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Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

Nathan was doing an admirable job working on flower arrangements today, the day before The Flower Holiday, without resorting to committing homicide. It was anybody's best guess as to how he was managing that, honestly, but he was doing his best to just put flowers together in a calm and rational way, even while at least slightly convinced that he had somehow been transported to one of the circles of Hell overnight.

Whichever one had flowers.

So many flowers.

... And one weirdo coming in to ask if they made bouquets out of pancakes.

"Go to the goddamn diner. We deal in flowers here."

And the occasional arrangement with sex toys worked in, provided people supplied their own, apparently.

"After this, I'm quitting my damn job."

He didn't mean that. Probably.

[OOC: Open!]

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Octavia didn't make promises lightly.

So she showed up, a little while into the day. Complete with a bag from J,GoB because at some point she'd been given the impression that baked goods generally went over well with people.

"How's it going?"

Nathan looked up from one of a few dozen bouquets he'd been putting together, looking slightly harried.

"Well, it's the day before the biggest flower-giving holiday of the year, and our friend with the unmentionables hasn't made an appearance just yet," he replied. "I'm secretly hoping he waits until tomorrow and makes it Peter's problem."

He didn't sound even remotely remorseful about that, either.

"And yourself?"

Octavia gave a quiet snort. "Don't see why it needs to be a secret hope." It seemed perfectly reasonable to her - as it appeared to seem to him, too, judging by the tone.

She held the bakery bag up, demonstratively. "I have something called Valentine's Day donuts." She was vaguely aware of what a donut was. The Blake household wasn't one for a whole ton of sweets. "The guy at that store didn't seem like he was feeling overworked for something relatively pointless."

"Most people don't push too hard to market fried pastries for the holiday," Nathan replied, smiling a little. "They generally don't impress people as much as an expensive bouquet of roses." He paused. "Even if the donuts generally taste better."

They were a much more practical purchase, that was for certain.

"I know which I like better," Octavia replied with a shrug, setting the bakery bag on the counter. "Food's always more impressive." She ~~somewhat improbably~~ didn't look like she'd suffered from too much malnutrition during her life, but she knew the value and worth of food over anything symbolic.

Her head tilted. "What's so special about roses, anyway?"

She'd wondered, while she'd worked with a ton of them.

Nathan paused in his flower arrangement for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the flowers in his hand.

"I suppose 'because they're pretty and they smell pleasant' isn't entirely the answer you're looking for, is it?" He gave a small huff of a laugh. "They have a long history of symbolism across multiple cultures, but I personally couldn't tell you where that symbolism started or who it was who decided that roses meant passion or love. They're just the flower that people are most aware of in this context, I suppose."

Octavia seemed to consider that an acceptable explanation. At least she didn't pull too much of a face.

Just sighed. "Sometimes I feel like I'm blind," she said. "A rose is just a rose to me - or, I guess after these past couple of weeks, a flower I've seen way too much of."

"You're coming here without context," Nathan pointed out, shrugging his shoulders slightly as he set aside a finished bouquet and then started work on the next. "You're hardly the only person on the island who has no real affinity for any one flower in particular. You're simply in a position where you're extremely more likely to have to deal with people who do."

He heaved a bit of a sigh as he started selecting more roses to put together the next dozen.

"I understand that feeling," he noted. "Not necessarily because of things I'm not used to from here and now, but I've been places that have made nearly no sense to me at all. For as blind as you can feel, at times... you do seem to be adjusting well. Asking the right questions. Handling it far better than you could be."

She spoke the language. That didn't hurt.

It was a definite benefit, even if Octavia sometimes found it hard to realize it was. And even the warriors among the Grounders had spoken English. But it was difficult to think about it that way, sometimes.

Sometimes, it seemed more aggravating to understand the words but not the context.

"I guess." She moved, to check the orders, to see where she could help. As she did that, she also let her curiosity take over. Even if the question was light, and her tone mild. "Where were you?"

Nathan allowed himself a tiny quirk of a smile. It wasn't a question he minded answering, at least. It was hardly a secret these days where he would much rather be than here.

"Japan," he replied. "Deep in the mountains of Japan, for months on end. I had been taken prisoner, one of the few survivors of a military operation that had gone... poorly."

He'd lost good men that day.

He'd lost his best friend that day.

Octavia didn't bother asking where Japan was. She knew she wouldn't know, so, might as well just look it up later. Neither did she ask what 'poorly' meant. She knew 'poorly'. Just a year or so on the ground had taught her a lot about battles and not always getting the outcome you wanted.

She was also very aware of the concept of casualties.

She picked up a bunch of roses. Pink ones. "Were you leverage, or did they want information from you?"

