ataraxionlogs | oo6. closedish.

By the time she gets to level fifteen, Johanna is pissed off. This is not a departure from her usual state of mind, especially not since waking up naked except for goo slicking her flesh, sporting a new tattoo and a new tracking device somewhere underneath. Even once she'd had the lack of Capitol influence explained to her, Johanna's anger had not cooled, and it wasn't likely to cool anytime soon, if ever.

And no matter how many times they tell her that it's not the Capitol, and no matter who it is that says it--she's still not sure that she believes it. Who else but the Capitol would grab up a lot of people and shove them into a place where they've got to fight for their lives?--not always in the dire Arena circumstances, but in circumstances so like the Districts. Limited resources, shitty food.

It's the shitty food that has her on the move today. For someone that hated the indulgences of the Capitol, and all that they stood for--Johanna is not happy to return to a diet more like her childhood, or the packs in the Arena. Meat was scarce even in District 7, just like it is here. She's gone through every floor that she can find, one by one, looking for something edible, something that doesn't require a lot of work. And each floor proves fruitless (ha ha, food joke), and each time she steps onto the lift, Johanna's irritation increases by a notch. Sometimes by ten notches at once.

So when she finally does reach level fourteen, and steps into the kitchen--and sees just the hint of movement in her peripheral vision, she needs no encouragement. Her anger has frayed away at her nerves, which were pretty frayed to start with. Not half a heartbeat and she's got one axe in her hand, and the other, she throws--picking out a target before confirming what it is that she's actually looking at--there's no time for that, only time for quickness and precision, and so she throws, hard--

--and there's a satisfying clang of metal on metal, the violence of hot food spattering chrome and glass and tile as the axe cleaves against the pot hard enough to wrench it off handle, which goes flipping out of the hands of the man holding it.

"Holy christing--"

A refrigerating unit shudders as Charles' back slams into it in flinch, hands up to cower for a moment. Not the most impressive showing in the world, he's only a few inches taller than her, and dressed in pyjamas, a robe loose over bedclothes and feet bare on the ground. Over-long hair not wildly tangled, but he clearly didn't expect to have to meet anyone today.

Cowering only lasts a second, hands dropping to shoot her a look of disbelief. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demands, voice as dry as autumn leaves, crackling in recent disuse. "That wasn't-- you threw an axe at me."

Who throws an axe at him. >8[

Edited 2014-07-15 12:55 (UTC)

She sinks down into her next step, muscles bunched and ready, her other axe in hand, ready--

But it's just a man with disgustingly long hair, and an expression of fear that quickly switches to something a bit more incredulous. Clearly not used to combat, or attacks in his kitchen, or anything except probably shuffling around this spaceship in a bathrobe. Or he's a really good actor, but that's less likely. Johanna can spot those easily. He's not one of them.

"Did they enhance your sight, when they brought you here?" She stands, fluidly, her axe still in hand but her posture less defensive, more defiant. "Because wow, you've got some powers of observation."

With a jerk, she steps forward, bound to retrieve the axe, and in case he's thinking about moving-- "I like you right where you are, so how about you stay there and save me the trouble of actually throwing this axe at your head. Or if you want a free haircut, you could try moving. You could use a haircut."

Charles is in fact half a step into investigating thrown axe for himself when she makes her warning, and opts to follow it with a list back into where he'd cowered, this time more deliberate slump than sudden startle.

He watches her go by, a mix of wary as well as curious. Inevitably.

Adjusting the sit of his robe as she goes, binding it back around himself as if to collect also his dignity. "You're the girl on the network who wants to rip her own arm off," he says. "Speaking of observation. Were you truly attempting to murder the nearest available soupe aux canned out of calculated vengeance, or are we feeling a little jumpy?"

Johanna smirks at that remark. She's already pleased that he actually listens, and doesn't move beyond that half-step. The robe adjustment gets a glance from her, but when it's just tucking some tattered shitty terrycloth around his body, and not a reach for a weapon, she mentally downgrades his threat status by another notch or two.

"Chop," she corrects, as she picks up the thrown axe with ease. She hefts it toward him as if in demonstration. "I don't want to rip it off. Do you know how much force I'd need? And just little me, trying to do that to myself."

On close study, someone might notice a physical slightness to Johanna--but she hides it with her swagger, and the chip on her shoulder that's half the size of the Tranquility itself. She turns back to him, her axes at her side now. There's a readiness to her even when she's standing otherwise at ease.

