thearena | [Open] Roam if you want to

Entry tags:

[Open] Roam if you want to

Who: Clara Murphy & YOU!
What: Clara slips out of the house to go exploring.
When: Week 2 (maybe later than that too?)
Where: All over!
Notes: Possible language? Potential violence?

01 - Main Street
Clara's pretty certain that her and Alex weren't the only ones to lay claim to one of the buildings in town. Thinking otherwise would be naive at best, and could get her killed at worst. Which doesn't mean that there aren't some that haven't already been sacked or claimed, and if she's lucky she'll find one of them and some supplies to add to their stash. Brandishing the knife that had been dropped in front of their house with her name on it the morning before alongside a flashlight that she's clutching in her left hand, she approaches what looks like an abandoned drug store, hoping that maybe there's still something of use inside.

02 - Amusement Park
Clara had always liked amusement parks. The lights, the colors, the sounds, the smell of funnel cake and cotton candy. They always made her think of going to the carnival with her family as a kid, or dates with Alex, or the proud look on David's face when he won a goldfish or a stuffed animal almost as big as he was. What they definitely never made her think of was thick fog with the skeletal figures of rides emerging with every step or the giant, terrifying clown face that obviously served as the entrance to a fun house. Hearing some sort of footsteps near by, she climbs over the wooden counter of a game stall and ducks down, hoping whoever (or whatever) it is goes away soon.

03 - Orchards
Suspicious as she may be of taking whatever came from the Arena itself compared to what was dropped in for them as gifts, there are certain creature comforts that Clara's missed from home. Ones that aren't completely obvious, like fresh fruit. So her discovery of an orchard makes her wary, which she ignores in lieu of the fact that there's a peach tree right in front of her and one's practically within her reach.

04 - Choose Your Own

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The drug store is not what Punchy was expecting. Having grown up in an era of CVS stores, he's used to pharmacies also stocking a supply of sodas and gummi worms, his favorite go-to snack foods. Finding nothing but some old peppermints that practically turn to dust in his mouth is, to put it lightly, a bit of a bummer.

He hasn't eaten in nearly a week.

He's taking a catnap when someone jiggles the front door handle. He's never slept deep or long, so almost immediately he's on his feet, hair smushed over to one side from the way he was cuddling with a folding chair. He has no weapon but his fists, but that's the way he likes it.

When he reaches the glass pane of the front door, he's half-certain that the glow of Clara's flashlight, combined with the way it catches her hair, is the sign of an angel. He cracks open the door, a big shit-eating grin on his freckly face.

"'Ey, shawty."

Edited 2014-05-29 02:09 (UTC)

There were a number of things Clara had expected to find in the abandoned shop. Medicine, little hard candies like the ones her grandmother used to give her to try to keep her quiet during mass, maybe, if she was astoundingly lucky, toilet paper. What she wasn't expecting was to have the door open before she could even touch the handle.

And what she definitely wasn't expecting was to see Punchy grinning at her on the other side of the door.

"Hi Punchy." Shit-eating grin, meet the exasperated eyeroll. "I already told you, my name's Clara."

"I know your name. I's just paying you a compliment." Punchy sails on past the point of Clara's request and happily lands on the comfortable side of obliviousness. It's as if he doesn't see the eyeroll at all.

"Just so you know, it's fucking rank in here." Honestly, the stench wafting from the pharmacy could cause fainting, hallucinations and probably a life-long phobia of the smell of grease. "There's another one of them dead walkers in here. I been dissecting it."

And mostly just covering it with a tarp while he sleeps. It smells only slightly worse than his bedroom does from its natural combination of teen boy odor and Axe body spray.

"Where I come from people usually don't use 'shortie' as a compliment." Okay, maybe in other parts of Detroit, but not in the neighborhood she grew up in or the one that she and Alex had settled down in.

The slightest whiff of the stench makes her balk and focus on breathing through her mouth instead. "That's probably why it stinks," she chastises, sliding into that motherly I told you so tone that's barely popped out since she got to Panem. "Why are you dissecting it anyway?"

