sixthiterationlogs | I'm Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In and Stops My Mind from Wandering

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I'm Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In and Stops My Mind from Wandering

WHO: Clint Barton, Master Carpenter (kind of)
WHERE: Area past House 20, Inn common room, out in the wilds
WHEN: Through mid-June
OPEN TO: Anyone, except the third part
WARNINGS: Nothing immediately, warnings will be in comment headers if they're needed

( Destruction and Construction, out past House 20, Open )

It's become inevitable, really - the house needs more space for all the creatures living there, at least not the ones not human. Arado stayed with Clint, of course, and the now-grown chickens had their hutch and run on the side of the house not occupied with Bev's garden, but somehow Clint had ended up with Moana's pig Itiiti when the girl had disappeared and also there were more (native? were they native any more than the people were?) animals coming around, some of which could apparently be domesticated. Despite living on an actual farm, Clint had never been a farmer, but he did know at least something about animals, and more about building. Not to mention their house was out at the end of the row, still close enough to where it was fairly central but with a pretty open expanse next to it, filled with a few trees but not a full forest.

Basically, it was perfect for a corral, and whoever the dicks were that had dumped them here, they'd at least left them some new tools for getting work done. So Clint had raided the storage room at the inn, taking a lumber saw, an arborist's saw, and full-sized axe, and had started cutting down trees. These wouldn't be going for firewood, however; as the day went on, it would be clear that Clint had a more specific purpose in mind, as he used his own toolkit to measure sections of the trees to cut into logs, followed by stripping the outer bark off with the smaller saw, and then splitting them into posts and planks. There's going to be a fence around the area in about a week if he has anything to say about it. If anyone wants to wander by and ask questions or help, they'd be welcome (it's not like it's a quiet thing he's doing, after all).

( Planning For the Future, Inn, Open )

The tools they've been given are surprisingly good, he's happy to see: sturdy, either completely new or very well-kept, with equipment to see to their upkeep. It gives him a vague hope that there's a way to beat this "game," whatever it is; that these people want to see them succeed to some degree or other, and that they're willing to give them a little help along the way. He's still massively pissed off at them of course, for all the myriad other reasons people are pissed at them, but good tools are good tools and it's a bit of help he didn't expect.

And now that they have those tools, they have capabilities they didn't before, and Clint's got something cooking in his mind. The animals that are coming around, some of them are herd creatures, but some of them aren't - and he's pretty sure he's spotted some horse-like things out when he's been hunting. And right now, they don't have anywhere to put large animals where they can be safe from predators or the weather, but he's sure that residents are going to want to tame some of these guys. To that end, Clint's devised the beginnings of a plan, but it's going to be a good idea to ask for any help that he can get with it.

So one day on his lunch break at the inn, he finds a spot on the community chalkboard that's non-essential and can be erased and does so, much as he'd done the month before when people suddenly disappeared. But instead of putting up a list of names this time, he first puts up the words "BARN? - IDEAS?" and begins sketching under them. For a chalk sketch in a fairly awkward position, it's a very good drawing; Clint's obviously had a lot of practice at making (and reading) blueprints, and a lot of practice at getting freehanded lines straight (a lot more than at making his handwriting easily legible). He outlines two sections in swift chalk strokes: one, the bottom, with a door on either end and an open path connecting them, four stalls on either side, and a small window in each stall. The other looks to be the same general size and shape, but without anything other than, seemingly, a roof and a single door, more a big square than anything. In that one, he writes "hay and feed storage."

( Rodeo Time, the woods, Closed to Nat )

Getting the barn started is one thing, but Clint wants to have some sort of transportation now. They've all felt the lack of it in their time there, not being able to jump into any sort of vehicle to get where they need to be fast, and if there's a way to negate at least part of that, he wants in. Which means Clint's grabbed Nat for back up, and the two of them have gotten some of the rope in the storage room at the inn, and they're going out to try and wrangle one of the horse-things that have been spotted but always run away.

It's an overnight trip to get to where things open up more and the horse-creatures are easily visible; thankfully their captors had also provided sleeping bags and tents, and Clint and Nat are old hands at spending a night "roughing it". Hopefully this'll have a good reward, and it won't be just a wasted trip, though Clint's at least spotted some interesting plants to take back to Mark even if they don't wind up with mounts. But at last, after some long but not too rough hiking, they reach the grassy plains where the things they're looking for seem to congregate, as well as a few other animals that don't look too aggressive, but that Clint's going to keep an eye on just to make sure they don't get charged. Both of them have ropes (a climbing rope is still a rope), and both of them have some of the early fruit from the community trees in their packs to act as bait.

"I think this is about the best we're gonna get - you ready?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Haymitch is, well, not settled, he'll never be that, but he's come to terms with being here. He's not alone, which is a huge factor, and he's aware enough to know that he doesn't have to like being here; he just has to survive it. And the best way to survive it is to play the game, as much as he dislikes the idea.

