The Gamemakers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thearena2013-10-19 03:07 pm
gamemakers) wrote in thearena2013-10-19 03:07 pm
Entry tags:
- ! arena 08,
- aunamee,
- commander shepard,
- joan watson,
- sigma klim,
- terezi pyrope,
- the grand highblood,
- wyatt earp,
- ✘ andraia,
- ✘ armin arlert,
- ✘ beck,
- ✘ calico suere,
- ✘ cosette,
- ✘ donatello,
- ✘ dr. holiday,
- ✘ eliot spencer,
- ✘ ellie,
- ✘ enjolras,
- ✘ eponine thenardier,
- ✘ eva salazar,
- ✘ garrus vakarian,
- ✘ homura akemi,
- ✘ howard bassem,
- ✘ ian chesterton,
- ✘ ian gallagher,
- ✘ iskierka,
- ✘ jack atlas,
- ✘ john watson,
- ✘ justin law,
- ✘ katniss everdeen,
- ✘ marius pontmercy,
- ✘ maximus,
- ✘ meulin leijon,
- ✘ mindy macready,
- ✘ orphaner dualscar,
- ✘ pj,
- ✘ pruna,
- ✘ r,
- ✘ remy lebeau,
- ✘ sherlock holmes (bbc),
- ✘ shion,
- ✘ susannah dean,
- ✘ venus dee milo,
- ✘ volanz adarga
Welcome To Arena 08
Today begins particularly early by normal standards. Long before the sun, or even a hint of dawn arrives. When the world is still and black and quiet, save for the parties still raging on from the night before. Night owls still have not gone to sleep. Everyone knows what today is, even if you've only just arrived.
There is a palpable tension in the air as everyone is ushered out under the cover of darkness to board the hovercrafts. A stream of faces both familiar and unknown filter in and take their seats, and very little is said as tributes are strapped in and attendants make their rounds, activating tracking devices. There are no windows, no openings no view of the outside world as it passes silently, below. The journey takes hours. And when everyone finally arrives, there is no hint of sky or grass or cloud or tree. Just long concrete hallways and rows of uniformed peacekeepers that remind everyone to keep in line in the underbelly of the unknown.
One by one, each tribute is lead into a small concrete room where stylists outfit tributes in their only bit of protection for the next coming weeks. Little is given away by the clothing each stylists put their tribute in. No flair or flourish or costumed monstrosity this time. Just simple, functional mundane civilian clothing. Khakis, cotton shirts, boots.
There is little time to dress and say goodbyes. Only a few small moments left to gather your thoughts. And then, the countdown starts. A countdown displayed in holographic blue begins:
25. 24. 23. 22....
The smell of earth and grass and a general damp green fills your lungs as you rise, slowly into a large grass field. At first, its the only thing you can see in all directions until the pedestal locks in place.
20. 19. 18. 17....
In the near distance, the cornucopia looms. Massive. Copper. Even hidden by the grass you can see its spoils are plentiful, tempting anyone with even a mild curiosity streak to come explore. Some may see this as a warning sign already .
15. 14. 13...
You can see the others, around you. Their heads, maybe the shoulders of taller tributes, and very little else. If there is anything hidden in this field you would never know it. The grass is too tall and too thick to show what might be lurking near the ground.
10. 9. 8....
There is just a hint of a breeze and the lingering scent of recent rain. The humidity is more uncomfortable than the heat., its a thick, jungle-like warm. You can see a dense tangle of trees in the distance. Blue sky filled with towering white clouds. Its the sort of place where nothing ever truly seems to be dry. At least you might not have to worry about freezing to death.
6. 5. 4...
For just a moment, everything goes perfectly still. Perfectly silent.
The grass rustles.
You feel the breeze.
2.
1.
0.
You will have two hours until a short warning alarm will sound and the sonic fences turn on across the entire arena.
no subject
This isn't fear. This is the kind of feeling that turns his veins into a nest of snakes, constricting around his bones. This is the feeling that makes it seem as if a hundred dirty, grease-covered hands are clenching his guts and his heart and his lungs in their fists. This is the kind of feeling that you spend a decade unwinding in therapy, only to get hanged by when some stray sparrow brings the memory back in the shadow of its wings.
This is terror.
