farsickness | 🔱 i counted days, i counted miles

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🔱 i counted days, i counted miles

WHO: Finnick Odair + Bucky Barnes / Finnick Odair + Daenerys Targaryen
WHEN: May
WHAT: Catching up with some acquaintances
WHERE: The inn and the road into town.
WARNINGS: Probable trauma/ptsd related trigger-happy twitchiness all around.

The Inn - Bucky

Finnick owes the fact that he got by in those first few days in the wilderness to a small number of people he met. He also knows that Annie owes something to the people she'd met when she'd arrived, too, and the two of them had one benefactor in common: Bucky, who'd lent Finnick a knife and given him supplies and gold, and bought Annie food and boots. The man had said that he'd wanted to help out someone who reminded him of himself, and that was intriguing enough to stick in Finnick's mind and make him want to know what had prompted it.

Finnick thinks he knows what Bucky had meant. To Finnick, it was the traits he'd recognize in a fellow victor. A wariness, a mistrust of the world around them and the way they looked for danger in every situation, no matter how seemingly mundane. The arena never really left the victors, but it seems that isn't as unique to victors as Finnick had once thought.

So he's been keeping an eye out for the other man at the inn, and on the evening when he sees him there, Finnick wanders across to the other man's table.

"Hey."

He looks a very different man to the wild-eyed survivor of the arena Bucky had first met: his clothes fit, his visible wounds are healed save for the unevenness in his skin tone on his face left by the chemical burns where the scars haven't yet faded. Perhaps the biggest change though is his demeanour: friendly, approachable, the sort of charismatic Finnick long ago learned to be for the world around him.

"Thought I'd give you this back," he says, offering up the knife Bucky had lent him, hilt-first.

On the Way into Gazin - Daenerys

Finnick and Annie have been starting to develop a plan. Between them, they're working on being able to fish enough to earn enough money to hire a boat. Finnick's lived off his fame and his winnings all his adult life, but here neither of those seems to mean anything, and Finnick and Annie are going to need to make some money. What she earned from selling her jewelry and what Bucky gave Finnick isn't going to last forever.

But he's been working on developing a trading relationship with one of the fishmongers, and when they can hire a boat, they should be able to really support themselves, in the way that Finnick's never had to do before.

He's been spending a lot of time at the river, installing and refining fish traps and working out the best fishing spots along the river.

Today, he's on his way back to the village with a broken trap in one hand; it looks like a long, bulbous basket that's been smashed on one end. Annoying, because it let the fish out, but possibly useful to help them build better traps.

As he's approaching Gazin, he sees a familiar figure ahead of him: a slight woman with hair so blonde it's almost white. He remembers her, and her name. So he smiles as he gets closer.

"Hello, Daenerys."

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Finnick does look a lot different than when he'd first seen him. The injuries are mostly healed but it's the way he carries himself that's different now. There's still a hint of wariness around him and Bucky suspects that never goes away but he seems confident now and looser in his skin. He hands back the knife without fear, too, and Bucky thinks that goes a long way. He reaches for it and takes it back, tucking it into one of his many sheaths.

"I'm guessing you decided to trust the town a little, huh? Let me buy you a drink. It's the least I could do. Besides, I'm a little bereft of company."

Bucky is often bereft of company, being mostly a loner, but this is someone he thinks he can get along with, this Finnick, and having friends isn't such a terrible thing.

There are a lot of things that Finnick could say: that he's watched enough people and had enough conversations that he's getting a feel for the people here and how different they are from the initial assumptions he'd made; that he'd had enough favors done for him without any apparent expectation of the repayment that would have been expected in the Capitol; that he'd been prepared to kill just about anyone when he first arrived and now he's further from the role he'd been playing in the arena of the defender of the rebels' hoped-for symbol. But it's really neither as simple nor as complicated as any of those things.

He'd trusted Annie. And she'd trusted this place. And she'd trusted Bucky, and Bucky had been kind and generous to her just like he had to Finnick. To Finnick, that's what matters. That's why he'd sought him out, more than to return the knife.

Finnick has gotten used to expecting the way people in the Capitol treat him. What he's never come to terms with is the things people say about Annie, and the way they think they can dismiss her. Bucky hadn't. Bucky, according to Annie, had been helpful and kind, even though she'd been wary and nervous.

"Since you're offering," he says, easily, and slips onto a seat.

"I'd have said you already did more than the least you could do," he says, smiling in a way that's not entirely friendly nor entirely sarcastic. Knowing, perhaps.

"Maybe. Those of us who don't trust so easily have to watch out for one another. Most people tend to think others are good."

That part of Bucky is gone, more or less, because he'd spent too long under HYDRA's control to think people are inherently good any longer. He thinks Finnick and Annie are, though, even if they're as cagey as he is. That's why he'd trusted Finnick with his knife and trusted him enough to come out of the woods on his own terms.

"The world can be a dangerous place. Sometimes you have to tiptoe around it until you can find solid footing. I just wanted to build the bridge for you."

Finnick's knew, early on, that people could be bad. Not that he'd thought of it that way really, because he wanted to participate in the Games himself, for the glory and money that victory brings. He hadn't learned just how bad the people he'd gotten himself involved with were until later, but he had learned it. So he gives Bucky a wry look at the comment of thinking people are good.

Maybe that's more common in Bucky's experience.

Finnick judges people by their actions and the things he learns about them, and that's why they're having this conversation. He could have kept the knife for his and Annie's stash of weapons, but he hadn't. That's more trust than most people here would have gotten.

