[For Veronica]

[plantfood]

There are many things about Henrich that drove Mathias crazy before Mexico and the ruins, things that now and then resulted in physical altercations or shouting matches which left them both feeling sheepish and hurt, but there is one thing Henrich was so good at. One thing Mathias wishes he could have learned from his brother, something he still can't quite seem to grasp no matter how hard he tries or doesn't try, as Henrich used to advise.

He's terrible with women.

It's been a month and a half since New Year's Eve and Mathias has done almost nothing to impress Veronica or further what relationship they might be developing. In fact, with the exception of assuring her there is nothing going on with Stacy, he's barely made any indication that he's interested in her, which he realizes is incredibly stupid. He's very interested and absolutely terrified. Coming to her while stuck as a woman hardly counts as making an attempt at getting another date, so earlier in the week, he'd gathered up all his courage and asked.

Which is why he finds himself heading down the path toward her hut, a bag with some food slung over one shoulder and his towel folded over the other. In a fit of panic, unsure what people do for dates on the island, he'd suggested dinner and swimming at the waterfall, hoping it isn't too forward to include swimming. Already he's starting to doubt himself, but he schools his face to blankness and then raps his knuckles gently against her door.

He can do this. It's a date, after all, he's been on dates before.

Comments

[plantfood]

"I can't imagine it would work anywhere. Not in the world we came from," Mathias agrees, his mouth turning up at one corner. "Germany would fall apart if we tried it there and the rest of Europe would soon follow, I expect." He's never been much of an optimist to begin with and trying to imagine his world running like the island does is more of a stretch of the imagination than he can manage.

"It seems to me that everyone here is an expert in something," he murmurs after a moment. "Even if it is something small, like cooking. We're all good at something."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Veronica had her own pet theory about that, something she'd formed early on in her stay and had been reworking ever since. Though her curiosity had always served her well, in this, however, she found it best to leave things where they lay for once. There wasn't much good that could come of what she perceived to be the truth, the inherent fictionality of her new compatriots. Besides, it worked to their advantage for just the reason Mathias had now given.

"Or were," she agreed, nodding. "Before this place made it impossible to be or to need to be. Makes us seem... handpicked."

[plantfood]

When she says that, Mathias looks up, his eyebrow arching curiously and he looks at Veronica silently, studying her as if he's looking for some kind of answer on her face. He's just thinking, considering her words in relation to some of the people he's seen here. This place has its geniuses and it has its fictional people, but more often than not, Mathias dismisses that, refuses to think about it.

"Handpicked by what?" he asks finally. There is nothing to have picked them, he's sure of this. It's the luck of the draw or just a strange twist on death for some of them, but he's interested in what she thinks.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," Veronica admitted, smile twisting sheepishly for just a moment. It was hardly a favorite phrase. "Whoever set this place up. Or got rid of the first batch of people here. The Compound was here before any of the current settlers. The ones before us might have built it, but not all of it." She still remembered when that had happened, the sudden, strange, overnight growth of a building, out of nowhere, like the elevator after it.

Her smile widened and she dropped her head. "I don't really have any evidence," she said. "I just keep trying to figure it out anyway."

[plantfood]

"No one told me that. I didn't know the Compound was here before us," Mathias admits, finding that incredibly interesting. It means that someone was here before them and, like Veronica said, something took them away. Maybe it had happened then like it happens now, maybe the island just takes people away, one by one, until no one is left.

A shiver works down his spine as he considers that. He doesn't want to imagine what it would be like to be the last one left in this place.

"But that's good, ja? To continue to try to figure things out. Complacency sometimes... is not the best way to live."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"This place makes it easy to be complacent, though." Veronica bit her lip, leaning forward, unconscious of her own little gestures as her hands moved. "Parties, food that replenishes itself, decent plumbing, places to stay. If people work hard, it's because they want to. But no one's exactly fighting to survive." She wasn't among the first, and she was sure that, even now, there were details she would never know about the earliest days, things people hadn't thought to mention. On the whole, though, it seemed as if people just stopped fighting to go home after a while. She might have been one of them, but it hadn't ever kept her from wanting to know.

