Already bustling through the business of getting the bush into a suitable pot she pauses when he offers the knife and shakes her head with a smile. "Hold onto it for now, I think that part's going to be your job."
And if asked, she'd say that was because she's seen how fast he can gut a fish and knows he has more experience handling a knife deftly, which is exactly what a job like this calls for.
In reality, she's decided that the man deserves nice things and could probably use a way to pass the time that isn't yanking stumps out of the ground and gutting fish.
"Looking good!" Aerith says to the newly potted baby bush she's holding out and admiring, looking it over carefully before she sets it, and a pair of secateurs down on the table by the water.
"See the trunk?" She points her finger following the curve of it. "Do you think you can cut the rest back until it looks like a little tree, instead of a bush?"
"I don't garden," he replies immediately, but Aerith seems distracted by her potting business, and he thinks she doesn't hear him.
Confirmed when she puts the task of trimming the tiny, stunted, definitely fragile bush on him. Not that it looks hard or anything, but he's got no eye for art and no hand for delicacy.
She heard him, she just didn't ask and doesn't care.
"Don't put your knife in it then! But, here look," Aerith pokes at a particularly sharp curve of the trunk, gesturing at all the bitty branchlets sprouting from it. "I can't tidy up anything that needs this kind of precision."
She looks from the little bush to him, frowning imploringly. "Can't you?"
"Why the hell not?" he fires back. "You think I'm that precise?" Getting the distinct impression he's being manipulated, or she's at least feigning helplessness to make him try it. Like she's a kindergarten teacher and he's refusing to fingerpaint.
None of this actually stops him from doing as she says. He just huffs, pulls the pot closer, and-- he's not hesitating, okay, he's just looking at it and trying to figure out what she's asking of him. The little branches along the trunk? Fine.
With large, actually quite precise hands, he starts cutting away at the little branches. Don't come crying to him when it dies.
Aerith watches, trying not to crowd him while peering over his shoulder while he works, smiling delightedly as her improvised project comes together rather nicely.
"It really does look like a tiny little tree the more you clean up the trunk," she sounds thoughtful, eyes narrowing while she looks at the bigger would-be branches further up, trying to envision what needs to be cut away for it to take shape.
"I think if you get rid of that thick branch on the right, it would end up shaped like a castle, but the other branch on the left might make it look more fluid like it's always caught in the wind." She moves to pat him on the shoulder but refrains, very aware of what a coin toss a motion like that would be. This is a nice day, she doesn't want to make it go backward.
Instead, she retreats back into the house and comes back with a plate of small steak pies, setting it by Krauser before she goes back to watching him work.
He's acutely aware of Aerith watching him. Or at least it feels like she is. It's not quite stage fright or anything so childish, but he does tighten his jaw and stare harder at the little branches along the bottom of the curved trunk.
He slows down moving higher up the trunk, when it's less obvious which branches need to go. When she points out the two differing visions, he pauses entirely. It still looks like a tiny, scraggly bush to him. Though... Can kind of see what she means with either option. But this is that intuition thing at work. How's he supposed to know which would look better?
Krauser hasn't made any further progress when she returns. He's not quite glaring, but looking very sternly at her. The pie actually gives him an excuse not to commit to anything yet. That, and he's fuckin' starving. He keeps a hand wrapped tight around the knife while he eats with the other one. Slowly, he does end up glaring at the bush.
"I think..." Tapping her chin with her finger as she draws the last vowel out a little, seemingly engrossed with the business of sizing up the almost-tree.
"The one on the left." Aerith nods decisively. "You're really good with that knife, I think you might be able to get it just right." As she speaks her hands move absently, arms curving and arranging themselves to try and resemble sprawling tree limbs - an attempt to illustrate her definition of what just right might look like, as lighthearted and carefree as a person who hasn't been glowered at by a tremendous, tremendously strong man.
You have no idea, he somehow resists replying to the compliment about his knife prowess.
His face does not even remotely soften as Aerith poses to try and get the idea across. Just silently chews and glares at her with discerning eyes, like he's trying to commit the visual to memory. When he shoves the last crust of the pie in his mouth, still chewing, he grasps the left branch in question and decisively cuts it off. A few more on the sides, then...
