Venus Dee Milo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
celebrityskinned) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-12-25 10:58 pm
celebrityskinned) wrote in thecapitol2014-12-25 10:58 pm
Entry tags:
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.
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
"Do you want to do another round?" She squeezes his arm again out of some strange and likely ill-founded protectiveness.
no subject
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.
/wrap here?
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.
Sounds good!
"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.