Dinosaurs - [Veronica]

[plantfood]

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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[plantfood]

One of Mathias's eyebrows arch at that, a sudden, sharp change of expression that's rare on his face. "That happens?" he asks, because somehow that seems more impossible than dinosaurs. At least dinosaurs once existed in the world he's come from, even if it was in the past. He's fairly sure no one on earth has woken up in another person's body, no matter how far back in the past he looks.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Veronica nodded. "One of the many wonders of living here," she said wryly. "Things... change. It doesn't last forever, just a few days, but it's more than a little confusing while it does." At least, it had always stopped before, but she wasn't so sure that would always be the case. It panicked her any time it happened. Knowing the island could control her body like that was one of the few things she hated about this place.

[plantfood]

"Now that is unexpected," he murmurs, as if they aren't having this conversation within a stone's throw from two dinosaurs. Lifting a hand, Mathias rubs his scarred fingers over the hair on his chin, then takes his backpack off slowly to get one of the bottles of water he's brought along.

"So this place... it could turn me into you?" he asks finally, after he's taken a drink and considered this. "Or somebody else?"

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

The degree of embarrassment that situation would cause wasn't something Veronica cared to consider. "Something like that," she said. "It's more like switching bodies, waking up in someone else's skin. You're still you. Like a Freaky Friday kind of thing." That one hadn't ever happened to her, though. Waking up as a man had been bad enough.

[plantfood]

"That is somehow not all that comforting," Mathias replies with a small, soft laugh, looking down at the grass between his shoes. "It's a deeply personal thing, isn't it? To be inside someone's skin."

Then he laughs again, shaking his head at what he's said. "Not that I can speak from experience, really, but I think it must be."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"It goes away," she said softly, but it didn't come out as comforting as she'd hoped it to be, if only because she took no comfort from it herself. Bolstering herself up a bit, she eased down to sit, sprawled out on the ground. "I can't speak from experience either. That's not one of the things this place's put me through yet." Waking up in places where she hadn't fallen asleep or weekends spent as a man were bad enough. Her body had been tampered with enough, more than enough, and the thought of the island contributing to the list of damages incurred sat badly with her.

[plantfood]

"Everything goes away in time," Mathias answers before he folds his legs under him and sits down in the grass as well, moving with an effortless fluidity. Digging into his pack, he offers one of the small bags of nuts to Veronica, holding them out in the palm of his hand.

"My brother always said nothing lasts, which is why he was so impulsive. He lunged at things because nothing lasts," he says, almost without thinking.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

Accepting the bag from him with a smile of thanks, she drew her knees toward her, leaning against them. "Lilly was the same way," she said, nostalgia flickering across her expression. "My best friend when I was in high school. She'd do anything, consequences be damned, if it meant having fun." She was pretty sure that the finite nature of living hadn't crossed Lilly's mind, though, not until it was proved and too late. It was seriously strange to realize how long ago that had been now.

[plantfood]

All his life, Mathias has paid close attention to people, watching them, studying them and weighing their words and movements. It's become easy for him to read people, but Veronica is different and even as she speaks, he thinks the only way he'll ever know the whole story is if she chooses to tell him. He likes that.

"She and Henrich would have been great friends," he says with a dry laugh, taking a bag from his pack for himself. "Getting into trouble together. She is not here, I assume?"

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

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.

[plantfood]

"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."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

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."

[plantfood]

"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."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

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."

[plantfood]

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.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"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."

[plantfood]

"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.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"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.

[plantfood]

"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."

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

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.

[plantfood]

"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.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

"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.

[plantfood]

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.

[neptune-sleuth.livejournal.com]

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."

[plantfood]

"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."