"There." He doesn't speak until he's swallowed. Decent table manners, at least. "Done."
"I know you said you don't do stuff like this, but," Aerith begins, circling past Krauser to the side of the table, turning the pot the bush is in around so she can look at it from all sides.
"This is really good!" And she knows he'd roll her eyes if she said so, but Aerith's aware the bush is a lot more content than it was, choking while trying to thrive around a dead tree.
"This one?" She points a finger at a small bit of branch on the other side of the bush that's sticking out at a strange angle before moving on to another. "Maybe this one too? Or, hm. You decide on that one."
When she indicates another branch, he holds his hand out to ward hers away from the bush, like there has to be a shield between her hand and his knife. Slices off the offending branches with the very tip. One. Two. A pause, and he takes out a third.
"There." More decisively this time. "Good enough."
Catching the motion Aerith moves her hand away but stays close enough to watch attentively as he takes out the two she pointed at. His decision to remove one more surprises her, and though she brightens immediately, Aerith manages to stave off the urge to say something encouraging or approving.
Thankfully she doesn't have to when Lorcan appears with a second plate, this one laden with fruit pastries, it's all the approval anyone needs. Her retainer casts a passing, dubious glance at the tree before disappearing again as Aerith continues to dart around the table, looking it over.
"You're right, that third branch got in the way of the shape."
As Aerith circles the table, he gives the tree another once-over before expertly flicking the knife around and tucking it back into the makeshift sheath at his belt, decisively finished. Especially when there's more pastry to be had. He plucks two off the stack and eats one immediately, relaxing back into his chair the way he had been before impromptu arts and crafts time.
Hell yeah. The strawberry ones again. And this time he's not eating them in a wet cave on the verge of starvation.
Every so often his eyes go back to the bush. If you really use your imagination, he looks proud of it. If you really read into the stony glare.
Equally satisfied with his handiwork, Aerith meanders from the table back towards the garden, heading back towards the hole he's made, chatting all the while.
"I guess I should find another tree to put in here. A willow would be nice, they grow down rather than out, so they won't block the sun from the flowers, but," she cocks her head, hands resting on her hips as she peers into the hole. "You're right, they like water, a willow tree wouldn't be happy here."
Of course she knows he didn't say anything, but who's to say she's not talking to a nearby peony or something? "I wish it was warm enough for a lemon tree, or a persimmon tree even. They smell wonderful, and they taste like candy."
Between admiring staring at the little bush and eating, he's not paying much attention. It doesn't dawn on him for a moment that she's yammering on about trees or whatever. When it does, he's taken just slightly aback.
Who is she even talking to? Him? Surely she's not expecting him to answer. Because he doesn't. Just keeps eating his pastries and watching her pace around and ramble, offering nothing more than a little raised eyebrow.
After traveling with Cloud, and being tailed by chatty Cathys like Rude and Tseng for years, Aerith's pretty used to filling the quiet by talking for the sake of talking. With the Turks, acknowledging their presence meant that it was less she was being followed and more that she was carrying out a conversation with them. A bizarre approach to undermining what she could never avoid back in Midgar, but it made her feel less cagey.
With Cloud, and now she's finding, with Jack, she's doing it because she hopes eventually, they'll start talking back. Either way, she'll continue to talk while she meanders through her flower beds, stopping to pluck a weed out here and there.
"Maybe I'll leave the hole for now and save it for a really nice rosebush." Aerith tilts her head from side to side, while she looks at the hole instead of him. "Hey, do you want to stay for dinner too?"
Wouldn't be the first time somebody's just kept chattering to fill in the silence he leaves in any given conversation. When it's not about battle plans or training camp or some other military topic, he's never had that much to say.
It's profoundly ridiculous for him to be thinking about dinner when there are two entire plates of pasty sitting next to him and he's got another strawberry tart in his hand. But between the hard physical labor and the passenger putting his metabolism in permanent overdrive, he can't help asking.
"I don't know. What's for dinner?" And also a much more practical, important question. "And when?" Is he gonna have to sit here for several more hours, then? That's another thing besides silence that Krauser's never had an easy time killing.
"You got another stump to deal with or something?"