Which means that he does have to venture into the village sometime, to figure out what he can about this place. He knows what the others have told him, and it's not that he doesn't believe them. He just needs to see it for himself if he's going to have any hope of figuring it out. The inn seems like the likeliest place to start, since it's the gathering place.

He looks like he hasn't slept well in days, because he hasn't. Clint can't know that his unkempt appearance is due more to old habits from before his arrival than lack of toiletries, but at least now he's got enough of an excuse to pass. He seems to be of the same approximate age as Clint, but in worse physical shape. His navy blue scrubs are in good enough shape yet to indicate that he's a fairly recent arrival.

He tilts his head as he assesses the drawing on the chalkboard. Despite an inadequate formal education, which he was never required to finish in the first place, it doesn't take him long to work out its purpose. Farming is one of many things he doesn't know about, with his background, but he's seen a little of it on his trips through the Districts.

He's not intending to strike up a conversation though. The purpose of venturing in here was just to see what he could find out about it. So once he's taken in the chalkboard, he glances around at the rest of it from his vantage point just inside the door.

Any new entry gets his attention; it's still ingrained deep in Clint to monitor the positions of people around him, the ways to enter or leave a place, all the kinds of things a person in his profession would consider "normal." The newcomer is someone he doesn't recognize, but there does seem to be a greater accumulation of arrivals recently than there has been for a long time. This guy is likely one of them. And it is kind of nice to see someone around his age, even if that's obviously not a guarantee he'll like the person.

But this guy seems a little lost. It's not that unusual for new arrivals to be hesitant at the inn at first - most people seem to have at least a little hangup at the idea of getting service without spending any money - but he seems a little more wary or skittish than unsure and it is kind of unusual for a new person to not say anything when they walk in.

"You looking for something?"

"No." And he's not. He came in here looking for information, and he's already found some. It's a communal area, there's nothing perilous about coming in here, and it seems almost to be like a home. For some people, at least. He's starting to get the impression that Peeta's opinion is correct -- this is no arena. Coming into the inn doesn't give him any more of an idea of what this place is, though.

He moves a few steps closer to the board to get a better look. "Is that intended for livestock?"

Ahh, one of those. There were a few people around the village - more in past days - that were just... not very social. Most of the people here and now seemed to realize they couldn't live without the others, but there were always a few who wanted to try it. Haymitch wasn't necessarily one of those people, but Clint was thinking it was a good bet he'd at least try it for a bit.

But he's not being antagonistic, and he's asking a question - a pretty reasonable question, really. "That's the theory. This town's weird - there's some buildings missing I'd expect to find in a place this small and this old, but they're nowhere to be found, not even old foundations. Barns're one of those. We don't have anywhere to put work animals we manage to round up."

He considers this. He had noticed how old some of these places seemed to be -- not something constructed by the Capitol recently, then. There's a lot that the Capitol is hiding, especially the existence of an entire District that had been thought lost, but this would be a lot more for the Capitol to hide. Can they really hide that much?

"Animals that just are there?" He'd been starting to wonder if the Capitol really was behind this, but the presence of random animals has him doubting his doubt. Even with a clear head, he can't make sense of this place.

The entire village is an enigma - Clint's familiar enough with different sorts of construction to know that the style of houses in the village are from around the turn of the century or a little later, some of the village-wide buildings were a little older than that, and in a fairly damp climate like the one they're in will swallow up a village in surprisingly little time if left alone. But the fact that houses were here, stocked for living with dishes and everything, but no personal possessions that belonged to people living there before? It really did feel like this entire place was built to be some sort of zoo, or maybe an observatory, and it was not a comfortable feeling.

It's partially because of that feeling that he's begun this project; it's a way for them to put their own stamp on this village in a manner they haven't before. They've made changes and built things, but never an entire building, and it's something people can work together on. Building community and everything, that's all good, right?

"As far as we can tell, yeah. We only had normal animals from Earth pretty much for a long time, then when we all went to sleep again and got rebooted here, more of the weird ones started showing up. There'd been a couple getting through before, but now... this is their home, we're just living in it." He pauses to study his drawing for a moment, then erases a corner of it and redraws it with more subdivisions. "There's some dangerous ones, but some are more like livestock you'd find on a farm. So if we can find some way to house them, we can put them to good use."

He's come to a similar conclusion -- they're being watched -- although it's not based on the architecture of the place. Buildings existed before the people arrived to live in them. With the exception of the fact that arenas didn't have buildings in them, this feels like one. It has obviously been constructed with them in mind. Even if it is an arena (and he's not so sure it is anymore) it's an unusual one in that the people in it aren't being encouraged to kill each other. So that's something.

And then there are the mutts. Which this man seems to want to be able to put in a single location.

"I suppose if they're all in the same place, we know where they are." Which isn't quite the same intention Clint has, but it works for Haymitch. If they know where they are, they can avoid them. "The supplies to build that are here?"

Clint's been there long enough to be fairly sure that the point of being "here," wherever "here" is, isn't to make them kill each other - it's some sort of grand psychological test, to see how they cope with various stresses and how they adapt to the situation. Not perfect, but preferable to them being pushed to commit murder.

