sixthiterationlogs | ψ can't turn back now I'm haunted

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ψ can't turn back now I'm haunted | CLOSED

WHO: Finnick Odair
WHERE: Outskirts of the South Village
WHEN: February 4
OPEN TO: Jessica Jones and Marian Hawke
WARNINGS: Probably cursing, references to canon violence

It had been a long trek back from the building in the mountains (shrine, other people had called it, though the word had been unfamiliar to Finnick). He'd gotten back fine, and his preparedness for an everyday fishing trip had been very useful for the group: it meant he could start fires, fight foxes, hike through the cold, take his share of the lead during the trek and the watch during the nights. When he'd gotten back, he'd been exhausted, and he'd spent days at home curled up with Annie and Coco, the little crocdog that had adopted them. But the need for food didn't wait for comfort, so now he's back to his morning routine of long treks along the river and out to the lake to check and reset his fish traps.

One of the traps had been broken yesterday, and he'd brought it back to fix it. He'd been finishing it off this morning, so he's a little later on his outward trek than he usually is.

Maybe that's coincidence. Maybe it's not, because as Finnick is approaching the bridge on the edge of the South Village, there's a flash of movement on the edge of his vision. Danger? Approaching villager? Animal? He doesn't see it well enough to tell, but it's enoughto snap his attention to the spot, and see her.

Moana.

His heart lurches. She's been gone for months, or he thought she'd been gone for months, but there she is, dark hair messy and matted, face gaunt, scrubs so torn and dirty it's hard to tell they were once dark blue.

He's seen what the victor looks like when they're plucked from the arena. She looks like that, a tribute who's been in the arena for weeks, barely surviving with little hope of victory. She's half-hidden behind a shrub, but he knows it's her.

"Moana!"

He starts towards her, and the girl turns and darts back into the scrub.

"Moana! It's okay!" He starts off after her, running, bursting into the plant she'd been hiding in only to see her disappearing up ahead. He starts to run after her, but his training kicks in and reminds him how bad an idea that is and he comes to a reluctant stop. He wants to help her. He should help her, but he can't trust what he sees. It could be her, or it could be a trap by the Gamemakers. It could be an illusion. It could be a lot of things, and he shouldn't run into potential danger both blind and alone.

So he slashes a mark into the bark of the tree he'd seen her run past and turns back the direction he'd come.

The first people he sees are both familiar faces, so he doesn't bother with niceties.

"Did you see that? Did you see her?"

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Hawke took a little longer to get back to the village than the others, but it was a willing detour. She was already considering the next journey that might take up her time, because getting a glimpse of more of their location filled her head with thoughts and ideas. And question marks. Surviving the situation was easy for her; she's a survivor through and through, but living off the land like this is easier for her than most. At least the others made it back and her anxiety for them was appeased.

She has sharp eyes so she sees the last part of Finnick's situation; she sees him running, a figure running away that she doesn't get as good a look at, and he abruptly stops. Hawke knows odd behavior when she sees it, and she knows Finnick well enough by now to know that if he's troubled, she should be troubled too. The name he called isn't one she recognizes. Hawke raises an eyebrow at him when he approaches.

"Yeah, only a glimpse, she moved faster than I could follow." They were at a distance after all, and in movement. She's concerned, looking at his expression, glancing in the direction the girl went. She's assuming it is a girl, since he used 'her,' but she wasn't close enough to know for sure. Hawke frowns and crosses her arms against her chest, on alert now, because she can tell something's up by his behavior. "Why, who was it? Did she take something from you?"

Apparently, Jess's band of misfits lagged behind the initial batch or two of arrivals. Adventures, Avengers and other A-listers with the kind of survival instincts one has honed to a point, as opposed to the raw paranoia of Jess, Miller, and sightless Matt. The best she could do is keep up with Elektra, their de facto leader, and that was really just so she wouldn't piss her off.

The homecoming was the harrowing part. As soon as she was in the door, Kamala popped her one, leaving a shining bruise on the crest of Jess's cheek. Currently, she's choosing homelessness, housing all her crap except a bottle of basement wine tucked into the messenger bag living on her shoulder. Jess splits her above ground time between the Inn and its amenities, and House 60 and its utter lack of them. Jess is heading away from town, to her lonely crapshack to refill her bottle, when the fancy peacock from some party a while ago squawks in her direction.

"What?" she asks nobody in particular, looking around. Unbeknownst to her, she'd been walking in a sort of fog, thinking about nothing yet entirely consumed by it. If she wracks her brain, sure, someone ran by. The handsome brunette nearby has answered his question and asked the relevant ones from their point of view so she takes a step nearer to her. Maybe with proximity she'll absorb some of her wherewithal.

