thearena | open log, group 1

Entry tags:

open log, group 1

Who| Bucky and you.
What| An open log, featuring: Stomachaches? Violence?
Where| In the candy arena.
When| Early week 3.
Warnings/Notes| N/A, will add warnings as they become relevant.

I.

Christ, Bucky was sick.

He knew about rationing. Not just the type that meant no sugar and no shoes, but the bigger idea, that said you don't stuff yourself when you're starving, because that's when eyes grew bigger than your stomach. He knew all that. He knew the candy was probably full of poison none of it was a smart thing to eat.

But when you're hungry, damn, if it isn't hard not to eat.

So Bucky was sick. You could find him, staggering through Candycane Lane, a glassy look in his eye, marching one front in front of the other. He was hoping, like he always did, that keeping moving would keep him lucid. To him, the whole world looked like Pepto-Bismol.

II.

It was night, and Bucky was doing his best to hide, clutching a bit of candy cane like it was Excalibur. The sickness had passed, and he'd fought off a Doki-Doki, earlier. Or, not so much fought off, as whacked at and then run away from. Night seemed to be a kind of peace, but he didn't sleep. Bucky didn't trust this place, or his dreams.

He wish he didn't have to rest, out in the relative open, but the Doki Doki's hadn't given him much choice. Bucky was resting against a chocolate tree, steadily growing sticky, his senses turned outward to any sign of movement.

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Him again.

Peggy slid down from the gumdrop tree she had been sitting in, baseball bat clutched firmly, but non-threateningly at her side. She was on look-out. It was easier to rotate and have a task assigned then it was to wander aimlessly or staying still.

He had helped her once, when she had been hurt and tired and so very done with the whole mad place.

It was time to pay it back in kind.

"You look like you're about to drop dead, soldier."

"Nah," he said, dreamily. "They'd have to cut off my legs, first."

Normally he wouldn't forget a face like hers— the lady was a real pistol. But the sickness running through him was making sure he didn't see straight. He couldn't recognize much of anything, right then, except some stupid need to keep marching. So that was what he did, bolting up a nearby candy hill with more determination (but less speed) than before. If he didn't make it up that hill, the Nazis would win.

Probably.

She was getting tired. Tired of all this candy, tired of the singing, tired of trying to eat and getting sick, and trying to eat again, and she just didn't want anymore sugar. Yeesh, this place would give even the sweetest tooth too much.

She just wanted to find a tree and settle in for the night. You couldn't go on forever, and she knew her body and how much it could take. She was a spy, not a soldier, she couldn't go for hours and still be awake. But Cindy knew she still needed to keep her wits about her. She'd gotten too close to the doki-doki before, or, rather, they got too close to her, and her rapier had fresh blood on it. So far none of it was human, though, and that made her happy.

Cindy was trying to be quiet, but how could you with this ground? She didn't even know there was someone close by until she saw a little bit of movement. She gave a soft whistle, one hand tightening on her pack, the other on her sword.

Bucky heard the noise cut through his own silence— it was a lady, and close by. The whistling was deliberate, so Bucky figured he'd been made. So he had two choices. He could run out with his stick of candy swinging and hope he was pointing himself in the right direction. Or he could wait for the whistling to come to him.

Some of the voices in this place were tricks, he knew. That was why he decided to stay put, biting his tongue as his nerves steeled for a fight.

Okay, whoever it was, wasn't coming out. Or around. Or anything. So Cindy kept moving ever closer, giving another whistle, until she started talking.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are..." She started, holding her sword out and ready. "Olly olly oxen free?" Whoever this was needed to come out eventually, or else she would be on them before they knew it.

One time, when his dad was still alive, Bucky'd gone to a circus and seen one of the clowns there throw his voice, making it seem like it was coming from clear across the dusty cloth tent. It sure would be nice if he could to that right about now, Bucky thought. The clown would even fit in with all the oodles and boodles of pink stuff.

But he can't throw his voice, so instead, he stands up real slowly, real quiet. He's good at that, he's had a lot of practice. Then he takes his candy-cane stick and runs it through the nearby candy-stalks. It's a test, maybe: he wants to see if whoever's looking for him will notice. (Bucky's brash enough to think he can't be snuck up on, himself.)

She saw that. She definitely saw him stick that candy-cane stick into the candy stalk, and she even jumped a little at it.

"Holy shit!" She stopped, grip tightening on her sword. "Okay, I'm really hoping, whoever you are, that that was your last stick, because how the hell did you just do that." She was strong, she knew that, but she also knew why she was strong. She didn't know how this person was that strong.

"I'm good at hiding." He really was good at hiding. "But you told me to come out."