The only mercy is that he doesn't see Aunamee's face. He doesn't wake to the blood-spattered, semi-manic grin that turned from him to his cowboy rescuer. Instead he wakes to Aunamee's back, his shoulder, but that's all he needs because he remembers being held down, once in life and a million times in dreams, over and over and over ten times a night or more, he remembers the feeling of Aunamee's body when he finds a scream dying on his waking lips. The blankets swampy with sweat, the trashcan ever present for the fifty-fifty chance he's going to try to puke up a dream.
Maybe if he fought he could escape. Maybe. But that means moving, and despite every impulse in his brain screaming to fight back or to run, there's a wall - no, a cliff - of hysteria that can't be passed.
So he's still, perfectly still, and he prays to be dead, too.
no subject
With telepathy, unconsciousness ebbing into consciousness feels like syrup thinning into water. Without telepathy, he can feel shadows of that familiar sensation, although he knows it is only a memory, a lie projected by his horrible, weak human mind.
He tightens his grip on the knife. He runs his fingers down the cold, exposed blade.
Forty, fifty minutes pass. The Cornucopia is far away now, blocked by the trees, and Aunamee's legs are growing tired. He crouches down, lowering Howard to the point where he can rest his feet on the ground and stand up, if he so wishes. This is how he tells Howard that he knows he's awake.
no subject
But he's sure Aunamee can tell. He's sure that his favorite serial killer is floating over his body like the scalpel of a surgeon looking for the best place to cut. The phantom knife that was in his hands moments ago is now in his guts. He opens his eyes with a whimper.
Howard tries to stand, but his bones are liquid, dissolved in the numbness that fills his from the waist down. He lowers himself back down to the ground with a weak shuffle, head against the ground, arms clenched as if they should be holding a calla lily over his chest, spine curved in a futile attempt at protection.
"Please don't hurt me. Please. Please. I'll do anything."
no subject
"You know I don't mean to hurt you." He doesn't know -- and neither does Aunamee -- but lies sound so much better with conviction. "I made that promise to you after the first arena. When I bought your dinner."
He places Howard's knife on the ground and steps backwards, his back still curled below the grass.
"That's twice, now."
Twice I've saved your life.
no subject
From Dr. Grey. From Donald fucking Duck. And now.
The first two scenes replay every time he sleeps, with Aunamee's voice narrating, "I wish I didn't have to go so far to protect you", "you'll never cry again"...and then the smile that was warm becomes a single blade of teeth, lancing down like a lightning bolt to rip Howard open from the inside. Every time.
He remembers the day Aunamee paid his tab in the bile in the back of his throat more than in his brain.
"Give me my knife back." Howard's words are individual tight-rope walkers, balanced and delicate and precarious, about to tip into either screaming or utter silence. He avoids those eyes, those eyes that met his back in the snow and smiled, and instead watches Aunamee's hands.
no subject
The duck. He forgot the duck.
"Three times," he says, holding the correction in his mouth like marbles, twisting it, feeling it with his tongue. He stretches out his fingers. Inside his fallible skin, his muscles slip and pull like gears. He was so hungry, when the duck attacked Howard. His ribs were broken. His ankle was bruised the color of plums.
When Aunamee gestures to the knife at his feet, there is a brief, unnecessary jerk to his arm. An overcorrection. An excess of energy.
(Fear of crumbling memories, a crumbling body.)
"Take it from me," he says. There is no attempt to mask the challenge. The words ripple up from his throat. "Or ask nicely."
no subject
But no matter how many times he tells himself that, he can't get the thought to translate into his muscles. He can't get up and reach for the knife, even as his brain screams that he should jump to his feet, snatch it and plunge it into Aunamee's snake face. Bleed him the way he bled Howard all those Arenas back...
"Please. Please give me the knife." His voice is so small it nearly disappears into itself, like a mouse scampering back into its hole. When he cringes his spine makes little imprints into the mud under him.
no subject
"Gladly," he says, stepping backwards, building space between himself and the knife. He's surprised to find that something in his mind catches, however, a quiet begging in his own voice, and that begging says --
-- don't let him have the knife don't let him have the knife don't let him have the knife --
His limbs grow cold and his heart rolls up in his throat because, oh, Aunamee is a passenger on a sinking ship, and now he's giving up his lifeboat to the boy who wishes to drown him. Yet he doesn't let himself stop, his feet taking him further and further away from Howard, the blade, salvation.
"Until we meet again. Howard."
no subject
And then he gets up, and he runs. And he doesn't stop for a long time.