WHO: Rey and Klaus WHAT: Post Survivor challenge conversation WHEN: Survivor, Day 1 WHERE: Outside of the race area WARNINGS: Nah STATUS: Paused
The relay race over, Klaus was relieved to have it over with and eager to step away from the competition. It wasn't that he regretted volunteering, but after the Krampus demon attacks, and the beach vacation turned nightmare, and struggling to stay sober, he wouldn't have minded a week where he didn't have to worry about anything else.
That seemed increasingly unlikely, however. They still didn't know what the leaders had signed up for, even as the volunteer roles were now known. There was always something keeping them waiting, lingering on the edge of the horizon and warning them not to grow complacent.
He was about to head back to his room when he spotted someone he'd seen around, but not yet spoken to directly. He'd caught her during the knife fights, having wandered down out of morbid curiosity to watch before quickly changing his mind, having enough experience with violence to not partake in it for sport. Still, Rey had been quick on her feet, and wild, looking like someone who had fought out of necessity more than with formal training, something Klaus oddly appreciated.
So he walked up to her now, giving her a nod. "Rey, right?" he asked. "I'm Klaus. Saw you fight the other day. Well, sort of…"
He'd left before the fight was over, still believing Diego could have taken any and all of them. Probably at once.
Rey straightened up when she saw someone approaching her. Her hands were still hot and clammy from the exertion of the race and dirty from where she’d steadied herself against the ground as she’d caught her breath from a crouch. As many times as she told people she was fine, she was definitely not back to her full strength again after the injury she’d sustained in the goat demon attack. Although the wound itself was knitting together nicely, Rey was still finding herself getting tired easily, winded, then there was the occasional twinge of pain, deep inside, like there was still some hidden damage left to heal. Still, determined not to focus on the problem any more than was entirely necessary, Rey wiped the dirt hastily away from her hands on the sides of her trousers and offered a small but genuine smile to the man who’d come to a stop in front of her.
“Right,” she confirmed, noting his name - Klaus - and the way he nodded his greeting. Good, she thought, no need for anything awkward like shaking hands.
Her smile widened into an embarrassed grimace when he mentioned seeing her fight. She assumed he was talking about the knife fight for the leadership of the red block, in which case she hated to know what he’d thought of her failure. Honestly, only two fights and she’d let herself be disarmed. On Jakku, she’d have been dead. She was lucky her opponent had been a gentleman and stuck by the “no killing” rule they’d all agreed upon before starting.
“What do you mean, sort of?” Rey asked, once the pink tinge had retreated slightly from her cheeks. “Any chance you didn’t see the part where I lost?”
"A fairly good chance," Klaus answered casually. "I didn't stay. I've been in plenty of fights and even a war. It's never really been my thing, I've just found myself in the midst of it." He considered her for a moment, noting she was young, but older than they'd be when the Academy was in full swing. "You looked like you'd had previous experience though, and could think quickly on your feet."
He pulled on a long sleeved shirt over the t-shirt he'd ran in, and pulled a cigarette from the front pocket, debating whether or not to light it. He'd just ran, it seemed silly to immediately poison his lungs. Besides, he didn't actually know Rey and didn't want to be rude, so he pocketed it again.
"How'd you learn?"
A pause. "If you don't mind me asking."
Rey knew what it was liked to be sucked into someone else’s fight, to be trapped in the middle of a war she didn’t quite understand.She supposed it was stupid of her to willingly put herself in the middle of yet more conflict, even if the knife fight had been a semi-controlled environment, but she never had been good at backing down from a challenge.
“Necessity?” Rey replied, her freckled nose crinkling as she placed her hands on her hips and shrugged.
“Where I grew up, you learned to fight or you had all your food stolen. All your everything stolen, actually,” she corrected. She couldn’t count the number of times, before she’d built her staff and learned how to use it, that she’d been robbed on her way from Niima to her AT-AT in the Goazon, her hard earned haul of portions fair game to anyone with a fist bigger and harder than a little girl’s jaw. One time, even her boots had been taken. She’d had to spend long weeks scavenging enough parts to buy herself more after that particular incident and it was a lesson she hadn’t forgotten. After she’d learned to fight, though… well, people had a habit of underestimating her still, perhaps because of how scrawny she looked, and that was perfectly fine from her perspective. Once someone had bothered her once, they didn’t usually do it again.
Since leaving Jakku, the stakes had risen dramatically but, with her understanding of the Force, so had Rey’s ability. It was still a learning process - she could think of a few times when she’d completely forgotten that there was a wellspring of cosmic energy she could reach out to and draw from when she needed it - but there was time. Being here, in this place, had given her time and she intended to use it wisely.
“What made you volunteer?” Rey asked, waving her hand towards the track where the relay race had taken place. Rey thought that Klaus had been running for the Purple block, although she had to admit that she hadn’t been paying close enough attention to know for sure.
Since arriving in the Compound, the purple block as a whole had remained a bit of a mystery to her. She’d been keen to explore the workshop and the gym in the Blue and Yellow blocks respectively and the Red block was beginning to feel like a home of sorts, but apart from talking to the odd person who lived there she hadn’t had much to do with the other colours. If the people in Red block were all as fiery as they came across, perhaps the other blocks also had a shared attribute. She wondered what they might be.
Really studying Rey this time, Klaus ventured he had about a decade on her, and she seemed a lot more composed than he'd been at twenty. Or at twenty-nine. Thirty, even. But he knew that drill, as his years after leaving the Academy had been in a constant state of flux, nothing solid for too long, his time and energy spent at surviving.
"I know what you mean," he said. "Except when I got to that point I'd already been trained." He gave her a casual shrug of his own and added, "Distraction. And my block has a couple friends and some of my family in it. No one seemed too eager to take the role from me."
He didn't elaborate, mostly because he didn't want to bother her with the details of his life, instead asking her the same question in return. "How about you?"
Rey nodded. She understood the need for distraction. In fact, she knew it had played into her own decision to volunteer. There had been a lot she felt she needed distracting from lately. It helped to keep her mind and body busy. After her forced stay in hospital, then the frustration of the others trying to coddle her when the resort had flooded and she’d been desperate to help, she was anxious to return to being active. Being part of Red Block had given her the freedom to do what she liked - she dared Kylo to try to stop her - and she liked the sense of camaraderie and excitement that competing as part of a team gave her.
“I suppose I thought it would be nice to be part of a team, for a change,” she replied, with an open shrug. “I’ve spent a lot of my life alone. I like this.” She gestured around her to the other competitors, most beginning to wend their way back towards the accommodation blocks.
“Do you like having your family here?” Rey asked, ignoring the slight twinge of pain (or was it jealousy?) that flickered in her gut.
"Yeah?" Klaus asked. "I've spent time alone and as part of a team and I don't know which I prefer," he said. "I don't mind this though, because yeah… My family drifted apart over time since we all wanted to escape my dad. Except Luther, that is. Dad wanted to escape him so he sent him to the moon." This was more information than she probably needed.
"Anyway, here Ben's alive again and we've been reconnecting. Bonding if you'd like… Sort of." With Ben and Allison, at least. Vanya and Luther had run off to the blue block and Five was doing his own thing all together.
"I enjoy meeting people here, even if it's seemingly only temporary." Which was a thing he'd been thinking about since he'd befriended Ava.