thecapitol | Sun Breaks Over the Same Human Race By Whom You Were Erased [Open]

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Sun Breaks Over the Same Human Race By Whom You Were Erased [Open]

WHO| Venus and you!
WHAT| Venus catches her second wind.
WHEN| Week three and onward, until a little past the end of the Arena.
WHERE|
WARNINGS| None.

When she first wakes in her bed, she's afraid to touch her face. She knows, deep down, that they won't have taken away the brand. She knows when she looks in the mirror and catches sight of that sprawling spidery blight, she's going to feel her stomach drop beneath the bed. She knows that the instant she puts her fingertips to her face she'll feel that warped, wrinkled slickness of scar tissue. She knows it'll destroy her all over again.

It takes her nearly half an hour of staring at the ceiling, making a mental list of the people she needs to make sure survived the Arena, before she reaches up and strokes her unblemished cheek. She all but catapults out of bed and stumbles to her dresser, to the mirror on top, where she stares with an uncharacteristic slackjawedness at the way she looks. She looks as if nothing has happened to her besides an unfortunate asymmetrical haircut. No being tied to a chair and mutilated. No nightmares that didn't end just when she left that jail cell.

It's stupid, probably, to care so much about how she looks, but it's difficult for a woman who's traded on her beauty to find purchase in anything but her body when it's mauled and mutilated, when its every corporeal reminder is one of torture and interrogation. And for a moment, just for a moment, she can imagine herself back in a time before so many of the people she loved died.

She can imagine herself renewed.

She returns to the Capitol with fresh energy, no longer curled into herself even though the windows in her have still been blown out. Her architecture no longer sags and creaks. She sings to the coffeemaker, sits on the couch of the District Suite with sodas and milkshakes, practices at the gym as a way to stay strong rather than merely to forget. She's social again, greeting people not out of a defensive way to hide her own pain but out of genuine interest in their lives.

She mourns, but it doesn't reduce her to some barely-functioning binge-drinking tragedy like it has in the past. At some point she realized that she was in love with all of humanity, rather than a handful of people. For the moment, she tries to hold onto that feeling, that hope that she so previously denied herself. For this moment, she makes herself free.

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The arena, this time, had nearly broken Joly. Proponent of science and the future though he was, he had never been a proponent of pain and causing agony, and he'd been forced to do both of those with Courfeyrac and his shattered leg. Simply because a thing is necessary, as it was then, it does not mean it is a good thing, and Joly hates himself a bit, for all the pain he had to cause. More than that, he hates the futility of this all, knowing that no matter what he tries to do, things like this, the pain, the suffering, are going to continue, and there will be little, if anything that he can do.

It's horrible, and he's been struck with that thought again and again since their return, the idea that he is powerless to aid anyone, really, that he himself must cause pain in order to help, and that there is no true relief for anything until death claims you. A terribly dark mood for him, especially, but Joly tries his best after Les amis return, to pretend that it is not consuming him.

Today, it's very hard to look like that. Joly's at a first aid station, yes, but instead of practicing his stitches or anything of the like, he's starring at a practice dummy with a simulated broken leg, trying his best to put the crushed thing back together with only the minimal help of bandaging and the generic first aid kit. So far, no good, and he's made four attempts already.

Instead, he curses loudly, overwhelmed by the failure and the idea that it could be his friends again, that Courfeyrac could have never walked again if this was any ordinary place, then sinks into a folding chair beside the dummy, burrying his head in his hands, his breathing rather deliberate, but still very shaky.

Perhaps he could use someone to talk to?

Venus was already on the gymnastic bars when Joly entered, and aside from hanging from her knees and waving for a moment when she sees him, she hasn't really acknowledged his presence. She's too busy flipping and twisting and catching herself, remembering things her agent said about how she could have gone Olympic-level if she'd started a little earlier and didn't have such a woman's body.

But then she hears him swear, and it doesn't matter that it's in the Training Center and not the Arena; her mind immediately interprets it as him needing her aid, as danger. All she can think about is his mannequin in the shopping mall Arena, finding it one day when she was expecting to meet him at the hair salon, holding the beads in her hair to her palm and staring at her own reflection in the storefront window.