Bucky was in plain view now, wearing roughed up and stickied long ago clothes. He didn't want to hurt her, but he kept himself on his guard, his legs bent just so, in case he needed to make a run for it. You never knew, in this place.

"I was talking about the stick thing more then the hiding, but..." Cindy rested her sword on her shoulder, eyebrow raised and hip cocked. She wasn't going to hurt him unless he tried for her, but well. Someone good at hiding wouldn't be making a run for another person right out in the open, anyway.

"Bucky, right? You've seen better days," She grinned. "But so has everyone else."

"I dunno what you're talking about, Cindy." Gripping this overgrown candy cane was making his palm sticky. "Got a girl here, got plenty of sugar— that stuff's rationed, y'know. Don't get to taste sweet everyday." He smiled sharply. "Only thing I'd ask for is a jukebox."

This place was all rotten, but there was no point in saying so. Bucky wasn't an optimist. He had a hard time believing the best in people. But he thought that sometimes, you had to fake the best in what you had. Or else you're liable to turn cock-eyed, especially in a cock-eyed place like this.

"I can't wait to see how many cavities everyone got once this thing is over," Cindy smirked. Ah, the good old days, when no one ate any sugar, because they didn't have it. Shoot, she remembered trying some of those chocolate bars they gave the guys stationed overseas. Not bad, but definitely not the good stuff.

"A jukebox?" She waved her other hand around. "You've got live animals singing the same fucking song over and over again. I'd say that counts as a jukebox." Cindy wasn't an optimist, despite acting like one. She killed people for a living. What was optimistic about that?

"Well, they ain't the Andrews sisters, that's for damn sure." They didn't look half as pretty, either.

"And they'll just fix the cavities." If they could fix blowing up, that should be small change. "I bet we won't even notice. Hell, my teeth're probably better now than when I got here." Yeah, he still wasn't keen on this whole secret surgery business, though it was probably more pleasant than getting a tooth pulled without novocaine. But eyes still got darker, thinking about it. He balled one of his hands into a fist, and stuck it in a pocket, the other still gripping his ridiculous candy cane.

"No, they definitely are not." Though to be honest, she'd kill for them. And she wasn't even that big of a fan. Anything was going to be better then this singing. Silence was going to be better then this singing. When she got back to the Capitol, she was locking herself in her room and sound-proofing it. or something.

"Mm, yeah. I was talking to someone... must have been a week or so ago, now. And they fixed his teeth right up like it was nothing. Apparently he had meth addict teeth, but not anymore." She didn't like the idea of secret surgery, either. "Didn't we talk about that on the network before, what they might have done to us when we were sleeping?"

"I did, yes ma'am." He nodded once, to show he was thinking about it, while his eyes started looking around him for trouble, cameras. There was no point to it, he knew they were there, and he knew they must not look like any sort of camera he could pick out. "Everyone else said I was wound-up, to think about it. But not you."

There were cameras everywhere. They were hidden; you couldn't see them. But since they needed to show everyone in the arena on those big screens and little ones back in the districts and the Capitol, then everything they were saying was being recorded.

But from what Cindy had seen, in the final edit of the arenas? They only put in what they wanted. So, she shrugged. "I have a passion for thinking about things no one else wants to think about. And I don't like the thought that something was done to me in my sleep. I watched a movie once where people could watch what people were dreaming. What if they can do that here?"

"In that case, I think I oughta be safe. I don't like to sleep." Bucky's nightmares were all hellscapes and Steranko homages. He didn't sleep much— not the long, deep sleep that could lead to dreaming.

"No wonder you look like hell warmed over. Okay, we're in a truce, right? So I'm going to get a little closer. Don't stab me or anything, and I won't stab you." She wasn't going to suggest that they hang out together, or partner up.

She'd already had a bad habit with her partnerships. But it was nice to relax, if but a moment. "So, does the sugar keep you awake, or is it just the nightmares?"

"Okay." He nodded. "I'm good on my word."

Bucky looked around again, like he was checking to see if anyone else was coming. All clear. But it was an odd thing, to take your guard down, once you'd put it up. "What keeps me awake is the threat of impending death!" He says that last bit like a radio announcer. "The sugar helps." He doesn't talk about the nightmares, or that bout of dizzy-sick he just had, because he's a tough guy.

She was good on hers, as well, which is what would help them out in the long run. If there was going to be a long one.

Cindy has to laugh, though. "You're probably going to die faster if you don't sleep. I mean, you could have no sleep for three days, and then bam! Suddenly you've walked into the chocolate pool, and you're stuck, and you drown in a thing of chocolate. What a way to go, right?"

"Depends. Do you figure the chocolate'd start tasting like you, after a while?" These were the important questions.

"Do you mean you're going to be tasting yourself, or other people will be tasting you?" There's a big distinction. Both are equally gross.

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open log, group 1

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