That said, he isn't at all ruling it out that murder might be eventually on the table for them. Torture and violence already has been, after all, though everyone who'd gotten those letters had managed to sidestep killing a person. He's pretty sure he was the only human physically hurt during that period of time, and he'd like to keep it that way. But if it does come up, it won't be until the "end" of whatever experiment's being run... when they're at their breaking points, ready to snap.

"Wouldn't be all of 'em, not nearly." Since he gets out a lot, Clint knows how dense the animal population is, and it seems to be amazingly heavy right now. "There's entire herds and colonies of different animals out there - we'd just be getting a few to help work here, so they could plow or ride or give us fiber." At the question, he sighs heavily, looking at his rough plan. "Not like I'd like. We can improvise - use mud bricks with straw. I've done it before, and they'll dry fast in the summer heat. But we don't have any nails or hinges. It'll be a job, that's for sure."

He looks a little more unsure now at this plan. He's been out around the village enough to know what kinds of creatures are out there, and he's seen plenty of them already. He doesn't want to think about how many more of them there are.

"You want to use them for things?" No one in Panem would have anything to do with a mutt if they could help it. They exist for one purpose alone, and thankfully most of the population doesn't have to worry about them much. Putting them in one place so they could be useful is something none of them would ever consider, because mutts are not useful for anything.

Clint can thank Peggy for making his whereabouts known; she'd given Bucky a grand tour of the village and pointed out noteworthy locations for him. It takes him a few days to gather his nerve and talk himself into it before he finally makes an appearance; he owes Clint a debt of gratitude. He'd been on Steve's side during the whole internal conflict debacle and had done a great deal to help him escape Flughafen Leipzig-Halle outside of protective custody (unlike Clint himself). He found out about that later second-hand, and while he knows Steve did a great job whisking Barton out of prison, he knows life outside the law is no walk in the park.

When he arrives at Clint's house the man's making enough racket for Bucky to know not to even bother knocking at the front door, but rather rounds toward the sound of a saw stripping bark. He looks like he knows what he's doing, which is pretty god damn impressive all things considered. Bucky waits for him to get to what looks like a convenient stopping point before approaching in the least startling line of vision he can manage.

As much or more than Steve, Clint is perceptive as fuck. (Not always about emotional, specifically romantic, matters, but everyone's got to have a blind spot.) He's not aware right away that Bucky's back in the village; he's perceptive, but he doesn't go out searching for news, well aware that anything of import is going to get back to him sooner rather than later since the population is so small. The news that Bucky is there reaches him a few days after the soldier's arrival, but Clint also doesn't go looking for him. Barnes was skittish enough before the fight at Leipzig, which was completely reasonable given the circumstances, but the fallout from that and then whatever the hell being pulled here would have done to him is something that Clint could only speculate over, and he wasn't about to do that with more data. Steve had said that Barnes had gone into, well, "treatment" to try and get the HYDRA shit out of his head, and that was the logical thing to do. But if he'd want to see Clint, that, he didn't know. His own stint with brainwashing had left him unwilling to face anyone for a long time, and Barnes had suffered much longer than he had. He'd find out, sooner or later. In the meantime, he had shit to do.

But it means when Bucky walks up, Clint realizes it even without the younger-older man making himself as visible as he can, and he identifies that step on the grass (more by process of elimination, but still: it's someone that knows how to hold their balance dead center, how to position their feet to cause as little noise as possible, all the things Steve can do, but it's not Steve because he isn't there and it's more hesitant. So, Barnes) before he looks up. He finishes the section he's working on, using his gloved hands and a tattered rag he stuffs into the pocket of his jeans to wipe the stray chippings away before looking up from his project. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

Bucky knows very little about Clint personally, knows only about his reputation. Perceptive sharpshooter with a tendency to catch people off guard; good man, good morals, and that's it. He doesn't know about the brainwashing incident that might make him seem more relatable, and doesn't know to expect the wry, knowing nature of the greeting he receives. As such, he falters a little, searching for the best path in conversation.

"Never got to thank you," He opts for jumping right in. When in doubt, don't beat around the bush. His lips tuck into his left cheek for a second. Figures he better elaborate, so he tacks on an explanation, "For what you did at the airport. Probably made life hard on you for a while, so. Sorry. Thank you."

It's probably not enough, it's an apology and appreciation rolled into one awkward stilted expression. Genuine as it may be, he's not exactly a fucking poet. His arms hang uselessly at his sides, palms out in a contrite little gesture, just hovering there on the edge of too far away.

Clint appreciates that directness more than he shows; he's not one for beating around the bush, prevaricating when there's shit to be done. He doesn't hold with cruelty, or excessive harshness, but in his world there's really no use in sheltering people from difficult situations or truths, or not just saying what you want to say to someone's face. (Fury had once commented that was both his best and worst quality.) So for Bucky to come right out and say that, that gives him a leg up.

