California, rest in peace; [Arrival + OTA]

[tarnishing]

WHO: Taylor Baum
WHERE: Fountain and Inn
WHEN: Late afternoon, then evening
OPEN TO: Jax Teller & YOU
WARNINGS: Possible narrative mention of drug abuse
STATUS: Closed to new threads

---

fountain, for jax;

When Taylor jolts awake, it isn't the water that's the biggest shock; it's the cold.

One moment sunk into the warm, bubbly depths of a much-needed bath, the next her body has seized, the drop in temperature a vise across her chest that jerks her legs and arms inward and leaves her floating for a moment, embryonic and quaking in the cold, shimmering depths of the pool. Instinct and Mrs. Lennon's kindergarten swimming class kicks in, butterfly kicking her up and up until she surfaces, coughing, grasping against rough concrete, trying to haul herself free and failing. Her fingers have gone rigid and her muscles don't want to work, skinny elbows wavering when she makes a second attempt, mind already racing at the flood of unexpected information, finally flopping over the lip and curling into a ball on the hard ground with a throat-tearing, "FUCK!"

What has happened, what has happened, what has happened?

Bunched on the ground, her eyes are wide, blinking against the cold, and this is nowhere she has ever been, nowhere she has ever seen, she's sure of it.

"What, what, what, what," she whispers, the words shuddered out as she watches the sun dip past the tops of the line of fir trees, and she knows she has to move, but isn't certain she can.


inn, later that evening, ota;

If this is a dream, or a coma, or a drug-fueled hallucination, it is an impressive one.

It's been hours since Taylor changed into clean, dry, clothes, but still she's huddled beneath a blanket and parked in front of the wide hearth in what everyone is calling the "inn." It makes her wonder, dimly, if that name really applies if nobody's paying to be there.

She's not such a SoCal girl that she can't handle a little cold; she's been to Big Bear and Tahoe enough times. She owns a pair of skis, for fuck's sake, along with several super cute sets of stylish-yet-practical leggings for hitting the slopes or showing off her yoga butt at the coffee shop at Sundance. But this weirdness wasn't a gradual cooling; it was like a hard slap that reverberated down to her bones. She can't seem to get warm.

The sun has fully set and she probably needs to be more practical than this, probably needs to figure out where the hell she's sleeping tonight, but right now she's pretty sure could pass out right here and be okay with it.

Comments

[beallmysins]

Jax has already had his baptism in that fucking fountain and he's not really looking to do it again. He hasn't done much in the way of contributing to the collective effort or anything like that since coming here but he has figured out he's going to need to provide for himself if he intends to survive. That and that alone is what's driven him out just beyond the fountain park today and while he can't see it, he can hear someone struggling.

He might be selfish in a lot of ways but he's not going to let someone drown. He tears through the greenery and gets into the park in time to see a woman's head break the water and haul herself out over the lip of the fountain.

"I'm not going to ask the stupid question and ask if you just got here. You want a hand up?"

[tarnishing]

The words are filtered through cotton; a low rumble, distant, indistinct. The only firm thought in Taylor's mind is that of the cold, her flimsy clothing wet and clinging to her skin, burning beneath the chill.

"What?" she manages, her body a hard knot as the word rasps against her raw throat, incredulous at the idea that she could be in this position at all, that someone could think talking was the proper response to this overwhelming, shuddering discomfort.

[beallmysins]

"You want a hand up," Jax repeats, offering his hand to her so he can pull her up to her feet. It's a pretty simple question but it seems like she's still in shock from all the cold water.

"No snow on the ground but it's fucking cold, so, I figure you want to get inside."

[tarnishing]

Openly shaking, Taylor stares at the hand, understanding beginning to at last pierce the fog of her reactive mind -- She's got to get up, she's got to get somewhere she can get warm, and she has to do this soon or she could legitimately die.

She hears him, the flippant phrasing like she's an errant child who made her own bed and now has to lay in it -- And hell, maybe that's the case, maybe Taylor doesn't remember shit about what got her here, even if purposely taking that level of drugs seems pretty fucking unlikely. Regardless, it doesn't stop her from thinking this guy is a massive dick.

