#app rp

tw: death, hospitalization, mentions of gore

Ariadne Beaurevoir was born into competition and she was born a loser with a temper begging to be crowned. Even out of the womb, she hasn’t been first: they were twins and he was faster. To a good but unfeeling family, all the silences at dinner tables were filled with boast and gloat. Orpheus had the smile of a winner -- it was so obvious he’d one day get his own name carved in gold that it seemed he never for one day fretted. Opposite extreme temperature, his sister never stopped shaking in doomed anticipation. 

The deal was to make it to the Hunger Games together and fight all fist and bruise, to the last breath. First, them against the rest of the world and, with no one else left, one against the other in the ultimate challenge. Orpheus saw this with dread -- he’d have rather been eaten in the womb. And so one day, years away from the deadline of their deal to volunteer together and completely unprepared, he got ahead of her. His volunteering hand in the air was more knife to her back than if he’d actually drawn blood. Whatever ‘I love you’s came next all didn’t matter. Of course she cared endlessly for him, of course she couldn’t breathe all throughout his arena. Of course his victorious name pulsating through the entire Panem made sure no one at all would remember hers.

However, even alive and showered in glory, Orpheus never returned. A fragile boy with vivid nightmares and a bloodstream never clean did. Lost to addiction and his darkened mind, her brother was someone to take care of, to watch self-destruct & nothing else. He made Ariadne promise she would never volunteer, as his achievement wrote him a whole page of history. He made her break her promise, better as a loving sister’s grave than as expired milk and a pointlessly overworked potential. This was all she’d ever wanted, all she’d ever worked for, and he had already taken his share.

She was dreaming of being a murderer long before she saw Orpheus kill on live television. Since, the haunting only thickened. She would train at the Academy and the swords would all beg to be used through flesh. In that sense, she had a special sort of hunger for the Games which did not soften in the arena.

Born into a district where everything came down to power, born into a household where everything came down to competition, it’s only natural that Ariadne felt the most intense desire for the Games. It’s what she trained all her life for, until her brother did it first. 

The worst part of all is that Orpheus wanted it less than her. Orpheus never drew crowns all over his notebooks. Orpheus didn’t wake up sweating after a dream of being projected into the arena, wanting nothing more than to go back. Orpheus’ hands didn’t tremble on the knife, fearful that it would go too deep, even though it’s only training. 

However, to her it was not boys nor girls. It was the recognition, the glory, her turned into the shining point of natural selection.

The bloodbath cut two fingers off her -- her own greed and miscalculation. Twenty minutes into the Games she was bleeding profusely, almost to the point of fainting. Fewer mistakes have been done after. There was a sense of irony in how the zoo setting kept her unpredictably sane, collected and humanly desperate at the same time. Any other stage would have made her berserk.

She kept losing, bit by bit of herself. They’d all been handed a guardian animal, based on their personality. With a graceful lion at her side, she couldn’t help but feel poetically accompanied by her brother. The other Careers were too much of wildcards for alliances, and she’d decided she didn’t want that for herself either. Instead, she befriended a boy whose only defense was a clever tongue and an echoing family name. She even saved him once, and anyone could have excused her fleeing. She understood being human a little more until Eli died. Afterwards, everything turned to shit and she can’t recall any of it, sleep deprived and in a survival mode so thick that nothing broke through. A trance of half-winning and leaving so much of herself behind. 

Then, Eli died. And her district partner and odd friend died by her hands, almost taking her with him. It was almost mathematical how it took all of her to make sure Dexter was done for, only to bump into another career a few minutes later. Persephone wasn’t any kind, despite the sorry sight Ariadne must have been. Everything happened so fast that sometimes, she was convinced that the other girl killed her. She hadn’t, they were separated before the knife could go through the spine.

More dead than anything, Ariadne kept going. She hid, she applied all the medicine, she lurked the best she could. This taught her humility, this taught her some sort of patience -- all on live television. When the companion animals turned against the tributes, she was again holed beyond reason when she slit the lion’s throat, remorselessly. 

In the finale, she faced Persephone from District One again. She cannot remember how she won, never even cared to see the tapes, but her mouth was all bloody and she had more bones broken than whole by the end of it. They say it was combat with no weapons. She’s sure it was, because her hands had no rival keeping them away from victory. Poor Persephone had had her eyes gouged out by the moment the cannon called it a sentence, and Ariadne can’t remember any last words.

Most time, she refuses to sleep because she only dreams that she is dead. It must be Orpheus’ frequency calling from beyond the grave. It must be that part of her brain that is stolen from him. Aside from missing two fingers on her better fighting hand, she makes up a story in her mind where she is actually dead, by his side. Two years after winning she spent on the marble floor of her newly earned victor housing. It all meant nothing. Too depressed to even lift a remaining finger, there had been no mentoring for her in that time. Even the Capitol couldn’t force her out of the hole. 

Then Orpheus died. Then everything truly lost anchor to sense and reality. But there is no other ending to that story.

After having been hospitalized for two years subsequent to her twin brother’s alleged suicide, she is more of a stranger to everything than ever. And it shows.  Being on another team is better than being on her own team without him, though she pretends it’s the district that slows her enthusiasm down. She treats all this with the sulk and the frown of a grumpy old man, dry humor and spite all over the fragile outlines and the shaking. 

Back when Orpheus had been a mentor and she, a bystander, she fought like fire to get a word of advice in, to strategize, to make herself useful. Nowadays, even if she still has a flair for the Games, exhaustion and bleak depression gets her before she gets to make a full plan. Clearly she respects her duties and treats the Hunger Games ceremoniously, but at times, it’s without picking herself off the floor for hours. And sponsor socialization of course drains her beyond reason. 

To work for another district, namely one, doesn’t feel right, but it is part of the cross she has to bear, and it’s better than being housed in her brother’s old room in the Tower.

Ariadne is a little afraid of her own two hands and of what they can do. She knows that, sometimes, they grab a kitchen knife without her permission. She knows that she wakes up not remembering how she got to the garden. She still cannot understand who poisoned their dog when they turned twelve. Perhaps stability could never characterize her. But she developed a sort of resigned mannerism. She’s softer these days, more unplugged. 

Nothing feels real & most sunrises convince her she is a ghost. After all, when she found Orpheus, she was already half gone, the pit in her stomach had settled and a headache like no other before could have fried her brains on spot. After all, she did not call for help for the longest time, instead just staring hours for a pulse. He was dead -- she’d won the Games when she no longer wanted any of it, when they could have both stayed crowned.

She still feels like an intruder -- that when she feels human to begin with. And nothing makes sense. And this all makes her angrier than ever before, and with no aim, and hollow, and aggressive when she has the strength for it.

(+) passionate

(+) ambitious

(+) perfectionist

(-) unstable

(-) aggressive