Her chalked feet smack the mat and she walks over not in a rush, but faster than she might if this were a casual moment.

"Hey." She folds her arms and bites her lip, paused at his side, standing with too much weight on one leg to be straight up. She looks at the dummy. "What are you up to here?"

Well, it may not exactly be the traditional sort of danger, but Joly could certainly use her aid. He's glancing up as Venus approaches, trying for a smile, which ends as something of a grimace, before he's giving her a little nod.

"Ah hello, there." The words are quieter than usual, though he's nonetheless happy to see her. "I've just been trying a bit of first aiding, looking for some new ways to fix things. I was not able to do that last time." He added, voice catching a little, though he took a breath to force his way through it, or tried to.

"Stupid, really. I've had to deal with that before, being a doctor with not much to help me but this last time, it was different. I hated it." he added, running a hand over his eyes. "Whatever I can think of still causes pain. I wish...there has to be a better way, if only I can work it out."

She didn't realize until he spoke the depths of his injury, how it's left a chasm in his soul. When she sees it feels as if she's been dealt a physical wound, and she feels her heart shudder inside her chest like a spider undergoing a death throe.

A grimace of pain wouldn't be as saddening as the feeble attempt at a smile he made.

"Hey, Joly, I saw that leg and there was nothing I could do about it either, and I have superpowers at my disposal." She slips into the chair next to him. "What happened to Courfeyrac wasn't your fault last time. It really wasn't."

She knows that using logic against guilt is like trying to slay Grendel with a fork, but it's one of the only weapons at her disposal.

It was more the fact that he had needed to cause so much pain and could not ease it and had nothing that he could do to fix things either. Joly would have hated causing the pain if he COULD fix it, but at least it might have been something anyway. Perhaps that is why he's returning to this again and again in his mind.

"I know that there was not much in the way of repairing it that I could know, but perhaps if I was missing something. Some formula they've tossed into the games to make them different, or..." Joly shook his head, biting his lip. "I hate how much it hurt him most of all. That even after all of that, there was nothing to do. I cannot blame myself, exactly but I...do wish to be ready should something happen again, if that makes sense? Once was terrible but excusable. A second time...I am not so sure." he finished with a heavy sigh.

At least some of the logic HAS soaked through, it's more the idea that this is something, a new challenge he should consider that Joly has a hard time leaving behind. And he still hates himself even though the pain was necessary too.

She listens; she's always been a good listener, a good canvas for people to spill out their ink and make calligraphy upon. So she does for Joly now, dark eyes trained on his, mouth slightly ajar in a word that goes unspoken and doesn't need to be spoken.

"There's a difference between looking forward and looking back," she agrees. An awful memory can be the springboard for moving forward and preparing for the next, but only if one's feet don't sink into it. And she suspects that this memory, for Joly, is tar with its hungry suction.

She reaches over and takes his hand. She rubs her thumb over his knuckle.

"Can you teach me some of the first aid basics? That could be a good way to prevent some of the problems of earlier Arenas." She bites her tongue for a moment. "And we can keep talking."

That is true, and Joly appreciates it quite a bit. It's good to get his fears out here, somewhere away from cameras and supervision and the others involved in the little...incident. There's a lot to be said for finding that sort of freedom.

"Yes, and sometimes, things are better for it. I would hope that this becomes something of the sort, but I am not sure what...I feel as though I need to get better at this somehow but..."

Instead of speaking when she takes his hand, Joly's just letting out a breath and a smile that's a lot smaller than the fake "public" one. And her idea seems like a good one, all things considered.

"Ah, certainly I could. You are already good at stitching if I recall, but there are other things of course. Let's see, where shall we begin?"

"Okay. Focus on that." She tips her head to hear the way he's breathing, but no, it usually isn't sadness that tightens up his chest but something else. She imagines being able to cup his sadness in her hands and squeeze it, wring it dry, she imagines the tears leaving him until there's no emotion left except for acceptance.

But she can't do that for him. She remembers it took her nearly six months to wring it out of herself, that she's still damp.

