notverywise | (no subject)

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cameron winklevoss

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There are days when Jenny doesn't know how she ever managed to like it here. She'd say as much, anyway, though the logic still makes sense. (Of course she would have liked it. The island is exotic, beautiful, about as far from Twickenham as it's possible to get, and it isn't as if she came from a particularly good time.) It's just that, while there are times it's easier to ignore the size and limitations of this place in favor of focusing on the atmosphere, there are likewise times when the exact opposite is true, when everything feels as stifling as it did back home, when she was still just a schoolgirl, before everything turned on its head. Here as well, there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, and no way of trying to put back together the pieces of the life she left behind. In that way, it's worse than home.

Were it not for the fact that half the things on the island are apparently bloody magic (and she'll never understand that, she thinks, not in a million years, not even if it fascinated her initially), it might not be an issue at all. As it is, though, this particular day, the jukebox and bookshelf seem to both be conspiring against her, the former singing you've got me wrapped around your little finger at her as the latter is at once filled with innumerable copies of Jane Eyre upon her approach. It's more than she cares to deal with, more than she has the patience for.

She heads out of the Compound after that, in the hopes that some fresh air will do her good. Anything, really, to get away from the notion that something here knows her, knows about the life she hasn't seen fit to describe in detail to anyone. It isn't supposed to matter here, and yet it follows her around anyway; the best she can do is try to put some distance between it and herself. Not caring enough to walk all the way out to the beach, she seats herself instead on the Compound steps, concrete warm under her palms and the backs of her legs, head tipped back slightly and eyes half-closed as she draws in a deep breath. It's far better than being inside, but it leaves her distracted, so much that she almost doesn't notice someone walking up. "Hello," she says absently, when she finally registers movement, probably a few moments later than should otherwise be the case. She lowers her chin slightly, then, just a touch more serious. "I'm not in your way, am I?"

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Cameron smiles down at her, a hint of something like relief in it at her accepting his gesture, and begins to walk, keeping an easy pace. Her legs are long for her stature (he's only human, he can't be asked not to notice a nice pair of legs), but he's got a foot on her easily and he's careful to keep his strides slow, short, so she won't feel rushed. "It's a nice walk," he says. "If you're for it, so am I."

It's also hardly the most exciting destination on the island, but she doesn't seem to find it disappointing or dull, so he tries not to let that late-coming thought bother him. It isn't about the destination, after all, but the company kept along the way, and besides, whether or not it's thrilling, it's beautiful along the water's edge and it has the benefit of being quieter. "I haven't seen too much of the place yet," he admits. "I explore a little, but there's only so far I want to go into that on my own." With the luck he's had lately, he'd find himself right in the middle of a herd of dinosaurs.

"I haven't seen much of anything yet," Jenny says, what's meant to be an agreement. At least she isn't the only one. It isn't as if she's had any reason to think that it would be anything less than normal, not wanting to go wandering around a strange tropical island, but if he hasn't — someone clearly more capable than she would be — then it's like a legitimate reason for her not to have, either, giving her no qualms about owning up to as much. She may be curious, able to see the merits in this place, but that only extends so far. For now, she's content enough to know her way around the main paths and out to the beach, only those things that are necessary. "For the same reason. It's easier with someone else, isn't it?"

That said, it isn't as if she has any desire to give the impression of someone who needs looking after or taking care of, but even with her arm still through his, she doesn't think he'll see it that way. At the very least, she hopes so enough to give him the benefit of the doubt; he's given her no reason not to thus far.

"And safer," Cameron agrees, nodding. Jenny seems clever, sensible, but that seems like all the more reason to say something on this — not that he thinks about it too particularly, but it seems like those are traits that lead to trouble surprisingly often (or maybe he's getting muddled. Tyler's sensible, but it's not the first adjective anyone applies to him, or even the tenth). "At the very least, to let someone know where you're going, and I don't really know anyone. Not very well yet. But around here, with people disappearing all the time? If no one knew you were headed out there and you got hurt, what's to keep people from thinking you just vanished?"

He'd like to think he could still get back just fine, but the jungle's a dangerous place. For himself, he exercises caution and hopes it doesn't sound like worrying too much; it's Jenny he'd be worried about out there. There's a difference, after all, between being capable and being able to defend oneself in the wild. He's not a city boy exactly, but his childhood was hardly conducive to life in the jungle, and he imagines the same was true of Twickenham.