"I've got it," she says, her words still too faint to be snappish, and forces herself up, thinking of Tim and his arms shaking with effort those first months, the refusal to accept help even when he needed it. She'll do this herself; thanks, asshole.

"Just point me," she adds, unstable but keeping her feet, bent at the waist and glaring.

[beallmysins]

"Not much to point," Jax admits. He's happy to stick his hands back in his pockets and let the girl figure it out for herself. He's never been mistaken for a gentleman by any definition of the word but he hadn't tried to be an asshole. Not this time.

"There's an Inn, though, in this weird place and they let you use the bathroom for free. Food, too, if you need it. I can take you if you want."

[tarnishing]

Is this guy homeless? Taylor squints back at him, her confusion compounding along with her shivers. He doesn't look homeless; he looks like a hipster nursing home attendant, artfully scraggly but well-scrubbed, like he's cruising for hot granddaughters during his rounds. It's such an odd thing to know, that a place would let her use the bathroom for free.

But gift horses and mouths, right?

"Thanks," she says with a twitching nod, arms crossed over her torso.

[beallmysins]

"Don't mention it," Jax says, grinning at her. She's hot, even if she's soaked from the fountain and bedraggled like everyone else is around here. He can see the potential.

"This place is going to be the biggest pain in the ass you ever encounter, though. Warning you up front. No electricity, no cable, no cars. No way out. It's gt free food and shit but that's the only good thing about it."

[tarnishing]

"What the fuck?" Taylor instinctively replies, her face pinched with confusion as she follows him. There's more she wants to ask, not the least of which is, where the fuck am I and why are you infuriatingly calm, but she's cold as balls and afraid he might slow his mosey if she engages him on this any further right now.

They emerge from the trees into what honestly looks like a set, rows of quaint buildings and dirt roads from a bygone era. Maybe that's what he means? Never mind that she would have needed to lose significant time to suddenly wake up someplace like that; at least it's an explanation that makes some semblance of sense.

And at least she didn't get high and accidentally sign up for some kind of new age commune.

"That one there?" she asks, chin shivering as she points toward one of the larger buildings.

[beallmysins]

"Yeah, that's it," Jax agrees. "Looks like some Shining shit, I'm not going to lie to you about that, but so far nothing weird has happened."

There's the fact that they're trapped here, the fact that everyone seems willing to go along with this place without fighting against it, the fact that everyone seems to get along - all of it is too much kumbaya for Jax but he doesn't know what this chick likes. Maybe that's comforting to her.

[3ofswords]

It's his last cup of tea.

Okay, overstatement: it's the last cup of the tea that was objectively his, probably not the last cup in the village, probably not the last cup he'll ever get to have. But the thing standing--sitting--between him and enjoying it by the fire, is the new woman trying to hold the corners of a blanket and brisk her hands over her arms at the same time. If he sits down by her with it, he's going to feel like an asshole, and he's just started to have enough feelings again that it might actually bother him.

"Here," he says, holding out the mug like he intended it for her from the start. "That'll help a bit. There's a bath upstairs too, when you're up for it."

[tarnishing]

The hard-scrabble reality of this place is far from settling in yet for Taylor, and she stares uncertainly at the proffered cup of tea only a brief moment before reaching chilled fingers from beneath her blanket to accept the gesture. Later, she'll feel a little tug of guilt when she fully understands what it means; now, though, the warmth of the porcelain against her careful hands is a simple and profound relief.

"Thanks," she says, and immediately sips, grateful, too, for the warmth on her throat, still sore from those first ragged shouts when she'd pulled herself from the fountain.

"Jesus," she mutters after, the entirety of this place still too much, something that needs to be shaken off with a curse for her own sanity.

"Sorry," she adds with a furtive, apologetic glance up at the thin kid standing before her. "I'm still trying to figure out if I'm on a really bad trip."