"I don't know. I guess tell me what to do if someone's going into shock? Or, um, blood loss." She raises a finger like a lightning rod, face going tight. "If you say leeches I'm walking out of here and leaving you with your simulation."

She's either very committed to the joke or a hundred percent serious.

That's true. The anxiety this time was mostly...in the moment, so to speak. Now that the moment is over, there is nothing he can do to repair it, and panic is certainly not the way to go now. Obsession on the other hand...

Obsession and sadness both can probably be said to be happening right now. And it might even be helpful, in the case of sadness to let it all go easily, but...certainly not right here and now, and no, it probably IS something that he needs to do himself, when there is time.

"Ah yes, those I can help with." He does have to smile at the expression and the words. "Not a word about them then, other than pointing out that losing more blood in either case is usually not the best of ideas. So, all right then, shock. I would say in the best of cases not to move the person but in an arena? That's likely a stupid idea. First, you will want to be sure that they are breathing, and elevate the legs if that is possible. Courfeyrac..." He swallows hard a few times bringing that up.

"Well, that would have been very painful and stupid...so..."

"God. With what his leg was like, if you lifted it up it all might have just slid down inside his skin like Go-gurt," Venus says, pulling a face that's too genuine to just be a joke.

Her guilt over Courfeyrac doesn't weigh on her chest as heavily as Joly's does on his, but she still remembers the sight - it flits across her vision like flash photography sometimes. She remembers the sound of Joly trying to rearrange the mush of muscle and tendon and joint and bone into something approximating a straight line. Sometimes when she's chewing she imagines she's hearing that sound, and her appetite evaporates.

"Okay, let's do a simulation." She gets up and, with a few flicks of her fingers over the console, dismisses the glowing hologram of the leg fracture, pulling up instead a basic shock response tutorial. "Okay, this one's- shock from broken ribs. Show me how to do this."

It wouldn't sound so intent on fixing him, rather than learning, except that her hand is on his arm and giving it an encouraging squeeze.

"Go...gurt. Something tells me I hardly want to know the details involved therein. Portable Yogurt is obvious but...anything else? I think I enjoy living in bliss if it's anything like what my mind is picturing." Admittedly, Joly is thinking of yogurt sliding out of some kind of a tube, like the kind they sell the push up frozen variety in at one of the odd cafes he tends to avoid. He notices her face, and winces at how serious it is.

"Well, let us hope nothing of that nature happens again. No certainly moving that could increase pain, and then shock, yes." Ugh. Joly sometimes sees it when he closes his eyes at night, and he finds the whole thing pretty terrible beyond words, really.

"A simulation. I can work with that." Joly agrees, stepping over to assume the position of a working doctor in the emergency setting, before he's carefully pointing things out, going over some of the finer details for Venus. It's helpful, even more so with that touch, at which he turns and smiles at her a little. So far? It's appreciated.

"Yeah, better to live in ignorance." She keeps pulling that face, thinking of how now that her brain's made that connection, she's probably not going to be keen on Gogurt either. Not for the first time, she wonders how Joly has the stomach for it, for healing. She was gifted with a magic touch but that's nothing on the nitty-gritty of medicine, of expertise.

The simulation is bloodless, more about readouts than it is about the visuals. Panels tell Joly the hypothetical patient's pulse, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and probably extra things that he doesn't necessary have the training to understand. Venus certainly doesn't, but she doesn't dare set the simulator to an easier mode, worried to shake Joly's already rattled confidence in his craft.

She listens intently, although she's absorbing less about the tutorial than she is about his own body language. She pays attention to the flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes dart back and forth between different elements of the simulator, the slight tremble of his hands and that smile as wilted as a winter rose.

She feels as helpless as a friend as he did as a doctor, and so she keeps her touch there as if anchoring the two of them in their mutual affection. It only grows more important to her when the simulated patient dies, and she looks at Joly with alarm.

Upon picturing the muscles in the same way, perhaps dripping out of a pantleg? Joly's not sure he'll be looking at anything that resembles yogurt any time soon. Disgusting mental image, and he shudders at the thought. True, he's here, well, in the sense of being somewhat of a medical professional, because he can help when there are paths to, but...the road is never a comfortable or easy one, certainly .