"And who's to say they'd even notice?" Jenny adds, picking up on his line of thought easily. It's sensible, even if not one that occurred to her before now. "It'd almost be as if you were never there at all — except you would be somewhere." There are records, of course, housing and standard Council ones, but she hasn't bothered with any of that, mostly because it feels too strange to. These are such things she's never had to worry about before; sooner or later, she will, but for now, it's one part of adulthood that she has no problem putting on hold. There are enough empty rooms that she doubts it makes a difference that she's set up residence in one. She doesn't spend all that much time there as it is.

In a way, it's strange to think about. As it is, she spends too much time dwelling on how little she'd have back home, how many more opportunities being here affords her, but in a perspective like this, she's just as lacking on Tabula Rasa as she would have been had she never been transported here. She's just also without the history — the reputation, as it were — that she was all too willing to leave behind. "I don't, either. Really know anyone yet. Nothing before now, at least." Given the conversation itself, she has no reason to think she's being presumptuous. Just in talking about it, they seem to be changing that fact.

Cameron's never had to worry about going unnoticed or forgotten. Tyler may be more popular, but hardly enough so to overshadow Cameron; at 6'5" and with all the things he has to his name, he's not easily missed. In a world of the brilliant, the beautiful, the wealthy, those whom fortune has favored, he has nevertheless managed to make himself exemplary time and again, to be one of the two everyone sees. Here on the island, though, he finds himself fading into the milling crowd, and it's in some part his own fault, the fault of this lingering cloud of doubt and hurt left by the circumstances of his arrival and his life in the months before this place, that dual defeat like the final twist of the knife. He could try harder. He could do better. He's usually so good at that, and there's a bit of shame in allowing himself to retreat like this, giving himself the luxury to lick his wounds in peace.

He hasn't been here long enough to form attachments or feel too grieved by their absence, but it's nice, even comforting when he didn't think himself in need of it, to believe there's one person at his side now. "Not before now," he agrees, wanting her to understand without saying it, that he is grateful for her kindness, for her interest, for the fact that she has no blessed idea about his connection to Facebook or the rest of it (even support on that front isn't something he wants now. He has no need of vindication, he knows himself to be in the right. What he needs is some small respite from both that and the ensuing restlessness). "It's a chilling idea. No one else noticing." Maybe she wouldn't either. It's just a walk, after all, a chance conversation. She may just be friendly or bored, except she was the first to suggest they could be friends. "If you disappeared at home, they'd put up a hue and cry; here, people just go on."

The direct comparison isn't one Jenny has thought of before now, but at the notion, she lets herself run with it, imagining what it would be like for people to disappear at home the way they supposedly so often do here. Probably it shouldn't be amusing, but as it turns out, it kind of is. Her father would practically have a fit; her mother would try uselessly to calm him down. While she misses them (she does, despite any attempts to convince herself otherwise), it isn't so much that she can't think about them with some fondness. She does like it, to an extent, the freedom that comes from being here and making her own life the way she wants it. She just also hates the idea of being here alone, and focuses on the warmth of Cameron's arm looped through hers as a reminder that she doesn't have to be. (It's foolish, maybe, to put so much stock in the company of a near stranger, but what else can she do? She has no one else. She has nothing else. It's got to be understandable.)

"I don't know how they do it," she says, eyes wide. "I don't." That fact alone is madder than all the rest of it, making this place seem surreal in a way that not even dinosaurs and living in a jungle and people coming from different times, places, worlds could be capable of. People adapt, she knows that, they must, but this is something else entirely. "It is chilling, it's not right." At least we have each other, she almost says, but she doesn't; with his agreement, it seems to be understood. She's never thought of herself as the kind of girl to rely too heavily on one person, has, in fact, been fairly self-sufficient as of late, even in her relationship with David, but being here changes things. No one can be expected to function entirely on their own. It only stands to reason that she should want to keep close what she has.

"I guess when you've been in a place like this long enough, you learn to adapt." Contrary to appearances, he knows, Cameron is actually quite good at that. He can be stubborn as hell, a fact which he thinks will benefit him just as much here, but he's not so set in his ways that he doesn't see when changing them will be of more use to him. "If it really happens so often..." He shakes his head. It's a wonder anyone gets attached to anyone at all, when it would be so much safer to close off one's heart and simply go on until the inevitable moment of return, but that, he thinks, would be living only half a life, and he's not built to give so little to any effort he makes. "You'd have to, to survive it. Otherwise it's just breaking your heart all the time. But I don't know how they do it either."