(For a moment, he wonders if Wanda's all right since she left - since she went back to the harsh reality that he knew was awaiting her. But only a moment, he needs to focus on the here and now.)

"Well, the Raft sure sucked," he comments, pulling off his work gloves as well, since Bucky seems to want to talk. "I've put a lot of people behind bars, but I never like when it happens to me. After that, though - that's when I showed up here. Been a long time since I've seen where we come from."

He huffs, a soft puff of breath that's akin to a laugh although no real humor filters through his expression. Sucked is just one of the words he's heard attributed to the raft; of all the prisons he's had the pleasure to vacation in he never got to experience that one. Wonders if Steve would have broken him out if he wound up there instead of in a holding cell under Shield.

He thinks so.

A frown does filter across his face at the next factoid though, and he can't help the incredulous question that escapes him: "You've been here this whole time?"

Might explain why Bucky didn't see him in Wakanda, fighting along side Nat and Steve. He never did get a clear answer on that, but he hadn't exactly asked either. They're not exactly on a location basis. They're barely even on a first name basis. He's got to wonder how much Clint knows about the goings-on after that, wonders if he knows about Thanos, and wonders if he should even be the one to break the news.

Probably not. He's not exactly an empathetic sounding guy, and he doesn't even know all the facts like Steve or Natasha would.

If Steve had known about the place, he definitely would've gotten Barnes out - through legal channels if possible, illegal if not. But knowledge of that place had been on an extremely Need To Know basis, and it was a real good bet that until the team got sent there Steve just didn't realize it existed. Clint did, because of S.H.I.E.L.D. - they needed somewhere to put the powered people they'd tracked down and captured, especially after the Fridge went down. But the Avengers went after weapons dealers and Hydra survivors on a broad level. It just hadn't come up as something that was needed, and Fury hadn't cleared Clint to say anything. But Steve would always come for the people he felt responsible for and considered friends, and there was no doubt that Barnes was definitely on that list.

"Year and a half, I think. Something close to that - we didn't have any kind of calendar until we got these things." He holds up his left wrist to show the watch-communicator hybrid. "We could make a guess on dates based on the seasons and equinoxes and stuff, but we didn't have anything definite before these. I showed up here in the middle of winter, and there's been another winter since then."

It's barely perceptible, and there's no guarantee Bucky will pick up on it because he doesn't know Clint anywhere close to well - but the archer is carefully controlling his emotions and reactions, almost too casual with that statement. Every time someone new from home shows up he's reminded of just how long it's been since he's seen his family, and every reminder is like a stab to the heart.

"We haven't died yet, but that doesn't mean they haven't tried to kill us. At the least they've made us all miserable time after time."

Nearly two years. It's a long separation; for some reason when he'd talked to Benedict the time hadn't seemed so vast, but knowing Clint has a family somewhere, has children he's been away from for so long? It must feel like an eternity. It's a grim realization, and his eyes drop away for a second as he mulls over the feeling sympathetically.

Clint's internal monologue isn't wrong, he doesn't know Clint well enough to see through the carefully schooled mask of neutrality on his expression. Can't hear any waver in his voice. Doesn't know that Clint is the kind to be too blase about things that hurt, but what he does know are the coping mechanisms he himself would use in a situation like this. They'd be similar, and the negative emotions would run deep.

There's nothing to be done, and Bucky isn't the right man to offer any kind of consolation, so he tactfully follows the subject deviation. Grimly, he agrees, "I'm starting to get that."

And with something of a good foundation of conversation beneath them he ambles forward a bit more, taking in the tools and supplies, the lumber, the scrap. Shrugs a shoulder and decides to just offer, "Anything I can do to help?"

Moving away from the subject is appreciated. Not that Clint doesn't trust Barnes, but... he doesn't know Barnes. He trusts Steve's evaluation of him; some of the stories he's heard about their misbegotten past reminds him of him and Nat, really. That same kind of snarky teasing and friendly ease in difficult situations. He's willing to learn more about the guy, he fully believes that he didn't want to or mean to do any of the things Hydra made him do, understands that Barnes is a good person when you get down to brass tacks, but his family is something he keeps close for several reasons. It'll take a bit longer for him to talk about it with the sniper. He's barely mentioned them to anyone who didn't already know even with how long he's been here.

But right now, there's things they can control. That's part of why Clint is starting in on two projects, one fairly big and one major. He really, really, really does not like being out of control of his life, and if he can't go home, he's going to be doing his damnedest to control what he can here.

Glancing back at Bucky in an appraising manner, there's a pause of a few seconds before Clint turns to move and pick up a 4-in-1 hatchet tool he keeps in the house. "You ever split logs before? Not into firewood - into rails."

Bucky understands the reservation, won't impose himself where he isn't invited at least with regard to personal relationship. He's not the prying sort, and he doesn't have any illusions of being significantly closer to anyone just because they're from the same place and fought on the same side of a war. There's a respect, but not an entitlement.

