I want to live where soul meets body

[repressings]

WHO: Credence Barebone and you (ft Annie Cresta)
WHERE: Fountain, inn, and around the village
WHEN: 12/8
OPEN TO: Legit everyone
WARNINGS: Most likely mentions of abuse in tags, will edit accordingly. Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts!
STATUS: Open.

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i. Bᴀᴛʜᴇ ᴍʏ sᴋɪɴ ɪɴ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴄᴏᴏʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʟᴇᴀɴsɪɴɢ ⇾ closed to annie cresta
It's probably not a good thing to scream when you're underwater. That's Credence's first instinct, to scream, but something instinctual stops him. He feels pressure, an unusual sensation that he soon identifies as being surrounded by something other than air. Credence Barebone is drowning.

Blind panic sets in. Somehow, he's underwater. How isn't exactly the first thought on his mind--instead, it's I can't swim, and he kicks in the strange mixture of somehow warm-and-cold water, though it winds up more as a flail, and tries to reach the dim light that signals the surface.

He's going to die.

Credence is going to survive so much only to wake up somewhere unfamiliar and drown. Sheer stubbornness doesn't quite describe how much he's clawing at the water haphazardly--it's more instinct to stay alive. To endure. He's done it before, he can do it again. He has to, even if he feels consciousness starting to slip away. He's tired. He's so, so tired of fighting. It's all he's done these past few days.

Finally, he manages to struggle his way upwards--just enough to splash a large wave of water over the fountain, pale hand surfacing from the dark waters of the fountain to grasp feebly at the edge before slipping under once more. Credence may be tired, but he's not done yet.


ii. Aɴᴅ ғᴇᴇʟ⇾ inn
Credence has been counting. It's been exactly two days since the girl with the long hair helped him out of the fountain, sputtering and incomprehensible. Two days since he first stayed at the warm inn, and he's still there. He can't quite put an emotion on what he's feeling--it's certainly not homesickness, nor is it restlessness. He feels uneasy, and it's a different type than what's usually ingrained in his mind.

Two days of doing nearly nothing.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. He tries to not take the phrase that flickers through his mind quite so literally, but after the events in New York City--after what he's done to everyone--it's hard not to. He'd been sitting in a corner, quiet and out of the way, when he decides to fix things.

Maybe it's a small way to fix things--to get rid of the feeling in his chest and the guilt of not actually doing anything when everyone is pitching in to survive. Somehow, he wants to make up for all of the damage he's done. This isn't the best way to go about it but it's a start. With an amount of courage that's abnormal from him, he clears his throat and speaks to the nearest person.

"I want to help." His voice is soft, barely above a whisper, as if raising it will somehow detract from something.

"I used to run--used to help--a church." It's the only equivalent to New Salem Philanthropic Society he can think of. "I want to help," He repeats, and finally chances a look at the other person's face.

"Please."


iii. Fᴇᴇʟ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪᴛ's ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ɴᴇᴡ ⇾ village

It's cold. It's cold and it's not snowing but there's a bunch on the ground, and Credence hasn't really it like this before. Not piled up. He's never been outside of New York City, never further than Broadway and 42nd street except for that one time he walked all the way to Harlem. He's left with the strangest urge to just jump in it, even though he swears he can still feel the chill the air had when it was biting down on wet skin upon his arrival.

He settles instead for smiling. Just a tad, of course, because he doesn't deserve to smile, but it's just him and the sky and someone passing by. Once he notices that someone's there his face immediately returns to it's neutral state, gaze to his shoes.

"It's beautiful," he says in that same soft voice he always does, as if misspeaking will bring forth something unpleasant. "It's not like New York."



iv. I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ɢᴜᴇss ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ'ʟʟ ᴅɪsᴄᴏᴠᴇʀ ⇾ wildcard

Credence can be seen wherever there is warmth--he is the quiet, lurking presence in the inn, always listening to conversations. When he's walking around the village, he waits until the night time, and can be found staring at houses in a forlorn fashion. He might even bump into others if his mind is preoccupied, though his reaction to doing so will be abnormal.