"I use shawty as a compliment. So there."

Punchy rolls his eyes. Of course that's why it smells. He isn't so stupid as to think that pharmacies tend to come with a natural eau de mort. He just figured that that was an acceptable sacrifice for the noble cause of knowledge. "Mofo ain't got no eyes, no nose, no ears. But he be tracking Tribs, so either he's got mad echolocation or he's got a mechanical tracker. And I want a tracker to find my homies."

She's so tempted to say something snarky about that, but she'll just bite her tongue and rolls her eyes. After all, there are more important things at hand.

Like, ew, dead walker...well, not walking, obviously. And wow, "mad echolocation" are not two words she'd even hear strung together, especially out of Punchy's mouth. "That's an interesting theory you've got going." Which is the closest to science speak she can really get. "Got any leads on how they're doing it, so far?"

"Not yet. Ain't found shit mechanical in it yet, which means I might be bussing on this. But with the fog up in my grill I ain't got options if I want to find my peeps."

He's given up on asking people if they've seen them. No one can really point to directions in this small town, what with the atmosphere making it so difficult to keep track of where they are, much less anyone else.

He gestures with a hand to the pantries of medicine in the pharmacy. "Gamemakers cleared house here. It's all empty or older than Rip Van Winkle's ballsack."

Clara actually understood most of that. She doesn't know if it's because Punchy's speaking something closer to what she understands from hearing while growing up in Detroit or if it's because she's starting to understand his own personal language. "That's a real shame."

And isn't that the letdown of...well, the day at least. "Everything? There aren't even bandages or gauze or cloths?"

Someone else joined her in jumping with the counter of the game, spear in hand.

Guy scurried back away from her slightly in surprise when he realized she was there, too, but rather than attacking, he held his finger up to his lips in a silent "ssssh," to let her know to be quiet.

He immediately jumped into a mime routine where he knelt, pointing in the direction of the counter to show that something was out there, and mimed something moving with lurching hand movements. Then he bared his teeth and chomped, as if he was a monster, before pointing back in the direction of the counter again.

There was a monster out there, one of the lurching human-like things with massive mouths filled with teeth.

The moment Clara realized who she was sharing her hideout with, she almost said It's you! Luckily her brain managed to kick in before the words could make it out of her mouth so that she wouldn't accidentally make it obvious to the thing that they were there. Instead her mouth was hanging open agape as she pointed at him, but better for her dignity to be slightly bruised than getting the two of them killed.

Though, if she was lucky, he may not have noticed the stupid look on her face as he acted out his explanation, which just got a nod from her. She'd encountered one of these things before, on her first night as she and Alex hid out in the house they had claimed. Hell, there was still broken glass on the front porch from the window it shattered.

"The back of the booth might be made of fabric," she whispered as she pulled her still folded knife out of her jacket pocket as she tried to think of how the booths at the carnival she used to go to were built, "If it is I can probably cut through it with this so we can escape."

Guy nodded, moving very slowly to check how far away the shape was in the fog. Then moved to the back of the booth and took out a knife he'd made from sharp metal scrap. The cut he made was slow so the shrrrrp from it was slightly more quiet, then he sniffed the air at the hole and peeked out to check and made sure it was clear.

He crawled through and held the flap aside so Clara could follow, constantly looking around to make sure nothing was creeping up on them.

Clara quickly followed him out and unfolded her knife once she was standing, just in case anything came up on them. Not that she didn't trust Guy (or was as skilled with a knife as him), but better safe than sorry. "I guess that's two I owe you," she said quietly, so as not to draw attention towards them, with a small smile.

"Not how it works," he whispered, trying to lead the way through the booths without leaving her side. He wanted to keep an eye on her at least out of the corner of his eye - you never knew who you could trust here, even if she seemed to be so new at all.

"You only owe me if you want to owe me. I'm not one of those people that feels being nice to someone is some kind of gift that has to be paid back. Even here."

It worked for him. People saw him as honest, honorable. He didn't do it for that purpose but it worked better at getting him favors and protection and shared supplies than being brutal ever would have.

