very unbottled lightening

[treadswater]

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: The Village, around
WHEN: 26th February
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: Open | Ongoing

---

Auroras, snow, no snow, lightning attacks: a girl's still gotta eat and work for her living. Or something like that. Annie knows she could just stick to the river and fishing with Finnick, remain on the outskirts. But she's been making baskets, bowls, over winter and those need to be dropped off at the Inn.

It's not as bad as a blizzard, she tells herself and her boyfriend. It's merely unpredictable. She can handle that. She's handled waves and storms on a bucking, frightened boat, and even if there is another earthquake, as long as she doesn't lose her head she knows that the shaking ground will stop and then she can move.

(It's an unfortunate choice of words, even within her own skull. Losing her head. Well done, Cresta.)

Naturally, it happens when the small woman is half way between her house on the outskirts and the Inn. Her instincts, honed by Career Academy and the school of the docks, tingle, twitch, pull at her, and Annie hits the ground as a ball of lightening crackles into life where her torso had been half a second earlier.

She hits the ground, rolls, curls up into a ready crouch ready to run, roll, move again if she has to. There's the sudden smell of burnt hair and she's guessing the end of her braid got singed, and the mud is cold against her shin and hands, but she doesn't move.

Not until the lightening is gone.

Not for a long, long moment after, where she stares at where the ball lightening had been. Where it nearly killed her, yet didn't.

"Oh," says Annie. Quietly, Distantly. "Okay."

She'll move, soon. She should. It's not safe, crouching here. She's just going to catch her breath first.

And try very, very hard not to giggle.

Comments

[scrounged]

Rey had seen the ball of lightning spark into existence, frighteningly close to the ground, and her instinct is to get as far away from it as she can. She'd never really known weather like this, but she was sure the lightning was every bit as dangerous as it looked. She holds her ground, though, momentarily mesmerised by its suddenness and raw beauty, ready to take off if more appears-- and then she sees the shape of a woman on the ground, right next to where the lightning had been.

She sprints over, fearing the worst, and looking relieved to see that Annie isn't badly hurt.

"Are you all right?"

[treadswater]

At first, Annie doesn't seem to notice Rey is there. She stays in her wary crouch, all coiled muscle under her overalls and coat, all wide eyes and ready to move. Then she sucks in a deep breath, sits down on her butt with all the abruptness of her muscles giving out, and nods.

"I don't think this arena likes my hair," she says, and there's laughter laced through her voice.

Not a good sign, for her. She knows it, everyone knows it, the way her giggle can bounce around an arena all creepy, but fuck it. She can smell her burnt hair. Her baskets, bowls, woven tight and waterproof, are in mud which should have been snow.

She hasn't nearly died in five years. She'd forgotten how it makes her feel, all full of space and disconnected.

[scrounged]

"Arena?" Rey isn't sure what she means, but she doesn't know enough about this place to argue with her; in fact, the idea that it's all some sort of proving ground makes a strange sort of sense. She wants to enquire further, but as she looks at Annie's singed hair she realises now's probably not the best time. "We should get you inside, you never know if more lightning's going to strike."

*THROWS JYN WITH A LOT OF FORCE*

[kestreldawn]

Jyn's now encountered a handful of people who'd been the unfortunate, unsuspecting victims of the rogue lightning seemingly overtaking the town. She'd thought it was simply a way of life here (it reminded her of the atmospheric conditions on Eadu when she'd first arrived - not exactly a happy memory, that), but has subsequently found out that the lightning is an anomaly. It's hard not to feel the prickling, skimming fingers of the electrical charges in the air as she walks around, and she's gotten fairly decent at predicting when one might strike based on way her hair rises on the back of her neck, her arms. She can hear the faint crackling that always seems to precede one of the clumped up balls of charge, and her eyes dart towards its location in time to see a figure commando roll away from it rather impressively.

Once she's sure the way is clear - or clear enough, at least - she makes her way over to the figure, hoping that the roll was enough to have kept the figure unscathed. When she draws near, she sees a woman with fiery hair, the glimmer of a laugh playing about her features. Jyn crouches, but doesn't reach out to touch - just in case.

"Did it catch you?" she asks, doing a very quick, preliminary scan with her gaze before finding the woman's eyes. She catches the unmistakable scent of burnt hair, but nothing like burnt skin - nor does the woman seem all that nonplussed. Good signs.

