thearena | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| Glinda and Venus
What| Death log
Where| Arena 1
When| Week 3
Warnings/Notes| Death.

She was starving again. This was the part that she had dreaded about the arena after the last two. She had been fortunate enough to get a small package of food from Eva sometime in the second week and survived until now off that and what food she could thieve and filch from the other tributes. A task made all the harder by the tall wings that protruded from the back of her dress that couldn't be ripped off without destroying the rest of the dress.

The witch was fatigued, shaky and tired. She wanted out of the arena now. She wanted back to the Capitol with its warm beds, hot food and pleasant chit chat. But for now she needed food. It was just a matter of finding a camp or a tribute that she could get food from.

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Venus isn't doing too much better on the food front. She got a medicine kit - thank god - but other than that Sponsor gifts have been few and far between. She's been making do with the milkshake river and hunks of gingerbread, but she's starting to think if she ever sees sugar again she'll puke. What she wouldn't give for some good old-fashioned aspartame.

She pauses as she sees someone moving not far from her, near a thicket of candy cane trees and mint leaves. Venus pauses, head held with the high confidence of someone who never lets herself look beaten, even for a moment. "Who's there?"

The witch froze. She had been closer than she had realised to somebody. Her tracking skills left a lot to be desired and without her magic she was effectively useless at a lot of things. Glinda had desperately hoped that her magic would become available the further into the games she got so that she would be able to defend herself but it seemed that sponsors hadn't materialised this time.

She stayed silent, waiting to see how the other woman would react.

"Look, I can see you over there." Venus wanders through the forest of red and white peppermint, leaning this way and that to peer through candy-cane trees. "Or I did see you. And I can find you if I have to."

She sees a footprint in the powdered sugar on the ground, but doesn't stoop to examine it. She drags her eyes in the direction it points in, mouth set in a furrow of thoughtfulness.

The immediate temptation in Glinda's mind was to run.

If she ran there was a chance of survival. But at the same time if she ran there was little chance of getting out of the arena. And she was tired. Tired to the very bone. Her limbs felt thick and muggy and ached every time she tried to move them.

She stepped forward, holding her hands up in defence. "I mean you no harm."

"Glinda?" The woman from the party, all proper manners and etiquette? Venus looks a bit taken aback. For her own part, Venus isn't looking so bad - she's used to looking good in harsh situations, and she's used some charcoal as eyeshadow and put some of her hair into small braids to hide that it's getting greasy. She doesn't look like she walked out of a magazine, but she could probably pass for normal walking through the mall.

Glinda, on the other hand, looks like this Arena's hit her like a train. She looks tired and pained and like she ought to be in a commercial for migraine pills.

Venus steps forward, letting the prosthetic leg drag behind her. "You look like hell."

The witch pressed her lips together.

"Yes, well thankfully this isn't a beauty competition." If it was Glinda had no doubt she would have been long out of the arena and crowned winner an incredibly long time ago. She had known since she was a young girl that she was frightfully good looking. "You, however, seem to be faring better."

"I'm a professional." Venus brushes a braid over her ear and cocks her head. "And you...really aren't."

She swallows and tenses the muscles in her upper cheeks, thinking. "You really don't belong in this at all."

"I am a Good Witch and a Politician." The blonde woman sternly replied. Or as sternly as one could reply while dressed as a blonde fairy. "And I have sworn not to use my powers to harm any."

"Of course I do not belong in a place such as this."

Venus pauses, then rests her hand on her lower lip, fingers curled into a loose fist.

"I could make sure you came back. To the Capitol, that is. I could take you out now, make it a good show, leave them wanting more from you. I'm good at it."

Glinda swallowed. What she was suggesting was killing her, one way or the other. But then again. It was the option of letting herself die by a friendly hand or letting herself die by a foe's who might not be so kind. And she was cold and tired and hungry and wanted nothing more than a soft bed and to sleep until she had to face the next horrible arena.

