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
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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