"No, but, I've got a lot of big plants you can help me trim." Dinner is whenever she tells Lorcan it is, Aerith's found, but if she doesn't have to she won't. While she's fairly sure from the state he's in, that he's not living in a cave, Aerith gets the sense that doesn't necessarily mean he's gotten it all together either, which is fine. Who does? Certainly not her.
"Shepherd's pie! I told Lorcan you were a meat and potatoes kind of guy." Maybe he's not, but he's certainly large enough to give the impression. "And more of those tarts, but with rhubarb too."
"Of course. Putting me to work," he says wryly. Which sounds very annoyed, but with his raspy normal speaking voice, so does almost everything. The very edge of a smirking smile might be the best indication he's not that irritated about the idea.
Especially when he's being fed. (Yeah, now he knows that he could ask that... thing to make him whatever dinner he wants, but he'd rather cut off his own limbs than owe anything to that little demonic brat. She's been making herself scarce since he emerged from the cave, and even the small signs and "favors" she's done are too much of her presence for him to stomach.)
"You do anything else but garden?" asks a man who appears to do nothing else but be violently weird.
Though part of her wants to, she doesn't protest - whether or not it's due to the fact she caught that tiny smirk remains a mystery. If she caught him smiling even the slightest bit, she's certainly not calling attention to it and risking spoiling all this excellent progress she's made whittling away at him.
"Sure! I also sell what I garden," she moves past a bed of larkspur, plucking another weed out of the soil the flowers are growing in as she does, her head cocking in the direction of the wagon parked just outside of Tango's horse house.
"Visit with friends, go people-watching, stare at the ocean, but, most of the time I'm either selling flowers or growing them." Aerith shrugs sheepishly. So maybe most of what she does is garden, it's where she feels the most at home. "What about you, Mr. Jack?"
He didn't frame it as a compliment, but now that he looks around maybe he kind of meant it that way. The garden really is damn impressive. Reminds him of... some other garden from long ago, except clearly a lot more exotic plants and hours of daily TLC went into it. She must spend a lot of time down here if she's gotten this much in just a few months. To say nothing of the other garden on top of the Whetstone.
Meanwhile, how does he answer that? Since arriving in Andovale he... stole some knives. Went crazy a couple times. Fucked a stranger in public. Starved in a cave and almost died. Went fishing, he supposes, but that was related to the cave thing.
"Nothing," he says, quite honestly. "Not anymore, really."
"You could make more little trees if you wanted. You're pretty good at it." She picks a few flowers, handing them off to Lorcan when he returns with fresh plates of pastries to replace the ones Jack's already seen to.
"We would have to steal bushes, I don't have that many good candidates for tiny trees around here." But that could be a fun way to pass the time, depending on how Jack feels about casual plant theft - personally, Aerith's been marauding through Pheme's gardens for months now and doesn't technically consider it stealing since plants belong to themselves not people.
Admittedly, stealing bushes sounds like it could be fun. He's stolen all the knives on his person after all, and that gave him enough of a thrill to try it a few time. But more to the point...
"Told you I don't garden." He plucks another pastry off of the plate, like they're miniature sized and he hasn't already eaten six of them. "I don't know if you picked up on this, but I'm a soldier." It's subtle, really. "Not much for me to do in a place like this."
"If you're a soldier, stealing bushes should be easy work. It would be a covert operation after all." Of all the people she knows, she's pretty sure Jack's one of the best choices for sneaking around in the dark with a wheelbarrow with an eye on petty theft.
"And if you're not doing anything," except pruning her lilacs like he said he would - she hasn't forgotten, she's just letting him eat.
Krauser lets out an audible sigh. Maybe he doesn't have anything better to do, but he didn't sign up to be garden bitch to this irrepressibly chipper woman. (He just sort of wandered into it and hasn't gotten fed up and left yet.)
"Sure. But they don't tend to send me in until somebody needs to die."
Until somebody needs to die. If he didn't sound like every brooding mercenary hanging around the slums of Midgar looking for work, that might have thrown Aerith, but she's already putting a plan together in her head - one that, ideally doesn't involve murder.
