so wake me up when it's all over ( open )

[ethnobotany]

Arrival

The last week was very literal hell for everyone in Zelien. Between the Eldritch horror, the rain of COMPASS monsters, and the cultists, survival was difficult for seven days. Well, survival in Zelien was always difficult, but it seemed much more so now. The days passed by so quickly and yet so slowly, to the point where each hour bled into the next, each day bled forward and Beverly fully lost all track of time. Nothing was safe and after living even a short time like that, even the most stalwart of people couldn't take it forever. So when the frantic man with white hair came through the mess advertising a serum that would take them through to COMPASS' realm where they could, theoretically, defeat the organization and get everyone to safety, if not home... to say she had jumped at the chance would be an understatement. At least, after she had ascertained that the serum wouldn't do any damage to anyone. While she couldn't be absolutely certain, she was sure enough and it would be better than their current options. With the serum in her system, she had followed the frantic man.

One side of the portal was Zelien. On the other, she found herself being tossed a good few feet and then dropped, landing on her back with a whoosh of air. With the breath knocked out of her, she takes a few seconds to recover and in that time, security is called to Ten Forward. Her phaser rifle sure does stand out. The altercation when she tries to stand is short, her surprise and a touch of fear being the largest reasons she resists so hard at first. Eventually, she relinquishes the weapon, snapping, "Okay, okay! Take it!" They like that better, leaving her to get reacquainted with the middle of Ten Forward and the stares of whoever happened to witness the scene.

Later

Once she's gotten the idea of what's going on, has dealt with something else, and has managed to accept the idea that this might not be a hallucination from the serum or COMPASS using one of her most important memories against her, she heads for the replicator and a cup of Earl Grey tea. She hasn't honestly had anything that wasn't canned pears, coffee, or creamed corn in so long. This might be overdoing it, but at this point, she's given up caring. After a moment's thought, she replicates a croissant to go with it. Both she'll take up to a table in the corner where she can, hopefully, sit in peace and get her head on straight. Looks like she can finally have a cup of coffee and a croissant tomorrow. For the first time in weeks.

For anyone who might want to approach, she doesn't look entirely unapproachable. She is tense, though, extremely so and she's noticeably facing towards the room at large with her back to the wall, watching people with the gaze of someone who has learned not to let her guard down too much. It'll pass and in time she'll be back to herself. Right now, she's just on the edge of a breakdown. Good thing she has that medical training to separate her emotions from a situation, right?

Closed

After getting more food and drink in her than she usually gets in a day in Zelien, she finally takes a deep breath and decides to go ahead with something that needs doing. This... will be difficult, but she needs to do it. For both of their sakes.

"Crusher to Picard." Pause. "Do you have a minute, Jean-Luc?"

She uses his first name in her request to show that she's coming to him not as his Chief Medical Officer, but as his friend, as a friend who needs him. Because she does. If there's anything in this universe that she needs right now, it's as many friendly faces and people as she can gather, people she can be sure of. That and she does have a lot to tell him.

Comments

[ethnobotany]

Beverly takes note of that fond look, thinking about a holodeck program she'd experienced where the whole crew had been sailors for a few hours. Mostly just to instate Worf as Lieutenant Commander and watch him take a swim, but it had been great fun. She wonders vaguely if that program exists here. If it doesn't, she might be able to write it or convince someone to write it for her. It might make Finnick homesick, but it might also help.

She gives him time to gather himself, focusing on her tea and croissant until he continues. "That's true of just about anything." Including space travel.

"Well, that depends on where your interests lie." And whether or not she gets herself reinstated. She'll have more pull and more to work with if she is. "We don't have much in the way of lakes or water, though there is a pond in the Arboretum. I used to have several botany projects going, but that's a personal interest. What are you interested in?"

[fishermansweater]

"There's nothing like it." Though Finnick and Annie have wondered if the holodeck could possibly come close.

In District Four, your own boat is a sort of freedom, and Finnick's boat, the Gheta Laurel, is one of the fastest and most beautiful boats in all of the area around Fishery One, because he'd paid what that costs, for a boat so classically elegant that it could have come from before the Dark Days.

For a victor, a boat brings even more freedom. The one opportunity to be out from under the eyes of the Peacekeepers. They can't watch all the little islands, and there are a couple of hard to find, hard to sail to islands that Annie and Finnick use as meeting places, where they can be alone, and in private, and pretend that the Games and his patrons and the Capitol just don't exist, in a world that's made of sand and sea and the shadows of trees.