Clint's appraisal probably comes up short; aside from being capable athletically he brings no practical experience to the endeavor. Whether it'd take more time and effort to teach him to be helpful than just doing it himself, Bucky couldn't say. He figures the offer couldn't hurt, he won't take offense to a rejection.

"No," he admits, lips turning down apologetically. "Not exactly on my track record. Turns out I'm pretty useless when nobody needs anyone else dead, so."

He hasn't been able to contribute and earn his keep. He doesn't like that.

"Not useless, they're just not putting you to work properly." Clint had come to reconcile the fact that he himself was a killing machine years ago, even though most of him was just a normal guy from the Midwest who liked cuddling with his wife on cold mornings and working with his hands on the various projects that sometimes drove his wife mad. It was what he was good at, and he wasn't ashamed of it. But he'd found that those skills translated well into other things he enjoyed, at least once he knew how to adapt them. It's what Barnes needs to learn now: how to take the skills he has, the ones he can't get rid of, and find productive ways for them to be useful. "Come on."

Steve had told them Tony had blown Barnes' arm off in that final fight in Oymyakon, but obviously the soldier has both of them again and that left one does look very metallic. Clint's seen the old arm in action, and it's a good bet that whatever new one he has will be even better tech, which possibly means more versatile and almost certainly means more durable. "Okay, I've seen Steve do this, which means you can do this too once you get the hang of it." It actually completely slips by him that he's making a reference to the farm here, but maybe Barnes will read it as happening within the village. Which, actually is also true. "Splitting wood's not so hard - it's not really one thing, see, it's a whole bunch of really small things all jammed together. But some of them aren't jammed so hard, and you can get something between them, and that's what splits the wood." Moving over to the side again, Clint picks up something new: a piece of rock that's more or less triangular, an "it'll do" substitution for the metal wedges he'd use back home. That's one thing he just hasn't found in the village. If Bucky looks, he can see two more in vaguely the same shape still in the grass. "You drive this in the end, between the grain, and the log'll start to crack. Make sense?"

He huffs out something soft and breathy, a tiny laugh. Clint's right, nobody's put him to work since he's been here,not really. He's taken liberties, volunteered where he could, chopping wood or cleaning, soundproofing or donating blood, but they all seem like a vast underutilization of what he's capable of. In sheer strength alone he brings a lot to the table, and that's not even taking the metal arm into consideration. His skills with a knife and inherent precision could certainly be turned into carpentry, with the right teacher.

Maybe it's good that he's here.

He moves with quiet obedience, settling somewhere just over Clint's shoulder, watching with keen intensity. A borderline eidetic memory and uncanny hand-eye coordination are almost as beneficial as the rate at which he learns, so he doesn't hesitate to pluck up a rather similarly shaped rock from the grass at Clint's feet. An explanation, a demonstration, a soft pause and he tries his hand at it. Either he's a natural or splitting wood can be done by any chump on the planet, either way it feels good to actually manage something productive. He doesn't even need a hammer, really. Big fuck-off metal arm seems to be the perfect tool to compliment triangular rock.

He may not have the talent to build the goddamn barn but he can at least prepare the materials for it.

"How much can I do?" He asks, and then rephrases. "How much of this do you need?"

She had done small bits of construction after her arrival, helping to repair their home after the earthquakes and other disasters that had effected the village. It made her no expert, but it left her with a slight understanding of the tools and enough confidence in using them that she didn't shy away from the idea of working.

Lyanna had lingered nearby, watching as Clint worked. She had spent most of her morning hunting with little luck. Her body was humming with energy but no way to expend it. She could either pace around the inn and her bungalow or she could work with her hands. Clint just happened to have a project that would at least give her something to do.

She approached him slowly, peering over his shoulder curiously. "What are you doing?" Beyond the obvious she meant. "Are you doing repairs?"

He knew she was there; that's his job, it's what he does. He'd survived this long thanks to those skills, after all. But until she chose to make her move, he didn't draw attention to her - there was no reason to make her uncomfortable if she wanted to remain unseen; most people had no idea how far out he could sense someone. And she stayed back for long enough that he was mostly convinced all she wanted was just to watch, at least until she started forward. Boredom, maybe?

It didn't matter. Briefly wishing he had a pair of safety goggles right now, Clint let drop the plank he'd cut out of a log about four feet long. It was rough and unfinished, but definitely not as much as it could be, and it didn't need to be pretty in order to work. "Nah - I'm gonna make a fence all around this area." He was barely out of breath from the work, obviously in really good shape and used to this sort of heavy labor. His hands handled the tools easily, and he never slipped when he was sawing or cutting. "We've got animals showin' up now, so we need somewhere for them to run around without getting into everything and trampling the gardens."

"Oh. That's rather simple." Repairs could be complicated, especially with their limited materials, but building a fence was different. They had done that several times before in the old village. All it required were a few posts, something to knock it into the ground and lumber of similar length. It was something she could manage, if he was willing to let her assist. "Would you like some help?"