Comments

iv

[booklegging]

Jess isn't a pious person. The only altar the Brightwells had worshipped at when he was young had been the trading tables in the underground, original books their bibles, materialism their guiding commandment. He supposes he wouldn't have stood a chance at rising past earthly concerns should the desire have arose--his father would have laughed him out of the house much sooner than he had.

But he can agree on one thing: idle hands are a curse for the spiritually-minded and the practically-minded alike.

Action is the only outlet that gives Jess a reprieve from burdensome feelings, and since the brutal murder of one of their own two weeks ago, he's been needing that reprieve more than ever. He sleeps less and less, and pushes himself more and more. Some days he heads into canyon lands before dawn and doesn't return until after dark.

Always, though, he keeps watch when he's in town. The animal mutilations and Karen's murder had been a stark reminder--they're not safe. They need lookouts. If that was ever in question, it's not now.

Those of them in town definitely aren't safe wandering about after dark, alone, and unarmed, and dressed in painfully eye-catching white as Credence is. Jess, concealed out of sight on a rooftop like a living, breathing gargoyle, sees the new guy coming a mile away. What are you out here doing? The hunched figure strolls aimlessly, passing dark alleys without checking them, blind spots wide open. Vulnerable from every direction.

An easy mark for a killer.

When it becomes apparent Credence isn't about to reverse course and head back to the relative safety of the inn, Jess sighs to himself. The prisoners who leave themselves exposed like this are the ones who worry him the most. Uncurling from his position, it takes a fence, a gap between roofs, and a matter of seconds to catch up to Credence, and when he does he swings down silently.

"Hey," he says just as his feet hit the snow-packed dirt with a soft whump. Surprise?

iii

[fishermansweater]

There's a look that kids from the industrial districts get. Pale, because they never see much of the sun, skinny, because they never get enough to eat. Scared, because who in Panem isn't scared, and the kids he sees from those districts have plenty of reason to be scared, because mostly, they're going to die within a few weeks.

The kid Annie pulled out of the fountain is like that, and oddly enough, it's something that makes sense to Finnick in a place that makes no sense. So many of the people here look like they never knew a day's hardship in their life until they arrived here, and, well.

There's nobody in Panem who's never known hardship outside the Capitol.

So Finnick's been keeping an eye on the kid. This morning, though, he's not actually watching out for him. He's on his way out to the woods, feeling decidedly too hot in his coat since the sudden mystery heat (and occasional fire) started.

But he sees the way the kid looks when he realizes he's spoken, and he's seen that look too many times.

"It's not like where I'm from, either," Finnick admits, glancing at the trident he's carrying to make sure he's not about to set the thing on fire again.

(There are scorch marks on the wood.)

iii.

[powerunleashed]

Jean didn't mind the snow nearly as much now that she had on clean, dry scrubs and overalls along with a coat and boots. She was much warmer, even if it was still impossibly cold, and the snow was nice and clean. It was never like this in the city and at school, it usually ended up getting cleared away before they could really get out in it like this.

When she heard New York, she paused and turned to look at the man who said it. "I'm from New York too," she said, her smile growing a little. "Upstate. Are you from downstate?"

village

[womanofvalue]

Peggy smiles softly at the comment, bundling her coat a little tighter around her neck to protect her from the chill, though she thinks that the voice she hears is enough to pause a moment for. "No, it's not," she agrees, turning so that she can look at the precise same view that he's looking at. "Though, in certain lights and at times, New York is quite beautiful too. Sunset on the Brooklyn Bridge," she suggests, her smile nostalgic and sad as she thinks of the last time she'd been up there.

"Have you ever seen snow like this before?" she asks.

i

[treadswater]

The wave doesn't make Annie startle so much as pivot, focus on it. Waves on a boat would be normal, expected. You'd need to watch them, if they were bigger or smaller than normal, but expected. Except she's landlocked here, no proper boat to take her onto the river. She's in the fountain park, and after Ciri, she knows what a wave means.

