plantfood | Dinosaurs

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veronica

Dinosaurs - [Veronica]

Three weeks on the island now and Mathias thinks he's ready to leave the Compound without assistance from alcohol. He stands near the front steps, watching the trees with a faintly wary gaze and waiting for Veronica. He'd asked her a few days ago to show him the dinosaurs, thinking that he'd need those few days to prepare mentally, but even with that time he's not sure just how prepared he really is. Maybe the only thing that can prepare him for going back into the jungle is actually going into the jungle. It's not ideal, but it is what it is and Mathias can no more change the island than he can change what happened to him before this place.

The weather is warm, hot and humid, and already he can feel sweat prickling his scalp, but it's a comfort to know that no matter where he goes on the island, the Compound is never far away. Despite this, despite knowing he's in no danger here, he's learned his lesson from last time and is carrying a small pack with enough water to last two weeks and several bags of nuts he's found in the kitchen. It isn't enough to survive on for longer than a few weeks, but it's more than he'd had in Mexico. Just in case anything should happen.

Around him, there's constant movement. People coming to the Compound from their homes elsewhere on the island, people leaving, fresh from showers or breakfast, clean, warm laundry piled high in baskets. There are children in the playground nearby and he watches them for a moment, watches their parents, wonders which of them came to the island on their own and which were born here. It's still strange to him, how this place exists, but it's preferable to whatever might have happened back in Mexico.

He's early, he thinks, but it gives him time to think and to watch, two things he's very good at. So he waits, his thumbs hooked tentatively in the straps of his pack, making sure not to aggravate his healing burns.

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Veronica shook her head quickly, opening her own bag. "She was," she said, "for a little while. Not very long." She hadn't expected to ever see Lilly again, though. Any time with her was enough, more than she'd thought she'd get. It was one of the few things in her life she knew of where she could honestly say she'd been lucky. "Better than not seeing her again, though. She died when we were sixteen." It wasn't something she talked about often at all, but Mathias knew something of loss.

"I'm sorry, Veronica," he says simply and leaves it at that. All too clearly he remembers Amy's hand on his shoulder, her attempts to give him comfort when he'd wanted none. He doesn't want to be that person, he knows how frustrating and uncomfortable it can be.

"It hardens you," he adds, knowing it does. "It's all we can do, I guess, when it gets that bad."

It was awful, maybe, to smile at that, but she did, a bit, the hard, quick curve of her lips proof enough of the truth in his words. He'd no idea how hard it had been, how hard it had made her. That was alright by her. She couldn't forget, but he didn't need to know.

"It's the only thing that makes sense to do," she said. She hoped his loss wouldn't harden him the way hers had done, but the more violent the death, the harder it seemed to bear. There had just been so damn much injustice, nothing she could ever put right. "Anyway, it was a long time ago."

"I suspect time does little, no matter what people say," Mathias answers, because he can still feel that sharp sting in his chest when he thinks about Henrich and the dull ache never seems to really go away.

"Despite appearances, I promise I did not ask you to come out here with me just to depress you," he says a moment later, offering a more genuine smile. "Though it seems to be what I'm good at."

Veronica laughed, shaking her head. "We all have our talents," she said sweetly. She was more than capable of managing that particular talent on her own, but not about to say so. If anything, his company left her strangely comfortable. "That just happens to be yours." She popped a nut in her mouth, then pelted him playfully with another. "The dinosaurs were just a bonus."

Mathias laughs as the nut bounces off his shoulder and falls into the grass at his side, then looks at Veronica with an amused smile. "And now I am to be used for target practice?" he asks, then heaves a sigh, as if accepting this lot in life.

"If that's the price I need to pay for your company, I suppose it's one I can afford," he decides, uncapping one of the water bottles.

"You think my company comes that cheap?" Veronica asked, clucking her tongue in mock disappointment. "Hardly." What she'd demand in return for it if asked, she didn't know, but surely she'd never draw the line at throwing nuts at someone. "Besides, I usually practice with bigger weapons on smaller targets."

"So am I safe because I'm too large or because you don't have any bigger weapons at hand?" he asks, his smile growing before he takes a sip of water. "This would not be the first time being tall has worked to my advantage."

He's always been the one girls have asked to get them things on high shelves, which has actually benefited him less than he would have liked. Impressing girls is difficult for a person who isn't particularly talkative.

"Little of column A, little of column B," Veronica said, shrugging. "Mostly, though, I just didn't bring you out here to beat you up. Too much work." She was fairly convinced she could take most anyone on the island, though, except Arya and a handful of others. She just had no cause to see if she was wrong.

"Ah. Let me tell you, that does come as a relief," he says with a smile, capping the bottle again before he lets his gaze wander over to the dinosaurs once more. As they sit here, eating nuts and drinking water, teasing each other gently, there are dinosaurs just beside them, having their own light meal and Mathias feels strangely like he's getting something in return for being brought here.