"Do I look jumpy?"

"Yes, actually. For a given value of the term."

There are times, at least lately, when Charles seems to pretend that the rest of the world doesn't quite exist beyond a three foot radius from him, all things more complicated blanching into apathetic fog. In this case, swinging axes and a jolt from routine are enough to put on alert.

In the background, a roomba is skidding over. A scrape as it pushes ruined pot pieces aside as it squeegees up still steaming tomato soup.

And a toaster ejects from bread, over to the right.

Charles is just jumpy enough himself to lift a hand as if he could will away any urge on her part to attack anything that happens to be happening. "Were you looking for something?"

Impassively, she stares at him, though her fingers tighten their grip on her axe, minutely--first at the whir of the robot, and then at the dry clack of the toaster. The latter is less familiar than the former, but the former makes her think of machinery, things she does not trust.

The noises settle. Johanna's fingers don't relax their grip. But she does bear her teeth at him, in a harsh little grin.

"I'm here for lunch."

And since he doesn't seem inclined to even attempt an attack, she turns her back on him and goes over to the toaster, her hand still tight on her axe. Just in case.

"Of course you are."

And off she goes, to terrorise his toast. Charles lets out a breath -- not quite entirely pent up, but just enough to matter -- as she withdraws, and there is the sound of shuffling, movement, nothing that indicates attack either.

A door opens. Cans are taken out, silver, labelled, indicating what food they're meant to resemble and what nutritional value they have. More than he needs for himself, they're set on the counter, picking through. Bolognese, vegetable, fish in brine, more soup.

"Did anyone ask the question?"

Being deliberately oblique is probably not the best way to handle a jumpy survivalist who has not one but two axes on her, but hey.

She's listening, as she snatches the toast out of the toaster and drops it right onto the countertop--but the noises are all domestic, the scuff of footsteps and the clink of dishes and silverware. The heavy sound of the cans briefly gets her attention--canned goods aren't a commodity, in Panem, but it doesn't take much for her to work out what she's looking at. Some weird method of food storage, not a weapon. Whatever; she goes back to the toast, her toast, crumbles off a corner and stuffs it into her mouth.

The bread tastes surprisingly good. Maybe that's because she's not been eating very much. It's something she forgets to do, but now that she has the chance at it, she's quick to crumble off a bigger piece and stuff that into her mouth, too, eager. She's so focused on eating that she nearly misses his question, and when she does make sense of it, she gives him as scathing a look as she can.

"What question."

Don't fuck around is in her very tone of voice. Answer quickly, pal, because she still has one of her axes in her free hand.

Charles can't help but watch her, and watch her watching him, as if maybe she'd never seen a can of food before. Instinct has him selecting the thing he imagines better tasting with as little preparation as possible, before he pushes it to slide nearer her down the countertop.

Fingers splay. "What was the last time someone shoved something in your arm and told you to smile," he clarifies. "Or perhaps more directly relevant to the matter, in what way did you not put up with it?"

He selects himself a new can as the roomba back there continues cleaning up the contents of the old, pulling it open by the ring set into the top, tin peeling on a curve.

"For most of us, it's been a new experience."

She doesn't take the can, when he slides it along to her--but she does smile, just a little, a thin upwards pull of her lips that does not really make her look any friendlier. Metal cans with food stuffed in them, like preserves in jars. Johanna is nothing if she's not adaptable. She can quickly figure anything out.

"The last time?"

She shifts forward now, takes up the can and peers doubtfully at its contents. Fruit. Whatever.

"Just a few days ago, actually. Putting the tracker in our arm is an important step before dumping us into the Arena. It's only supposed to happen once--and this--" And here's her arm, still attached, not scarred up-- "This is my third time now. If I believed in luck, I might start thinking my luck is really shitty, but. I don't."

She dips her fingers into the can and fishes out an orange slice, and give Charles another grin before she shoves it into her mouth. It's more teeth than true smile, but whatever.

"So. Been here long? How are you enjoying your captivity?"

Vegetable and barley in preservatives and oil is dumped into a pot as Johanna talks and Charles listens, an eyebrow raising in side along glance in return of thin smiles before he turns to set it on a stove. Electric surface plate is quick to glow to orange with a few presses of a button, practiced, now. He's used to gas burners or. Well. Hank, bringing him something on a tray.

