you with the tongue that speaks my name

[axeyou]

CHARACTERS: Johanna Mason, amnesiac victim + Kate Bishop, less amnesiac
LOCATION: in the jungle (the mighty jungle)
WARNINGS: potential for violent content in memories but since there's still so much amnesia here maybe nah
SUMMARY: Johanna is an amnesiac young lumberjack working on a treehouse, for lack of better things to do. she can't exactly remember Kate, but Kate remembers her. -or- a scene straight outta a rom com.



Hewing logs is all muscle memory, a function coded so deep in Johanna that she probably could have gone to work the second she'd jumped off the wrecked ship.

That's not exactly true. When she'd first jumped off of the ship, Johanna had been naked and shit panicked and also unarmed, until she'd armed herself with shrapnel. Hewing naked? Bad idea; uncomfortable at best. Hewing without an axe? Impossible. But Johanna has both axe and clothes by now, and a rudimentary idea of who she is--not that she needs anything of the sort to do mindless work like this. And it is mindless, repetitive, work that keeps her busy and secluded and leaves her sore and aching and still somehow happy when she goes to sleep at night. She's dug out a little hole for herself, with an opening just big enough to crawl into and a roof of tree roots woven together in their growth pattern. She drinks rainwater and goes back to the camp and gets food off of people, or else does for herself, watching what berries the fauna of this weird forest eat before sampling for herself. When she'd picked a handful the first time, she had remembered, briefly, something about berries. Poison. Disgust. It was enough that she'd dropped the handful on the ground, but then her stomach had rumbled and she's picked up the fruit again and shoved them into her mouth, tart and gritty from the dirt.

Anyways. Hewing. That's what she's busy with. The dog sits at the end of the log and watches her. His ears prick at each chop of her axe, but he doesn't startle. When she glances up at him, his tail thuds against the ground, a dull hollow sound. Johanna's smile is quick, and she rubs her wrist against her forehead, a long smeared line of sweat and mud.

The dog breaks their gaze when he turns to look over his shoulder, and something deep in Johanna tenses. She's seen the way little rodents flinch against the dirt, a freeze and then a flattening. For a moment, she feels exactly that, but it pisses her off and she shoves to her feet instead, her axe in her hand. It isn't the right kind of axe for hewing. It makes her work look clumsy. But so what. What choice does she have?

When she sees who it is, something actually brightens in her expression. She doesn't know it, but this isn't a look that she typically wears when she sees Kate Bishop. She doesn't know Kate Bishop at all. But she knows Kate's face, familiar enough that it had been one of the first things she'd remembered, even if it had been entirely divorced from anything real. Just Kate, in a hundred different ways. By now she's reckoned that Kate must be someone else from Panem, someone she's spent hours and hours with--more hours than she'd had on the ship. That must be true, or else she wouldn't remember so much about her.

"Hi," she says, and plops back down onto the log. If she was intending to keep working, she'd stay standing, foot braced against the log. It's only half done. Instead she squints up at Kate, and rubs her wrist against her forehead again. "Got anything to eat?"

Comments

[alsohawkeye]

Kate's memories came flooding back to her so rapidly it was like one night she went to bed without her own name and when she woke up she had everything but those last hours before the crash. She's strained against that barrier in her mind, flung her thoughts against it, tried to sneak around it, all to no avail, not even the usual nosebleed to at least tell her she's fighting the right battle.

She's heard it's different for everyone, that for some the process is slower, but Johanna seems to know herself. Kate's overheard her use her name when bartering for food. But she hasn't sought Kate out, hasn't made any real effort to speak with her on the occasions they've been around camp at the same time. And there's something in the pit of her chest that tells Kate that's just as it should be. She doesn't know what it is, the truth of it hidden away in that corner of her mind locked off just when the rest was finally broken free. But whatever it was, she's pretty sure it was her own fault. Whenever she looks at Johanna her stomach flops over, half-nauseated by guilt. It makes sense that Johanna wouldn't be interested in talking to her.

So when she rounds the corner in the woods and is met with a muddy face lit up at the sight of her, she stops short, uncertain. And then double-takes again at the dog, who hops down and trundles over to paw at her shins. She crouches, buys herself a minute by ruffling ears and picking leaves out of fur, glancing up at Johanna a couple more times around canine affection. There's no mistaking it; she looks happy to see Kate. It's weird, but heartening. Maybe she'd got it wrong? Or maybe she's been forgiven?

"Hey," she replies, letting Spike follow as she straightens up and closes the few steps to sit beside her. "I don't, sorry. I was just going to go collect some berries. You've got--" she gestures at her own forehead.