[treadswater]

"No. I can't decide if they wanted to or not. Maybe it plays well either way except no, this isn't like that, I don't think." Annie worries at her bottom lip and rocks back a little, enough to wind up sitting. Her legs feel shaky. It's not even the arena, her arena, she's thinking of now, but boats. Fishing. You might nearly die every day you go out: you shrug it off, you laugh and you swear, you get back to work.

Arenas are different, there's a purpose there. Even if it's only editing. Would it be a good idea now, to bump her off? But no, this isn't like the arenas back home. She knows that, she used logic and evidence and oh, but her thoughts are going round and round and round.

Annie reaches up, not to the woman but to her hair. To run her fingers through it, all shaky and agitated.

"I'm fast, though," she adds, and that amusement deepens. She is. Always has been.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn's trying her hardest to keep up with what this woman is saying. She knows that there's the general theory that there's some twisted group of overlords loitering somewhere, toying with the lives of the people (un?)fortunate enough to find themselves in the town. She remembers what Kira had told her when she'd arrived, how it felt like they were all pieces of a game - how she'd imagined herself as a holochess piece, smashing the brains out of another (figuratively speaking, at least). But the way this woman speaks of it, it sounds more - real, hauntingly so. Like she has no doubt that there are entities tugging at strings, like she's had - experience with them.

There's a lurch in Jyn's stomach, then, but she offers a very faint smile - both to extend the kindness to the woman rocking in front of her, but also to keep the bile in her stomach, rather than in her mouth.

"You are fast," she agrees, "I was rather impressed at how you dodged the lightning." Easier and safer to talk about something more sterile. "You've had training, I take it."

[treadswater]

Oh. Shit.

Jyn's words are a dash of cold water, shaking Annie's mind and forcing herself to be here, now, aware. Training? Yes, yes she has. Years of it, in secret. Secret, illegal, all the Careers are illegal, allowed only because it plays into the Capitol's wants but it can always be taken away.

Like it has been, back home in District Four. With executions and beatings. Arrests and examples.

This isn't her arena, but a lifetime of silence isn't so easily broken.

She shrugs, tilts her hand this way and that.

"You might call it that. You get used to dodging shit on boats. Machines can stuff up, cranes can spin and if you don't want to get killed by a crab cage hitting you, you gotta get out of the way."

All, as it happens, perfectly true.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn can see the fright, the panic that flashes across the woman's eyes for an instant. She knows it, very well - knows that the same fear has been captured in her own gaze, in those moments where she'd been discovered, figured out. It's the look (and subsequent forced calm) of a person who has seen too much, done too much to ever give voice to it all. The controlled nonchalance she attempts to convey, as though running through a checklist of what it means to appear unconcerned: relax, round, and shrug the shoulders; avert the gaze towards something impassive; make a non-committal sound; gesture casually with your hands.

She's still crouching, hands loosely clasped at the ends of her outstretched arms, elbows resting on her bent knees. She nods at the woman, placating her for now (especially given what she's been through with the lightning), but there's a knowing gaze that Jyn shares with her - willingly, secretively - one that tells her she knows it's a rouse.

And that she respects it. Understands it. Feels it, too.

"Whatever the source, it's done you well," she comments, glancing at the spot she'd been moments before. "I doubt you would've survived it if it hit you straight on."

[treadswater]

It is a rouse in how she's using it, right now. She's used her tumbles and rolls from the Academy on boats, and it's saved her life more than once. But isn't that the cover anyway? The good-looking boys and girls from District Four, so athletic from their dangerous, yet oh so scenic, work. (The smell of fish doesn't come through the screen.)

And yet.... there's something almost friendly in the glance that the woman gives her. A shared understanding of, I know what you did and I won't tell.

Yet, anyway.

Annie doesn't trust easily.

"No," she agrees, softly. "Not dressed to survive that kind of shit."

Her hands, Annie notes to herself, are starting to tremble.

[kestreldawn]

Once Jyn notices the tremble of the woman's fingers, she stands, makes a motion for the woman to follow - even offers a hand, should she need it to assist her in rising. There's nothing forceful or intrusive in the way she's reaching her hand towards her, it's merely an offer - an option - in the event the quivering has spread past only her fingers.

"C'mon," she urges, "Why don't we get you a drink? Or we can walk for a bit, allow you to gather yourself again after what you've been through." She pauses then for a moment, the demands of social graces coming back to her momentarily enough for her to add on, "I'm Jyn."

[ex_assertiveness90]

Stella feels it before she sees it — the prickle of fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck, a charge in the air that means she should get out of the open before she's struck by lightning. And she would, if not for the sudden blinding flash mere feet away, the ball of lightning that remains for only a handful of seconds before disappearing, leaving behind a sulfurous smell: ionized air molecules, or something like that, the hard sciences are the one thing she'll admit to not being that good at.