"Well maybe I want to owe you," she replied as she followed him, sticking slightly behind him on purpose, just in case he suddenly decided to turn on her. "Where I come from, good people generally don't get what they deserve and I'm guessing it probably isn't that different here. Maybe I want to change that."

She stopped and glanced around, trying to figure out exactly where they were. She hadn't gone through much of the amusement park, considering she generally stuck with exploring the town itself, and this definitely wasn't a part of it she'd been to before. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

He liked how she talked, mostly because he felt the same way, about good people not getting what they deserve, about good people getting things they didn't deserve. That was why he did everything that did, quietly tried his best to help other people and offer them kindness.

"Don't talk about that too much," he said to her. "The helping people thing. They don't like that. It's okay to think it but try not to say it too much. They like to punish everyone but the nicer you are the more they want to see you break."

He was still sniffing the air slightly, eyes darting all around as they walked.

"And I know where we are but those things are swarming all over. It'll be better if we take it slow." That was why they were moving slowly and cautiously. There was no need to rush when quiet and stealth was more conducive to their survival. They were attracted to movement.

Clara gave him a nod and followed his lead. She didn't know what exactly sets these creatures off, but she'd already had one altercation with one of these things, and that was more than enough. Especially since last time it had taken three people to finally kill it, and one of the three happened to be a cyborg. But just two garden variety humans? She didn't like those odds, not one bit.

The silence and sneaking around gave her more than enough time to think about the other thing he said. It almost crossed her mind to ask what kind of people would enjoy watching decent people get pushed to their breaking point, but she already knew the answer to that: the same type of people who would take pleasure watching an ongoing string of death matches.

She wasn't sure if it was some weird basic instinct or from eight years of raising a somewhat overly adventurous son, but something up ahead was very much Not Right. She couldn't be sure if it was more of the creatures or a fellow tribute out for blood or just her mind playing tricks on her, and she didn't want to find out which one it was. "We should go to the left," she whispered.

Edited 2014-06-25 07:33 (UTC)

Clara had been careful to make sure that Alex didn't know that she was slipping out of the house while he was gone. Hell, the first time she had found the orchard, she fought the urge to bring any of the fruit home with her because she knew that, if she did, Alex would have given her so much shit for putting herself in danger. This time, though, she can point out that she didn't leave the house unprepared. She has the pack he grabbed back at the cornucopia to carry the fruit back and has her knife and some bugspray in her jacket pocket and her flashlight in hand.

By the time she gets to the orchard, she's dodged a couple of walkers and successfully managed to fend off one the dog-like creatures. There are trails on the ground, but she tries to not let that phase her. After all, there's only so much old canned food and delivered rations a person can deal with. Clara shrugs off the backpack and opens it up once she gets to an apple tree with low hanging fruit. She picks a few apples before stepping under the tree and looks up, noticing something scuttling above her, which makes her quickly retreat back to the outside of the tree as she closes the bag and swings it back onto her shoulders.

It's too late, of course. The spider's already seen her and is coming down from the tree. And against Clara's better judgement, she's running deeper into the trees instead of out into the open.

After his run-in with the basement, Alex learns to take it more carefully with his scavenging runs. He doesn't weigh the same anymore and these buildings are about ready to go. Last thing he wants is it be out there trying to find food and water and taking another swan dive. He might not get fished out the next time.

He gets back with some more pieces from the Amusement Park: scraps of metal, more boards to shore up the windows, stuff that he forgets about when he calls out "Clara?" and she doesn't reply. It's not a big house. Thank God there isn't any blood stains. No signs of struggle. She left on her own two feet.

Alex can't work out if he's scared or pissed or a mix of both that feels like it's trying to strangle him.

He steps outside as the fog presses in with a grey wall, his mind racing trying to figure out where she could've gone to. Alex tells himself she'd be crazy to go back to the Cornucopia. But she'd been talking about fruit, wishing she could find a good apple or orange, and he wonders if the Orchard might be a place to check. He's seen it from a distance, avoided it because he kept thinking of Tributes hiding in the trees. With his heart jumping in his throat, Alex books it for the Orchard, legs pumping.