Everyone adapts eventually. "Loving every moment," he says, wry, prodding at food via silver serving spoon. "Getting a lot of reading done, or I would be, if there were any actual books.

"But no one's asked me to smile yet," emphasis of spoon edge tapped to pot lip. "It's been--"

Christ, how long has it been?

"Seven months. Nearing eight. We time it by jump cycles, which approximate a month. What sort of Arena?"

Johanna picks out another orange segment and shoves it in her mouth. She doesn't make any particular efforts toward good manners, but lets the soft canned fruit squish between her teeth. The citrus flavor is flat and dull, or maybe she's just used to all that enhanced shit the Capitol puts out--but the electric-colored orange slices are better than whatever the hell is in Charles's pot.

"You've been doing some smiling since I walked in," she observes, coolly. "Or maybe they were grimaces. It gets so hard to tell. They don't have to ask you to smile. They just have to tell you to get on with your life, and you do. Eating lunch in a kitchen and looking like total crap."

The Arena. Johanna bites into another orange segment, and spits half out into her hand, drops it onto the countertop. "An Arena where everyone got to watch us kill each other. Twenty-four Tributes, last man standing is the victor. Or woman." She squashes her thumb against the piece of orange on the countertop. It makes a satisfying squelch. "I can't wait till they start giving us incentives here. It's going to happen pretty soon, they never let a Game sit for very long."

"Thanks. I wasn't actually expecting company."

Not that he's been cleaning up well generally, but still. Charles seems more or less unfussed at criticism as to personal grooming as he heats up what appears to be an attempt at canned stir fry, idle scrapings of spoon around the inner of pot. "You get on with your life because inertia is death. And you're going to find, love, that there are less villains to throw an axe at than you hoped.

"No one's going to wind up victor. They've let this game sit for two and a half years."

Her mouth tightens at the word love. No matter how casually it was dropped in there, she hates it, dismissive stupid fucking word that it is. The year she won the Hunger Games, Johanna had won by letting everyone underestimate her. She played weak, saved her strength while the Careers were picking off the real weaklings--and then she'd torn right through them. After that, no one had dared to underestimate her.

(That's the story she tells herself. Better than thinking of the total dominance of the Capitol. Better to live her own story and never stop to think too hard.)

"I don't look for villains." She shoves away from the counter, abandoning the can and the mess of squashed orange slice. "I look for anyone who gets in my way."

It's delivered flatly, but Johanna isn't done there. "Handy tip: a long game is still a game. Maybe they've got more patience than the Capitol. The Capitol isn't in it to watch suffering. They like it fast, and they like it hard, and they like as much blood as they can get." She hefts her axe again as she speaks, an almost reflexive movement, one that she's barely conscious of. "But what you always had to watch out for was when it would get really quiet, because they were always cooking up something good. Imagine if it was years of quiet. Imagine if everyone got complacent and started getting on with their lives. And then just imagine the kind of shit you could do to them."

She grins, hollowly. "Two and a half years, letting everybody dangle. You have to watch out for the long games. Those are the worst ones."

With food set to simmer, Charles shifts to find a lean against kitchen island, watching her as she speaks, hefts her axe. He slides a look towards that weapon, expression inscrutable, if only because pity might get his face cleaved in two.

"You're right," he offers, instead. "The longest games are the worst ones. The worst part about them is when they don't end. Even after you leave your arena."

He glances at the abandoned can, back to her. "There was a man, here. Haymitch Abernathy. He thought like you did. Same words."

There's a flicker of recognition in her eye at that name, and the smirk that crooks at her mouth is different than the others were. Still sharp, still mocking, but there's a touch of something else. Someone stupid might mistake it for fondness, but it isn't that exactly. Bitter and familiar and angry and maybe a little, little bit fond, if you could just chip away at the rest of it.

"Of course he did." She shrugs, one-shouldered, as she lets the axe drop back to her side again. Talking about Haymitch doesn't exactly set her at ease, but it's a more familiar topic. "Victors all think alike. He's full of it, if you can get past his breath. What other crap did that old drunk say?"

And what did he think of you, though she doesn't voice that one aloud. But the reference to Haymitch does have her studying Charles slightly differently: a little more careful interest, even if it's still edged with disdain.

"He said I was very optimistic, for a man who was going to die."

