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]

You know what one of the advantages of having a habitually unsettled gaze? You can look for cameras and bugs without it being out of character. Annie rocks back a little on her heels and glances around the room, much as she has been doing on and off through-out the conversation.

"Depends if that's their purposes," she comments, although her voice is softer. "They don't quite know what to do with us, so. They could be making up things as they go along, too."

The Capitol would hate her thinking like that, but she grew up on an ocean that regularly made clear it was more powerful than any human government or machine, and she survived an arena where the gamemakers made some very, very big mistakes.

[engineermage]

"Yeah. Maybe. But I've been looking at their records and that prime directive thing has been around for years." Kale shrugged. "Once I get the computer to like me enough, I'm going to get into the classified stuff and see what's up."

Her gazing is noticed. Which is what you get from being trained from a young age to notice these things. However, it's not mentioned, because mentioning these things makes people wary around you. And if they're wary around you then they won't give off as much information.

Kale rocked back on his heels and pushed a few buttons.

[treadswater]

"No, that's not what I meant, um-"

Then she stops, cocks her head a little. Watches him.

Then watches Trever.

And gaze back.

"Like you enough?"

[engineermage]

"I'm a technomage. My knack is, among other things, to talk to technology without having to use an interface like the normal people do and make it do what I want. The ship is very complex though, I've never seen anything like it, so it's taking me time to work my way into her systems," Kale said. "I call that making friends."

[treadswater]

She thinks she's starting to get used to this place: Kale's statement only makes her blink. But, then, she's been here for six moths, and saw what Trever could do with magic. Saw teleporting cats, and she's still not sure how, exactly, her roomate manages to weave baskets, and not to mention just being here at all.

So, all she says is, "Oh."

And then.

"Do you buy her flowers, first?"

[reincarnshaman]

Trever started cracking up as soon as she said that.

He started laughing so hard that he had trouble breathing.

[treadswater]

Annie's expression is complicated: she smiles, at first, pleased if a little startled at the laughter. But people have spent a lot of time laughing at her, mocking her, so the smile falters.

But.

Trever's been nothing but decent to her. Treating her as if she were normal.

So the smile comes back.

"It'd only be polite."

[engineermage]

From the good nature rolling of the eyes Kale is doing, it's clearly he almost sort of finds Trever's reaction funny. In that "I'm going to strangle my brother later but I'm not going to do it right now because there's witnesses and I don't want to have to deal with getting rid of two bodies" sort of way. They have a very loving relationship.

"It's not quite like that," Kale said, glaring at his brother, "It's more like trying to tame an animal. It starts off not trusting you and I have to make it trust me. While it takes a bit longer than perhaps normal hacking, the upside of it is that I don't need to be at a terminal to access information and once she trusts me, she'll pretty much always trust me."