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.
"'Probably' she says." Taking a guy like him on a stealth op is like taking a wild dog into a meat locker. Though something tells him if he actually tried to kill anybody here, either the "LTC" or some other force would stop him. (Except Leon that one time. Maybe the powers at be agreed he fucking deserved that for opening his mouth.)
"You're serious? What do you need more bushes for?" He throws her a sidelong challenging glance. "Apart from keeping me busy and trying to give me a sense of accomplishment like I'm a pouty kindergartner."
Aerith laughs at the accusation, fanning a hand at him as she squints her eyes into incredulous slits. "Don't be silly, you would break those little chairs."
Taking a seat beside him she stretches her legs out and pours herself a glass of water from the carafe he's not drinking from. "Besides, Pheme messes with us all the time. It's fun to find ways to push back - and those bushes hate the shape they're in."
It's kind of a snort, but there's an unmistakably quiet "heh" in there somewhere. Fine. Well-played. So long as she's aware he's onto her, and isn't going to be manipulated like he's stupid, and that he's only agreeing to anything because he actually wants to.
Humming noncomittally in response, she looks back at him, tipping her chin toward the pair of garden shears she left on the table when they began this tiny tree adventure. It's not that she's against imparting that yes, they did, but she's not that sure any explanation she could give him wouldn't fall on dubious ears at this stage in what she's treating as a budding friendship.
A jaded man with a parasitic worm mending his nerves and screaming in his brain is a little more inclined to believe some crazy things. But yeah, that one would probably not land very well with him just yet.
Satisfied with his answer and pointedly ignoring the way he rolls his eyes, Aerith nods cheerfully. "When you finish your lunch we'll go trim the lilacs, and then you can come back and eat dinner."
Then, while lifting a hand as though she were making a solemn vow– "And that was my only stump, I promise."
That makes it sound like it's going to take hours. "Christ. How many lilacs do you have?"
Honestly, it doesn't matter. But he's enjoying the griping, lest she think he's really that easy to placate and boss around. It's also the closest thing to actual conversation he's comfortable with right now, so... that's pretty pathetic.
"You'd be doing all this yourself if I wasn't around?"
Or she doesn't think it'll take long for him to be ready to eat - a suspicion she assumes will be confirmed if the way he's going at those pastries is any clue.
"Probably, but, I do it myself back home." It's just a matter of lugging a ladder around - not a huge hindrance but as far as Aerith is concerned, this is much better.
"So, were you a solider for your homeland, or a big evil corporation?" Her time in Andovale has taught her it could be either, which is nice. Every universe doesn't need a Shinra - even if some apparently have similar.
He would, at the very least, lug the ladder around for her.
The question's a dangerous one, though one he's been asked here before. And it's not like Aerith would know how fraught it is, so he tightens his jaw and his voice somehow stays evenly calm when he answers.
He doesn't have to say more - the tension in his jaw speaks volumes. Maybe another time a chance to pry further will present itself, but Aerith's not going to push her luck. Instead, she nods understandingly and takes a sip of her water.
"You sound like you come from a world like mine." How many spurned Shinra operatives were out there, making ends meet as mercenaries?
"Do you stay at Whetstone now?" She's seen him there before, on the roof, and though she's around fairly often, it's a pretty big place.
Thank God. He doesn't trust his patience to hold out on that particular topic. Doesn't know what she means by "a world like mine," but for the same reason, he doesn't ask her to explain it.
"I guess." More like, he hasn't bothered packing up what few things he has and moving anywhere else. "Nowhere better to go, and nobody's told me to fuck off yet. And I'm not staying in that apartment, that's for sure." Though he's now aware that his "maid" can show up wherever she likes, at least out here the footing feels more even. It feels like she and by extension Pheme control everything in the "free" apartments.
"Sometimes. It gets quiet here, and Shaxx let me take over one of the storage rooms." Or rather, she took over one of the storage rooms and made it cozy, and Shaxx didn't protest.
"I go a lot, even if I don't sleep there. There's a garden on the roof to take care of." And it's more than likely that before this adventure is through he'll be told when it needs watering and trusted with the task.
Whether he'll agree is the real question. Not because he think he'll see less of Aerith if he does it for her, though. Definitely not that.
"Guess it keeps me out of the way. Out of a cave." Was that a self-deprecating joke? It kind of sounded like one, except for the completely deadpan dry tone in his voice. "Supervised and everything."
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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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"You're serious? What do you need more bushes for?" He throws her a sidelong challenging glance. "Apart from keeping me busy and trying to give me a sense of accomplishment like I'm a pouty kindergartner."
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Taking a seat beside him she stretches her legs out and pours herself a glass of water from the carafe he's not drinking from. "Besides, Pheme messes with us all the time. It's fun to find ways to push back - and those bushes hate the shape they're in."
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"Did the bushes tell you that?"
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"Are you still going to help me prune?"
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"Are you still going to feed me dinner?"
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"After we go steal bushes tonight, I'll feed you then too."
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He rolls his eyes. Mostly at himself, honestly.
"But these damn bushes of yours better not be under tree stumps."
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Then, while lifting a hand as though she were making a solemn vow– "And that was my only stump, I promise."
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Honestly, it doesn't matter. But he's enjoying the griping, lest she think he's really that easy to placate and boss around. It's also the closest thing to actual conversation he's comfortable with right now, so... that's pretty pathetic.
"You'd be doing all this yourself if I wasn't around?"
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"Probably, but, I do it myself back home." It's just a matter of lugging a ladder around - not a huge hindrance but as far as Aerith is concerned, this is much better.
"So, were you a solider for your homeland, or a big evil corporation?" Her time in Andovale has taught her it could be either, which is nice. Every universe doesn't need a Shinra - even if some apparently have similar.
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The question's a dangerous one, though one he's been asked here before. And it's not like Aerith would know how fraught it is, so he tightens his jaw and his voice somehow stays evenly calm when he answers.
"Freelance, now."
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"You sound like you come from a world like mine." How many spurned Shinra operatives were out there, making ends meet as mercenaries?
"Do you stay at Whetstone now?" She's seen him there before, on the roof, and though she's around fairly often, it's a pretty big place.
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"I guess." More like, he hasn't bothered packing up what few things he has and moving anywhere else. "Nowhere better to go, and nobody's told me to fuck off yet. And I'm not staying in that apartment, that's for sure." Though he's now aware that his "maid" can show up wherever she likes, at least out here the footing feels more even. It feels like she and by extension Pheme control everything in the "free" apartments.
"Do you?"
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"I go a lot, even if I don't sleep there. There's a garden on the roof to take care of." And it's more than likely that before this adventure is through he'll be told when it needs watering and trusted with the task.
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Not because he think he'll see less of Aerith if he does it for her, though. Definitely not that."Guess it keeps me out of the way. Out of a cave." Was that a self-deprecating joke? It kind of sounded like one, except for the completely deadpan dry tone in his voice. "Supervised and everything."
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