ten_fwd | Gym

Current Location: Deck 12, Gymnasium

Entry tags:

Gym - OTA

There was a time when Annie was in a gym at least six days out of seven. Ages eleven to sixteen, during her time at the Career Academy (a slightly grandiose name for quite a glorified school club, but it wasn't until Annie was a victor herself that she recognized the self-depreciating humour in the name). Before school and after school, training and training and training. After that, when she was washed out, no gyms, but she kept up the physical activity - and exceeded it, fishing being what it is. As a victor, she ran most mornings, or swum. Worked out. Sparred with Finnick. She'd noticed if she didn't, her mind got worse, her fits of hysteria (anxiety attacks, Beverly had called them) more frequent.

But it's been six months since she's done anything properly physical regularly. When her mood's been stable, she's turned the holodeck into a running track, but that hasn't been nearly anything like five or six days out of seven.

She's twitchy, which goes a way to explain how she winds up in the gymnasium, trailing her fingers over the bo staffs in their rack. She'd been good at spears in the Academy, and although the idea of stabbing now makes her uneasy, she's still good at wielding a staff. She can get her fiancé (tall, built, twice her size and lethal) on his back.

Annie picks up one of the staffs and hefts it, giving it an experimental twirl. It's well-balanced, and she smiles, quiet and shy and delighted.

But despite that delight, and how practically she's already dressed (boots, trousers, simple blouse under her loose jacket, hair braided), she doesn't make any further movements towards any of the practice mats.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She'd noticed Finnick's roommate when she came in. But he'd seemed busy. Not that she's avoiding him, she's actually been quietly planning on how to summon up her courage to get to know him better. Somewhere where Finnick isn't being protective at her, isn't drawing attention back to himself to allow her to slip away: after five years of walking as a team, they do it almost automatically now.

So, instead, she'd occasionally glanced over and assessed. Some of the moves were the fancy things she'd seen here, but he'd seemed more efficient than some of other folk. Training for a purpose. It's something she can understand.

Not that she notices him walking over. She'd gotten somewhat lost in thought, and so she startles a little when Steve speaks.

"Um," Annie starts, which is fairly normal for her interactions with people. She's shy to Finnick's slick, the unpolished district woman next to his stylish socialite, right down to how she speaks with a much thicker version of their Mexican-Texan hybrid of an accent.

Then she smiles, lowering the staff and letting it hang loosely by her side. The smile is still shy, but not quite so startled. Confused, though, and that's clear from the faint crease between her eyebrows. "I'm fine. Did, uh. Did I not look it?"

With her initial reaction, Steve thought that maybe he shouldn't have interrupted her. He'd gotten the impression that Finnick hadn't been eager for them to meet, and perhaps there was a reason for that Steve didn't know about. After all, the world they were from sounded pretty rough and...

Then she smiled and he realized that maybe he'd just caught her off-guard. Returning the smile, Steve shrugged as his eyes first moved over the gym, taking note of who else was present, before looking back at Annie.

"More like your thoughts were some where else."

"Ohhhh," Annie says slowly, mouth tilting at that. "Yeah. I do that some- Actually, I kinda do that a lot."

She hates it, but the ways she has of trying to make her concentration better, the swimming and running and surfing, aren't around in ways she trusts to try and help. Working out in her room isn't the same, and she forgets.

Steve scans the room and she knows that look, too. She does it herself, usually. Quick, assessing, automatic. It's reassuring, in an odd way.

But then, Annie's a Career. Something of a terrible one, and she knows that training is a neutral thing of itself, but at least when people are trained she knows something of what to expect.

"I didn't interrupt your training, did I?"

Steve offers a tentative smile, not really sure what to say. It does make him wonder more about the world she's come from and what she's been through. He wonders, but he won't ask unless she opens the conversation up first.

"Nope." Steve genuinely smiles at her question with a small shake of his head. "Just burning off some excess energy. Seems I have too much of that and not enough of things to keep me occupied."

He shrugs, and looks around again, this time at the equipment. It's a pretty well equipped gym, and he's found and regularly utilizes the running track as well. Still, he misses the water.

"Too bad we don't have access to an ocean up here though. I could really use a swim," he says with a shy smile but thinks maybe she'll understand. Then he looks at the staff in her hand. "Am I interrupting your workout? I could..." His hand comes up and points over his shoulder back at the bag.

The tentative smile gets an unconscious tension, but it fades as he continues talking to her normally. No pity, no eggshells beyond just normal not-quite-strangers on a strange, strange ship.

She can deal with that.

And it's not as if she disagrees with him: too much energy, nothing productive to do to burn it off.