[3ofswords]

"That's the most normal shit anyone's said to me since I got here," he admits in a huff of breath, glad his derailing moment of kindness hasn't resulted in another earful of Latin, or someone so grief stricken but analytical as to feel like a garbage fire to his other sense. "So, I guess I don't have the answer to that one either."

Taking up a place along the hearth's wall, he adjusts to cold stone at his back, the fire's heat along his side. People tend to come and go through the inn at any hour, but he'd appreciated the people who stuck around a bit to help him through the first night. "I'm guessing you don't know anybody here already."

It doesn't quite sting, seeing friends or contemporaries reunite in the village, but it keeps him going back the fountain when he can, wondering if it will ever be his turn.

[tarnishing]

"Is that a thing that happens?" she asks, glancing upward and squinting against the glare, eyebrows pinched. "Knowing people here?"

Nobody had mentioned it before now, but she'd been a little preoccupied with not freezing to death, so that might have been why. Her mind doesn't leap to Tim or her father or even someone like Beccah, but rather those random people you see around town every five years or so, long enough that they have a new haircut or have gained or lost ten pounds, or have a new baby -- People who may have mattered once, transiently, but now only rank small talk. Old co-workers. Professors. Cousins of friends. Like her 9th grade biology teacher might walk in the door right now.

[3ofswords]

"For some," he says, a sigh puffing one cheek and exiting at the corner of his mouth. "Six billion people on the earth, sixty here who don't even all claim to be from it, and somehow you could do an entire Friends recast with the groups."

They even have a fountain, he realizes, and turns rolling his eyes into checking the door. He can't believe he misses skirting around the tourists at that thing, trying to recreate television instead of enjoy the actual city around them. It'll be a long time before they get to do that again, if the bodies were stacked as far in Central Park as they had been across from the shop. "I get to be Monica, for the record."

[tarnishing]

"Well," Taylor slowly begins, "as long as I'm not Ross."

She'd heard already that people come from all over, from different universes, different planets, which -- There's only so much that can be asked of her to accept just yet; the entire climbing out of an unknown, freezing fountain experience is really enough for now. The wash of information she's been getting is being dutifully tucked away to unpack at a time when she less on the cusp of having a mental break.

Hell, maybe she's already there. Maybe that's what this is.

"I don't think there's anybody here that I know," she adds, although it isn't like she's taken a survey.

[3ofswords]

He's complained about it before--to himself, at meetings--but perhaps he needs to reevaluate the insidiousness of human coping mechanisms. At some point, he's started to steer into the slide, just to keep himself even, and he needs to either roll himself off the road or start forgiving the people he thought were crazy, the first few weeks he was here.

Jokes about the familiar can make it easier, and at least he's found someone who knows what he's talking about--but it doesn't get easier period, on day one. "Sorry," he says, for her lack of built-in-friends and for steering them into some bullshit.

A beat passes between them: he looks at the fire, at her hands on the mug. He can offer food, if she hasn't already had her share; he's already offered tea and a bath. He could get a read on her or he could ask the cards--what does she need--but they could be cosmic and contrary, and sometimes you just have to be gentle with people, and ask: "If there were one thing that could help you feel closer to normal, right now, what do you think it would be?"

[tarnishing]

"What, you mean apart from not having fallen down the rabbit hole?" Taylor asks with a soft, scoffing laugh. What a question. She has no idea where she'd even begin -- There is no part of this experience which is familiar, except for maybe this guy himself and his pop culture references.

"Why?" she asks instead, thinks she detects an air of earnestness like this dude is planning on giving her whatever she conjures up.

Inn

[71st_victor]

Johanna tries not to sneer the minute she sees the woman, on her return to the inn with some collected food that she needs a few extra ingredients for. It's just that look she has, the kind all the Careers always had - untouched, perfect beauty, the kind that you had to spend hours with the stylist for in an effort to look naturally amazing. She's definitely a new face, Johanna can tell that much, but how new is the question.