Their response tells him enough to at least know that it wasn't a hallucination, or at least not one exclusive to him. Hawke had seen Moana, at least, even if she hadn't recognized her. The other woman doesn't offer much, but they're both at hand and he has their attention now.

He shakes his head.

"No," he tells Hawke.

Maybe if they hadn't just been transported several days' walk away from the villages to have things they didn't want a bunch of near-strangers shown to them anyway, he would be feeling less like this was a trap. Or perhaps not, he's always been untrusting of this place, ready to expect it to turn on them just as an arena would.

"I know her," he explains. "Her name's Moana. She was here for a while. And she's gone. She disappeared months ago, we all thought she'd gone home. But I just saw her, and she looked..."

Like a tribute weeks into the arena, ragged and thin, scared of being caught. But neither of them would understand if he said that.

"Like she'd been living wild."

Hawke glances toward the woman who joined them and nods at her in greeting, before turning her full attention back to Finnick. Her eyes widen at the explanation. "She's one of the people who went up missing?" They'd been all questioning this for a time now, where people went when they disappeared, and Hawke feels something awful rising in the pit of her stomach.

Her eyes sharpened in the direction the girl went. "She ran from you." It's not a commentary on Finnick, who she knows to be a sweetheart, but it is very confusing. Why stay away all this time? Why run? She flips her braid over her shoulder.

"We should try to catch her. If they're still here, we have to know." One of those mysteries of the place that Hawke started not to question anymore, and it clearly was foolish of her. While she has no real interest in getting out, it doesn't mean she likes the idea of Ty and Connor still being here and them having given up on finding either of them. "She hasn't had time to cover her tracks."

Just because she was here for a while doesn't mean anyone who recognizes her is a friend. Her skepticism about him doesn't trump her inherent skepticism about the villages, the bunker, the big creepy picture, though. That's information she can get from Moana, provided they catch up to her. Jess would be confident of that if she were at her usual speed but her mile time isn't nearly as impressive anymore. Then again, that won't matter if they stand around much longer.

"Not yet," she tosses away as she takes off in chase. The mystery girl has enough of a lead on them that it's likely they'll come upon multiple route options to search, otherwise Jess would leave it up to these two. She still might. She should not have given up so easily on that jogging-regularly plan.

“She was,” he confirms. “Months ago, maybe a year now.”

She did run, and it’s there to see in Finnick’s face when Hawke points it out that it’s one of the things that has him so unsettled. Moana was a sweet girl, eager and cheerful, with none of the shadows in her eyes that victors all had. If this place has thrown her into the wilds to survive...

It wouldn’t be much different to the things Finnick’s seen over and over again in Panem, but that wouldn’t make it right.

“She was a good kid. Friendly. If she reacted like that, something’s wrong.”

It could just be the things that fending for yourself on your own do to someone’s mind, but it could also be something else.

Before he has a chance to say anything else, Jessica starts running. It’s a relief; despite the wariness of a career and a victor, his gut still says to give chase.

He takes a few steps back in the direction he’d been running and picks up the spear he’d unthinkingly discarded as he starts off after her.

“We should be careful,” he calls. “It could be a trick.”

That doesn’t stop him running back towards where she’d disappeared.

Despite her lightfootedness, Moana's trail is easily to follow at first. With half the village emptied out, their are fewer prints on the path to confuse with hers. She's leading them further south -- and, as Finnick reasonably warned, very possibly into a trap. Jess could deal with a trap right now, even if it's an existentially overblown one. Still sounds easier to deal with than the awkward vibe she's created at home.

"Moana!" Jess bellows, assuming a familiarity she has no right to. That's the theme of their lives here so it shouldn't jar a stranger too much, if she has a history with the Observers. Then again, there's every chance she's a different or new version of the same person. It's too early to trust her gut on which is more likely.

Finnick knows a little about tracking. It’s an important skill for the tactical approach the Career packs often take in the Games. They need to be able to find their targets to track them down and defeat them. So, it was one of the skills they’d been taught at the Academy.

He’s never been a bad tracker, but he’s not particularly great at it either. Fortunately, Moana doesn’t make it hard for them: she’s running, fleeing, and that makes it harder to cover her tracks. There’s a scrap of blue fabric on a tree, a trampled shrub, footprints in a patch of mud.

Speed is important; she’s clearly moving fast and it’s hard to tell if they’re making up any ground on her. But their own haste could be making them more vulnerable, and he’s trying to watch for traps, too, people hidden in the trees, concealed triggers or tripwires, he knows a lot of ways to lead someone straight to capture or worse.