There's also the stink of burnt hair, which is what attracts Stella's attention to the young red-haired woman with the braid. Annie, she thinks her name is — they'd met once, during the feast, and again afterward when she'd been investigating Karen's death. The lightning must have just missed her.

Stella goes over and leans down over her, a hand hovering over her back without touching, ready to step away and give her room if she needs to. "Here, come on," she says. "You're all right." A bit singed, maybe, but she seems otherwise sound.

[treadswater]

There's silence. A beat of it, silence and stillness, Annie's eyes unfocused and her attention not here and now. Another beat, another breath, then she moves. Rolls back, then rolls up onto her feet, stands with hands up.

Flight is clear in every line of her body, every angle of her face.

But Annie blinks, then, and seems to refocus and reassess the woman, Stella, as not being an immediate threat. Still a threat, her posture seems to say, but not an immediate one.

"I'm all right?" she asks, sounding genuinely puzzled. "I am?" Another blink and her mouth cants downwards. "Why?" She's not dead, obviously, even she can tell that, but what does Stella mean? And where does she want her to go? Come on as if she has to go somewhere, or maybe should, but she doesn't know. She was trying to get to the Inn but Stella can't have known that.

Or maybe she guessed. Or. Maybe.

Belatedly, somewhere behind the shock, Annie thinks that she might have misunderstood something.

[ex_assertiveness90]

The defensiveness is clear — the posture of a woman ready to run at the slightest sign of a real threat, even though there's nothing nearby to hurt her. It's a look Stella is very familiar with; specifically, she's seen it on assault victims, and on people suffering from PTSD. It could very simply be a reaction to the close call with the lightning — as the shock and confusion probably are — and Stella's certainly not ready to make any assumptions, but the response catches her attention all the same purely for how frequently she's seen it.

She takes a step back to give the other woman room, letting both her hands fall relaxed at her sides, turned slightly outward so she can see she's not armed. "The lightning," she says, patiently. "Looks like it just missed you — although I think it might have caught your hair."

She doesn't ask are you all right because she thinks it's fairly clear that she's not. Stella doesn't move any closer, but she's watching the younger woman's face carefully. "It's Annie, isn't it?"

She knows an Annie, back home. Annie Brawley, who nearly died at the hands of Paul Spector. The two women aren't alike — but for a second saying the name makes her think back to the Spector case before she puts it to the back of her mind, dismissing it as irrelevant to the moment at hand.

[treadswater]

"Oh."

It's a small sound, crushing under the weight of everything going on and all of her thoughts trying to process it. 'It' has several layers of meanings here, definitions spinning off like a dictionary or is a thesaurus? Something fancy and Capitol, in their bookstores.

"Yeah. It's, it's Annie. Annie Cresta."

Strange to introduce herself, still. She's not like Finnick by any stretch but she's still used to people knowing her name.

"You're, you're Stella?"

Annie can't keep still. She straightens a little, lowers her hands and then reaches up to pull her braid across her shoulders to look at at the damage.

[71st_victor]

Johanna stands above her, having followed the strike the same as she's been following all of them since they started. She knows it's crazy, but every time, part of her thinks that this is the one that's going to break the arena. She sees Annie on the ground, but still cranes her head upwards to look for a hole in the arena, but there's nothing there, which means that she needs to focus on the woman beneath her.

"Can you move?" is her blunt question. As much as she knows people here aren't going to kill them just because they appear weak, she also doesn't think that whatever happens next should be in public. "We should get you back to the house." Especially before Finnick loses his mind and starts tearing through the village searching for her.

[treadswater]

It helps. Johanna is blunt, practical, an anchor to keep her secured after being hit by that sudden wave of nearly dead, nearly dead. Annie seems to deflate, just for a moment, then nods.

"I ducked."

It's an answer. Yes, she can move. She's good at moving, she's good at moving fast. Except there are the trading wares, scattered on the ground. Not too scattered, she doesn't think. Salvageable, just a bit dirty.

"I don't think there'd be another strike. Probability's against it," Annie says, thoughtfully, swallowing a giggle as she reaches out and gathers her things. Johanna's here, she'll look out for her. For Finnick, if nothing else. That's okay, it's the main reason why Annie looks out for her in return. And wants something like her approval.

She keeps talking. Maybe if she keeps talking, she won't laugh and won't look completely crazy.

"Unless it's dramatic irony."