"I am not very good at fighting," he continues, the dinosaurs still in his line of vision. "I trip over myself, usually get flattened."

Veronica laughed, almost a scoff as her brow arched. "It's those long legs," she said. "Your height works against you. I don't trip over myself, but I do sword fight." Maybe, just a little bit, she was bragging, but what was the good in having that kind of skill if no one knew? At least the people who weren't trying to get you, anyway.

"You sword fight?" Mathias asks, turning his full attention to Veronica, his eyebrows climbing as he studies her. "I don't mean to suggest I don't think you could do it, because I'm very sure you can. It's just not something you hear of many people doing, yeah?"

Come to think of it, he isn't sure he's ever known anyone who's even held a sword, let alone been able to fight with one.

"Not at home," Veronica agreed, nodding. There was a part of her that couldn't help still thinking of Neptune as home, even after everything that had happened. "Around here, it's a little more common. I'm getting trained by this fifteen year old badass in my spare time." She laughed, rolling her eyes at herself. Nevermind that Arya had been twelve when they'd started.

He has to laugh, shaking his head in amusement as he realizes, once again, just what sort of place he's living now. "So what you're telling me is that I really don't want to get on your bad side," he decides, still grinning, feeling better about being in the jungle now. If anything goes really wrong, he thinks Veronica will be able to get him out alive, even if she doesn't have a sword handy.

Veronica grinned. "That would be correct," she said, nodding. "My good side, though, is one of the best places to be on this island." She turned her head from side to side, playful, almost striking a pose, pretending to mix up the meanings of the phrase. "Many have tried, many have failed."

"Ah, yes, I can see the difference," Mathias teases, studying both the sides she's presented to him with a smile. "I'll make sure to stand on your left from now on and make sure people see I am on your good side. That has to speak well for me, yeah? I can build a reputation on this island before I'm here even a month."

"Hey, there are worse people to hinge your reputation on," she said, smirking. "I'll have you know, I'm a fine, upstanding member of this community." They did let her help run it, after all. As far as she was concerned, that was a sign that some intelligence actually persisted around here.

"Then it is good for me that I've met you," Mathias decides, leaning back on his hands and tipping his head slightly, as if to study her more closely. "I could have easily fallen in with the wrong crowd, being new to this place and I would never have known that they were the wrong crowd until I began to get into trouble."

"Yeah, you seem the kind," Veronica deadpanned. He was anything but, so far as she could tell, a genuinely nice guy. They were a rare breed, even here. Even that kind of guy had its dangers, though. Sam had been one of them, after all, and everything they'd been through had fallen completely flat. She didn't want to fall into that trap with anyone again. "A real rebel without a cause. Don't worry, kid, I'll steer you right."

Lifting one hand, Mathias places his palm against his chest, feigning a look of deep gratitude. "I have no words to express how thankful I am," he tells her, even as his mouth curves up into a grin he can't control.

Shifting, he returns his water bottle to his pack, gaze flickering toward the sky for a moment as he tries to judge where the sun is and how long they have before it sets. He isn't nervous, exactly, Veronica has more than distracted him, but the fear is there. Always there. "Should we get back?" he asks, looking back to her, defaulting to her knowledge of this island.

Veronica just looked over at the dinosaurs for a long moment, considering it. "Probably," she said, nodding. "They'll still be here anytime you want to see them, but the wolves come out at night." She was only teasing, but it wasn't exactly a lie. She just doubted the direwolves would injure anyone who wasn't asking for it. They were Starks in their own right, after all, a fact that probably wouldn't mean much, if anything, to someone as new as he was, but which said everything to her.

"It's not the wolves I'm worried about," Mathias admits, but he'll say nothing more on the subject right now. Instead, he climbs to his feet and shoulders his pack, then offers a hand to Veronica. It's a slow process, this recovery, but he's made this trip today and he thinks it's a fairly large first step.

The roughness of his hand as he helped her to her feet was a reminder of just how valid his fears were. "Thanks," she murmured, dusting her hands off against her hips and starting to walk. "How are you doing, being out here?" She wasn't the kind to talk about feelings or whatever, but it seemed worth asking. He'd been braving the jungle pretty well so far, as far as she could tell.

Instead of answering right away, Mathias gives the question some consideration as they walk, taking a careful inventory of how he feels. "Not terrible," he says when he's satisfied that it's the truth. "I can't stay inside forever, after all and all things considered, this is not terrible."

"It's a start," Veronica said, shrugging. It was, anyway, a lot better than the alternative. "You just have to keep at it. Either you go forward or you keep letting what happened back there shut you in, and that's, I mean, that's hardly an option." She knew that well enough. She was willing to bet Mathias wasn't the type to be held down by his past either.

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plantfood - 2009-01-04 04:19 (UTC) - Expand

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