thearena | (no subject)

Entry tags:

aunamee,
✘ r

(no subject)

Who| Aunamee and R.
What| A reunion.
Where| The jungle (far away from buildings)
When| Evening after Cornucopia.
Warnings/Notes| Some self harm. Will be added as necessary.

In the middle of the night, Aunamee makes shelter by digging a hole in the soft ground of the jungle and crawling inside. He covers himself with giant leaves, guaranteeing that his sleeping nest remains pitch black. Claustrophobic. When he blinks, dirt catches in his eyelashes.

He shudders.

Something inside his body is cold and black like the walls around him, and he's not sure what it is.

He shudders again.

This is what it feels like to be an animal, his mind offers, but he silences it by making his hands into tight fists, digging nails into his stupid, bleeding palms.

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It's taken awhile, but he's finally stumbled out of sight of the Cornucopia. It's lost to the tall grass whispering in a breeze that doesn't do anything about the humidity, R wondering briefly if the muggy air is going to speed up his decomposition that, for the most part, has pretty much flat-lined. If Howard's left signs, they're definitely...hidden. So not obvious. R's head swings left and right as he blunders from the grass past the humming poles and into the edge of the jungle.

Night falls. He's used to days and weeks jittering and stopping like a broken film reel - you know, the whole zombie thing screwing up his perception of time - but this is almost pitch-dark. He travels mostly by touch now, figuring when he bumps into something is probably a signal he should turn and shuffle until he stops bumping into things quite as much. Wet leaves slap against his face as he turns yet again.

R's starting to think he should stop and smell for any signs of Living when he topples into a hole that opens up underneath him in the jungle floor. R doesn't curse or shriek as he pitches in: there's a groan choking to nothing in his throat as his cold body collapses almost on top of Aunamee.

The smell of decomposition fills the hole.

When Aunamee smells that hot, putrid stench and feels that sudden, suffocating weight on his body, he wonders if someone has thrown a corpse at him. It's an odd attack, he thinks, but he still thinks of it as an attack, and immediately his self pity dissolves into white hot rage. He brings up his knee -- not to attack R, but to kick him away and find his real enemy -- and then he realizes who this is. What this is.

(He remembers his face covered in blood, the way he lunged, the way his head buried into Aunamee's stomach as though it were a stew.)

He still pushes at the boy with his legs, hard, and uses his elbows to hoist himself out of the hole.

Edited 2013-10-28 16:03 (UTC)

That's basically what happens when someone puts a hole in the ground where any Dead boy can stumble into. R has a few confused seconds to catch a hitched breath, feel a knee coming and then he's being bowled over, his arms flopping in the dark as he slams against the side of the hole's wall. He can hear more than see someone scrambling up in the dark, probably spooked because they think they're getting attacked by another Tribute.

R's tired of people running from him. It's a fact of life but at the same time, it's gone on too long and if he can try to fix things, he should. Show first of all that not everyone is out for blood.

He's not, for a change.

"Not...hurt...!" R moans from the pit, trying to claw his way out too. His groan surprisingly doesn't carry very far. It's the jungle, he realizes. It muffles sounds in a way the ruined city back home never did.

Not hurt. It is not a statement of R's well being, but a promise for his, a guarantee that R means him no harm.

Aunamee answers this promise by removing his pocket knife and flicking open the blade.

"Old friend," he says with his usual patience, although his eyes are hard and he looms over the hole like a wild dog. His clothing is stained with dirt. Specks of blood. He brushes his foot against R's hand as the boy struggles. "Has it really been so long?"

The voice is the last one R had expected to hear in the dark, above him while he was trying to crawl his way out of a hole in the ground that had no right being there. R groaned in surprise. Oh Jesus. This was awkward. What did he even feel right now? This was the guy Wyatt and Howard both seemed to have a hate-on for, the same one who'd seemed so cool with his charming pearly smile and the way he'd accepted a zombie playing at being a boy. Could Aunamee really have done those things? Could he ever give a "why" that makes sense?

R's face turns blindly toward where he heard Aunamee's. He feels instead of sees something - the toe of a shoe, probably - brushing aside his hand when he gets a hold of the edge of the pit.

"A-rena," R said. Are they still friends? Does Aunamee still think they are? What is this connection between them now? "Have....ques...ques-tions."

Bad timing or worse timing?

