Day 3 { like it doesn't hurt, no

[tobeclosetohim]

WHO: Jo Harvelle
WHERE: #44, The Waverly
WHEN: July 3rd, morning, Before Exploration #1
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Jo, so swearing, other updates as needed
STATUS: Open

Jo doesn't choose a house until somewhere in the early midnight hours of the third day, and not even then because she wants one, so much as she's just dead on her feet tired, starving in her stomach, and she can't keep her eyes open anymore. Not without a threat more active than the tension in her shoulders and the hairs on the back of her neck, while nothing makes a sound in this place except the creaking buildings, the running water, and the other kidnapped people.

She's broken into any number of houses and the large buildings. The only ones of note that landed pilfered items in her bag, tucked in her clothes and her boots: the butcher shop, the police station, the hospital, the school house. It's not her fault if people's thought process here isn't to stockpile weapons, or anything that could be used as one, and then figure out provisions and shelter, in that order.

Everything is woefully outdated,
More than half needs repair work,
But a weapon is a weapon is a weapon.

(All of it -- all of it -- is still better than hell.)

Sleep takes her for a few very short hours, and the restless tension is still there when she wakes up. As she rummages the dusty choked space and takes a washcloth bath, without any soap. Her stomach rumbles, but she ignores it. Giving up for a while, Jo settles down on the thick front wall of the Waverly porch, back against the corner column, sharpening a slightly rusty knife with a handleless sharpening rod.

Comments

[tobeclosetohim]

It's a smart assumption. Making them and not making them. Jo can't help doing the same. Sizing up the teenager, who reminds her just a little too much of both the girls, with dark hair and dark eyes, she just left behind with the Roadhouse. Too young, and yet never young, because of the life they all lead, and still. She wonders if they've found her letter yet. She wonders if it's easier not being there to watch the Roadhouse change hands.

It is was easier to just have it ripped from her hands and sawed out of her chest with falling asleep and waking up drowning.

Even if that thought is entirely cut short with the question that makes Jo's eyebrows raise. "When are you from?"
It might even make sense more to ask where. But she looks human enough, even if it's a too easy assumption, too.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"1989," Veronica answers, and can't quite keep the corners of her mouth from turning down. It's fucking crazy, she gets it. But they're all from all over and different times, aren't they? To hear Nerys talk, she's from actual, literal space. Anachronisms are kind of par for the course as far as she can tell.

"Is it like a car phone or a satellite phone?" she prompts, arching her eyebrows. "Not that it matters, I guess, since the whole point is not having them here."

[tobeclosetohim]

"Huh." Jo tilted her head, eyebrows raising and dropping about as fast.

That's actually a whole lot closer time wise than she was expecting, but then the gamut wouldn't surprise her here. You can't tell here. People don't arrive with their clothes, accessories, hairstyles. Everyone is in the same when they arrive here. Drowned soaking rats, in colored scrubs. It makes them all look alike. It makes it impossible to guess if it's thousands of years ago, or forward, or different universes all together at a glance.

"Sort of like those, but smaller." Not that she's seen an actual on in years. The one back before waking up here was the first one in most of a decade, and that one was more creepy than helpful a lot of the time, since it came with her name on it, and people never seemed to use it well. "It would fit in your hand and your pocket."

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"No shit?" Veronica replies, and tilts her head in a conceding gesture. "I guess it was only a matter of time. Technology does march on." And yeah, it's easy to see how something like that could definitely come in handy in a situation as strange and sticky as this one.

"When are you from, then?"

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's mouth curved toward a passive enough smile as she nodded her head to the side like a, what can I say?. Time marched on and technology with it. She'd made that face enough times. The first time she saw an actual space ship her jaw really hadn't come off the floor for a good while.

It's an easier question than she gets. When, instead of where, but it fits their discussion, too.

"I was born in 1985." She considered it, trying to remember when or where exactly. "I think I had my first one somewhere in my late teens. Pager's came first, but they were kind of useless." Or, more to the point, Jo's had been, since she never paid much attention to when or if her mother used it.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"Yeah, we have pagers," Veronica says, doing her best to not acknowledge how completely fucking surreal the conversation has quickly gotten. "Doctors mostly, though. Probably a little more useful to them, I'm guessing."

It's a weird dichotomy, being able to see clearly that Jo's older than she is, but being told that by any normal reckoning, Veronica is nearly old enough to be her mother. Jo's got a cool confidence as she smoothly informs her of how things are, and Veronica doesn't know whether to be in awe or annoyed. Maybe a little of both at once.