all_inclusive | (no subject)

It had taken her a long time to find it, but once she has it in her possession, they'll have to pry it from her cold dead hands to get her to give up the small, but functional axe she'd found on the grounds in a shed. It's probably the remnant of some old gardener, but in her hands, it could be the difference between life and death.

She wishes there were tall trees around, the kind of soaring redwoods that adorned Seven. She'd learned to wield the sharp edge of her blade on thick trees standing hundreds of times the size of her. Meek, weak, and a little mousy, Johanna had learned that everything can fall if you apply enough pressure and cut them down at the right angle. Everyone falls and everyone bleeds.

Johanna hefts up the axe and makes her way outside, careful not to appear too overtly threatening. There are strangers roaming here and she needs to maintain the facade in case she has to play them. The axe has to be hidden where she can find it and she needs to seem like the little girl who frightfully entered the Hunger Games. She makes her way to the English Gardens, settling cross-legged on the ground as she starts to dig a hole in the ground. It's nowhere near six feet deep, but it makes her think of the grave she'd basically dug for herself by joining the rebellion.

Once she gets three feet down, she gets the axe in there, covering it up quickly and dragging over several blue bell flowers to mark the spot in a circle. She wipes the sweat from her face, smearing her cheeks with dirt like a hasty camouflage.

She's going to keep protecting herself, no matter the cost.

Johanna catches movement in the corner of her eye and she softens her posture and her expression, careful not to look too aggressive. She draws her hand over the soil and keeps the shadow in her peripheral vision, always wary. "Did you come to look at the flowers?" she asks quietly, head down, eyes averted.

Meek, weak, and murderous if given the chance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"To weed them, actually," Larry replied from where he'd stopped a few feet away, hands covered in dirt-smudged work gloves, his head tilted with mild curiosity. There was something entirely too familiar about the hunch of this girl's shoulders, of the wary flick of sharp eyes completely in contrast with the softness of her voice.

He really ought to have walked off right then, but Larry had never been terribly smart about these things.

"You're a little big to be making mud pies," he pointed out, squinting against the afternoon sun.

"I'm a messy gardener." Which is really just her way of saying she doesn't mind making the mess. Johanna sits back, lifting her shirt to wipe at the stains on her cheek and exposing a strip of skin at her stomach in the process. When she's fairly certain she's got most of it off, she takes in the man as if he's a potential threat.

Everyone is, no matter how charming or kind or seemingly insignificant. They're all threats. "I can help," she offers. "I mean, if you wanted help." Maybe she can learn something about this place in the process.

Dropping his wooden box of supplies with a rattle, Larry looked out over the flower beds and then back to the girl. Closed off, he thought, but trying desperately to seem the contrary.

"Well," he answered at length as he knelt beside her and began rummaging through the box. "I get paid to do this. I don't mind the help, but you're going to have to let me buy you lunch or a drink or something in payment." He glanced up at her, utterly guileless, and then held out a second pair of gloves. "Otherwise it wouldn't exactly be fair."

Edited 2014-02-13 21:13 (UTC)

"How about a drink?" Johanna suggests, reaching out for one of the tools so she can start to angle them in a direction away from where the axe is buried. "And maybe you can tell me where you're from? I don't think I've actually held a conversation longer than two sentences with anyone who's from here."

In a chilling way, Johanna thinks they're a little like the Avox servants in the Capitol and it's just one more reason to suspect this place of being another move in the Capitol's chess game.

"I am from Boulder, Colorado," Larry replied, an answer that had finally established itself at the top of a mental hierarchy that included too damned many places. "That is on Earth, if you're unfamiliar. In the United States of America. Or, what used to be the United States of America," he conceded with a cant of his head as he reached for a weed and gave it a firm pull.

"I'm Larry," he added a moment later, casting her a sidelong glance.

"Johanna," she rattles off her name, trying to place any of what he's said as something she knows, but she can't. She reaches for one of the trowels and grips it steadily, as if she's trying to get used to the weight of it. She can only imagine what she could do with this in an arena, so it's lucky they're not in one.

She shakes her head when she doesn't know Boulder, Colorado, or the United States. "I don't know what any of that means," she confesses. "I've never heard of any of those things." And she doesn't like the fact that it sets her at unease.

"Don't worry about it, you're not the only one," said Larry, the slope of his shoulders relaxed even as he was shaking soil free from the offending weed and tossing it aside on the grass. "If I were a betting man, I'd put money on my not knowing anything about wherever the hell you're from, either," he added, and tipped Johanna a glance, his face impassive but for the slightest wry upward twitch of his mouth and the crinkle at the corners of his eyes.

"Although," he blithely began again, turning back to the flowerbed, "I'm pretty sure there's some books on America in the library, if you actually give a shit."

"No, nobody seems to know where I'm from," she replies quietly, a soft 'lucky them' on her lips as she bows her head down and continues to dig out the weeds as though she can forcibly do something more than tear out the garden pests with her actions. She can pretend there are greater evils she's doing something about, she can pretend she's protecting herself, but in the end, she's just weeding.

"Maybe when I'm bored, I'll stumble my way to a book or two and learn about this America place," she offers.

Pausing again, Larry fixed Johanna in a contemplative squint. "If it makes you feel any better," he began, and reached behind him for a trowel, "America had technically gone to shit by the time I left. Technically, it wasn't even America anymore. Not the country of, anyway."

He rolled his shoulders and began to dig around the roots of one of the more stubborn weeds. "Where is it that you're from?"

"It's called Panem," Johanna explains, pausing in her work to look at him and wondering what his country gone to crap looked like and if it bore any similarities to hers. "Twelve separated districts with their own specialties and one sadistic government who tries to hold it all together," she says, staring at the garden beds in front of her. "We should plant some trees," she says. "They won't do much now, but give them twenty years...they'll be strong."