"What about if probably nobody needs to die? Still want to help me? We can go tonight." She can't imagine anybody needing to die over some stolen bushes, but for the sake of getting him to agree, she'll be diplomatic.
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And if asked, she'd say that was because she's seen how fast he can gut a fish and knows he has more experience handling a knife deftly, which is exactly what a job like this calls for.
In reality, she's decided that the man deserves nice things and could probably use a way to pass the time that isn't yanking stumps out of the ground and gutting fish.
"Looking good!" Aerith says to the newly potted baby bush she's holding out and admiring, looking it over carefully before she sets it, and a pair of secateurs down on the table by the water.
"See the trunk?" She points her finger following the curve of it. "Do you think you can cut the rest back until it looks like a little tree, instead of a bush?"
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Confirmed when she puts the task of trimming the tiny, stunted, definitely fragile bush on him. Not that it looks hard or anything, but he's got no eye for art and no hand for delicacy.
"Things I put knives in don't stay alive."
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"Don't put your knife in it then! But, here look," Aerith pokes at a particularly sharp curve of the trunk, gesturing at all the bitty branchlets sprouting from it. "I can't tidy up anything that needs this kind of precision."
She looks from the little bush to him, frowning imploringly. "Can't you?"
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None of this actually stops him from doing as she says. He just huffs, pulls the pot closer, and-- he's not hesitating, okay, he's just looking at it and trying to figure out what she's asking of him. The little branches along the trunk? Fine.
With large, actually quite precise hands, he starts cutting away at the little branches. Don't come crying to him when it dies.
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"It really does look like a tiny little tree the more you clean up the trunk," she sounds thoughtful, eyes narrowing while she looks at the bigger would-be branches further up, trying to envision what needs to be cut away for it to take shape.
"I think if you get rid of that thick branch on the right, it would end up shaped like a castle, but the other branch on the left might make it look more fluid like it's always caught in the wind." She moves to pat him on the shoulder but refrains, very aware of what a coin toss a motion like that would be. This is a nice day, she doesn't want to make it go backward.
Instead, she retreats back into the house and comes back with a plate of small steak pies, setting it by Krauser before she goes back to watching him work.
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He slows down moving higher up the trunk, when it's less obvious which branches need to go. When she points out the two differing visions, he pauses entirely. It still looks like a tiny, scraggly bush to him. Though... Can kind of see what she means with either option. But this is that intuition thing at work. How's he supposed to know which would look better?
Krauser hasn't made any further progress when she returns. He's not quite glaring, but looking very sternly at her. The pie actually gives him an excuse not to commit to anything yet. That, and he's fuckin' starving. He keeps a hand wrapped tight around the knife while he eats with the other one. Slowly, he does end up glaring at the bush.
"Which one do you want?"
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"The one on the left." Aerith nods decisively. "You're really good with that knife, I think you might be able to get it just right." As she speaks her hands move absently, arms curving and arranging themselves to try and resemble sprawling tree limbs - an attempt to illustrate her definition of what just right might look like, as lighthearted and carefree as a person who hasn't been glowered at by a tremendous, tremendously strong man.
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His face does not even remotely soften as Aerith poses to try and get the idea across. Just silently chews and glares at her with discerning eyes, like he's trying to commit the visual to memory. When he shoves the last crust of the pie in his mouth, still chewing, he grasps the left branch in question and decisively cuts it off. A few more on the sides, then...
"There." He doesn't speak until he's swallowed. Decent table manners, at least. "Done."
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"This is really good!" And she knows he'd roll her eyes if she said so, but Aerith's aware the bush is a lot more content than it was, choking while trying to thrive around a dead tree.
"This one?" She points a finger at a small bit of branch on the other side of the bush that's sticking out at a strange angle before moving on to another. "Maybe this one too? Or, hm. You decide on that one."
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When she indicates another branch, he holds his hand out to ward hers away from the bush, like there has to be a shield between her hand and his knife. Slices off the offending branches with the very tip. One. Two. A pause, and he takes out a third.
"There." More decisively this time. "Good enough."
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Thankfully she doesn't have to when Lorcan appears with a second plate, this one laden with fruit pastries, it's all the approval anyone needs. Her retainer casts a passing, dubious glance at the tree before disappearing again as Aerith continues to dart around the table, looking it over.