There was little else for her to do. Hunting hadn't been rewarding and she didn't feel like sitting around the inn with nothing to do. This could let her spend some of her energy and have something to show for it at the end. "I could gather more lumber or something? I know how to build a fence, enough that I won't be a bother."

"If you'd like to help, sure, I could use it." He had bigger plans than just a fence, but the fence was the main concern right at the start. Some of the animals around here were obviously herd animals, and they'd need a piece of land big enough to roam comfortably while also not being too big for the people caring for them to not be able to keep it free of weeds and predators and the like. Immediately after the fence will come a sort of stripped-down barn, a place for the animals to sleep and retreat from the sun in summer and the cold in winter, but the boundary would have to be laid first. The fence could potentially be finished with just one person, but the building would take more help.

"Gathering it's not really the issue - it's getting is stripped down to a usable size and shape that's the hard part." He's really missing the fact that lumber for a project at home could just be delivered. Even when he was working construction as a profession, Clint had never had to create planks from a full log. Some of his hobby projects had done that, for the "rustic" aesthetic that was what fit better with the farm and Laura's vision for their home, but it still wasn't a thing he had as much experience with as he'd like for this situation, especially since their materials are fairly limited. "Are you any good at splitting wood? Or do you wanna strip branches?"

It was a project that she had heard one of the people in the village was desperate for. While she never spoke to Robb's woman, she knew that she possessed a large herd of animals and had been wanting a barn. It would take time to construct, but having a project was a relief to Lyanna. Her brother's absence tore at her, leaving her physically in pain with heartache. This would let her focus on something else and spend her energy, channeling all of it into something that could help the village.

"I would like to help." She peered over his shoulder at the lumber, watching as he shaped and stripped it down to the size he needed. "I can do either." She might look small and fragile, but she had enough strength to make a decent pile of wood. "Do you have an ax for me to use?"

He was a little skeptical about her strength, but, well, he really shouldn't be, should he? She's young, no doubt about that, but young didn't mean weak. She could give it a try, at least, and if she failed at the task he gave her, they could find her another one.

"Not an axe - a saw. We've got to get these down to a more reasonable size quickly, then we can split them." He'd already felled four trees, and it wasn't hard to see why that's starting to become a priority. The downed trees take up a lot of space, and it's starting to get difficult to walk in the area that's supposed to become the corral. "I can mark the lengths off if you can cut them apart, and we can switch when your arms get tired." Because that was inevitably going to happen with her using a saw. It happened with him and he was one of the most in-shape people on his world. "After that, we can split them down to rails, start stacking 'em out of the way for building it when we've got enough." It would take more than four trees to get enough rails for what he needed, but this really was a project that would have to be done in stages. "Here, I'll show you." Picking up the 4-in-1 tool he'd had almost since coming to the village, Clint moved to the end of one of the trees, then took three decent-sized steps along the trunk. At that point he paused and slammed the hatchet head of the tool into the wood, leaving a noticeable mark in the bark. "Cut here, and all the other marks like this, and that'll be a good length for what we need. Work for you?"

It would be rough work, but she had the time and patience for it. She listened attentively to his instructions, making mental notes for what he was asking her to do. It would be a long, drawn out project. There would at least be something else to focus on besides loss and whatever games the Observers would have coming.

"I think so." She inspected the mark and the thickness of the trunk. He wasn't lying when he said that her arms would eventually grow tired. Even looking at how much work she'd have to do, she knew that she would be able to manage a few before she would need to switch off to him.

"You have been doing this all on your own?"

If you ask Natasha Romanoff what's kind of skills she has a verbal list will be rattled off that include being really good at interrogating, getting into hidden files on pretty much any kind of secured computer, speaking a bunch of different languages, fighting and even some other talents no one would expect an assassin slash spy slash agent to have. Nowhere on that list is horse wrangling or whatever the horse like creatures are called and she only remembers riding a creature like this once in her life.

But everything Natasha does is for a reason and if this overnight trip is simply to find a shred of something amusing to bring up (read: tease) her partner with later on down the road, then that's reason enough to go. Also, how hard can it be really? She's caught a ride on a flying Ski-Doo before. Is this really any different?

Only she can't help it. She looks at Clint with a clear look of uncertainty and nods, looking at the closest animal.

"You know, by the end of this I'm pretty sure we've seen and done everything." A pause and then another nod to signal she's ready.

Nat has lots and lots and lots of skills, so many so that even Clint sometimes thinks he's barely scratched the surface with her (not focusing on how she acquired those skills - but to have made it as long as she did with so much stacked against her, and become the person she has in the present day, means she's pretty damn amazing). But somehow animals were one thing that'd never really been touched on in her training, which maybe made sense but was also a little confusing for him. What if she needed to get past an unhappy guard dog, or snatch an escape on the back of a horse? But maybe he just thinks those things because of his own childhood, which even if he hadn't lived on a farm until he was grown, was still pretty filled with encounters with working animals. Knowing how to ride was just kind of a thing in his town, and while he hadn't had to go wrangling anything in awhile, it was another skill he'd picked up doing odd jobs in his teens that had served him well when he needed to use it. And one of those times was definitely now.