Finnick's eyes are an odd shade of sea-green, flecked with gray and blue like light shining in the shallows, but they cloud for a moment before his eyelids droop low over them again to mask the confusion. He hasn't been asked that in a long time, because everyone knew, or assumed they knew: sailing, fishing, netmaking and ropework, and poetry, his official talent.

It's a short list, but it's what everyone knows about him. He has too much time, as a victor, and he fills it as he can with those things, those things and Annie.

"I was trained for fishing and sailing. I never learned much else. Swimming, netmaking. Poetry."

He shrugs.

"Not exactly things you need here."

There are things he's not mentioning, of course: the skilled seduction he can turn on his patrons, the way his eyes scan a room and notice the things people don't want him to see in their interactions, that he'd trained as a fighter to kill not fish, but people.

They're no more likely to be of use.

[ethnobotany]

Tilting her head a little, Beverly regards Finnick with quiet interest. Poetry might work for a short burst every now and then, but she doesn't think it'll keep him occupied for a long period of time. Still, that reminds her of one of her hobbies.

"Perhaps, but I have a friend who likes to try his hand at poetry," she says, recalling Data's Ode to Spot she'd come across during a very memorable day. "You could work on something whenever you have the inspiration." That's how creativity works, at any rate.

"One of my hobbies is theatre," she continues, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she speaks, keeping most of her attention on her cup. "I'm an actor and playwright in my spare time. Have you ever given that any thought?" Either the acting or the playwright part, she means. She thinks something along those lines might give him something to do, especially if she's here long enough to get her acting troupe going again.

[fishermansweater]

He'd known his place in Panem.

He hadn't liked it. He'd tried to change it, for Annie's sake, so she could be safe. For his own, because he'd been Snow's personal toy for so long he didn't know how to be anything else. He could try to be a fisherman, could pretend at being a sailor. Could even tell himself he was those things. But what, really, is he? A mentor, complicit in the annual Games. And, as much as Annie may hate the word, a whore for the Capitol.

"It's not really an option where I'm from," he says, the tone easy, offhand, though internally he's guarded as he says it.

He gives a dry half-smile. "I've always been good in the spotlight, though."

He'd been the star of his Games even before he'd entered the arena. The one everyone was talking about for his charm and charisma and looks.

[ethnobotany]

"Well, it is here," Beverly says firmly. "Or it should be. I don't really know anyone else who would start up something like this, but perhaps... when I'm feeling a little more myself, I can get it started. Then I would happily see which part you would be good for."

Assuming he doesn't protest her pushing and prodding too much. Even if he does, she's quite good at getting people to work with and for her, especially where theatre is concerned.

"Sound good? And if you know of anyone else who might be interested, please do let them know. The more people interested, the better."

[fishermansweater]

He's a liar, a performer: a seducer for the Capitol, an earnest teacher for his tributes, a desperately wanton sex god for his patrons. Sometimes, he thinks the biggest lie of all is the fisherman's son he plays in District Four, the role he'd been raised for until he went to the Academy to learn to kill for his district.

His head tilts a little to one side.

He could be a good actor, maybe. He's handsome, charismatic, good with crowds and people. Once, he'd even enjoyed the spotlight. Still does, sometimes, when he can separate it from what it's brought him to.

"What do you get out of it?" he asks. "I mean, I don't like to be suspicious, but strangers don't tend to offer me things out of the goodness of their hearts."

[ethnobotany]

Finnick's entire statement catches her off-guard, makes her wonder, even after living in a place like Zelien for weeks on end, what sort of horrific world he comes from to think something like that. A pause follows his statement, not because she's thinking about what she wants, but because she's considering how to explain her idealistic views to someone who so obviously has never had much good in his life.

"I like having a lot to do. You'll be doing me a favor in return," she answers honestly, fixing him with another studious gaze, as though she's trying to figure him out. "But even if I hadn't thought to give myself a lot to do, I would still make the offer. You might not be used to people offering things to help, but that's exactly what I do."

So he better get used to it because she'll be giving him that more often than he might like.

[fishermansweater]

Once again, those lazy green eyes have a keen gleam of hidden intellect in them as Finnick watches her. If this were District Four, he'd be less inclined to be suspicious: there, there is the bond of the people who survive together against what the Capitol do to them and there's the relationship the people have with their Career tributes and victors. They know that Finnick, like the others, trained and volunteered in part to protect their children, that his victory brought a year of better food, that his winnings do their part to support the small traders in the city.