He makes it there to the sound of someone running through the trees, something skittering and crackling among the branches. He sees the spider before he sees Clara; it's the biggest, ugliest spider he's seen and it's so big his mind goes blank for a second trying to compute. The flash of blonde hair jolts Alex back to action.

He reaches down, picks up a piece of rotting fruit, and chucks it at the spider. It'll get its attention, at the very least.

There are a lot of things that Clara's figured might kill her here. Things like those dogs she's heard off in the distance, one of those things that got into the house the first night, or another Tribute. Being eaten by a giant spider never really crossed her mind.

She wishes she could run faster, but she feels like something's weighing her down and it's taking much more effort than it should. She's been feeling that way lately along with being a lot more tired, and has assumed that it's the fog and this place getting to her somehow. The only other reason that she can think of would be the fruit, since it only started after she ate some the last time she was her, but that doesn't make any sense since it seemed totally fine. Hell, the apples she had picked a few minutes ago seemed fine too, other than the fact that the tree seemed to be housing the biggest spider she's ever seen.

Clara runs under another tree (that she can only hope doesn't have another spider) to try to evade it and loop back towards the edge of the orchard when she notices that it isn't pursuing her anymore. In fact, it's facing the other direction and is headed towards Alex.

Which begs the question, when did Alex even get here and, should they both survive this, how pissed is he going to be with her? She doesn't have very long to dwell on that, considering the fact that, yeah, she isn't being chased by Shelob's cousin with anger issues, but it's headed towards Alex and that is most definitely not good.

Maybe it isn't the smartest thing, but she pulls out her knife and unfolds it before chasing after the spider. Which probably won't do much, but at least she can try.

That is one big goddamn spider.

Weird the stuff that goes through your head when you sit up and go Jesus, I could really die today. The spider bearing down on him makes all the ones back home look like jokes, the joints and exoskeleton so big that they bypass that monkey part of his brain that’s hardwired to get squeamish. It’s just flat-out ugly. Like something puked it up.

“Clara, stop!” Alex catches sight of Clara coming his way instead of, say, climbing for the trees. “Don’t – ”

He gets cut off as the spider barrels into him, hitting his chest with enough force that he actually stumbles back, thinks he’ll make it and then goes down underneath the weight of the thing. It chitters, the mandibles or whatever they are flailing as if looking for a good place to sink its fangs into. Maybe it’s never run into a cyborg before. For once Alex is glad he’s trapped in this exosuit/chassis/what-the-hell ever, the visor down to protect as much of his face as possible. Saliva drips down, splatting on his chest. Something starts to sizzle.

Alex has a sinking feeling that’s him. Of course the spider’s also acidic.

He manages to get one arm wedged underneath the spider’s mouth, trying to frantically pinpoint where Clara is.

There are moments where Clara can be smart and perfectly capable of keeping her head clear and not let the distinct feeling that her heart's in her throat distract her. Moments where she is the picture of poise and rationality. Moments that remind her that, of the two of them, she's generally the one who doesn't go off half-cocked.

This isn't one of those moments. Not by a long shot.

By all rights, there should be a sane logical part of Clara's brain that's reminding her that Alex is covered head-to-toe in graphene armor and, while he may be in danger, he's in significantly less danger than she probably will be once the spider realizes that Alex won't be much of a meal (both in the sense that it'll probably be next to impossible for the spider to get through the armor and that, even if it did, there probably isn't very much of him left that's organic for it to eat, much as she hates to acknowledge that). And that, if Carlos was right, there really isn't that much of a reason to fear death here because they'll end up back in the Capitol, right as rain.

Of course, these thoughts don't really occur to her because there is a giant fucking spider on top of her husband. It's hard to think clearly when there's adrenaline shooting through the fog and cold that's sunk into her recently and the reason why is the only thing she can focus on. She only has enough time and forethought to acknowledge that, maybe, doing this uncovered is a bad idea and pulls the hood of her sweater up and tries to bunch the sleeves around her hands in an attempt to protect herself.