[71st_victor]

"Probability only works in a place that makes sense," she reminds Annie. "I know you and Pretty Fish didn't get to live through the Quell, but they rigged up lightning bolts to strike every twelve hours," she shares, thinking of the bright bursts of it when Katniss' arrow had struck it. Lucky for her, she got to pass out. Unluckily, she didn't get the chance to get the chip out, so she can only imagine what that means for her, back home.

"Careful," she warns, because while it's not like they're being killed for sport, they're also not getting immediate sponsor gifts. What she wouldn't give for some timely medicine right now. "You're sure you can walk?"

[treadswater]

"Arenas make sense," says Annie the Career. She's studied them, all of them. She knows their tricks, their trends, the beats of narrative imposed on them later by editing. Nature, too, has its probability, but with every thud of her heart, her thoughts are getting less coherent again. The cold wash of Johanna's presence wearing off.

Can she walk?

"I."

She has to think about that. Think it over, assess her limbs, the trembling in her fingers.

"Could you help me up?"

[71st_victor]

"Not when Katniss Everdeen likes to fuck them up so well," Johanna replies as she leans over her, debating how she's going to help her up. "If I let you stay on your feet, you promise to walk right back to your place? The last thing I need is Finnick turning that pout on me." It doesn't work, so really it's just an annoying thing that she has to put up with and then deal with more of it when she isn't impacted by it. It's just pouting and sulking and more, until she thinks about doing something stupid like smacking him.

"How's the heart rate?" she checks, because that's probably a good thing to keep an eye on, too.

[fishermansweater]

They don't have the ideal means for fish preservation, but Finnick and Annie do have a smoker, and if they had some salt, it would be better, but smoking and drying is something. With the food supply so precarious here, that something is better than not making any preparations at all. So Finnick's in the kitchen, some of the goose brood pecking around at his feet, when the attention of his companions is suddenly diverted elsewhere.

North and South, two of the older goslings, are turning their heads towards the door, and South starts up with the honking that's matured out of the peeping that they'd made when they first appeared on the doorstep. Moments later, he hears the door, and the sound of Annie's voice calling to him.

The sound of her voice is enough to make him pull the fish off the stove, turn, and run towards her.

He knows that tone. She's trying not to sound it, but something's wrong.

"Annie?"

[treadswater]

She looks whole, at first glance. No limping, no stiffness, no obvious injury. No blood. Her singed hair is hanging down her back, hidden aside from the whiff that takes a little while to accumulate. But she's pale enough her freckles are starting to pop out against her skin, her eyes wide and fingers trembling.

"I'm okay," she says, distantly. Then she blinks, focuses on him, and runs across the room to throw herself into his arms. He'll catch her; he always catches her.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, it didn't hit me, I'm okay." Annie's words are muffled against him and fast, a little frantic. She's trying to convince herself as much as him.

[fishermansweater]

He knows this. He doesn't know why, now, and she's far too upset to be able to openly tell him. He knows that, too, and he knows how to wait for her to be able to tell him. It hurts, though, because it means he has to see her like this, while his thoughts race from one possibility to another, wondering what's upset her so much.

She's not okay, whatever she says. Not when she's so distracted, so unfocused, that way she gets that cruel people grab onto and say crazy. But he's watching her as she runs to him, watches for any physical sign of harm, and sees none except for her shaking shock.

"Hey, hey," he says, softly, holding his arms out for her and wrapping them around her when she gets to him, pressing her face into his chest. He stretches his neck to kiss the crown of her head, and that's when the acrid burning pierces into his sense of smell. He shifts, staring, wide-eyed, looking again, closer, for any sign of hurt.

"Are you burned?"

[treadswater]

"I ducked." It's said quietly, still muffled and still frantic, as if she's trying to convince herself that's what she's done. She feels worse now than she did immediately after it, the implications and almost died and her brain throwing up images after images of what happens to the human body when struck by electricity.

But he's here, he's got her. Annie can gulp a breath, cling to him, collapse because he's got her, she's safe. She can be useless at him and it's all right, it's all right.

She's not dead. She ducked.

[fishermansweater]

He can feel the moment when she lets herself collapse, and he strengthens his arms around her, hands held against each other behind her back, and her weight held partly by him now.

"The lightning?" he asks, softly, forcing himself to keep the sudden sick horror of understanding what she means from showing in his face or quavering in his voice. He's been worried, worried about her, since the lightning started hurting people, but he'd told himself it wasn't going to happen, told himself she was going to be all right, that he didn't need to be afraid.

"You're okay, you're okay."

He's telling himself as much as her.