Even in District Four, though, he'd question it. He'd question it from anyone but a friend, and that means anyone but the handful of victors he's close to and the crew he sometimes sails with.

That's the thing about being famous all over Panem: people everywhere want their piece of him, and with the reputation he's acquired as a result of the act he's been forced to maintain, he knows well enough what that means.

"Keeping you entertained." There's something flat, not quite right, in his tone, though it's subtle enough to almost miss. He glances away, long lashes drooping across his eyes for a moment, before he nods.

The concept that he can be of assistance by helping keep her from being bored is, at least, a familiar one, though if it sounds more like the Capitol than he cares to tell her, that's unsettling.

"And that's the only favor you'd ask in return?"

[ethnobotany]

In any other situation, it might be funny. That he would even come to that particular conclusion with her is so beyond outrageous it might be amusing. Just not right now.

It might help if she knew that was where his mind went. She doesn't, though. All she knows is that in the course of a minute, she's managed to offend him somehow. The only way she knows is the emphasis he puts on the word "favor." Something clearly isn't right here. Unfortunately, she's in no frame of mind to try to correct it.

"I don't generally ask for anything in exchange for something. This has nothing to do with my entertainment. I like plays. If you'd rather not be part of one, you don't have to be," she says, deciding to go the route of sudden stage fright rather than assuming something else. "I won't force you to do anything you don't want. That isn't the point. Plays, hobbies... They're supposed to be fun. No pressure."

Normally, she would have an easier time of reassuring someone. Normally, she wouldn't have just come back from the hell of Zelien to a starship and time that are no longer her own. Right now, this is as comforting as she can be, though she is trying.

[fishermansweater]

I won't force you to do anything you don't want.

He's heard those words before, most often as a lie. Because they'd been so arrogant, so convinced he must want them, though he'd been forced to their sides by nothing less than fear for the people dearest to him, though he'd never even touch them of his own will. And they lavish him with gifts and goodwill, except they were never really gifts, they were apologies for outrages that could never be forgiven.

His expression as he looks at Beverly is smooth, showing no sign of the scrambling for purchase going on in his thoughts. He's known a few people who might make an offer to help him keep busy for the sake of it, like the crew he works with sometimes back in the district, but even they get his skilled hands to work nets and lines and make their task easier in return for their indulgence.

Doing something because it's fun can be equally strange as a consideration. Of course, the victors often have nothing to to but entertain themselves, but an invitation to join in on someone else's fun rarely comes for the sake of that fun, usually for the sake of the prestige of the victor's company.

She could well be genuine, but if that's the case, he's not sure how to take it, wariness throwing up a shield around him instead of letting him accept.

"I'll think about it," is what he eventually says, glancing away from her.

[ethnobotany]

If Beverly knew Finnick's thoughts, she would be sure to word everything differently, to use her knowledge and kindness to convince him otherwise. As it is, she can't possibly know and it won't be until much later that she receives even the smallest of hints about how horrific his life really has been. Right now, she can only nod once in response to his words, deciding that this is all she can ask for.

"It's your choice. The offer will always stand." But whether he believes it of her or not, she will never, ever force him into anything, especially not what he thinks she means. She never would. That just isn't in her nature. Now, though, she's getting the feeling that she should be elsewhere. Whatever Finnick is imagining she is or wants, he needs time without her. And she still needs to cope with her own horrors.

"But," she says slowly, offering him a tight-lipped smile, "I think I should be going now. It was good talking to you." She would add her typical ending of hoping to see him again, but somehow she doesn't think that is quite the best thing to say right now. So she leaves it where it is and begins to gather what little she had on the table.

[fishermansweater]

He's not looking away from her for long, but when he looks back, his eyes are half-lidded, less of the cautious curiosity he'd shown earlier visible behind the mask of one of the Capitol's most sought-after heartthrobs.

"I'll remember it."

It's not an idle assurance: he does mean it, even if it's not necessarily in the way Beverly might think. He'll remember the offer was made, and he'll watch, and he'll see what other moves, if any, she makes.

He's not beholden to anyone here. He has to remember that, as hard as it is. He's here, and Annie's here, and she is, as far as she can be, safe, at least from Snow's reach.

"You too," he says, a smile equally tight pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Have a nice day."