"You're right, that third branch got in the way of the shape."
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Hell yeah. The strawberry ones again. And this time he's not eating them in a wet cave on the verge of starvation.
Every so often his eyes go back to the bush. If you really use your imagination, he looks proud of it. If you really read into the stony glare.
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"I guess I should find another tree to put in here. A willow would be nice, they grow down rather than out, so they won't block the sun from the flowers, but," she cocks her head, hands resting on her hips as she peers into the hole. "You're right, they like water, a willow tree wouldn't be happy here."
Of course she knows he didn't say anything, but who's to say she's not talking to a nearby peony or something? "I wish it was warm enough for a lemon tree, or a persimmon tree even. They smell wonderful, and they taste like candy."
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admiringstaring at the little bush and eating, he's not paying much attention. It doesn't dawn on him for a moment that she's yammering on about trees or whatever. When it does, he's taken just slightly aback.Who is she even talking to? Him? Surely she's not expecting him to answer. Because he doesn't. Just keeps eating his pastries and watching her pace around and ramble, offering nothing more than a little raised eyebrow.
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With Cloud, and now she's finding, with Jack, she's doing it because she hopes eventually, they'll start talking back. Either way, she'll continue to talk while she meanders through her flower beds, stopping to pluck a weed out here and there.
"Maybe I'll leave the hole for now and save it for a really nice rosebush." Aerith tilts her head from side to side, while she looks at the hole instead of him. "Hey, do you want to stay for dinner too?"
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It's profoundly ridiculous for him to be thinking about dinner when there are two entire plates of pasty sitting next to him and he's got another strawberry tart in his hand. But between the hard physical labor and the passenger putting his metabolism in permanent overdrive, he can't help asking.
"I don't know. What's for dinner?" And also a much more practical, important question. "And when?" Is he gonna have to sit here for several more hours, then? That's another thing besides silence that Krauser's never had an easy time killing.
"You got another stump to deal with or something?"
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"Shepherd's pie! I told Lorcan you were a meat and potatoes kind of guy." Maybe he's not, but he's certainly large enough to give the impression. "And more of those tarts, but with rhubarb too."
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Especially when he's being fed. (Yeah, now he knows that he could ask that... thing to make him whatever dinner he wants, but he'd rather cut off his own limbs than owe anything to that little demonic brat. She's been making herself scarce since he emerged from the cave, and even the small signs and "favors" she's done are too much of her presence for him to stomach.)
"You do anything else but garden?" asks a man who appears to do nothing else but be violently weird.
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"Sure! I also sell what I garden," she moves past a bed of larkspur, plucking another weed out of the soil the flowers are growing in as she does, her head cocking in the direction of the wagon parked just outside of Tango's horse house.
"Visit with friends, go people-watching, stare at the ocean, but, most of the time I'm either selling flowers or growing them." Aerith shrugs sheepishly. So maybe most of what she does is garden, it's where she feels the most at home. "What about you, Mr. Jack?"
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Meanwhile, how does he answer that? Since arriving in Andovale he... stole some knives. Went crazy a couple times. Fucked a stranger in public. Starved in a cave and almost died. Went fishing, he supposes, but that was related to the cave thing.
"Nothing," he says, quite honestly. "Not anymore, really."
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"We would have to steal bushes, I don't have that many good candidates for tiny trees around here." But that could be a fun way to pass the time, depending on how Jack feels about casual plant theft - personally, Aerith's been marauding through Pheme's gardens for months now and doesn't technically consider it stealing since plants belong to themselves not people.
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"Told you I don't garden." He plucks another pastry off of the plate, like they're miniature sized and he hasn't already eaten six of them. "I don't know if you picked up on this, but I'm a soldier." It's subtle, really. "Not much for me to do in a place like this."
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"And if you're not doing anything," except pruning her lilacs like he said he would - she hasn't forgotten, she's just letting him eat.
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"Sure. But they don't tend to send me in until somebody needs to die."
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"What about if probably nobody needs to die? Still want to help me? We can go tonight." She can't imagine anybody needing to die over some stolen bushes, but for the sake of getting him to agree, she'll be diplomatic.
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