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
He’s learned to modify it, to clarify and twist the phrase around so he’s offering something else other than sorry - but with her he doesn’t feel like he has to. He thinks they know enough about each other for her to know that when he says I’m sorry what he really means I understand. Not completely, of course, but as much as he can.
“Anything loud enough to drown out the noise in your head telling you all the things you shouldn’t done different,” he confirms, giving a small, humorless smile. “The first time I joined the military. The second time I left it, because I guess sometimes it turns out the explosions don’t drown out the guilt as much as they add to it.”
no subject
The movie continues in the background, unconcerned with their life stories or the way the air between them has gotten thick and humid and heavy, sagging with the weight of their mourning.
"What've you got to be guilty over?" Even as she asks, she does so with a tone so gentle, so demure that it could never be mistaken for a demand, that she's accepted and dismissed as unneeded his apology already if he declines to tell her. She knows things come at their own times.
no subject
It’s not the only answer he’s giving her, though. Maybe because he’s giving him more than enough room not to, maybe because he trusts her more than enough for this. He doesn’t tell her about Riley. Sam’s told a lot of people about Riley, over and over again, because the repetition helps him work through it, and because knowing the story helps other people work through theirs. In a way, Riley’s easier. It’s not hard to understand the guilt of a soldier unable to save his best friend from being shot down right next to him.
He hasn’t talked with very many people about his dad. It’s old and put to rest, but… it’s still there.
“My dad was murdered, long time ago. Tried to break up a fight with some dumbass kids I knew, and they ended up killing him instead.”
no subject
"I'm sorry." She doesn't say it's not your fault because she knows how hollow that is to come from someone who wasn't there. She doesn't say anything else at all for a moment. Instead she reaches over and places her hand over his, her palm over his knuckles, linking them in their shared guilt and sadness.
"I can't imagine that he'd be unhappy with who you came out to be, though."
no subject
He stays quiet as she covers his hand with hers, shifting his hand up gently so his knuckles press very lightly against her palm. It’s empathy as much as the ‘sorry’ had been, and he finds himself more grateful for the quiet touch than anything else.
But her last words make him think. She’s not the first person to say that, and he usually agrees or makes a joke in response, because he does agree, for the most part. But there’s some things he’s done that he really hopes his dad couldn’t see, and with her, he’s more honest.
“Nah, he wouldn’t be. Might not agree with some of my choices, but he wouldn’t be unhappy.”
no subject
It's been a long time since she's had loved ones; she's surrounded herself with agents and lawyers and teammates but not family, not until recently, and it seems that Panem just strips all the choices out of people. There's not much chance for them to become soldiers or doctors or teachers or saints. There's only a limited and manipulated set of options each Arena.
Maybe that's what makes it important, when you manage to do right not between many good options but when you can barely redirect yourself from the wrong path between two choices.
She gives his hand a squeeze. "Are you happy with who you came out to be?"
no subject
But it's gone quickly enough. It's not like he's inflicting the conversation on her, and he figures she'd tell him if she was done with it.
And she's the one asking the hard questions, anyway.
"I'm getting there," he murmurs. "I'm a lot further down that road than I was a few years ago, anyway."
no subject
Two years ago, when she came to Panem, she was miserable and faithless, with no goal aside from a beautiful period to place at the end of the life sentence she was serving, a myopic fixation on her own death that precluded caring about anyone or anything, mortal or ideal. And over two years she's opened up like a lotus in a pond and let it all in, the love and the hurt and the philosophy that animates her now while death remains nothing but a tempting peripheral distraction.
She doesn't know if she's still miserable. She does know that every day she wakes up and she doesn't regret the sunlight pouring into her eyes to tell her that morning has come and that life, that sweet complicated awful struggle, has come for her again. That she now lets people like Sam in.
"Do you want me to stay here tonight?" She looks concerned for a moment. "I don't mean- I mean, on opposite sides of the bed. You know, hearing someone breathing and all."
no subject
But he’d kind of figured she’d understand, that she wouldn’t be one of those to think he was looking for someone to fix his lack of happiness.
He smiles a little bit at that concern, though, soft and fond. “Yeah. Yeah, I get you.” He’s still a little relieved she clarified. If she’d been asking for a different reason, he’s not sure he’d be capable of saying no right now, even though he knows that saying yes’d probably take them down a road he isn’t sure he can handle.
He knows he wants her here, though. “I’d appreciate that. I miss it, sometimes.”
no subject
But 'people' aren't Sam, and Sam doesn't seem to be among the multitude of whispering faceless figures that have told her that her body was all that she was worth, and so they can settle into something both more innocent and more honest.
She kicks aside a blanket and crawls under it, pulling it over her shoulders. "I took some drugs before I came over, so I'll probably be out like a light all night. You don't need to worry about nightmares or anything with me. But you know, wake me up if anything happens, alright? Fire alarm, awesome hand at late night poker, you know."
If he needs a friend.
no subject
Even if that help is something as simple and as complicated as asking her to stay the night so he doesn't have to face this one alone.
He doesn't have the words to say how grateful he is that she brought up nightmares first. Sam hasn't slept in the same place with many people since he retired, and the nightmares are a big part of that - he didn't want to have to explain them, or to have to wake up from one with someone there.
"You're something special, V," he murmurs, stretching out on his back under the covers. "Thanks."
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