[plantfood]

"I don't think you have to fight to survive to not be complacent," Mathias answers and he's leaning forward as well, fascinated both by Veronica and by the conversation itself. "I think you just have to continue to ask questions. There's no harm in being happy, but to stop asking? To stop being curious, to no longer care... that is where the danger lies."

He's thinking of Henrich when he speaks, remembering how unconcerned with life his brother could be. When things are too easy, Mathias knows, people fall into that trap.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"People start thinking of it as a vacation," Veronica replied, shaking her head. "Until they lose someone, until they're hit again by how inexplicable this place is, they stop looking to explain it. Not necessarily everyone, I mean, but most people." Others were just naturally compelled to keep looking. Yet even those sorts weren't all searching still. She'd always wondered at Sam, that he could be content with the illusion of a white picket fence when he'd spent his whole life fighting demons and monsters. How he could trust so easily, she'd never understood. "I don't want to leave. I just want to know."

[plantfood]

"I don't want to leave either," Mathias admits, but it isn't only that he doesn't want to leave. He doesn't think they can, not the people like him or Stacy, the ones who are dead back where they've come from. If it isn't the island for them, it's something else and he's content to think of this place as a deviation from death.

"I think wanting to know is important," he tells her, one corner of his mouth turning up briefly. "It's what keeps life moving forward all the time."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Somehow that meant more than it should have, and she weighed his words in her mind as if she might find new meaning if she looked close enough. He didn't want to leave. Too many people did. It wasn't always a choice, though, and that was harder to bear; there was no one to blame for that.

"Really?" she asked, lashes fluttering, playful. "I just thought it was a good way to keep from getting bored. I might take up juggling next."

[plantfood]

"You could start the island's first circus," Mathias mused, pretending to consider this thoroughly. "You would have to find a bear willing to ride a unicycle to really make it complete, I think, and that might be hard here. Not many bears that I have noticed."

Except in the winter. He couldn't believe he'd already come to accept this place in all its strange behavior.

"Maybe a small jungle cat instead," he decided.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"Ah, but you start with cats on unicycles and then it seems alright to go for ballerinas on horseback," Veronica said, shaking her head, "and before you know it, you're telling yourself it's only a small step to clowns, it can't hurt. It's all downhill from there."

[plantfood]

"I suppose you're right," Mathias agrees, letting out a soft sigh, as if she's crushed some life-long dream of his. "It looks like the first island circus will have to be the responsibility of someone else."

Setting down what's left of his sandwich, he smiles at Veronica, then tips his head toward the water. "I know you're not supposed to swim for half an hour after eating, but I think I'm willing to risk it if you are."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"How very brave of you," Veronica teased, dusting the crumbs from her hands. "Well, if you can dare to, I guess I can, too. But if I drown, it's on you." As if there were a strong possibility of that. The pool around the waterfall was deep in places, but nothing she couldn't handle, recent meal or not. Still, under the playfulness, it was a little unnerving to be about to strip down in front of someone else, let alone someone she liked, regardless of the swimsuit she wore. She just had no intention of admitting to it.

[plantfood]

"I'm an excellent swimmer. I would rescue you if you were to attempt to drown," Mathias answers with a teasing grin of his own, then gets to his feet and offers her both his hands. He's a little nervous himself, but it doesn't show, not through his smile. It's the one thing Mathias has never been very good at hiding, but he's doing an exceptional job so far, or so he thinks.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"If I made an attempt at anything," Veronica promised, mock-solemn, "I would succeed." Taking his hand with a smirk, she pulled herself up, then stepped away to start shimmying out of her jeans. If there was one thing they had no shortage of here, it was swimsuits, but coming by something tasteful and plain in a one piece had taken months. "I grew up by the beach. I've been swimming longer than I can remember."

[plantfood]

"So it is I who should be expecting you to save me," Mathias replies, averting his gaze probably too quickly. There's a flush creeping up the back of his neck, colouring the tips of his ears and he doesn't know why. This had all been his idea, after all, he'd been prepared to see her in a bathing suit and yet he's still blushing.

Trying to cover it, he kicks off his sandals, then pulls his shirt up and over his head, hoping to hide the redness for a moment. Dropping his arms again, the shirt puddles on top of the blanket and he offers Veronica a grin. "I'm expecting not to drown now, you realize," he adds, then steps toward the pool.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Obvious benefits aside, Veronica suddenly found herself reconsidering the wisdom of having agreed to this, roughly around the same time she found herself staring.