Charles does not look it now. Maybe through the world as seen by Haymitch Abernathy, or maybe he's changed. "We had joined an attempt to take the bridge of the ship, and command control. It didn't work in our favour, clearly, and we were all trapped for a while. I remember that he had an unshakeable certainty that someone was going to make the first move, and coming to the conclusion that it would have to be himself that did it. He didn't like blood baths.

"It was like watching a car crash in human form. A very slow one." Charles glances over his shoulder, deciding the steam rising off heating food is not yet smoke. "You appear faster off the mark."

She smirks, again, sharper and with less pleasure. Even a drunk like Haymitch was probably still a match for most of these people. There's no pride in that thought, it just is what it is. "Yeah. Another shoddy revolution, and then he's got to try and clean up his mess. You think he'd learn."

The Mockingjay and the end of the Quarter Quell, those weren't Haymitch's fault--not exactly. But he was easy to blame. Someone had talked them all into it. Someone had made them believe it was possible, for a few moments, that they could do something. Whatever else Johanna joined the alliance for, there had been the smallest flicker of something way too close to hope. The chances of her getting out of the Arena were always a little dicey, but being grabbed up by the Capitol and strapped to a chair had wildly skewed her perspective on so much.

The remark about her makes Johanna's smirk a little stronger, like that's something to be proud of. She cocks her hip a little, like she's striking a pose. "Thanks." She drawls the word, dredging it through sarcasm. "He had more time to get old and dull. Means he's a little slower. But I wonder what he'd think of you now?"

Because, yeah: optimistic is definitely not the word that comes to mind, when looking at a probably unwashed man with long unkempt hair, wearing a pretty disgusting robe while cooking up a can of vegetables in deep space. People give up in lots of different ways. Morphling is always the easy way out, but Haymitch had his alcohol, and Johanna has her anger. Everybody learns. Revolutions end badly. It's hard to think of it any other way when she's still pretty fresh out of that gleaming white room.

"Actually, I don't wonder. I bet you've already lost some of that optimistic shine he saw."

An exhale funnels noisily through nasal cavities, as dismissive as Johanna's assessment. Charles pushes away from the kitchen island to go see to his food, pot gripped by handle and shaken light. It's a tender mark to hit, but not a new one, subdued self-awareness in the turn of his shoulder, drag away of bright-eyed eye line.

"Well, it isn't as though Mr. Abernathy said optimistic like it was a good thing."

And Charles doesn't say that like its much of a defence either. He could tell Johanna what happened to him, his story abbreviated into a sentence, but it doesn't seem particularly necessary, conclusions already crystalised in her tone. He doesn't tell her that he didn't say car crash like it was a good thing either.

"Xavier," is what he offers instead. "Charles Xavier. What's yours."

Edited 2014-08-04 10:50 (UTC)

"That's because it isn't a good thing."

Obviously. Optimism has never done any good. Panem teaches its children that lesson long before their names come close to the Reaping. The Hunger Games do the rest of the work on its Victors. A car crash in three acts. The third is the one that keeps going, the one Johanna is living in.

She smiles, coolly, at the introduction, and reaches to curl a long strand of her hair around her index finger, a coy and girlish gesture, disparate with the rest of her.

"Johanna Mason. You're so polite." That doesn't sound like a good thing either, the way she says it, but it might just be cute.

"Am I?"

There is a sidealong glance that caught gesture, caught her peculiar smile, lingers as if trying to hunt for the punchline in her next phrase, but the corner of his mouth hooks up and he allows it to ease on by. Mostly because trying to find reasons to dislike people and for people to dislike him is uniquely exhausting.

Ceramic bowl. Pot tipping contents into it. Dull green, orange for carrot, white florets of cauliflower. It'll probably all taste the same.

"I make a point to mind my manners around women with axes."

"Then maybe you're smarter than you look." She twirls her hair again, untwirls, lets it loop off of her finger with just the end twisted once around her first knuckle. Another once-over, slow and careful now, lingering in a few places. Hair, face, upper arm, hip, crotch, slowly dragging down his left leg and then back up at his face. "Maybe."

Doubtful is the very-unsubtle-subtext there. She goes on, briskly: "You could work on your conversation skills. Next time, try and be a little less boring. I don't want to have just two chats with you and then have to write you off, that would be sad."

oo6. closedish.

kitchen - level 14, midmonth

perfect.

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