"Not used to the cold?" she prods, her things from the kitchen and from her hunt in hand, dropping it all messily to the table so she can start sorting what'll stay and what she takes with her, along with what gets dropped off for Finnick and Annie.

[tarnishing]

Taylor doesn't immediately answer, swallowing instead against her sore throat as she shifts her gaze from the low flicker of the flames to the owner of the voice. She watches the woman a brief moment, the bluff movements of efficient hands, the sardonic line of her mouth.

"Not when it involves being soaked," Taylor replies, some flicker of pride pushing against the idea that she's a soft, spoiled beach bunny, despite the fact that most of her experience in the cold has been wrapped in the privilege of ski lifts and rented lodges. She's been to fucking Iceland. She's stood shivering on a desert set at three in the morning.

[71st_victor]

Must be nice, she thinks, to not have a frame of reference of being soaked and cold, though her most recent experience had been the kind of deathly tropical that comes of the elements trying to boil you out of your skin when you're not having blood rained down on you. Still, she keeps that to herself as she rifles through the herbs to start separating poisonous from edible, keeping both because she can use it for the garden she's started to keep.

The 'just in case' garden, for when alliances and all this sharing and happiness falls apart. "Well, don't worry, unless you're really stupid, no one's going to make you jump in any rivers." Whether this woman is the kind to idiotically search the fountain for a way out, well, Johanna will find out through word of mouth if that happens, she's sure.

[tarnishing]

"That's reassuring," Taylor replies, a wry tilt to her head and lift of one shoulder, resigned to a level of strangeness already even if she still isn't fully comprehending what's going on.

"Is that for eating?" she asks with a nod to the various plant life being sorted on the table, imagining it has to be something like that. This place still feels surreal, apart from her like she's watching dailies of her own life, crouched around a little screen and blocking out the glare of the sun, but she's caught on to the antiquity of the surroundings, the lack of technology. She'd had a bowl of soup earlier and it felt and tasted like something out of a Victorian kitchen -- Hearty, filling, not over-processed or finely milled. Like she's on a school trip to one of those places where they do historical reenacting.

[71st_victor]

"Most of it," she agrees, going through her things and separating out the poisonous from the good, faintly amused every time she does this, because it's practically Tribute 101, like they're just getting some practical experience before they go out there and kill again. She lifts one of the berries up and feels like she might as well offer one free tip to the girl. "Word of advice? Unless you're looking for your quick ticket out of here? Avoid these," she says, ditching the unwanted items into a little bag so she can use them to dissuade the local wildlife from getting at anything she plants.

That leaves her with the herbs and foliage she can use for food, whether broths, sides, or more. "You don't exactly look like you're starving," she says, eyeing her. "Maybe you just need more time."

[tarnishing]

Taylor has never been a Girl Scout, but neither has she ever been the sort of person to just eat a random plant, so she at least feels fairly secure in that. What this woman is planning to do with the ones she's collected, Taylor is almost afraid to ask, and she decides to be generous and assume it's something medicinal.

"I didn't get the impression that anyone here was starving," she says instead, her eyebrows arching. She's been told there's a free meal here everyday and that people actively contribute to make sure it keeps going. There are plenty of people on the streets of L.A. who have lived for years on a single meal a day, and none of them had access to their own kitchen.

[71st_victor]

"Not yet," Johanna replies, but she's also been in enough situations to know that one day, you can have a stockpile of food and the next, it can be stolen or destroyed or someone might just blow it up because they're trying to starve you out when they can't outwardly kill you. "I'm just giving it time, something always happens," she says offhand.

"Who are you?" she asks, waiting to hear some stupid Capitol name, like Shiny or Gold or Cadmium, whatever those idiot parents think is the new trend to name your kids.

[tarnishing]

Taylor arches an eyebrow. "Well, at least I have something to look forward to," she deadpans, and tugs the edge of her blanket closer. It's hard to tell if this woman is excessively practical or just kind of an asshole. Maybe it's both.

"Taylor," she adds to the question, and then jerks her chin the chick's direction. "Who are you? Apart from someone who collects plants that could kill a man."