"I had reason to expect that people here would try to kill me, so it was a nice surprise. But the best bridge you built was by helping Annie."

"She seems like a nice girl," Bucky says, thinking back to having met Annie in the market. She had seemed a little different than other people at first glance but the argument could be made that he, too, was different than other people. It was the very least he could do to help her the same as he'd helped Finnick.

"I'm not...I wasn't always completely together. It doesn't mean I'm bad or stupid or anything like that. I've been through a lot of war and a lot of things that most people never experience. Far be it from me to judge someone else for being different. Annie seemed sweet and lost so I wanted to help her the best that I could, make sure she was in a safe place and had what she needed. I couldn't leave her."

Bucky laughs softly. "Besides, I've always liked redheads."

"People don't understand that, where we're from. What going through things can do to a person. How it changes you, and that doesn't make you crazy, just someone who's been through things nobody else understands."

It's not just Annie, but it's particularly Annie. Annie's the one they call crazy, the one who gets either ignored or laughed at when Finnick is in popular demand. They make the victors into entertainment and never seem to see what victory did to them. If they saw that, it would destroy the lies Panem is built on: that the rewards for the victors somehow make what it takes to survive worth it.

He can't say that, of course. Even here, with the apparent distance from everything he's ever known, he can't admit what he really thinks. But at least he can talk about Annie without everyone thinking she's crazy.

"I'll have to tell her you said that. Though you've got some competition there."

It's the closest to an open, public admission that Annie is his world that Finnick's ever made, especially so casually. But mostly it's a joke, said with an easy grin, because he knows that Bucky's speaking in fond generalities, and that he has nothing to fear from any competition for Annie's attention.

"Where we're from, most people wouldn't have thought that way about her. They'd have dismissed her and moved on. I appreciate that you reached out when you didn't have to."

"I saw something that could have been me, once, and no one ever reached out to that. I owed it to her," Bucky says thoughtfully. He doesn't know what his attachment is to this pair of kids but he feels it. He doesn't know what they've been through or why but he does know that they're older than they look to be. He knows that because that's what he is and always will be - carrying the scars of something no one should bear.

Maybe one day they could swap stories but it isn't something that will happen now. Now, an understanding is enough.

"Just like I owed it to you. She's not fragile, though. I don't think that of her. I think she needs a little help sometimes. Some of us need it more than others or in different ways but it doesn't make her different or other. It just makes her Annie. Whatever she went through hit her hard. She's strong to go back in the world. I wasn't strong enough for a long time. Still aren't, sometimes."

"Finnick," she dipped her head in greeting. She had seen him at the river when she would go to collect herbs for his boss at the apothecary. When she visited Ubbe as well, helping him finish his boat, she had noted how diligent and busy Finnick seemed. While she wasn't aware of his plan, she could understand wanting to do something rather than staying idle in this place. It kept thoughts at bay and let you feel you were doing something.

More than that, she enjoyed working with her hands, living as others did rather than the Queen in the Pyramid that she had been. She might be missing her children, but she was making herself useful, not simply to the people, but to herself as well. It was what kept her in good spirits, so she smiled at whoever she met during the day.

"Trouble with your basket?"

"Something like that," he agrees. "Problem with rivers, they can be unpredictable."

He should be able to make something better, but it could just be that he'd found a spot in the river that wasn't good for fish traps. He misses his boat. He misses the crew he used to sail with occasionally. He misses knowing where he stood in District Four, even if that knowledge came with everything being a victor meant. It means spending a lot of time trying to learn the things here he'd known at home. He needs to build contacts, and he needs to find people who will be willing to let a stranger learn from them.

But to start with, he's just trying to build a small reputation as someone worth trading with. Which means catching enough fish to trade.

He holds up the broken trap.

"It's a fish trap. Or it was, before something smashed it and let the fish out."

He was industrious, that was at least the impression that he had given her. Someone who was willing to work and make some sort of life here. That was a bit more appealing than a constant lamentation, not that she couldn't understand that feeling. But for someone who feared reflecting on the past, she preferred moving forward and making the most of what was in her control. That meant work, friendships and some measure of a home.

She glanced over the basket, having seen fish traps before but not really aware of how they worked. "Do you know how to repair it?" She asked, curious to watch. That might save her time later when her basket inevitably broke. "There are more quiet places at the river I could show you. There's a large patch of algae where a number of fish collect."

Finnick would be amused to know she thought he was industrious; it's about the last thing anyone would suggest about him back in Panem, based on his reputation. Which doesn't mean it's not true, but not having to earn his living has meant that he doesn't work the long, hard hours that Four's fisherfolk do, and hasn't since he was a child.

He's been trying. And this, at least, is something he can do among many unfamiliar things in this place.

"Yeah, I can fix it. I just need some more good sticks the right size."

He looks across at her, interest clear in his expression at her offer.

"You've been here longer than me, I'd appreciate anywhere you know about. I've been exploring and trying some spots but it takes a bit of time to work out exactly where the best ones are."

"With little else to do but earn my living, I have time to learn the smaller places that might be missed. Algae is important for some of the potions that the owner of my shop makes. You will find more fish there, particularly fat ones." Sometimes they would disturb the quiet by jumping, startling the creatures that enjoyed the cool waters and came to drink.

"You will fetch a good price for them." She nodded, willing to lead him further down so he could see it for himself. "There should be reeds nearby as well. It could help you fix the basket?" Exploring had at least proved profitable. Extra coin didn't hurt, given she didn't want to be a beggar again.

"I have honestly lost track of my days."

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🔱 i counted days, i counted miles

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