Moving as quietly as possible, she creeps towards where spider has Alex pinned and ducks underneath the creature before, with as much effort as she can put into it, she plunges her knife into the spider's underside before yanking it out and repeating the action.

The spider rears back, taking it]'s attention off Alex as she stabs it a third time. There's a terrible sinking feeling in Clara's stomach. She figured, from the beginning, that she never had a chance of winning this thing. She just never thought she'd end up being killed by a giant, angry spider.

At least, maybe, Alex still has a change winning this thing. "Alex, run!"

Ichor or blood or whatever it is the spider has inside it splashes as it jerks its body, dragging its abdomen across Clara's knife and making this chittering squeal sound that instinctively sets Alex's teeth on edge.

He manages to shove most of its weight off him, aware of Clara in that way you become hyper-aware of things when shit is going down. Adrenaline rush. It'd be relieving in a way to know he can still feel it if he wasn't worried about this thing killing the two of them. Shoving one of the legs off him, he ignores Clara's warning. He runs, she gets targeted, and she doesn't have this armor to protect her from the acid or the fangs. Like hell he's leaving her behind.

He reaches out without thinking about it.

Alex won't know later if it's him or the AI module reacting to a direct threat: his left hand shoots out, swiveling on its joint, and sinks its fingers into the narrow part where the head meets the abdomen. It squeezes mechanically, no tremble that a human would have, inevitable and steady, Alex throwing his weight forward. He doesn't expect to get any traction because the spider looks like it should weigh more than he does. He pictures his old self in his mind's eye. The reality is he weighs more than he's used to and instead of bouncing off the spider, he actually manages to shove it onto its side. The legs twitch and scrabble. More ichor wells up around his armored fingers, Alex shooting a desperate look at Clara.

"Knife!" He doesn't know if he means gimme the knife or stab it while it's down. All he knows is he won't be able to hold it down for long...

On some level, Clara's relieved that Alex decides to ignore her and doesn't run. And really, she didn't expect him to, but it was worth a shot. Except she's almost certain that this is going to end with one, or both, of them dead and she's pretty sure that she can't handle losing Alex again, even if she knows that he'll just be going back to the Capitol.

She's waiting for one of their inevitable deaths to come when Alex gets it onto its side and calls for the knife. Clara doesn't know why it takes a moment longer than it usually would for her to do anything (she pins it on the fact that the adrenaline rush is starting to ebb away and she hasn't been sleeping as well as she usually would as of late). Taking the utmost care to be sure that her hands are safely cocooned in the sleeves of her jacket, she plunges the knife in its tail-end and, putting all of her weight into it, drags the knife forward, trying to cut through the exoskeleton. While she's pretty sure that the knife's edge might be chipped and ruined by the time she's done cutting through it, it still works for the most part.

There are a lot of things she wants to tell Alex right now. That he was right and she should've stayed at the house. Or, in the same vein, that she's sorry that he had to come rescue her and she never meant to make him worry (because she knows him and it's another thing on a long list of things she feels like she needs to apologize to him for). Or that she's almost thankful that he's covered in armor because if he wasn't he'd probably be dead or badly wounded (again). Of course, saying any of those things over the sounds the spider's making right now are an impossibility if she wants him to hear her.

Instead, she walks past Alex toward the spider's front and, noticing something that resembles a vein, covers her face with a sleeve and stabs it, ducking out of the way of the spray of...blood or venom or whatever the fuck it is, only getting the sleeve of her jacket slightly sprayed in it (though not enough to soak through to her sweater or past it to the skin, thankfully). Once that's done, she starts to strip off her jacket with the now ruined sleeves so she can wipe the spider's saliva off his chest, and refolds the knife before pulling down the hood of her sweater.

The spider collapses, Alex feeling like he should be breathing hard. Mostly his heart races like it's from NASCAR and with the chassis, it feels somehow claustrophobic.