Bloodless is good right now, and Joly's taking his time with those read-outs, maybe too much time, but even so. They're good to study and if he's pausing for a few notes, of things to look up later, well, he doesn't mind so much that he's losing time in the simulation. He's also busy with the explanations and, even though he frowns as the alarm goes off indicating death, he's calmed, somewhat, when things are over.

"Well, I am certainly glad THAT was nothing real." he mutters. "And proof, I suppose, that not everyone can be saved. ...Yet. With my current understanding that is. But...still solvable, I think. Unlike some things. Courfeyrac...it is good he did not make it through the arena. Remakes or not, that level of pain..." He shakes his head. "Death is awful and I wish it gone but PAIN...pain is so much worse, somehow. Particularly when there is no control for it. Still. It's good to know there ARE still things that I can fix, given enough time to learn."

She relaxes some now, seeing that this failure hasn't sparked any powderkeg of helplessness in him, seeing how he responds as a doctor instead of as the friend so grieved by his own impotence.

"No, he never would have been able to walk again," Venus says with sober certainty. "At least not with both legs. If he didn't have his wits about him we maybe should have..."

Courfeyrac did Venus the favor of ending her life a few Arenas back, a favor she wished she hadn't asked but could never wish he hadn't done. No matter how old she gets, no matter how far she runs into age at that steady, unchangeable pace, she'll never be able to escape that guilt.

"Death seems the easy way out, sometimes. I wanted it so badly when they were interrogating us. It says something about Courfeyrac that he didn't want to give in with his leg all busted."

Greiving his failure as a friend would be far worse, yes. He is rather glad to have the option of retreati into doctor mode, now. it helps in tsrms of forming his responses for the future.

"Certainly if he was not himself..." Joly takes another moment to be relieved that death is not so permanent an option here. "But, otherwise, yes, I have wanted to die many times as well. I marvel sometimes, not that everyone goes on, but that some of you wish<\i> to do it."

"Me too. Marvel at it, that is." She's told him before about her own struggles with hopelessness, with suicide, how it'll always be apart of her like a stain upon her. She doesn't tell him that since her interrogation with the Peacekeepers, she still longs for it constantly. It calls to her in her sleep, death does, and her friends here in Panem hold her back even without realizing it.

"Do you want to do another round?" She squeezes his arm again out of some strange and likely ill-founded protectiveness.

So she has and so Joly has listened and tried to offer support where he could; a task that was not always easy, especially here of all places. He constantly feels as though he is falling short somewhere on the great Chart Of Friendship, but he does still try.

He wishes he knew more of Venus, constantly, that he might be able to do more for her, but he's settled into the role of trying to cheer her where he might, and finds it sometimes seems to work. Should he know everything happening to Venus, he would be grieved to know the direction her thoughts take. Still, he is available at least, for anything that she might need.

And she knows exactly what he needs too, Joly decides, giving her a little nod. "I would actually like that, yes." It keeps his mind going so that he cannot dwell, at least.

With a generous affect that is in no way dishonest, she watches him perform on another simulation, taking diligent notes in her head that she can't hope to actually remember. Even someone like her, so used to being hyperaware in the heat of combat, will occasionally lose sight of what she needs to know during the crunch of necessity.

But she tries with the same tireless effort that she did to learn philosophy, to keep up, to strain forward not because she imagines herself at the forefront but because too often she imagines herself in the back - and because she would rather be at his side no matter what the path. She occasionally places a hand on his lower back as he works, absent-minded and congenial.

Joly would prefer her at his side rather than front or back, certainly. He turns at one point in this, a sliver of a smile on his face, glad for her steadying touch that keeps him rooted firmly to reality. In a time like this, it's the most useful anchor that he has, and it holds him in place, where he feels like he belongs.

"Thank you." he says, when he's finished the current simulation. That helped...rather a lot. But perhaps we should move on to brighter topics, now?" He added, wiping at his brow with a nearby towel. He had the feeling that they both could use that right now.

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Sun Breaks Over the Same Human Race By Whom You Were Erased [Open]

Training Center

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/wrap here?

Sounds good!