"Ocean?" Annie asks then, surprised. Then, cautiously pleased, "You...live next to it? This is the longest time I've ever, ever spent inland. Or. Well. You know what I mean. Not living on the coast. They got the holodeck for swimming, but. Not the same."

Even if she trusted it, it's not the same.

"Yeah, I'm from Hawaii. It's an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." Steve's smiles but it's probably clear that he misses home. "Where I live the ocean's basically my backyard so I used to start my day off with a swim. Seems weird not doing that now..."

Quiet a moment he thinks about home. It had taken him sixteen years to finally find one of those. A place where there are people who truly care about him and he felt he belonged. Not even two years later and he's here and not there with them. Maybe it's just not meant to be.

Pulling himself from those thoughts he shrugs and focuses back on the here and now.

He nods, understanding what she means. Forgetting that he wasn't going to ask and that she may not want to talk about her home, he asks, "I take it you swim then? Fish? Surf?"

Tilting his head he frowns slightly. "Holodeck? What's that? And why is it not the same?"

"Yeah, I used to live on the Pacific coast, too," Annie says, for a moment actually cheerful. Someone knows the same ocean. A different part of it, sure - she has no idea where the 'middle' of the Pacific might even be - but the same ocean. A type of beach.

Her grin turns her rather ordinary face lovely. "We're fisherfolk, me and Finnick. Grew up on the docks, in the water. Surf's not great where we are, though. Gulf of Panem. Uh. I guess you'd know it as Gulf of Mexico? But it's better than nothing."

The grin fades at the mention about the holodecks. "It's. Virtual reality. Bunch of rooms, go in, call up a program. And it's like you're...doin' whatever it is you programmed it to do. Feels right. Smells right. But I, uh. Don't quite trust it. Not completely."

"Yeah?" He grins, happy to find she knows where he's talking about and they have something in common they can relate to. "Best surfing in the world in the Pacific."

"Personally I can't imagine living landlocked on the mainland. There's nothing better than getting up every day and having the water there to greet you." Steve smiled and shrugged. "Or sitting on it's beaches after a long day to unwind and enjoy a beer."

When Finnick had mentioned his home world and how bad it was, Steve had assumed that his home was a different home than the one he knew. With Annie knowing the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, even by a different name, he realizes that it's in fact the same world. Carefully he asks, "You're from the United States?"

"It's never quite the same though is it? I've done some training with Virtual Reality and while I'm sure it's improved from what I know..." He shrugs, "You know that it's not real and it's only really good for grasping the basics."

"Dawn on the ocean," she offers. "I mean, I used to work on fishing crews. Started on my momma's shrimp boat when I was kid. You're already on the water when the sun comes up. And it's...amazing."

The beer comment is accurate, though. It's not as if fishing is an easy, safe job.

"Uhhh...Hmm. Not exactly?" Annie thinks for a moment. "Best we can work it out, we're from what used to be Mexico. Mexico, United States of America, and Canada, that's all one country now, Panem."

She nods. "It's better than nothing, and it feels really real. But I can program the wind speed. Not the same."

Nothing compares to dawn on the ocean, Steve would agree and smiles at the thought. "Shrimp eh? I have a friend back on the island who would love to talk with you. He's got a shrimp truck on the beach." Steve chuckles. "I had no idea there were so many ways to cook shrimp prior to meeting him."

The smile fades as he wonders how that happened. He wonders, but he's not sure he really wants to know. Still, he needs to make sure he's not misreading things and she seems okay with the questions so far...

"So, you'd be from my future then?" His voice is slow and tentative, careful not to upset and watching her reaction closely. "From what Finnick mentioned... It doesn't sound like a very nice place...?"

"Oh." He thinks about that for a moment. "So you need someone else to program it so you've got some natural surprises once you get up on the board?"

There are many, many, many ways, Steve. Not that Annie knows all of them, restrictions on what they were allowed to eat being what they are.

"I think with the holodecks, I need to reread the manual, there has to be a better way..."

But, no, she was ignoring his previous question, and that's rude. And it's not as if she and Finnick have normal reactions to things, even as far as the Displaced go, so Annie sighs a little and backtracks.

"The future," she says. "Or...a future, anyway. I don't think it's this universe, the Federation doesn't seem like it'd let what happened to us happen to Earth here."

She glances away, her sea-green eyes dark for a moment as she thinks of how to explain. When she glances back, her voice is briefly sing-song. "The seas rose, countries fell. We're taught that Panem's the only place left."

Then her mouth twists, wryly.

