thearena | Pretending There's Nothing That You Aren't Prepared For [Open]

WHO| Venus Dee Milo and open!
WHAT| Venus teleports around the Arena setting off danger and distributing supplies.
WHEN| Week One
WHERE| Everywhere in the Arena
WARNINGS| Death, explosions. Venus having some suicidal thoughts.

Venus has been dying for far longer than the two days she's been in the Arena. Ever since she got herself banged up on that mission against the Capitol, she's been biding time with increasing difficulty, trying to make it to the Arena so she can cover up for the internal bleeding that's killing her from the inside out. It's gotten more difficult, but thankfully she's had Porrim on her side, who's been able to taper off the amount of in-person interviews Venus has had to do and cut semi-nude shoots down to zero.

To finally be able to die instead of fighting it is a strange form of release. Venus thinks to herself as she crawls through the wormholes she rips into the fabric of space and time that it probably says something about her that death always feels like a relief, like relaxing after a long day's labor, rather than as something to fear. Having to stay alive has always been such an inconvenience for her, and she became a superhero because it was a clear-cut path towards dramatic, beautiful, and permanent ruin. It's eased in the last two years, this dogged pursuit towards a final end, and yet it's always there with her.

And so she's strangely sort of happy as she teleports around the Arena, looking for worthy allies to disperse her Cornucopia supplies to. The Gamemakers are coming for her, with rats and fires and claps of lightning. She emerges from nowhere, literally pulling herself from places out of eyesight or earshot, like a migraine in quick-motion to anyone watching where she blips back into reality, with a wild, jagged, beautiful smile on her face and a bag over her shoulder.

"Hey! You!" she'll call.

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She doesn't love him.

She doesn't not love him.

She's been so focused on her impending death and her loneliness and her loss that she hasn't thought about it, hasn't really examined the amorphous feelings that surround him, hasn't decided if that ease around him she carries or that laugh only he's able to get out of her or that happiness he's able to resurrect in her, when she was so certain that it had been ground out, was platonic or romantic. Maybe it never mattered. She didn't lend herself to planning for the long term or analyzing what the pining she felt was, whether it was loneliness or genuine affection that animated every smile she gave him and every batted lash.

At this moment she wants to leave him with something warm and kind and innocent and sweet to remember her by, in the very real circumstance that she might explode and never return, as may happen. As, she believes, will happen.

"Then do it," she says, craning up to him. "I want you to."

Maybe she does love him.

Shyness would have no place in this moment, Phillip took the plunge and let his lips join hers. Venus felt hot, but that was probably her condition giving her a fever, it didn't matter. This moment was theirs and he would remember it to the day he truly died. If he were to die here or sent back to Freddy's, to be sliced and dismembered, this is the memory that would get him through it all. There was so much need behind that one token of affection because Gray knew she wasn't coming back from this. This kiss was their first hello this way and their last goodbye.

She knows how to kiss for cameras, how to turn someone on, how to perform, but that's not how she kisses him now. She doesn't move much, just presses her lips to his with a shy reservation, feeling his cool against her as sweat begins to trickle down the corner of her temple.

"You'll see me again. Promise," she says, and even though she doesn't mean it she certainly sounds like she does, sells it like she could sell ice to an eskimo with those bright eyes and that trustworthy grin. She rests her forehead against his.

Phil doesn't want her to go, because she will die as soon as she tries to teleport. He knows it's a childish dream, that if she stays here, nothing bad will happen to her. He gently wiped the sweat from her face, as silent tears ran down his cheeks. Phone Guy is no stranger to loss, and he's seen such brutal things happen to children and adults...but none of them felt this close to his heart.

"Promise," Gray felt so small and insignificant but this is the promise that he holds on to keep going, to give his best shot at protecting the kids here, and to keep his head high. Venus gave him a breath of life just as District 6 gave him new purpose. He kissed her forehead and whispered three words against her skin: I love you.. Might as well tell her now than never have another chance.

"W-Whenever you're ready," the former night shift guard said, wiping away his face.

She feels him say it, but she convinces herself he said something else, something less intimate and easier to say in return. It's not that she doesn't feel it, but that she's yet name it, so natal is this feeling between them. She pulls herself to her feet and gives him a gentle hug that's ginger more for her sake than his, then takes a few steps back.

"See you on the flipside, Phil."

And like that, she vanishes into thin air.

Pretending There's Nothing That You Aren't Prepared For [Open]

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