She doesn't start moving until she sees the hand. Then, it's instinctual. Someone is drowning and she's able to help (and it's not her games where she had to wait and wait and wait and ignore all the kids): she runs over.

Her coat is on the ground before her knees hit the snow (she's the priority, needs to keep something warm for herself), and she braces herself against the edge of the fountain before reaching in.

Gotcha.

Annie wraps her hand around the person's wrist and pulls upwards, hoping it's enough to get them kicking up again to grab the edge of the fountain.

ii.

[lastofthekellys]

She's been concerned about Mr Barebone, ever since Miss Annie brought him in a couple days ago. There's a fragility to him she isn't used to here, a sense of fine cracks running through him as if a wrong word would make him shatter. No, that's not it. He reminds her of a badly beaten horse, dark eyes hidden, head lowered, the strength in his limbs forgotten.

Badly beaten horses can be dangerous, as well as heartbreaking. They need to be treated with kindness.

But it can be hard to judge which particularly path that kindness needs to take, and she's not sure if she's made an error here or not, letting him try and get his bearings without asking for his help straight away.

Kate lowers her sewing and glances over, regarding him for a moment.

"Well, now, I'd be glad of your help, Mr Barebone," she says kindly. "I just wasn't sure if it'd be the right thing of me to ask before now. I've run a little farm 'fore now, not anythin' like this." And yet, here she is, orchestrating a daily meal for fifty-odd people, cut off from civilisation.

And the mention of church is a sure thing to mention to a woman who wears a twig-and-string cross around her neck.

"What did you do, in that church of yours?"

ii

[notabirdcostume]

Sam had been counting the days as well. At first it had been since his arrival, but now he was worried for Jo, Mark, and the others who had gone on that hunting trip. They'd been gone for awhile and he hoped they were going to make it back okay.

The weather hadn't exactly been pleasant after all. Sam had tried passing the time recently by patrolling the village and keeping an eye out for danger. There had been no new attacks, but a few new people had joined their ranks. That just meant more people to worry about and Sam was so tired of worrying.

He had started thinking again of his talk with Nerys. They needed a distraction from all this snow and being so helpless and the idea of starting a game night of some kind was poking at the back of his mind again. Sam had decided it might be a good project to start trying to "make" his own games out of stuff he found in the woods. Game pieces didn't have to be fancy carved plastic or metal -- it could be rocks, twig, and debris from the broken homes. A game board didn't have to be freshly painted and printed with words -- it could be a big enough piece of wood from one of the broken houses from the earthquakes.

Sam probably looked strange coming in to the inn with this junk, but he did it all the same. It was while he was setting the materials down that he felt someone watching him. Sam looked over and realized that the inn's main room was currently occupied with one of their newest arrivals. He might have waved the request off if it was someone else. After all, he really didn't need help with this project and he was hoping to keep it as a bit of a surprise. But as soon as he'd looked at the kid and really heard the request he'd immediately reconsidered.

"Yeah? My dad's a minister at a church." He looked around, but they were pretty alone in the inn right now, "You just got here right? I'm working on a surprise for the others. Mind helping with that? It's nothing big, but I"m trying to make something that will break up the monotony that comes from endless snow days."

iv

[ofspaceandtime]

Ciri is tucked tight in every item of clothing she arrived with to make her way through the village. The cold weather (and the general bizarre nature of the situation) has kept her mostly confined to the inn. However, pacing about in a tiny bedroom or in front of the fire is getting her nowhere, and there is only so much help she can be to Kate, and there is only so much game to caught in the forest.

As she explores, Ciri notes those that come and go from the unfamiliar looking houses, and examines some of the larger, more purposeful looking buildings.

She's just finished her loop around the snow-covered bakery and is stumbling out from behind a bush when she nearly collides with pale figure wandering down the road. Ciri tries to catch her footing before any actual harm is done. "Oh! Sorry- sorry, I didn't see you there!"