sixthiterationlogs | Day 3 { like it doesn't hurt, no

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Day 3 { like it doesn't hurt, no

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Everything is woefully outdated,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.

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Sharpening a blade with a rod that has lost its handle is hard enough to keep unmoving with perfect unsplit focus, getting distracted means she has to stop. She'd rather not lose control of either, and without much to grip, she'd rather not slice her hand or her leg, or any other part of herself either. Jo squinted into the earlier morning light from the still stagnant shadows of her porch perch. She remembers this face, and her name. Even if she knows it's not her.

Peggy Carter. Not someone she knew. But someone who had been on the Medietas Network when she was watching everything.
It doesn't touch her expression, which she lets stay calm and even. "Not unless you plan to go crazy and attack me suddenly."

Beat. "I'm Jo."

Peggy gives a considerate hum, as if she's debating the possibility of such a thing. Maybe if hunger and thirst and frustration all combine to the worst of a peak, but even then, she thinks she would just bunker down and simply get through it. "I'd like to think I'm a little more civilized than that," she says, stepping towards the woman.

She does make it a point to keep safe distance, though. "Peggy," she introduces herself. "Is the knife for procurement of food? Or simply defense?"

Jo notes that. She's not surprised, but then Peggy wasn't one of the two-three people Jo had pegged as the worst possible threats, if the situations came down to it, on the day they all showed up. It's been easier to keep a watch on that, base or unbase her assumptions, as she watched them work the problem of this place. "I'm a fan of all of the above." Beat. "And more."

"It never hurts to be prepared for the worst of eventualities in this kind of thing."

She's not wrong, but it bears a sort of paranoia that Peggy isn't sure she wants to be living with. After all, it would mean that she would have to spend all her time keeping herself away and worrying about the worst possible scenario. She will, is the trouble. She just doesn't like that it's her life.

"I'd like to think I'll be a somewhat friendly neighbour. Or do you mean whatever forces brought us here?"

She's alive when so many others aren't, in so many different places. She keeps moving through these places when almost no one else does. Survival isn't an option any more than her heart beating, and trust in anything, and anyone, from the air, to the houses, to a familiar face, comes at a highest of the high premiums.

"I wouldn't mind that," is an easy admission. She'd love to catch, capture, torture, hurt, and demand answers of any of the things or people who did these things. But she was years over the first, most virulent, rage or hope waves of that. She wanted it. She'd never stop hunting for it, them, etc, no matter where the fucking Multiverse threw her. But other things were more pressing timewise.

"Or whatever was howling in the woods last night. Or anything that might come from any of the areas none of us have checked yet."

She'd heard the howling, though it hadn't kept her up all night. Unfortunately, living through the war has given Peggy the ability to sleep through great barrages of bombs at night. It's numbed her nerves, but in this place, she could use them back again. Or at least one of the Howling Commandoes to watch her back might be nice.

"We really ought to be coordinating efforts," she says, shaking her head as she thinks of wasted effort. "We might be doing much more than we need to, right now."

"That seems to be a lot of people's thought," Jo said, without much enthusiasm or the lack of it. "But without a head yet."

Maybe it was still just a bit too sore. That was just what she'd been doing. Days ago, she'd been running the Roadhouse, doing just that, for dozens and dozens of people. The ones she'd moved into the middle floors. The ones she employed. The ones who were under the protection of the hunters, angels, and even some of the monsters there. The ones who came in just as patrons, both those who knew what the Roadhouse was about and those who had not the smallest clue.

And she'd written that stupid letter for her heir for Merlin. Handing it over, in case, she vanished. Only hours before she had vanished.

Being the lead on something like this is not something Peggy wants, though she'll step up if she has to. She'd rather give herself the ability to operate in the shadows if it comes to that, moving quietly and quickly. It's more effective and efficient than having to stand there with all the attention and the responsibility on her. While it might be nice to be acknowledged at home for her efforts, it feels rather like attracting an unnecessary spotlight, here.