"I'm listening," he says, and he is. His mind is sharp and bright, ready to turn R's words into vivid, painted images of what he will do next. Beat him? Stab him? It surprises Aunamee, how much it bothers him to know that R has feasted upon his blood and sinew. (It must have something to do with knowing that his body is meat, sweet and malleable like a pig. It must be primal.) Shouldn't he accept that the boy wasn't in his right mind? Shouldn't he acknowledge that the boy's animalistic, murderous nature is what makes him so appealing in the first place?

He keeps his foot brushed against R's hand. Just one step is all he needs. Just one step.

"Provided you came alone."

Listening? Listening's good. R could feel Aunamee's hesitation hanging in the air and he feels his own doubt doing funny things to his body. It's been awhile. Now that he's had friends and he's betrayed and he's...connected in ways that don't involve eating the brain, he finds the world's a lot more messy than he thought. R stares up at Aunamee's shadow above him, misunderstanding the question as he focuses toward that purr that seems to smooth away the doubts the longer he listens.

It's not the voice of a killer.

"Only...Dead...here," R groans, confused. Who else would he come with? Zombies usually travel in packs.

"What about the Living?" he asked. He was mindful of the omission, and now was hardly the time to be careless. He glanced around, his eyes flicking back and forth despite himself. (Didn't he know how weak that looked?) He searched for shadows in the trees.

"What I'm saying, R," he said, tasting the name like a precious metal (like ammunition), "is that I don't want one of your friends showing up and startling us." He flexed his hands, feeling the blood stick to his palm and then give. Stick and give. Stick and give.

"I don't enjoy surprises. You see."

"Only...me," R groaned as it slowly dawned on him. Had he seen the Arena footage? Replayed Wyatt killing him and...what happened next. "No...surprises..."

He trailed off, the words gurgling to nothing in his mouth as he realized Aunamee hadn't just said "friend", he'd said "friends", plural. Wyatt and Howard and what if he knew about Julie? Would he torture them like they said he would, if given the chances? Did he turn into another man entirely or did he sound the same as he did right now, standing above some pit R couldn't seem to climb out of. His fingers brushed again and and again against a boot slick with fresh dirt, unable to get purchase.

There had to be a way to communicate here. Talk it out. He'd spent years wishing he could "talk it out". R swallowed and began moaning again:

"Ex...plain...?" R couldn't tell if he was trying to explain why he'd been face deep in his intestines or if he was asking for Aunamee's side of the story. What could possibly justify all the horrible things they said he did.

"I was gone for a long time," he says, filling in R's missing words as smoothly as possible. Guesswork makes his insides curl, and so he pretends that he is not guessing right now. R wants him to explain his absence. Simple. "You encountered me in the end, of course. You saw me while I slept."

Slept. This is how he prefers to think about it. Sleeping is also cruel and terrible, of course -- sleeping is half of death. But when Aunamee sleeps, he wakes up. He always wakes up.

"But I am a fixture, R." He always wakes up. "I am not the sort of person who goes away for good."

He leans over, just slightly, looking for R's eyes in the darkness.

"You spoke with Mr. Earp."

Slept? R would've gone more for "stone-dead" but apples and oranges.

Sometimes he has a hard time following along with Aunamee - the way he laces together his words delicately while R groans and stumbles over syllables, the way he'll make these remarks that leaves him wondering if there's something he's missing. R gapes up at the shadow as it bends over. He thinks he sees something glittering. Could be Aunamee's eyes - he's alive again, without that flat, dry look a corpse's eyes would get.

"Wanted...to know. They're...ff...friends," R says. Unlike Aunamee, his words are blunt and feel clumsy in his mouth, dusty. "Howard...?"

R lets that hang in the air. It doesn't occur to him that he should be worried about himself. It's just not the zombie way.

"Howard."

His voice is an echo, dropping off into silence before the final letter. Howar. The name says it all. R had been cautioned, warned against Aunamee.

Just as he expected.

"He's a good boy," he says, his voice recovering its usual volume, his fingers dancing along the handle of his knife. "Just as you're a good boy." Just as the dead are good, polite and motionless with their arms all folded up, obedient, giving. "I wanted to help him, you know. Him and Mr. Earp. But they don't understand."