Grinning at Nat from under his tarp hat, Clint begins digging in his pack to pull out a few strawberries he picked from one of the bushes. Hopefully the new food source will get their attention to where one - preferably two - separate off from the herd and they can catch them. And hopefully the unfamiliar scent of human won't scare them off. "There's still a few things we haven't done - I've never dragged you cow-tipping, after all." And with that probably not-reassuring comment, it's time to put that aim of his to good use, and he quickly launches four strawberries into the nearby grasses only a few dozen feet from where they're hidden.

Regardless of her lack of experience in the animal wrangling department, Natasha was someone who would rise to any occasion. She didn't fear much and whenever she wasn't sure about something, first-hand experience was the only way one could learn.

She watches him, listening without much expression before glancing back at the kirin who may have already been aware of their presence. But no quicker than he tells her about the cow-tipping does her head snap back towards him and her face shifts into one of mock ire.

"And why haven't you?" she asks, following his throw. She doesn't move yet, but the kirin is considering the smell of something that could be tasty.

Shrinking back into the tall grass and bushes around the fields, Clint lets that grin keep going for a bit as he answers that question. "I don't hate any of my neighbors enough to do that to them." Considering cows certainly didn't like cow tipping, and farmers rarely liked dealing with cows that had been tipped.

The animal in front of them is as horse-like a creature as they're going to get, and when its attention is gotten by the strawberries, Clint grabs for Nat's arm and holds onto it to keep her from moving, sinking into that stillness that he adopts on instinct when in a perch waiting for a target. "Be very still," he breathes on an exhale; they have to fool the animal into thinking they're not a threat so it will come closer. Keeping his hand on Nat, Clint waits as the kirin takes one, then two steps in their direction, obviously smelling the air, and another seems to be interested a little further on. Hopefully they will ignore the unfamiliar scent and sounds of humans...

"Like that would ever stop you." she replies, scoffing playfully.

Though she has never been horse wrangling, there's logic to all this, even if she's one of those people who openly admit to being slightly impatient. Natasha can do it, but she gets bored quickly which leads in turning her head slightly to look the other way before looking down at the nails on her right hand.

She was never good at taking direction whilst off duty, which was hardly ever.

"Hey, is there ice cream here?" she asks in almost a whisper, quite seriously.

The house that Clint, Beverly and Picard share is not far from the one where Finnick and Annie live. The sound of construction doesn't go unnoticed, and it's what makes Finnick carefully approach the clearing out past the house. He's approaching, as he often does, cross-country, keeping to cover whenever he can. Old strategies and tactics have been fortified here so that they're habits more than careful awareness, but Finnick has been a little wary of Clint since he'd attacked the man. Not because he feels any particular fear of Clint, but because he wants to avoid any trouble.

He had, after all, attacked the man with a knife, and not because of anything Clint had done to provoke the attack, but because of the promise of reward he'd gotten from the Gamemakers here, a reward he hadn't wanted to claim, precious as it turned out to be.

It really is caution that leads Finnick to hang back, watching Clint work with the wood in a way that to Finnick's inexperienced eye seems to be a fair level of skill. Johanna would know more, but Johanna's not here anymore, one of the few people he genuinely misses. Unfortunately, Finnick's not the only one here; something past in his peripheral vision, and Finnick spins towards the movement, shattering any hope of staying unobserved.

A bird, just a bird, and he'd given away his presence.

Finnick nods towards the planks Clint's been making, an uncertain attempt at covering his overreaction to the bird.

"You know what you're doing with wood."

Clint would be more annoyed about the whole "attacking" thing if he hadn't blatantly volunteered for it. When you say you're willing to get stabbed, that put the burden entirely on you. And Finnick had taken him up on that offer, which had actually worked out well - even that small physical encounter had shown him that the younger man knew what he was doing with a weapon, which meant the injury was pretty light and easily treated. They'd needed answers, and that was a way to find them. But after that, he'd obviously been uncomfortable, so Clint had let him be and simply waited. There was potential there, if he wanted to use it. As much as any of them could in the place they're trapped.

"I've had some practice at it," he responds to Finnick calling out to him. Clint hadn't jumped when he had, showing absolutely no surprise at hearing someone behind him. Instead he just keeps working, carefully shaving off the outer bark of the log he's working on to put in a slowly growing pile next to him. "Everybody's got to have a hobby. I like working with my hands."

What experience Finnick has with woodwork is limited, and it's come from the occasional need to patch up or fix boats, but it was never something he was primarily responsible for. Still, he finds there's something he has in common with Clint, beyond the man's obvious familiarity with weapons.

"I make rope," he says, an almost offhand offer that he, too, likes to work with his hands, though for Finnick it's often more a case of keeping his hands busy, distracting himself with something that's not innocent, but is a reminder of who he could have been if it weren't for the Games and everything victory did to him.

Clint doesn't show any obvious unease at Finnick's presence; the man's difficult for him to read, but Finnick's good at reading body language, and there's nothing but ease in the way Clint goes about the motions of his woodwork.

"What are you making?" he asks, moving a little closer out of the edge of the trees.

"That's good," is the immediate response to Finnick's statement about rope. He still doesn't look up from his work - he's at a point where he's trying to strip the bark around a particularly gnarled knot and needs to keep focus on it - but he's obviously listening to what the younger man is saying. And, Finnick can probably assume, he's also paying attention to any noises he makes and where he's positioned in respect to the archer. "Rope's something we need a lot more of - there's only a couple in storage at the inn, and we're gonna need more."

Coincidentally, rope would help his own project, and as he keeps working Clint answers the question and spells out what he's doing. "This is gonna be a corral for livestock - there's enough of it running around now, it's time to get some of it working for us, one way or another. I gotta fence it in and build a shelter for them, though, and that's gonna take a lot of lumber." Hence the tree-felling, though that was also to clear the area properly to give the animals space to run in. "It'd help the process to have some cord to tie it all together - think you could swing something like that?"

Their house does seem to be gathering animals at a fair clip, it's true. Not that he minds any, but it's not any surprise that the accommodations for same might need a bit of an upgrade. Admittedly, he's never really had a whole lot to do with farms, but he knows the basics of constructing trellises for grapevines at the very least, and that should manage to translate well enough for something like this.

And if not, cutting wood, at least, is still something that he can handle.

"Is there anything you need a hand with?"

There's bound to be something in a project this size, after all, and he can't imagine that extra hands won't be welcome either.

Honestly Clint's not sure how it came to pass either. The house just kept growing, and while Arado helps with hunting and the chickens give eggs and the pig eats the garbage so it doesn't rot, he's not completely sure what possessed him to try and grab a few of those purple things that are hanging around closer to the village lately. Maybe it's a residual feeling that Wanda would want some - or even his own children. Maybe it's because everything else here seems to have some kind of potential use, so these probably would too, and they don't know what those uses are unless they observe them closely.

Maybe he's just trying to keep busy so he doesn't think of other things.

"Probably - what're you comfortable with?" He's found that asking that question is generally a better idea than asking about specific tasks, especially when it comes to his own hobbies of construction and remodeling. After all, most people (from his time) don't work in those fields and wouldn't know what to do with a post holer even after he explained it to them, and presumably the future would be even worse. Having a general idea allows him to tailor tasks to a person rather than trying to get them to do something they have absolutely no idea how to do.

To be honest, it seems a perfectly reasonable assumption to him. They're wooly, at any rate, and if that wool can be made useful in any way then it certainly can't hurt to have a few of them around. And who knows whether or not they might be useful in some other way besides, when they're still working on figuring out what to expect of this strange new world, and the various plants and animals that are present besides.

But that's a consideration for later. Right now, there are far more important matters at hand.

"Oh, a variety of things. We might not have had livestock, when I was growing up, but we did need to set out posts and rope for the grapevines to grow along; I shouldn't imagine that making even a fence like this would be too terribly different."

At least, not when it comes to actually building the posts. The actual fence itself is probably going to need to be more durable, given that it'll need to keep a variety of animals in, but he's willing enough to learn as they go and isn't any stranger to hard work besides.

"You might be surprised - we're going for durability here, not style." Not to say that what he planned wasn't stylish in its own way, but it was also the dead easiest thing he could make, requiring the least tools, the least time, and absolutely no joining. Not that he wouldn't be tying together the rails if he could get his hands on enough cord or rope, but it technically wasn't a necessary process in this escapade. "And I'm gonna have to figure out some kind of a door, but that can wait. You ever split rails lengthwise? Not into firewood?"

Not that Picard couldn't pick it up if he didn't know. Clint had found that the man was very competent and still physically fit, well able to do chores around the house and work in the fields on backbreaking labor. He might make mistakes, but he'd learn from them, and if he did they'd have more firewood for the winter.

Setting the saw down, Clint dropped to one knee on the ground, picking up some of the discarded twigs from trees he'd been cutting down, and started arranging them in a rough configuration of how the fence would work, one over the other over the other. "See, we're gonna skip the posts, except around the door. If we balance them overlapping like this, and give them all an angle, nothing's gonna bring this down except a real flood. Make sense?"

"I can't say that I have, no."

While he's done his fair share of chopping wood, it's never been anything like what Clint describes. Largely because there hadn't really been any need to do so, working on the vineyard. But the concept sounds simple enough, and if the resultant fence is really as sturdy as Clint is suggesting, than so much the better, he figures. Especially when the Observers are prone to throwing a wide variety of things at them, besides. Any number of which might be inclined to bring down a less sturdy fence.

And if doing it this way means he has to learn something new, he doesn't have any problems with that, just as long as Clint is willing to put up with him learning as they go.

"And it definitely makes sense."

The rest will, mostly, be seeing how long it takes him to get the hang of splitting the rails properly.

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I'm Fixing a Hole Where the Rain Gets In and Stops My Mind from Wandering

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