"Do you have any thoughts?" Peggy coaxes. "Perhaps something we're all overlooking?"

That makes two of them. But, then, Jo hadn't been pushed to it by a want to do or become what she'd had to realize she'd done or became. It'd all started out so simply. With four people who couldn't save themselves. And knowing what those people needed, that the islands couldn't offer. Which deals to make it happen, and then with alliances and agreements.

But it was all gone now, and this was different. This place was different. None of her people were here.

"No, mostly just organization. Figuring out who wants to step into that." Beat. "And whether they can be trusted at all."

Peggy raises her brow when Jo brings up a topic that Peggy has been keeping rather mum about. "You think there are people here who can't be trusted?" she wonders, not trying to suss out names just yet, but finding it good to sort of probe at the topic in case she can get information. "Has anyone given you cause to suspect them?"

"Has anyone given you proof that you should implicitly trust in them?" Jo's head cocked.

"Aside from desperation making bedfellows of everyone in this mess, or however that phrase goes?"

Jo wasn't one for cliche turns of phrase, but Jo, also, wasn't one for being led like a sheep to the slaughter of anything just because someone thought desperation should make her. She'd managed the Hell Dimension, and weeks and weeks, if not months on months, before she'd been willing brought into a group, and even in groups people didn't trust, couldn't trust entirely.

She didn't know these people, and she didn't like the idea of needing them just for the sake of needing them. Thorfinn was different. She had history with him, and she couldn't put history aside as easily as desperation. Desperation made people give up things too fast, and it made them agree to things they shouldn't even faster. It led to unplanned weaknesses, and Jo was careful with where she placed her weaknesses and with whom. She wanted those to be her choices, not a mysterious invisible forces manipulations.

Sam Wilson, she thinks, but there's a trust implicit in him because knowing Steve had trusted him is enough for her. She thinks she also ought to trust Frank, but there's something about him that despite his similarities and experiences in her world, leaves her wary, yet.

"There are one or two," she replies carefully, not to give up their names. It's not that she doesn't trust Jo, but she also doesn't want to be proven wrong if they do turn out to be nefarious traitors against her better judgment. "I take it that means that you've yet to trust anyone, here?"

"I am keeping my options open," Jo said easily. It rolls right off the her tongue without any hesitation.

She was keeping her options open, which didn't keep her from keep her hands full. Or from gathering weapons and supplies in case the whole lot of them end up crazy, evil, or demons. Which sounded insane, if the whole thing hadn't all already happened to her before. Yet. So had finding good people, who she could trust, team up with, and building things with. It was early yet.

It was day three, and if she knew anything about these places, they'd all have the time to see how that shook out.

Peggy has to find the whole thing a touch amusing. Here they all are sitting around in a strange village, not trusting each other yet. They've had to work together in order to survive the situation and really, the scarcity of resources means more of that is to come. "You know," she admits, "I think everyone here is sleeping with one eye open."

"Would you believe me if I said I meant no harm? And I'd like to offer my help wherever needed?" Because she does mean to and is sincere. She needs all the alliances she can get.

"Maybe." It's just as fast, just as hesitationless. "But I wouldn't disbelieve you either."

It's not that she has anything bad to say about most of these people. One, two, sure, she's keeping an eye on.
It's a very black and white sort of thing, and she has them all in the grey until they prove they are in either of those.

"I like to make my moves on proof, and try to give people in these situations the benefit of the doubt first." Even while planning for being absolutely on point, on key, prepared for the second the whole table turned on her entirely. They way it could. It was not saying it would. It was being prepared in case it did. Refusing to be caught unaware and unprepared by the fucking multiverse ever again, if she could help it.

"Well, if there's ever something more malicious than a large burst of wind, I'd be happy to stand at your side and prove that I'm a team player," Peggy says, wry given that their only enemy thus far appears to be an invisible force that's brought them here and some temperamental wind.

"I like to think I'm a good judge of character," she admits. "I tend to get a good sense of people, from experience."

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Day 3 { like it doesn't hurt, no

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