"Thanks." Alex releases his hand hold on the spider, letting it thud to the ground and ignoring the way that even though it's huge, it's still doing that disgusting leg curl that his brain is still instinctively going holy christ at even though he's stuff in some kind of armor. "It didn't get you, did it?"

Looking at her, his HUD sweeps the outline of her body in red and then begins ticking off biometric readings, whatever those are supposed to be. It comes back with "emotional distress" and "increased heart-rate" like those wouldn't be obvious. Clara just ran into a goddamn spider from a monster movie - who wouldn't be shitting bricks about it? His left hand comes up to cup her face, hesitates, and then gingerly touches Clara's cheek, the coolness of the graphene grazing her skin. She looks like she only got some of the jacket hit with the blood and it's not eating through her like the drool was. Clara's trembling, though, and even though he's touching her with a prosthetic hand, he can still feel how she's shaking.

He's never seen her like this. Alex remembers what she looked like when she was ramping up to propose and he used to think that was the most scared she'd ever been. It doesn't have a candle to the look on her face now.

There have been a number of times in her life Clara's been completely and utterly terrified. The first (and only, thankfully) time she had gotten into a car accident, proposing, walking down the aisle, finding out she was pregnant, finding out that she was going to have to have a C-section, almost any of the times Alex or David got hurt (especially if it meant having to go to the hospital), almost losing Alex, actually losing Alex, being told she'd have to go into a death match and knowing that David was alone in downtown Detroit...none of those compare to the way she feels right now. She isn't sure if she's going to cry or vomit or scream or do all three, which would be painfully embarrassing, doubly so if people were watching them right now.

It's the dumbest thing, but the moment his hand touches her cheek something in her snaps, breaking all her resolve to stay strong and steady and calm. She's always cried when she's too stressed, and this is one of those moments. Usually she'd try to make it not so obvious or try to cry pretty. But this isn't usual. Nothing about it is. She's pretty sure that there's both tears and snot and her eyes are bright red and starting to get puffy and there isn't a chance in hell she'll be able to hide it from him like she usually would because, nope, it's too late, his hand is on her cheek and he's looking down at her and, if she's completely honest with herself, she doesn't care that about him seeing her cry right now and is just so relieved that she didn't lose him again.

"I'm fine," Clara says in between ragged breathes. "How about you?"

Edited (icon!) 2014-06-24 10:49 (UTC)

"I'll live." Alex cracks on of those lop-sided smiles of his, worn at the edges. It looked almost alien on a face that had been burned to jerky only a few months ago.

He doesn't know how long and frankly, he doesn't care: from what Clara told him, it's a miracle he's even here today. Alex stands there, feeling useless as his wife's shoulders heave as she cries. Really cries. He rubs her back with his flesh hand (his "good hand", in his mind, because the other one is alien), whispering something like "it'll be okay" and "we'll work it out" and he doesn't know if he believes it. All Alex knows is he needs to convince Clara and he can worry about how much he believes his own BS later.

"Hey," Alex keeps his voice low, trying to aim for comforting but aware they're still near the tree line. If other Tributes didn't hear them, another one of those freak spiders might. "Hey, look. We'll get back to the house, okay? C'mon."

He protectively loops his arm around her back, glancing around at the fog as if daring the other Tributes to try their luck. After the damn spider, Alex feels like the rest of the Arena can't possibly be as bad.

Rosalind didn't trust the fruit, either.

Something about the whole setup was just terribly obvious - with everything as decimated as it was, peaches that just happened to all be ripe right about now were just too good to be true.

She was just a couple of trees away from Clara, holding one of the offending fruits to inspect it. Sniffing it. Breaking it open with her fingers. Evaluating whether anything about it was strange.

...But then she noticed she wasn't alone, and in lieu of being silent, she chose to speak up. Alliances could be made. Besides, the girl didn't seem so very tough at this distance.

"I wouldn't, if I were you. Something isn't right about these."

Clara probably wouldn't seem very tough at any distance. Not to say that, if push came to shove, she wouldn't be able to hold her own in a fight if it was brief and she was able to escape her opponent, but she wouldn't know the first thing to do and would probably be working off of instinct and instinct alone.

