wants: any sort of unwanted injury could potentially lead to an infection, particularly from a chunk of metal. "For the can?"

"For the flint," he says, holding up the small stone. "There's firewood laying around just about everywhere. This shack should keep anyone from noticing a small fire. The hole in the roof will let out the smoke and, when it's dark, no one will notice it."

He gives her a satisfied smile. "If I can catch a few of those rats that we saw yesterday, we'll have a decent dinner tonight."

Momoko takes a gulp gladly, though she regrets it when it's more painful to swallow than it is to bear the dryness. It's that more than self-restraint or selflessness that keeps her from downing half the bottle. She sets it down with an annoyed grimace and tunes in to the conversation just in time to hear the dinner plans.

Rats. Wonderful.

Ariadne allows herself a little chuckle, nodding faintly. "Right. That makes more sense," she replies lightly, voice quiet. She's still wary about the idea of setting a fire inside a shack like that - worried that they might just burn up the place altogether - but she trusts that Eliot knows what he's doing.

The idea of eating rats isn't entirely appetising, but the protein will probably help them along more than the dried fruits she has. Plus, that's still a dwindling supply; she wants to save them for when they have no other options. Glancing over to Momoko, she offers a small, reassuring smile, "They're probably better than they sound."

Eliot chuckles quietly. "They're not exactly my preferred game meat either," he says. "Squirrel and rabbit are better, but they're definitely not as bad as they sound. Once you cook it, meat pretty much is meat."

He picks up a few small rocks that lay scattered on the floor of the shack. Idly, he throws them at a knot in the wood of the far wall.

Momoko isn't exactly in the mood to be gracious, so she wrinkles her nose at the thought anyway, no matter the other's assurances. The floor's concrete but covered in a thick enough layer of dirt that Momoko can write out her thoughts on the subject of dinner, and for good measure points out that drawing attention by throwing things and making noise is probably not the smartest idea, finish her always elegant calligraphy with a little flourish.

Her elegant, entirely in Japanese Kanji calligraphy.

Eliot frowns slightly when he notices Momoko writing on the dusty floor. He pauses and leans toward her, trying to read as she writes. He sighs disappointedly. Of course. Things can't be too easy for any of them, not even the youngest of them. It's Kanji, not English.

His frown deepens in concentration as he tries to remember what he'd studied in the navy all those years ago. They'd focused more on spoken Japanese than on Kanji.

"Stop killing things, making too much knot, get attention?" he reads slowly. "And don't want birds. Momoko, if I don't kill something, we're not eating tonight."

"That's not true, I still have some dried fruit," Ariadne states, peering at the writing. Sadly, she might have studied a number of languages, but Japanese wasn't one of them. She would have been better off with Greek.

Which, of course, is going to make these next few days downright painful, she has a feeling.

Eliot looks up at Ariadne's offer. "You should save that. You can't have much left and if we can't light a fire again, that and this can will be all we have."

He picks up a few small stones and steps outside of the shack. A few large rats had gathered in the shade of a nearby building. He weighed one stone in his hand before taking aim and throwing it at at a large rat just outside the taller building.

Momoko stares at Eliot, confused. What the hell was he talking about? Had he gone stupid in the heat? Was he illiterate?

It had never occurred to her to ask why everyone in the Capitol and Arena was conveniently speaking Japanese, or to even consider the idea that...well, they weren't.

Frowning, she wrote again, simpler, Are you stupid? Can't you read?

She wasn't exactly in the mood to act sweet and innocent just then.

Eliot walks back into the shack, three dead rats in hand. He sits down next to the door. He picks up the sharp piece of metal and begins skinning the animals when he notices that Momoko wrote something else on the floor.

He frowns slightly, trying to make out what she'd written. "I can read anything in the English, Hebrew, Arabic, or Cyrillic alphabets," he explains slowly. "But I'm not exactly fluent in Kanji. I learned enough in the military to follow road signs and such, but that's about it."

Ariadne watches Eliot in mild curiosity, trying to suppress the civilised part of her that truly was Parisian and frowned upon anything less than high class food. Beggars couldn't be choosers, no matter how unappetising all this sounded.

"What did she write?" She asks, nodding towards the writing. She would have preferred not treating Momoko like she wasn't there - the other girl was injured, not deaf - but she wanted to know, and it was better than taking her time coming up with a non-offensive way of asking.

He smiles slightly. "She asked if I can read," he explains wryly. "Apparently, I butchered what she wrote in Kanji. Can you pile some of the smaller wood debris just on this side of the hole in the roof?"

He throws the intestines of the animals well away from their hideout, keeping the skins to line whatever sticks he used to cook the meat.

She nods, biting back the urge to laugh, as she moves to collect the debris. And then, remembering the cameras watching them, decides to chuckle a little - quietly, to herself. Just enough to show them that she's human, the same as everyone else.

"Yeah," he mutters despite the twinkle in his eyes. "Go ahead and laugh. I can speak a some Japanese and I understand most of what I hear, but I don't read it very well."

Momoko just stared at the two of them, utterly confused. What were they talking about? They both spoke perfect Japanese. Everyone in the Capitol did.

Which was. Kind of odd, actually, since this was definitely not Japan. Hm. Momoko frowned, thinking.

Eliot looked over at Momoko. He smiled gently at her. "What are you thinking, imouto? I'll try not to slaughter your Kanji this time."

"I couldn't tell at all," Ariadne replied lightly, looking more amused than anything else. Truth be told, her own thoughts were mirroring those of Momoko's, wondering why everyone spoke flawless English when that really wasn't the case most of the time. Usually, of course, but not all the time. She wondered, for a moment, if they would understand even if she spoke French, if it was a trick of the Capitol or some such.

Well, now they were just teasing her. Momoko was hardly in the mood to bear this, but she didn't think allowing her true feelings to show would go over well with the sponsors. Rather than letting loose the death glare she would have preferred, Momoko pouted and wiped away her lovely Kanji with a swipe of her hand.

"Nani ga machigatte imasuke, imouto?" Eliot moved to sit beside her. Well, as close to beside her as he could without bringing their uncooked dinner where she'd have to look too closely at it. He figured she probably wouldn't appreciate that. "Can you hear the difference now?"

He sighed quietly as he worked the first carcass onto the hide-wrapped stick. "I don't know how they did it. Maybe it's part of how they brought us here. But we're really not speaking Japanese."

Ariadne, to her credit, wasn't making fun of or teasing Momoko quite as much as she was teasing Eliot. She sat contently back, watching the pair of them with more amusement than she had felt in ages. Even if the entire situation was screwed up, they were about to eat rats, and Momoko had been effectively silenced.

Momoko wasn't entirely sure at this point if she was pouting because she felt teased or because of the Capitol making her feel stupid, if probably inadvertently this time. Or possibly because she'd nearly been strangled to death earlier today.

Whatever the reason she didn't feel like stopping soon, so she just leaned back and pouted at the ceiling, as much for the cameras as to avoid looking at dinner. She was definitely in a 'canned fruit' mood this evening and she voiced this by scribbling out the kanji for 'fruit' in the dust.

Eliot caught sight of her scribbling as he walked over to the small stack of firewood. "Fruit? Am I readin' that right, imouto?"

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