Gym - OTA

[treadswater]

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.

Comments

[treadswater]

Her gaze had dropped sometime during his brief...not quite rant, but something like it, and it still doesn't quite return. Partly, it's just a shy woman's response to someone else's frustration, but partly, it's simply that she has a hard time meeting people's eyes for long. She has to look at other things, or gets too uncomfortable that she might be staring.

"It's all right," she says, although she's still frowning, a little. "I wasn't, um. Asking because of anything formal."

(She needs help. She knows she does. She's tired of being crazy, but not asking yet. Not without researching and double-checking what she finds.)

"I'm just. Here's very different from home. The... Contexts of everything. References. Attitudes. Motivations. So. It makes sense."

For a moment, Annie is tempted to add, and don't worry, I could give you plenty to do, but she probably couldn't do it as a joke and it's not very funny because it's true. Instead she laughs, the sound small and breathless.

"Okay. Well. Holodeck, you said?"

[chaotica]

By way of confirmation, he gestures for her to precede him through the door.

"You didn't say your name," he remarks, once they're out in the hallway. It's not actually pushing for her to give it. Could be that she doesn't like going by a name, or that names work differently where she comes from. He's seen alien races that separate the human concept of names out into designations and indications - ways to refer to the person, and ways for that person to refer to themselves, for instance.

[treadswater]

Annie doesn't particularly like walking in front of people she doesn't know, not outside crowds, but it's a social politeness, even in her world, and she's used to just rolling with it.

As soon as she's through the door, she stops and waits for him, and as they walk, she keeps parallel with him. Or, sometimes, a step or so behind.

"I. It's Annie Cresta," she says, debating if she should explain further. "Forget to introduce myself sometimes. Um, though."

There's something that could be a smile.

"You didn't say your name, either."

It's a gentle poke, curiosity more than anything else, both as it the name and if he'd supply a reason for not giving it.

[chaotica]

"Hugh Cambridge." He lets her fall into a position she's comfortable with. If it means he's leading the way, very well. His stride is confident and maybe a little quick; he's not particularly worried about her keeping up. "Though, in my case, I fail to introduce myself because I think little pleasantries are an enormous waste of time, and it's a genuine possibility that I'd find any given acquaintance too boring to bother."

There does come a point, however, when knowing someone's name is quite handy. It's a way of filing all of his observations together in his mind. Almost a trigger word.

"Do they have dance, in your world?"

[treadswater]

She keeps up, and doesn't particularly seem like she's working hard to.

"Oh. I see."

She does, too. That attitude requires confidence, intelligence, and enough security in his station in life that offending people doesn't really factor in. Her mind supplies rich, connected, talented as reasons, and arrogance. It could be misplaced, but it might not, too.

Not that Annie says any of that. She just thinks it, and uses their journey to give herself time to settle. Try to settle. The staff in her hand helps, giving as it does something else for her to focus on (the weight of it, the feel of the wood against her skin, and the security of a weapon even though she knows she's probably never going to use it as such). She might be walking at a brisk pace, but she makes sure she takes enough air in, enough air out.

It helps. A little. She still feels like her nerves are scratching at the underside of her skin, but the skittishness has died down to a low simmer.

"We do. Got a few kinds, actually. Depends which district you're from. Balls are a bit fancy, though. If that's where 'ballroom' is from."

It might not be. Language, she's finding, does some funny things.

[chaotica]

"Mm? Ah, yes, it is. English, then." Not a universal translator situation. "So you're human. An Earth-variant, or something else?" It's half asked to himself, half to her, and he doesn't really pause to let her answer before he launches into the explanation.

"Yes," he says, "but here I'm referring to ballroom in a more general sense, as a category of dance involving two people as partners. Usually there's an element of formal dance to it, but it can contain many different styles. You'd be shocked at the profusion that it can contain, in fact, given that the last two centuries have expanded the category by adding what aliens can do."

[treadswater]

"Earth-" she starts, but lets it go as he keeps talking. She doesn't really feel like getting into what happened to her Earth, about why she's from District Four instead of Mexico.

"I know how to dance with a partner," she says then. A few ways, too, a lot of them involving a ruffled skirt and boots that click sharply against the floorboards. But not every woman wears a skirt, even to dances, and there are variations for those without.

"Aliens dance, too?"

[chaotica]

"Not all of them." Aliens being a very large category. "Are you curious about alien races?" He's really asking. He wouldn't really blame anyone in a vast and new situation wanting to shut down, especially at first. He, personally, would be ravenously curious, but then, that's why he joined Starfleet. It's just a part of who he is.

[treadswater]

"Yes."

An easy answer. Or maybe not so much, because then she seems to add something, then stops.

"I haven't... We've mostly read about them, here. My fiance and I? Since we got here. It seemed... Important, to know what was going on."

A nicer way of saying that Annie and Finnick are paranoid, and distrusting, and needed a couple months just to believe that the people they saw weren't Capitol fashionistas, but people who weren't human at all. Once they accepted that, learning about those they ran into here seemed prudent.

"But it's not like, well." Annie stops to try and rephrase. "A lot of the differences are cultural. So, it's kind of the same with the human folks from this universe, too. It's all different."

[chaotica]

"Hmm," he says. A sound of slightly increased interest. "I'm actually a bit impressed. It takes some people a long time to realize understanding a culture's point of view is the first step to understanding an individual's, and that most alien cultures can be compared and understood with a bit of empathy." He's not stating with precision what he really means, which is a concept that doesn't translate well into words. Cultural understanding starts with a sort of initial burst of comprehension, a realization that they are like me, only different. It's how someone learns to reach outside of their own culture, their skin, their life.

[treadswater]

At last, someone who uses empathy in a way she understands: not a power, but a concept and a feeling. It makes her feel a little bit warmer towards the man.

A little bit.

She's still not entirely sure what she thinks as a whole.

"I guess," Annie says, slowly. "It seemed logical to me. But." She doesn't want to explain her world. She doesn't. She's sick of it. But this, at least, is nothing to do with horror. "My, my country is made up of a number of different districts. And then the Capitol. We all have a bit of our own culture. If you just extrapolate from that, and..."

This time, her expression is wry.

"Things are very different here. Culturally. So. Again, you extrapolate. Maybe most people just don't have to try and understand, so they don't."

[chaotica]

It seemed logical because it is logical. It takes logic of a different, slightly bent kind to insist that the only valid point of view comes from inside one's head.

He reaches the holodeck here, and pauses before the control panel.

"Know anything about jazz?" he asks, an eyebrow quirked. "Swing?"

[treadswater]

"They might be called different things by my time," Annie points out. "Or. Got lost."

Seas rose, countries fell, and all of that.

"So, no. Not by those names. I know harabe. That's one of the District Four dances. Although that's probably changed to, if you had it."

There's a certain amount of resignation in her tone: working out that different cultures are different isn't hard when so very many of your bearings have been taken away.