By the time Clara heard the other woman's voice, she had already picked the closest peach and had started cutting into it with her knife. "Nothing's right about this place," she remarked as she sniffed at the fruit to see if it smelled off. "It smells the way peaches smell back home."

"They smell the same," Rosalind agreed, approaching slowly and carefully. She still wasn't precisely about to drop her guard...but at least this appeared to be a civil conversation. "But it does seem a bit too easy, doesn't it? There just happens to be an orchard full of ripe fruit here?"

She frowned, tossing the peach she had been tearing apart herself aside.

"I don't quite trust it. It may well be a trap."

"It might be. Though, if you think about it, how boring would it be for the people watching if we all died of starvation? I mean, part of the reason we were all brought here was to put on a good show, right?" Clara looked up from the peach she was cutting into to look at the other woman before pulling one of the slices away from the pit and popping it in her mouth. It's completely undignified, and she'd definitely admit that, but a sound somewhere between a happy sigh and a small moan slipped past her lips. "It definitely tastes right. Do you want a slice?"

Rosalind was very, very hungry.

She almost visibly weakened at the knees at the sight of the girl eating the fruit with such enjoyment - but no. No, she didn't trust it. Shifting her stance into something more stubborn and proud, she crossed her arms, shaking her head just once.

"No, thank you. I still don't trust it." A beat. She needn't sound so standoffish, she supposed....

"...Besides, that one is yours. You've deemed that one safe, so...you eat it."

After spending most of the first week hungry, Clara had, by some stroke of luck, managed to attract a couple sponsors that had been willing to send her food. So by all rights, she didn't really need the fruit, but if she could do anything to ration out her food for as long as possible, she'd take it (and the fact that she had been pining for fresh fruit was a plus). And really, there was a world of difference between the dried fruit that had been sent to her as part of her rations (which only made her think of packing lunches for her son and made her heart ache all the more) and the peach that was leaking juice into her hand.

The way the woman was posturing herself was familiar to Clara, as if she recognized something of herself in the way she had set her shoulders and was putting on a facade.

"Oh I will. Or at least I will if you're totally sure that you don't want any of it."

Rosalind had been sent a little bit of food herself - but she had gone through the most of it by now, even with the strictest of diets. The sight of fresh fruit being eaten right in front of her was difficult to bear...but no. She was going to stick to what she believed - and she believed that something was very wrong here.

So she nodded sharply, lips set in a line.

"I'm certain. Nothing personal - but I just don't trust it."

"Alright then," Clara replied before popping another slice in her mouth. Maybe, if this were Detroit, she'd feel at least a little weird about eating in front of a complete stranger. Especially a stranger who had completely legitimate fears that there was something wrong with the fruit here. But this isn't Detroit and, despite this woman's fears, Clara can't help but be optimistic that the people running things would be considerate enough to give them a stable food source so they don't all starve to death and ruin the show.

"I'm Clara, by the way," she said once she had swallowed the peach slice and began cutting another slice from the fruit in her hand. She might as well finish it out here instead of put it in her pocket and hope it doesn't get her jacket too sticky.

Choosing to focus on examining the trees instead of watching the other woman eat, Rosalind moves about, not straying too far from Clara, but pointedly distracting herself.

"Mm. Rosalind Lutece. I'm relatively new to this mess." A beat.

"And I do mean mess. Why is it that - no matter the universe - people find a way to be terrible for entertainment?" Just musing, perhaps a little exasperation. Rosa had seen quite a bit of human nature's dark side...this was just another on the pile. Wasn't precisely a HEARTENING thing to see over and over again.

Clara considered cutting the rest of the peach into slices before deciding it would just be faster to just eat the rest of it off the pit. She was about to take a bite of the fruit when Rosalind's words really sunk in.

In her brief time in Panem, Clara had come to learn that vampires might be real, aliens definitely were, and that someone had the technology to drag people away from their homes. And, as much as she had wished it was all just a dream and had clung to that at first, it had really started to sink in that, no, this was real. But from the other woman's words, this wasn't exactly old hat for her. "Do you travel to different universes often?" Her voice was on the edge of joking, if only because she was completely out of her depth.