[axeyou]

In absent response to Kate's gesture, she rubs her wrist against her forehead again. It doesn't do anything to clean off the mud. If anything, it makes it worse. Whatever. She clearly doesn't care. Work and effort and sweat and humidity and a lack of safe water beyond rainfall have all combined to make Johanna pretty damn filthy. Then again, this also means that she fits right in. Kate's probably no rose herself.

Roses. She doesn't have the Katniss Everdeen aversion to roses, but the thought of the flower makes her mouth twitch. Memories are still a little hazy, built outwards from trauma. Before she knows the why, she knows the what: you hate roses, Johanna Mason. The sight of a rose pinned to a neatly folded lapel makes you feel like you're going to puke blood. President Snow comes later.

"Collect them," she instructs Kate, "and bring me back some. I'm starving. This stupid dog is eating something, but he doesn't share. Do you, stupid. Do you?"

The dog doesn't leave Kate's side, too happy to see her to be deterred--but Johanna's gushy tone gets a bark out of him. His waggy tail hits Kate's legs. Johanna smiles up at Kate as she tosses her hair off her sweaty shoulder.

"Take him with you, he's driving me crazy." It's sincere, but it lacks its usual bite.

The thing is, she's seen Kate around. But Kate has always shied away from her, disappeared into the crowd before Johanna could track her down and extricate her, take her aside and corroborate what she remembers. The Arena, right? Not at the same time. There's no way--Kate would be dead. But like when she thinks Finnick, there's something too familiar about Kate's face to write her off the way she's written off just about everyone else. If nothing else, they're as close to allies as Johanna has ever let herself get. So Kate is totally going to bring back some berries. No question.

[alsohawkeye]

Kate smiles at the tail thumping against her shins and bends to scratch behind puppy ears. He's not puppy-sized anymore, not at all, but whatever. "Okay," she says to Johanna, smiling for her, too. There's a note of pleasant surprise in it, like she had been braced for something painful or ugly and can now let the tension go and can settle, back into what seems like a significant degree of comfort with her. She sure agrees easily, even if she does roll her eyes. "You could look for yourself, you know. And he's not hurting anything, are you buddy?

"Thanks for looking after him for me." Because this is her dog, apparently. It's the sort of statement that would go better around a departure, but Kate isn't getting up to leave, instead leaning to look at all the hewing Johanna has been doing. "What're you building?" she asks, before her mouth tugs into a teasing sort of smile, "Please tell me it's a treehouse. If it is I demand to get to stay in it, this time."

[axeyou]

Another thing Johanna knows about herself: she doesn't have a lot of patience, but when it's necessary, she can force herself to be patient. Shut up and listen is as good a reconnaissance technique as anything else.

So the dog is Kate's. That's why she's barely got any memories of it. The little touch of surprise in Kate's expression--she's less certain of what to make of that. Less so with the this time. It's not like it's out of character for Johanna to refuse entry to someone. From what little she knows of herself, she could tell you that.

She's been busy. If the smears of sweat and dirt weren't enough to stand proof of that, the pile of rough-hewn logs would do the rest. And there really is a pile, a little stack. Not near enough to work with yet; not dry enough to serve for proper long-term construction. The work of building structures that last isn't work that Johanna is familiar with. All the dwellings she's ever put together were designed to come down when they were ready to move on to the next site.

But all of that is boring detail. In short: Kate is right. More or less. Coolly, Johanna arches her eyebrows. "You really think I'm going to listen to demands?"

Come on. She flicks a chip of wood off her thigh, dismissively.

"Bring me back some berries. Then we'll talk."

[alsohawkeye]

Kate appears totally unfazed by Johanna's coolness, undeterred by the disdainful bend to her brows. She tips her head to one side in a sort of copy of her expression, brow rising to match. The curl of a smile is all her, though. "I think we both know how persuasive I can be." It's a come-on, obviously, but there's something light-hearted and familiar in it, some sense that Kate has good reason for her confidence. Like they've had this exchange a million times.

But she's still rubbing her palms on her jeans just above the knee like she's getting ready to rise, and she doesn't refuse the berry-collection --> conversation plan. "You sure you don't want to come? Take a break from chopping?"

[axeyou]

For a moment, she does remember, and the remembering is dizzying. It washes through her, flushes her cheeks, stilts her breath. Kate, toweling her hair dry. Kate, lights and music and the same smile she's got on now. Kate, aiming that smile over her bare shoulder. Kate, face touched scarlet, angry and scowling. The crook of her fingers on a bowstring. The weight of her hand on Johanna's back. The taste of her mouth; the lift of her hips.