She slowly lowered her hands. "I don't want them to want more from me. I only want out of here." She admitted.

"Okay. I promise I won't make it hurt." Venus looks genuinely sympathetic - she knows of a few people who thought they were cut out for this life and turned out short. "And you'll wake up and send me a little something for my troubles, right?"

Glinda gave a very stiff nod. She felt light-headed at the thought that she was effectively giving this woman permission to murder her. It was hard to accept.

"Okay, come with me. And do what I tell you to do." Venus starts up towards a cliff with Glinda in tow.

It takes the best of her courage to simply nod and force her stiff limbs into action and following Venus closely behind. She didn't know what was about to happen beside the obvious but it made her empty stomach turn to think of it.

Venus ascends the cliffs on her busted high heels before finally snorting and slicing them off with a knife. They're attached with just the fabric of her costume, so they come off easy.

"I could beat you to death with a shoe," she jokes.

Glinda's own bepompomed slippers weren't much better for climbing. The knife makes her admittedly nervous even when it's only being used to remove the heels on Venus' clothing. "I don't think that could be describe as being a painless death."

"Well, that depends on where I hit you," Venus chatters idly, as if she were discussing the weather. "If I clubbed you hard enough to knock you out, you wouldn't even feel the second blow."

When they reach the top, Venus sits at the edge, confident Glinda won't push her. "Sit down. I'm not gonna push you if you don't push me."

How casually she said that sent shivers of fear down the witch's spine. How anyone could speak of death so flippantly was beyond her. She had assumed that Venus would get it over with swiftly. Not take her on a hike.

"I wouldn't." She shook her head, empty stomach as she looked over the edge and then sat. Glinda never had much of a head for heights when she didn't have her magic to fall back onto.

"You ever been in love, Glinda?" Venus dangles her feet as if she were sitting over a pool instead of a cliff.

"I was engaged to be wed." Glinda answered with a little frown, not quite understanding what this has to do with anything. "He was a prince." They would have been the ultimate powercouple had he not fallen for Elphaba instead. "It was unrequited."

"Tell me more," Venus says, wiggling her toes - they're painted the bright pink of the landscape. Her Stylist must have known.

"We met at university when we were both young and foolish and thought that we were perfect." The word haunted her. You're perfect. You're perfect. So we're perfect together. He had agreed with her that they had been meant for each other. She had tried to be perfect for him. Be who and what she wanted but she had lost out to the only woman she had never thought her rival in love.

"I was head over heels for him but he fell in love with my best friend. I never knew until our engagement party where he ran to her and chose to be a fugitive rather than marrying me." She told the other woman, uncertain as to why she was opening up quite so much, she knew the world was watching but it felt urgent now, necessary to get this story out.

"That's terrible." Venus sticks her lower lip out a bit, thinking. "I fell in love with a boy who was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, who was dead. Which made competing with her kind of crass and unfair, if you ask me."

She sighs. "You know what they say about love and cliffs?"

Glinda's stomach twisted in sympathy. Or perhaps in hunger. One of the two. "No?" She answered with a frown and a shake of her head.

"They say if you've ever been in love and you fall, you don't feel it at the end because hey, the impact's not worse than anything you've felt emotionally."

It's a ploy. Venus is certain that whatever happens next - if Glinda jumps or if Venus has to push her - the Capitol will revive just the woman just to find out if this bullshit myth she just made up is real.

She knows that's her cue. Glinda knows she's supposed to jump. More like fall really. The cliff is so precarious that all it would take to go over the edge is the shifting of weight forward. But the fact of the matter is that she's scared. It's human nature to be scared of falling to one's death after all, isn't it? Primitive. In built safety instincts.

Her heartbeat pulses in her ears and thrums at her pulse point and for some reason Glinda finds herself closing her eyes and leaning forward. Whether she's pushed or she falls she isn't quite certain. It didn't really matter once the rush of air was flying past her.

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