Rosalind didn't miss a beat in her response.

She looked straight at Clara, expression flat.

"I do. Or - I did, before I wound up here." There wasn't a trace of irony in her voice - in fact, there was a note of relief. She hadn't gotten to talk about any of this with anyone here yet, and...it was sort of reassuring.

"I have come here from a quantum superposition. Living everywhere. At once." A beat. "I may even have been to your universe."

"Huh," Clara responded. There really wasn't anything else she could think to say other than that. It's not the easiest thing to believe in, but at the same time, the people in charge here had the ability to pull people from different universes in so it really couldn't be that far fetched.

"So where do you consider home?" Admittedly, it could be seen as small talk, but at the same time, Clara's more than a little curious about what a world with the technology to allow travel into different universes would be like.

Home. A hollow laugh escaped the scientist, and she decided this was a good time to rest. Moving to the nearest tree, she slid down to sit below it, folding her legs neatly off to one side. Poise. She definitely had it.

"A city called Columbia. America. Well...technically above America. That bit was my doing." She reached up, shaking her hair down from its bun so she could re-tie it. "The precise year is...a bit fuzzy, honestly, given time had no meaning after the accident. Around the nineteen-hundreds, primarily."

Clara followed her lead and also sat down with her legs crossed, albeit without the grace and poise that Rosalind showed. At least she managed to not drop her peach or her knife while sitting, which is a plus in and of itself.

From the start of Rosalind's description, Clara assumed she was from the future. "The nineteen-hundreds? How does it stay afloat?" Considering, according to what she was taught in school, flight wasn't a thing until after 1903. "And what kind of accident? If you don't mind me asking."

Rosalind stared straight ahead as she spoke, skillful hands winding her thick red hair up into a fresh bun - talking about her work was nice, it was welcome. She wasn't surprised that Clara was surprised about the year. Half the universes were ahead, half behind. The ones that were behind tended to find the ones that were ahead unbelievable.

And in fairness, she mused, she was ahead of the curve even in her own world.

"Quantum entanglement. It was a principle that I worked out myself. I was able to develop the technology with the funding I acquired from the city." She wasn't necessarily loathe to speak about the accident - but she hadn't been asked about it yet in her time here, and she hadn't expected for Clara to do more than vaguely acknowledge the comment. She fastened off her hair, finally looking to the other woman.

"Scarcely matters here - the Lutece Tear was sabotaged, and I was scattered alongside my brother across the probability space. A quantum superposition. we were everywhere and everywhen at the same time, in all worlds and in none. Alive and dead."

Clara has absolutely no idea what 'quantum entanglement' means. Though the second part of what Rosalind makes some modicum of sense and reminds her of her high school physics class. "Like Schrodinger's Cat?"

She realizes that maybe, just maybe, that isn't the best response to have when someone tells you that they went through that. "I'm sorry that it got sabotaged. Is your brother here with you?"

The flat expression this is met with speaks volumes about how often this particular comparison has been made. In various worlds. In various times.

"Yes," she sighs. "Like Schrodinger's Cat."

It's after this is dispensed when the question hits - it strikes hard and deep, making something in her chest sink and her eyes get bleary. She tries desperately to keep herself together, but her voice still shakes when she speaks. She does not look at Clara.

"No. I do not know where he is."

Going off the other woman's tone, Clara gets the distinct feeling that both of those weren't the right questions to ask.

"I'm sorry," she says, not quite able to bring herself to look Rosalind in the eyes. "Maybe it's better that he isn't here, though. It means he doesn't have to deal with all of this."

Keep it together, she tells herself. Her lips tighten, her fists clench, her jaw sets. Keep it together.

"...Small mercies," she mumbles, straining to keep the tremble out of her tone. "But if he were here, we could find our way back out again far faster."

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[Open] Roam if you want to

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02 Amusement Park

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Closed to Alex

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Let's start wrapping up this thread?

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The Orchard

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