In practice: Johanna's eyes go soft and unfocused for a moment. She's sat on the log, so there's no stumbling. When she blinks, she comes out of it. A little paler maybe; a little short of breath. Maybe that's leftover from all that hard work, and speaking of which--

She rubs her forearm over her forehead again.

"When I could make you go and pick berries for me? Come on."

Obvious answer. She swings her legs over the side of the log anyways. Determined, focused. When she sets her feet on the ground and heaves herself up, she stands firm. No staggering. She even swings her axe up onto her shoulder as she nods, permissively.

"Go on."

[alsohawkeye]

Kate watches her, as that moment passes across her face. It isn't much, but Kate is on alert for any little clue, and here is one. Not that she's at all sure what it means. It's actually the opposite of helpful, since Kate had just begun to feel more sure of herself and now there's this weirdness to make her doubt again.

But if something were really wrong, Johanna wouldn't be swinging that axe onto her own shoulder. Though playing a part was how she won her games, so maybe she would? Kate lingers uncertainly once she's upright, hooking two fingers into the collar of her t-shirt, letting her arm hang. She can't afford to stretch them out anymore with supplies so limited, but she's not thinking about it.

"We're--" Instead she's thinking about how to word this. It's not going very well, as she hesitates on the very first word. "We're okay, right?" Vague is always the way to go.

[axeyou]

The weight of her axe is both comforting and familiar, like someone she likes very much squeezing her shoulder. Her axe is the thing that she knows best, the most familiar thing in a green sea of the unfamiliar: jungle and ship and people she knows and doesn't know, dull little flickers of familiarity lighting up neural synapses and she doesn't know why. She doesn't even know neural synapses.

When Kate asks her question--we're okay, right?, with that touch of hesitation--it very much feels unfamiliar, a sick swoop in the pit of her stomach. Like grabbing for someone's hand, to be hauled up to the next branch, and missing, grabbing just air; like hearing her name called at the Reaping. The announcement of the Quarter Quell. The rumble of thunder. More deep misgiving than terror. You fucked up, and here's how you'll pay for it.

She stares at Kate. No sign of her interior thoughts--her little brain, shrieking at her--shows on her face.

"Why wouldn't we be."

It's not actually a question. More like a you-tell-me. Why would we not be okay. Should we not be. What is she missing; what does Kate know that she doesn't.

[alsohawkeye]

"I--" Kate pauses and reconsiders. Though since she hadn't actually decided what she was going to say, there's not a lot of re- to it. Part of her feels like she ought to explain, an urge to get it off her chest and just blurt out I think I did something awful but Johanna looks at her, so opaque, so cool, all that challenge in her tone. And Kate falters, her stomach taking a sick swoop as she's stopped short by uncertainty.

What if she did do something and this is how Johanna has chosen to handle it? Taking her time, brushing it off, pretending it wasn't, daring Kate to try to bring it up. If she doesn't want to discuss it won't Kate just be compounding her guilt if she forces the issue? What a terrible choice of words.

But what if Johanna somehow doesn't know? There's some obligation there not to hide this from her-- but hide what? Is it hiding something if you don't even know what the something is or if there even is a something? This is ridiculous.

"No reason." Kate shrugs, and if her smile is a little wan and a little unconvincing, so be it. This is a bridge she'll cross when she comes to it. If there even is a bridge. Or anything to cross. Kate doesn't know anything that she doesn't. "See you later, then."

[axeyou]

Okay would be easy. She should choose easy.

Easy isn't easy for Johanna. Too conditioned; too wary. She doesn't narrow her eyes, or twitch her mouth down into a frown. Her caution runs deeper than that. Less worried about what she's missing (too much) and more worried about what Kate is keeping secret. She knows her name, she knows the way she looks when she's irritated, and she knows subtler emotions, the bright color of pink in her cheeks, the way she looks when she's sleeping--and she knows when she's lying. Or at least, when she's not being forthcoming with the whole and total truth.

Johanna lets a smirk hitch into place. She turns to go. See you later, except first--

"You know," and she says it airy, and thoughtful, like this is all just occurring to her, "if you want to say something to me, you should. Now."

Like maybe, what's the secret. What is not being said. She glances back, over her shoulder, eyebrows lifted high. Sweat sticks her fringe to her forehead but she still manages to look superior.

"It'd probably make you feel better too. That's what I hear."

Like confession was ever her thing.