R struggles to understanding the reasoning here - he gets the words, sure, but there's something not adding up. It takes R a long minute in that pit to put into groans what he wants to say. If it wasn't for the smell of wet earth, he could've almost believed they were back at the Capitol, Aunamee promising to help him with his Escort problem and dazzling with that particular smile of his.

"How...help?" R has to know. He's been dead for God knows how long, but unless things changed drastically since he kicked the bucket, he's (fairly) sure "help" doesn't involve torturing someone to death.

"You come from a difficult world, don't you, R?" Aunamee plays sympathy like a clarinet. He lowers his voice to a purr when the key signature allows it. "You're familiar with the concept of mercy."

In the distance, he hears a crunch. Crackle. It could be the wind, but who knows?

(Mercy is lying down in the middle of the grass -- no hole, no leaves, no nothing -- and waiting for the monsters that crunch and crackle to take you. Aunamee can't think of anything more boring. More disgraceful.)

"Many people in this arena," he continues, "are doomed to suffer slow deaths over the course of days. Weeks. My touch is kinder."

Familiar with it, but he'd (almost) never acted on it before the Capitol. Before Julie. He couldn't. Used to think he didn't have a merciful bone left in his body because when push came to shove, he'd always gone for the arteries instead of letting prey go. R falls silent as Aunamee explains his reasoning. In a weird way he thinks it makes sense.

Maybe that's why Perry put himself in a situation where he knew he'd get eaten. For all he knows, it was worse somehow to live day to day compared to those brief, agony filled seconds as R ripped into him.

Fresh guilt wells up.

"But...not...their choice," R tries to figure out what's where. He wants to say it's different with Perry. "Wyatt...said..." What'd he say? R has to fight to concentrate between the wet dirt - really, it's almost mud at this point - sometimes dribbling into his face whenever Aunamee shifts his feet. "T...torture..?"

There it is. The meat of it. Wyatt said torture.

"I told you that he doesn't understand," he says, tension rolling up in his throat. In the pitch blackness of the night, Aunamee allows his lips to slip into a snarl. "Do you listen to me, R?"

'Temper, temper,' his mother had told him when he was a child, her voice growing softer (weaker) as the years went on.

"Do you think I'm a liar?"

R listens. But he doesn't understand, either, and even a zombie eventually starts to ask questions.

"I...don't...know," R admits reluctantly, his groan quiet from where he's still stranded in Aunamee's pit. Where is this conversation going? Will he get an explanation that could satisfy the fear in Howard, the way Wyatt turned almost into another man entirely when the subject came up? "Want...truth. To...digest."

He has a feeling that's not exactly the word choice he was going for but whatever, it'll have to do for now.

"Digest," he says. He laughs, a soft, rolling rumble that comes from a dark place at the base of his spine. "Digest."

And then the anger is complete, it's here, it belongs and his toes curl up as he imagines stomping down on the boy's face, again and again, first with all of his strength, then softer so that R's brain could register every blow, every last blow, every fucking --

He steps backward, allowing his shoe to graze R's hand one last time as it went. Like a goodbye.

"I had been so happy to see you," he says, his voice somewhere between a hiss and a whisper.

He would've thought Aunamee was amused if it wasn't for...this. Whatever is happening in this pit with the man standing above him and R groaning away, aware something isn't quite right here but not sure if it's him or the human. The way Aunamee delicately strings his words together like lace, like the softest silk, has R doubting himself all over again. The level of awkwardness chokes.

"Wanted...friends. You," R's suddenly on the defensive. Was it too much to hope to be friends? Has he been dead too long to understand the intricacies between the Living? "But...they're...friends...too."

His hands come up to claw again at the fresh dirt, ground into mud by Aunamee's boots. If R has enough time, he might even figure out a way to heave his corpse out of there.

Edited (typo fixing) 2013-11-23 12:40 (UTC)

Aunamee could help him. He could help him by offering a hand -- or he could stay there, keeping him company as he struggles for purchase in the mud. Isn't that something a friend would do? Isn't that something a father would do?

But he doesn't. Aunamee's anger is petulant like a child's. It pulls him backwards, step by step, until the boy's groans are nearly indistinguishable from the wind. It is an act that has nothing to do with manipulation, nothing to do with strategy. It is pettiness, plain and simple. It is the ugly structure beneath the mask.

Digest thoughts, he thinks again and again, like a broken record. Digest thoughts like you digested me.

He does not even say goodbye.

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