So far, he doesn’t see any. But he does see, very obviously, that they’re being led quickly away from the village and the protection the proximity of other people offers. What is she doing? Why isn’t she responding?

“We’re not going to hurt you!” he tries. “Moana, it’s okay!”

Hawke is an expert tracker but she's also paranoid and used to being attacked. Her general reaction to a great deal of situations was to set off traps so she could deal with them rather than try to avoid them. If they do get in a spot of trouble, she'll be ready, especially with her learning her new powers enough to control them reasonably well now. The clear tracks of the girl helps confirm that she most certainly was there, not a hallucination or the sort. It's possible these things are left on purpose, but they do have the appearance of someone desperately trying to run.

If she didn't know Finnick was a good sort, she'd wonder why the girl was running and if it was something he did. But she is confident he wouldn't hurt one of them. She notes how far they've been moving, as they move from the village down south a bit. They'll be able to follow their own tracks back easily at last.

They continue until very, very abruptly, the trail ends. Hawke's confused, since it really does trail off, and she glances around. She steps to the greater area, seeing if someone she jumped or leapt, she glances up to see if there are branches or something to swing out of the way. It can't be so simple as a cold trail when they were relatively close behind her. Dark eyes narrow suspiciously.

"Stay within ear shot, branch out a little from here," she says quietly to the others, gesturing with her fingers at the same time. Something doesn't add up, she might be nearby hiding or have a spot.

Anything Jess misses, her companions seem to pick up on with ease. She wonders how easily they made it down the mountain, inwardly relieved not to have been grouped up with them. She would rather burden her friend(s) than total strangers. This impromptu search party will disband once it reaches the end of the line in several minutes, an hour, somewhere that falls within her acceptable time limit for teamwork.

They come to a stop. Jess stares intensely off in every direction without any real clue which one to go in. She nods curtly in acknowledgement of Hawke's suggestion, then heads off toward the densest foliage. More traces of disturbance ought to stick out there, she reasons. The other two can pick up on subtler marks.

Jess steps steadily between the trees, listening for a twig snap or leaf rustle further off than her own boots. The trail she's on is ill-defined and narrow, trodden down by fauna, probably. It's only because she's looking down, trying to find a human trail, that she notices a perfect corner of wood jutting out amongst dead leaves and dirt. Jess crouches down to pull detritus aside and verify she hasn't just unearthed a stray two-by-four from the nearby abandoned village. She has to uncover less than half to figure out she's dealing with a Lost-style hatch, pre-industrialization. Which is good because the other half is pinned under a dead log she's not going to be able to dislodge on her own.

"I might have something over here!" she calls to the others. She might not, or it might have nothing to do with Moana, but it doesn't sound like either of them have turned up another lead.

Finnick's looking up into the trees when she shouts. He'd been wondering if Moana could have climbed and started moving from tree to tree, as Rue had done in last year's Hunger Games. He'd never seen Moana do anything like that, but he knew that being forced to survive in the wild could bring out unforeseen skills, and so long living out here undetected suggests that she's been able to adapt. But the shout brings him immediately back to see what Jessica has found.

He frowns when he sees what it is: a hatch in the ground, pinned down and unable to be opened without moving a heavy log. That would explain Moana's disappearance, except that it also prompts the question of how, if that's where she went and why her trail disappeared, it could have been covered over again and caught under that log.

But it's clear that they have to go down there. Finnick moves to help with the log and they haul that out of the way and clear the rest of the forest's debris from the hatch. It's big enough for people to get through, and when Finnick tries it, it comes free easily, swinging open to reveal a ladder inviting them down into the ground.

"Cover me," he says, gesturing to the spear he'd set aside so he could help clear the hatch. He draws a knife out of his coat pocket and eyes the depth. No, it wouldn't be a good idea to jump. He climbs down using the ladder and spins when he gets to the bottom, knife ready.

He doesn't see any threat.

What he does see is food, blankets in a heap on the floor, packed dirt, wooden supports. This is a serious hideaway of some sort.

"You're gonna want to see this."

Hawke follows the other two, suspecting that this was merely the start. She was getting that feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one warning her. She felt it frequently, but it'd been quiet lately here. Now, it was a shift in their world. She covered him, as he requested, and dropped down after he gave the clear all. Hawke's sharp eyes looked around, and she knew what this looked like. She knows a hidey hole well, having made several of them herself over time. This was not good. This may be some answers ... or another misdirect.

Hawke drops into a crouch to look closer at the items there, glancing over her shoulder at Finnick. "If you could get on the network to let people know. We might not have any answers, but we might want to get a blue in here to see if they can pick up the trail." She has thoughts about what this means and knows other people will too.

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ψ can't turn back now I'm haunted | CLOSED

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