"Information," Nathan replied, and then paused before adding, "an understanding. I was a prisoner, but I was treated like a guest, to some extent. I didn't know the language, or the customs, but I knew my troops. I knew the intentions of my commanding officers."

Assholes.

"I wouldn't have made good leverage. Winter was just around the corner, and there was no navigating those mountains until the weather eased back. I was an asset to either side, but only worth so much trouble."

Octavia thought - briefly - about Lincoln, and about how Skaikru had captured him, and what they'd wanted from him.

Good thing the roses called for her to keep her gaze down. "Did you learn the language?"

There were personal reasons, for that question.

"Hai. Yes. Eventually," Nathan replied, picking a spray of baby's breath to work into his bouquet. "It took months, though. Until I started parroting words back to them, they weren't in any great hurry to teach me."

It helped, he supposed, that he'd always had an affinity for language.

"Ai gaf gouthru klir," Octavia muttered, a little unintelligibly. But not entirely.

Apart from the language being one that was completely unfamiliar to everyone except her and her brother, of course. And Bellamy didn't even speak it.

"So you had to make the effort yourself before they helped you?"

It was an interesting language, enough that Nathan tilted his head a little and attempted to mouth the words himself, before he answered her question.

"I had to prove that they wouldn't be wasting their time if they tried to help me," he settled on. "They were going to keep me alive, regardless. They treated my injuries, kept me fed. I wasn't treated unkindly. But until I showed that I was willing to learn, they weren't going to try to teach me. I don't think they entirely expected me to try to learn the way I did, either."

As could be evidenced by that time he'd had the shit beaten out of him simply for picking up a wooden sword.

Put English through ninety years of post-apocalyptic living and the need to not be understood by some other survivors, and you got the language Octavia longed to hear.

"I get that," she said, reaching for some red ribbon (with heart-shapes on it, because of course). "It's a resource, same as everything else."

Time, or even the energy that went into teaching someone something.

"It is," Nathan agreed. "And there are very few situations I can think of where knowledge and understanding aren't some of the most important resources one can have access to."

So he could understand her frustration, when things were so, so similar, but so truly, thoroughly, fundamentally different all the same.

"At least they have the internet in this time," Octavia replied, dryly. "Though that seems to bring more knowledge than it does understanding."

She could look up confusing things that were something concrete. Her questions to do with more abstract things weren't as easy.

Which, yes, lead to her frustration.

It was difficult to explain seemingly abstract questions away with equally abstract answers. Nathan nodded.

"One's not worth much without the other," he allowed. "Understanding can come in time, but there's no telling when, or just how much context you need to pick up before that begins to happen."

Octavia sighed. 'Theatrical' might not have been quite the right word for it, but there was still a hint of exaggeration in it.

It was an adequate replacement for words. She'd made her issues loud and clear as it was. "What about when you came here?" she asked instead. "Was it easier than Japan?"

"No," Nathan replied, shaking his head. "No, I don't think this place is easier than anywhere, really. I might be mistaken, maybe somebody out there has better luck here than at home. But at least Japan was a place in my own time, in my own world. What didn't make sense could be made sense of. This place seems to view 'sense' as optional, and to delight in that fact."

"'Sense' has always been optional for me." So it seemed, anyway. Her concept of 'normal' had been offbeat from the start. "Still, I can deal with learning the rules, I guess, if this is where it ends."

She'd been yanked from one culture to another enough already, in her life.

"Can't hurt to learn them, I suppose."

Assuming there were any.

"I don't pretend to have any great understanding of this era, but whenever you have questions, if I know the answers, I can at least try to provide that context."

"Thanks." It was sincere, no matter how mild it was. Aside from Bellamy, he'd been the first person on the island who'd seemed to understand where she was coming from, at least in a manner of speaking. And she wouldn't treat that lightly.

She fixed a rose in her bouquet, trying to jut out further than the rest. "And if it seems like I don't get something everyone should somehow get," she added, "just remember that I only talked to two people until I was sixteen."

Well, there had just been talk about context. That seemed worth mentioning.

That was definitely some context, right there.

"I'll keep that in mind," Nathan replied, "though around here, I wouldn't imagine there's anything everyone should somehow get. Anyone who believes there's any such thing likely hasn't been paying attention."

"Still," Octavia replied, shrugging. Was this bouquet finished? Probably. "Just saying."

Sometimes, it felt like she was even lost on some fundamental basics. Though most of the time, she didn't have the time to get fixated on those things.

Nathan nodded.

"I appreciate it," he replied. "It might help me come up with ways to explain things, as well."

Better to be aware of her being relatively cut off from people in general than to make assumptions and frustrate situations further.

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Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

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