"It's illegal to speculate otherwise. And. No. It's not a very nice place."

Surprise, followed by disbelief, and then intrigue passes over Steve's features. "There's a manual?"

It's not lost on Steve that Annie doesn't want to answer the question. He could kick himself for prying, especially after he said he wasn't going to do that.

Crossing his hands across his chest as she speaks, he nods curtly when she's done. He hates that the future of any version of Earth ends up being such a place. Isn't that what he's spent half of his life trying to fight against?

"I'm sorry," he says, both for asking and her living conditions back home. And he truly is. He doesn't know the full situation, and he's not going to ask more but he won't turn her away from talking if she wants to, but if he could change it for her, for them, he would.

Changing the subject a bit, he latches onto something else she's said. "This," he waves a hand to indicate where they are, "they have an Earth as well? I was..." He frowns slightly. "I guess I don't really know what I thought, but I didn't think..." He can't get his mind quite wrapped around what he means or what he's trying to say. The idea of being in the future and of multiple worlds is still very new.

His apology gets a smile, small and tight. If before she grinned enough light up her face, this expression turns her eyes dark. But it's a smile, a silent thank you for just apologizing and moving on.

Horror isn't something she's used to dealing with in regards with her world.

"They have a manual. And...yeah. They have an Earth. Got the whole solar system, and...all the systems around the stars we could see. And a whole bunch more besides. It's...

Weird. Being back in a past. I mean. I'm pretty sure this never happened for my Earth. It's enough to give you a headache."

"Yeah, being in the future gives you one too." He looks around the room, but he's thinking of the ship in general. "Where I'm from, many people would love for this to be a reality but I'm not so certain this is the path we were headed on."

He shrugs. "I never really thought about any of this before. It's all very... science fiction. Multiple Earths, being in the future, or past... Kidnapping aliens. But hey," Steve offers her a small smile, "at least we have a well equipped gym right?"

It all still seems very surreal to him.

She doesn't ask what path he thinks his world is headed towards. Too heavy a subject, and also, to a certain extent, if his world winds up hers, she doesn't want to know. The people in the past fucked things up so badly the seas roses, countless people died, and all that's left is Panem.

"At least that," she says, and smiles back. A little. "But. What's science fiction?"

"What's science fiction?" He parrots with a smile.

Steve thinks about that a moment before answering further. Several looks pass over his features as he gathers his thoughts - amusement, contemplative, wonder, more amusement.

Clearing his throat he says, "Well, before coming here for me it was space ships, time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes, life on other planets... That sort of thing. Basically anything that you can imagine but can't explain scientifically pretty much falls into science fiction. Being here though pretty much blows most of it out of the water. Except for maybe the supernatural part..." He looks unsure. "Maybe."

She watches him as she talks, and it's one of the few occasions where she keeps her eyes on his face for any length of time. Not that her eyes are really showing anything of what she's thinking, although the faint smile suggests it's at least not anything terrible.

It's not.

It's wistfulness over all the ideas he's talking about, all the other possibilities that were allowed to be read, written about, dreamt of. Alternate worlds, where things happened differently, not as a fact just as an idea.

What if things were different.

What she actually says, though, is a faintly teasing, "Not really something you were interested in?"

"Sure, when I was a kid, I suppose," Steve says with a smile and shrug. "As I grew up though I got more into sports and less into sitting still long enough to read a book or watch a movie."

Steve was always much more of an active child. When he and his sister were young their father enjoyed reading to them but it didn't take long before that was more of a father / daughter thing. Steve couldn't sit still long enough. Instead his Dad had gotten him into sports to help burn off all that excess energy.

Pausing, he doesn't want to ask something that reminds her of her home world, but he's still curious to find out her opinion. Instead he phrases his question for the present. "How do you find being out here, among the stars?"

"Books aren't that common where I'm from. Expensive, you know? So, when I was little kid, in a little town...mostly, we just listened. Fisherfolk are great ones for tellin' stories. But at night, or on Sundays. Rest of the time, we're too busy."

Until she won the 70th Hunger Games, and had nothing really much to do. Her book-buying rapidly became A Thing.

(But not as much as Windlass Ward. The man practically lives in a library. Useful to borrow things from, though, and she can always give him her book lists when it's his turn to mentor.)

Steve's question makes her pause.

"I. It's. Strange, I guess. Nothing I could have ever imagined. I just really wish I had a window in my quarters. I could sit there and watch the stars for hours. I never expected it to be so clear, you know? Without the air. The technology, it's mostly what's in the Capitol. A bit more high-tech, but it's not strange. The ship's strange. Wonderful."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gym - OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject