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WHO: Jake Jensen
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: July 11th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: open

Waking up underwater has got to be the least fun place to wake up.

Thankfully, Jake's instincts had him kicking for the surface before he even knew what was happening, and by the time he burst through into the fresh, clean air above, he'd only just really registered the fact that he'd somehow managed to wind up in...a fountain?

During SERE training (which Jensen has had to suffer through not once, not twice, but three times thanks to insubordination claims by disgruntled superior officers), he'd been waterboarded. Obviously, he walked away without any scrapes, but it's a sensation that simply cannot be forgotten. As he scrambles to grab onto the rough edge of the fountain, he's grateful that he wasn't more aware of his surroundings below water, or he might not have been calm enough to haul himself out without having a panic attack.

He's in a clearing. It looks sort of like a park, or a town square, which seems weirdly deserted. But, considering he's soaking wet and his glasses are hanging on to his face on a wing and a prayer, he can't exactly complain. Coming up against a hostile when he's still trying to disentangle himself from all his wet clothes is hardly something he wants to deal with right now.

When he finally manages to haul himself far enough out of the fountain to tumble over the side, he discovers he's wearing a pack on his back, and only because landing on it sends the air whooshing out of his lungs.

"What the fuck?"

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There's something about him that looks terribly familiar. It's like a painting that's had water thrown on it and the colours are dripping, barely allowing her to make out the image but to say that it's a familiar one and not half bad, at that. She's been trying to understand what's going on with the swell of the water and had thought to return to the fountain.

What she hadn't expected was to find the man tumbling out of it, looking like a half-remembered idea she'd once had in a dream. Maybe there will be others? Maybe this is just a delay. She wonders if it's rude to ask whether he's late or on time. "Here," Peggy coaxes, kneeling down to pry the bag off and try to smack the water out of his lungs with hearty hits to the back. "Careful now, take some deep breaths."

It's a little embarrassing how tangled up he's managed to get in his soaking wet clothes and pack, enough that the figure he'd barely noticed across the clearing is suddenly at his side, peeling the pack off his back and whacking him between the shoulders.

When he finally stops coughing and dribbling up water, he's able to focus better on his Good Samaritan.

"Hi," he breathes, surprised. She's pretty. Like, really pretty. "Hello. What's your name?"

"I'm Peggy, can you breathe?" It's all in one rush of a sentence, thinking that if he can speak, then he can clearly breathe, but there still seems to be a vaguely stunned look on his face. Maybe he's been underwater too long and he's still recuperating. "Careful," she coaxes. "I know it's a bit of a shock, but first thing we need to get you to do is get all that water out."

This close, that odd feeling only intensifies. He looks like he could be Steve's brother or cousin and it's dredging up old feelings she'd thought long buried.

"I'm Jake." He can breathe just fine, really, but he can't help being a little star struck.

Roque would mock him endlessly for this. Suddenly, his starry-eyed wonder at how striking she looks dims a little, his guilt about Roque's death and complicated feelings about how much he misses him anyway distracting him. Which is probably a good thing, considering how he doesn't have any idea who she is. Or where he is. Letting himself get attached to a stranger is stupid. More stupid than anything else he's done.

Hacking up the last of the water is kind of horrible, but it's not the worst feeling he's had to deal with, so after a bit of spitting, he dredges up a smile for her.

"Thanks."

She steps back out of the splash zone, so to speak, and does her best not to get too impatient and demanding with the answers of questions she's yet to ask. This is a new blip in the pattern and it makes her way to understand more, like why he seems to be on his own when she had been accompanied by so many strangers.

"Was there anyone else in there with you?" she asks, wary of anyone left in the water.

She could get impatient and demanding, he's kind of used to that sort of demeanor from people.

Wiping his glasses on his wet shirt is really less than helpful, in terms of making them dry, but it gives him something to do with his hands so they don't have to hang there like lumps at the ends of his arms.

"Not that I could tell?" he says, glancing over his shoulder. "...Was there supposed to be?"

"When I arrived here, I had to practically stick out my elbows to find room," is her mild joke, not sure she sees anything funny about this situation, but the weedy humour is the best she can offer to this new man. She extends a hand politely to the man as an offer to clean his glasses for him, seeing as her shirt is plenty dry.

Unfortunately, she can't offer much help in the way of explanations. "I'm afraid I haven't got much of a clue where we are."

"A pretty lady like you?" He scoffs. "I find that hard to believe."

Seemingly realizing what he's just said to her, he winces, not quite blushing but almost. His mouth always runs away from him. "I mean, uh... Right. Uh, thanks." He thrusts his glasses out at her so that he has an excuse not to make eye contact, fuzzy thought it may be, and desperately casts around for something else to talk about so he stops putting his foot in his mouth.

"Well, damn. I'm assuming asking if you know why we're here is also pointless..."

Peggy raises her brow, the flattery from that face somewhat more tolerable than it really ought to be, but she can work with that. She smiles as she ducks her head down to focus on drying off the glasses with her scrubs top, handing them back to him as she takes the chance to look at him again, marveling at how like Steve he is.

"In two weeks and change, I've yet to discover a purpose for our being here, unfortunately. Maybe someone wanted us out of the way or maybe this is just purgatory."

It's been a week and half. Jo knows. She's keeping a tally carved on one of the closet walls in the house that she took over. She started it with the last number of days she'd counted in Medietas, in her Hunter's Journal, before she woke up here without it. The house wasn't picked until the third morning, but that was an easy countback. It's been a little harder each morning, waking up and carving in a fresh tick mark.

Eventually, she does have to get out of her house. Which puts her back outside, backpack hanging from one mostly bare shoulder, because she doesn't trust to leave her things anywhere yet. Houses that can be broken into for squatting, can be broken into for stealing, and her bag is full of stolen things from all over this place she'd like not to have to replace again. Plus, she's keeping her clothes in it, given she's wholesale given up on the big black scrub top in favor of the tank top.

She isn't expecting the guy who comes out of nowhere. Tall, and blonde, and clothes soaked to him.

In the way no one else's clothes have been stuck them except for fighting the river or the pipes exploding lately. "Fuck."
Then, a touch more sensibly a second later, but also braced against the answer. "Are there more people with you?"

After Peggy helped him to his feet and kind of clued him in to what's going on, Jake decided to start wandering. There are lots of buildings around, some that are clearly houses, and some that look like storehouses or businesses. There doesn't seem to be much activity going on, apart from a few people he's seen dressed just like him in varying colors of scrubs, too far to talk to, too wary to respond when he waves.

That is, until he nearly runs smack-dab into a tiny blonde woman.

"Whoah, hey!" he exclaims, holding his hands up in front of him. "Uh..no? I mean. I met a brunette named Peggy by the fountain, but she was already here when I showed up. Who are you?"

Jo doesn't know which is more staggeringly painful.

The relief of him being alone, or the disappointment of him being alone.
Both of them sear through her center with the kind of fury reserved for bullets.

For three months there had been people. She'd built them something, and let them in.
This was where it left her. Alone. In another godforsaken trap. With no one she knew or knew her.

"Sorry." A few more second late. A few more dollars short. But there. Even if it's about as apologetic as it is uneasy, while she reaches up to adjust her bag strap and then rub the side of her neck. "Jo. I came with the first wave of people a week or so again. You?"

Funnily enough, her strange lag between him finishing speaking and her starting doesn't seem to bother him at all. Nor does the slightly insincere tone of her voice. He's used to brusque people, even if he's more used to them being a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.

"Jake," he says, pointing to himself unnecessarily with his thumb. "So you've been here like a week, huh? Any idea what's going on? Where is this place? Where did you come from?"

Amusingly, or ironically, maybe both even, so is she.
Which is maybe why she never feels off foot with slamming into one.

"I'm not exactly the best person to ask that. Pretty much everyone else's answer will be somewhere around the same par except mine." So far at least. She was used to being the odd one out. The one the fucking multiverse liked to play kickball with. Even if. It'd never been this fast. Not any of the other times. It'd been a year, or years. Not months. Not barely the quarter of a year. "No one knows where we are, except that the canyon hems everyone in here, and no one knows why it's happened, or who, or how."

Edited 2016-07-12 17:45 (UTC)

"Except yours?" Jake's eyes narrow. Statistically, an anomaly is interesting. He has a feeling that here, 'interesting' isn't really the word for it. Is there something stronger than interesting? Fascinating makes him feel too much like Spock...

He's getting ahead of himself.

"Why's yours different?" A cursory visual examination doesn't bring up any obvious differences for why she'd be singled out: she doesn't have pointy ears and her eyes are clearly human, so something weird like aliens or elves can be ruled out (hey, just because it's not likely doesn't mean it's not possible), and while they're all dressed alike apparently she doesn't look like some kind of royalty or anything weird like that. She holds herself like Aisha, actually, and that makes him feel weirdly comfortable around here. "Has anyone named this place?"

Jo's eyes narrowed, with an odd speculativeness at the question. Not because it sounds like it's entirely an inquisitive thing, but like there's something familiar and young about the way the question is asked. It reminds here of something, but she's not entirely sure what, and she's vaguely afraid she's about to find out she's right.

There's a linger on the single word, brows furrowing slightly more, a statement that is almost reluctant question. "No."

The rest isn't reluctant because it's happened too many times. On too many multiverse places. With too many people. Both that she didn't know, and ones who had the faces of people she knew, but whom had never met her before. "Because this isn't the first time something like this has happened to me."

Beat. "Or even the third."

He recognizes that look. It's when someone doesn't really understand what he's talking about but is almost afraid to find out. Jake grins at her, feeling much more steady on his metaphorical feet. He's used to that look. He knows what to do with that look. "Sweet."

He's about to start spouting off ideas for names for this place when she answers his next question and he gets completely derailed.

"No shit, for real?" He's momentarily stunned into silence, which is something new for him. If this has happened to her before, then that means that this isn't some kind of one-off thing, maybe it's not even something that's directly targeting him. Would it be possible that he's just accidentally caught in the crossfire of something bigger than himself? It wouldn't be the first time that's happened, although it's never manifested in something like this. "Okay. In the interest of figuring out what the fuck is going on here, I'm going to need you to tell me about the first three plus times."

She doesn't for a second look like she's bragging about any of this. Being taken from her home without her volition was not something to brag about, and neither was being taken from any place, or people, she'd tried to make a subsequent one, or ones. It was exhausting, and it was painful on a level where 'pain' didn't even seem to be the right word anymore. It was too physical, too temporary, and too light for the price it collected on each time.

His request isn't her favorite, and maybe that wrinkle to her features shows it. He has every right to ask, and every, first hour of the first day, reason not to understand he's enthusiastically stomping on graves that never seem to truly close. "That's not exactly something that fits in two or three sentences in the middle of the road."

To his credit, Jake seems to realize when he's, as she calls it, stomping on graves that never seem to truly close, and his expression falters for a bit before he tries again.

"I mean, you don't have to. Tell me, that is." He lifts a hand like he's going to gesture between them, but then freezes and lets his hand drop. "Clearly. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, duh. I'm just curious. Too curious for my own good. Sorry." He grimaces, well aware he's being weird, and then shrugs and spreads his hands.

"So. Jo." A beat of moderately awkward silence. And while Jake is seemingly immune to silence when it's Cougar that's providing it, he can't stand it around other people. "...Do you have any hobbies?"

Jo's eyebrow twitches, along with something in her cheek. Because. Seriously? Did he seriously just do that?

Actually apologize for asking, and then ask her if she had hobbies. Like anyone had hobbies here, or that she'd gotten to do much of any of them, if she ever had them, given all the being picked up and pocketed by the universe, dropped willy-nilly, for all she could tell for trying to pick those places apart even.

Maybe there's something ironic to it. Her answer more than his asking. Or maybe both. Maybe for surprising her. That makes her answer sound tauntingly amused, more than flat. "Other people would tell you it's killing monsters and running bars."

But without waiting to clarify if she agreed, she continued on, from the earlier part, too. "It'd probably be a whole lot easier if I could just write it down once and hand it to all of you, but given our lack of paper and pens, and my decided lack of not wanting to write it all down again--" And that word is an annoyed pointed. She hasn't forgiven this place for taking her Hunter's Journal or her father's knife. She will never. "--it's what you've got really."

Beat. "It just happens to be the same as what everyone else has got and wants, too, and none of it helpful to answering this place."

It's got to say something about human nature that they've only been here eleven days, and a degree of complacency has already begun to slip in. Not a comfortable, leave your doors unlocked kind of complacency, but that can make a person think they actually understand the shape of things. Weirdly, for Veronica this hadn't involved anyone but the small group already in the village with her.

She's walking up the dirt road to the inn, empty pack hanging loose from one shoulder, when she stops dead in her tracks and wonders why the fuck it never occurred to her to expect anyone else out of that asshole fountain. A soggy stranger's stepped out of the trees, and that's pretty damned significant in this particular town.

She hesitates from a safe distance, head tilted as she takes him in with a wryly arched brow from beneath her ball cap.

"Let me guess," she says. "Fountain diving isn't your favorite sport, either."

Jake saw the girl long before she saw him, sauntering up the path with all the confidence of someone who feels comfortable in their environment, or at least, comfortable enough to know where she's going and how to get there. Jake, on the other hand, has been skulking about in the treeline, because he doesn't know where anything is, and the few people he's spoken to already seem highly wary of strangers.

He can't really blame them, to be honest.

Still. He's pretty sure there are no weapons in this place, or someone would have pulled something on him already, so he steps out of the trees to make himself seen, confident he won't get shot. Well. Pretty confident he won't get shot.

He jumps theatrically when she calls out to him, pretending he hasn't spotted her already. He's known some unfortunately deadly teenagers in his time (himself included, honestly), but he still doesn't want to spook her. Acting spooked is the best way to do that.

He laughs. "Yeah, no kidding. What's with that, anyway? What kind of crazy fucked-up world spits people out of a fountain?" He carries on as if he doesn't expect her to answer. "My theory? Alternate dimension."

"That is a popular theory," Veronica replies with a slow, considering nod. "Did you come from another place like this?" It still seems unbelievable to her, but there are several people here who absolutely insist that they'd been trapped in similar situations before -- Sometimes several times over, like whatever puppet master was in charge just enjoyed fucking with them in particular.

"Because this is my first time, and I have to say, I did not react this well," she adds with a motion the guy's way.

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