It's official. I'm hopeless. Give me bad guys and mysteries, piece of cake. An attractive, shirtless man, and suddenly I'm in trouble. How was I ever a detective?

Tugging her shirt off, breaking her gaze in the process, she took a deep breath. "I'm counting on it," she said, airy, as she headed to the water. "I've put a lot of time and effort into knowing you. It'd be a waste to lose that just because you wanted to swim."

[plantfood]

"I will do my best not to drown," Mathias promises and his gaze lingers on Veronica maybe a little bit longer than it should. She has her back to him, however, and he feels only slightly embarrassed when he finally looks away and follows her to the water.

Sitting down at the edge of the pool, Mathias looks briefly up at the waterfall, sometimes still scarcely able to believe that he lives somewhere like this, then slips into the water. It's cool and clear and he quickly ducks under the surface to wet his hair.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Silence didn't come so easily to Veronica most of the time, but now, sliding into the cold water, she was content for a moment to say nothing, her eyes falling closed. She lay back, kicked against the water, body floating up to the surface, and gave a little, involuntary sigh. Despite the fact of people passing on the path not far away and the persistent chatter of birds and animals overhead, there was a kind of peace to be found there. It eased the faint burn of embarrassment that had run down the back of her neck. It was silly to worry about showing interest, and she didn't like to think of herself as being in the habit of running scared. She'd shown interest just by accepting. It was hard not to see the whole affair as her putting something on the line without guarantees. The question was, as it always was, just how much she'd let herself put down.

Upright again, she smoothed her hair back where it clung to her cheeks. "Being out here, it's like - Well, no, it is being in the middle of nowhere, but. Isolated."

[plantfood]

"Away from everyone else," Mathias agrees, pushing his wet hair off his face, feeling cool water trickling down between his shoulder blades. The path is close and he knows it's well traveled, but that doesn't stop him from feeling what Veronica is saying. It's peaceful in a way not many other parts of the island are.

Touching Henrich's pendant unconsciously, he turns the coin over and over as he moves through the water slowly. He's moving closer to Veronica, he isn't trying to hide it, but he continues to speak as he moves. "There aren't many people here, not compared to where we come from, yet sometimes it feels so crowded. Like there isn't enough room." It isn't true, he knows it isn't, but that doesn't stop him from feeling it now and then.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"There's always someone else around." It wasn't like living a city, where the crowds kept moving, heedless. People here had nowhere else to be. They came in close, paid attention. Small town, small talk. "Especially when you live in the Compound." She'd learned to ignore it all as best she could, and moving out had improved things. She couldn't ignore his moving closer, though. Even so, she stood her ground - kept treading water in place, anyway - watching him. "It's why I left. Needed a little privacy."

[plantfood]

Mathias smiles when he nears her, ducking into the water once more, hunkering down until it reaches his shoulders. The coin still turns in his fingers under the water and when he finally does notice that he's doing it, he flushes a little and lets it float back to his skin.

"I don't notice that much," he admits, but he suspects that is partly because he spends much of his time watching people rather than looking for them to be watching him. "I think I would like to move out from the Compound, though. Not yet, but soon." He doesn't think he's ready yet and, more than anything, he doesn't think Stacy is ready. It makes him feel like a coward, but he knows he can't live alone in this jungle.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Veronica nodded, her smile edging up higher on one side. "Sooner than I did," she said, either a suggestion or a stab at precognition. "Took me almost three years. But it's better, having a place to yourself." She was too accustomed to being an only child, not sharing at all. Her 'plays well with others' days had passed. After a moment, she realized she'd reached up to fiddle with the end of a strand of her, absentminded, a tell of faint nerves, and she dropped her hand to the water again.

[plantfood]

"My roommate is... spoiled, self-involved and whiny," Mathias admits, dropping his voice as if he's telling a secret. In a way, he is. He's far from the type of person who talks about others or spreads gossip, but he thinks, in this case, Veronica will agree.

There's also the fact that his roommate is from a children's book series, of course, but he doesn't mention that to anyone. Things like that seem to be unspoken on the island.

"I would like to escape him, I think," he decides. "Just in case his snake attacks me in my sleep."