You're Still No Hero Diving in the Blue [Closed]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus and Wyatt, Venus and Guy, Venus and Courfeyrac, Venus and Enjolras
WHAT| Catchall for Venus meeting with her fellas again after the mini-Arena
WHEN| Before the Thicker Than Blood plot
WHERE| Tribute Center
WARNINGS| Mentions of death.

She sits up and laughs when she wakes. Not a long laugh, not even an especially humor-filled one, but it's a surprised sound that comes right out of her, because she had been told that she wouldn't be coming back and yet here she is. The Capitol's lied many times to her before, and yet she can't recall it ever being so blatant. So rarely have the contradictions come so soon after the original statements.

She lets living again flow through her. She examines it, sitting on the bed, feeling her heart beating away in the body the Capitol gave her, twisting a tiny braid in her fingers, letting herself feel the disappointment and anger and grief she felt while in the Arena have a smidgen of time in her right now. She breathes deep, in her nose and out her mouth, and counts, over and over again, to thirty-five. After some time, she opens her eyes and feels, while not clearly, somewhat less overcast.

She puts on a dress and socks and makeup and listens through Enjolras' door for a moment in the hallway, not wanting to interrupt if he's getting some much-needed sleep. She doesn't hear the typical rustling of pages or scratching of a pen, so she leaves him be for now. She slips one of her hair ribbons under his door, so he knows she's back and well. And she asks an Avox if Guy and Courfeyrac made it back, and sits down on the suite couch with relief when she gets news that they did.

An Avox gets her a cookie-dough milkshake and she watches Wyatt win on a rerun, and Hans, and Harley and Eliot. She replays it to relish that one of her team made it out relatively safe and sound. Since she's only been back a few hours, she leaves watching all the deaths for later. No need to see what happened to little Pruna when the day is so fresh. And when that's done, she puts her feet up, flicks off the TV and starts her way into Sartre.

Over the next few days, she goes and finds the people she owes celebrations and the people she owes apologies to. Guy, Courfeyrac, Wyatt. She finds them in the Tribute Center lobby and greets each of them with a hug.

Comments

[the_marshal]

Wyatt was mostly healed by the time he and Venus found one another, but while the Capitol's medicine's were an undeniable part of it, it was even more Max. Howard. Venus, breezing from the elevator in her gauzy dress, smiling brightly at him.

That was what really did him good. A balm like nothing the Capitol could concoct.

Rising out of his chair at the little table, coffee steaming in the fine, designer mug before him, he swept off his hat and returned her embrace.

"Welcome back, Sis," he rumbled roughly to her.

It wasn't what he really needed to say, but that needed working up to.

[orestes]

The Tribute Center seems deserted while the Arena is in session. It's at once restless and comfortable, the silence a means to focus so long as one does not concentrate too much on the reason behind it. For that reason, and because of the inescapable television screens broadcasting the latest display of brutality, Enjolras has avoided the building for the most part. If one could ignore the stares of random passersby, the outdoors could offer the illusion of refuge from their all-too-luxurious prison.

She's moved onto Sartre by the time he returns from his walk. His understanding of the modern philosopher is limited, but he knows enough to recognize the name and a few key concepts. Existentialism, not to be confused with the far more optimistic Absurdism, Communism, which seems in some small ways to be a movement preceded by the republican institutions and labour initiatives to which Enjolras himself belonged, though further developed and changed into a distinctive ideology of its own.

Not wanting to disturb her, he unties his scarf, quietly placing it on the shared coat rack at the periphery of the common area. He settles next to her, reading over her shoulder in a way that is, perhaps, too casual, too familiar, but which he's almost entirely certain she won't mind. Finally, his instinct to question, to debate, gets the better of him. It has, after all, been a while since they have had the opportunity to do this. "People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked? From whom, do you suppose, he borrowed that idea?"

[acroodawakening]

"...You're not mad?" Guy asked cautiously as she hugged him. "I took your choice away."

But he hugged back, tightly.

He was still a little jittery from having just been revived. Very jittery, in fact.

orz

[libertin]

The only injuries Courfeyrac is still nursing are the ones to his pride. One the plus side, death and resurrection have solved the problem of his crocked nose entirely. One the negative, he's come to honestly appreciate what Max has been harping on him for. He isn't prepared for another arena, physically or mentally. It's something he needs to work on. But that will have to wait until after all their reunions.

"Do not look so sullen, my dear. This is a happy occasion." He smiles when he sees her, determined to be his dazzling self.