It still feels very much like a case of us and them, people who've been here forever against himself and Jenny (as if the us versus them of himself and Zuckerberg weren't bad enough). He's not sure he'll ever work out a way to be a part of this, to live the way everyone else does. He's lost things before in his life, but not in such severe and, admittedly, terrifying ways as this place seems to present as normal.

Jenny has never been the clingy type. If anything, she's been the opposite, so determined to be independent that she won't allow herself to lean on anyone. In the moment, though, hearing him talk about it like that -- getting one's heart broken all the time, when she's already reeling from one such incidence, doesn't possibly know how she could handle another -- she thinks fleetingly, painfully, that she could not stand such a loss again, nor could she stand to be someone so closed off that she doesn't let anyone in. Having this, this one thing, a brief conversation that might even be a friendship, she doesn't want to lose it like she's lost everything else.

God, she really is in a sorry state.

"That much heartbreak, people aren't meant to survive it," she says, her frown small and thoughtful, like she's discussing philosophy rather than something that applies to herself. "It's not something anyone should have to adapt to." Just because someone should see something coming, after all, doesn't mean they do, and doesn't make it any easier when it actually happens. Or maybe she's just thinking about it too much, making analogies where none need to exist, because it's the best she can do, all she knows, this piece of the past she's stuck in, unable to fully move forward from even as she pretends to. That no one here knows helps, but it doesn't change the fact of what happened.

"No," Cameron says, nodding, "it isn't." He doesn't know if they're meant to or not — people are remarkably sturdy creatures — but he knows they shouldn't have to. To him, it still seems abstract; there isn't much he's lost in his life, and certainly not like that, not in this set up which suggests everything done, every attachment formed, is doomed. There's a certain romanticism in it, in fact, but maybe that, too, is just his ignorance, his not understanding how it feels. Being without his brother is bad enough, but he'll get back home one day. It's hard and in ways he never would have expected, but it's bearable. It isn't the same as probably never seeing someone again.

He glances over at Jenny, her dark hair framing her pale face, the pretty seriousness of her, and his free hand lifts to rest on hers where it sits on his arm (there is something about the abstract, at times like this, which he suspects to be deeply personal, but he doesn't know her well enough to hazard a guess if that applies here or if he's simply imposing himself on others). It's brief, a quick gesture, before he thinks maybe that's too forward, and entirely out of place in a conversation centered on the inevitability of loss, however much held at a distance. His hand drops away again. "I wouldn't worry about it too much," he lies. "Maybe you'll be home again before it even matters."

"God, I hope not," Jenny says frankly, eyes going wide, before she can stop to consider the implication in what she's saying. It isn't, she rationalizes to herself, like it was so awful back there; she had good parents, stability. She was just also a girl who'd lost what she had heard called the best part of herself before marriage, to a man who was married, and dropped out of school and lost any chance of going to university. There would be no prospects of any kind for her back there, but then, how much better can she really have it here? (His hand is off her arm before she can think maybe she could, maybe she could.)

That's wrong, too, though. Losing something means having something to lose in the first place, and therein lies the advantage that Tabula Rasa could have on Twickenham, however painful the loss itself. Smiling a little, self-deprecating and far more natural, more confident, than she actually feels, she lifts one shoulder, keeps just as close. "Things were a bit of a mess, when I showed up here," she says simply, just this side of rueful. It's a gross oversimplification. Why should he want to hear, though, about all that happened, how foolish she was? And why should she want him to? "Stay or go, the one's practically the same as the other."

"Oh, that can't be true," Cameron says, expression turning immediately, if briefly, apologetic. She would know better than him, after all, whether or not it is, but it seems to him as if it must be an exaggeration. His life was messy when he arrived here, too, but that doesn't have to be the whole story. She has a future back in her world, a family, a home; it can't be so hopeless, this mess, that it would make her want to give all that up. Things are problematic at home and he knows he's looking forward to years of painful litigation upon his return, but at least back there, he'd be able to do something to fix the tangle he's made of things. It's his responsibility to see to it that things progress as they should. Maybe it won't work out like they want, but at least he'd know he made the effort. "I'm sure whatever it was, when you get home, you'll put it right. It'll be good just to be home."

It isn't as if she wouldn't try. Jenny will concede that much, knows, at least, that when she's already lost everything, has to start completely from scratch, then there's nothing at stake, no reason not to do whatever she can. She just isn't sure there's anything she can do. They won't let her back to school, and there's no other way to take her exams and apply for university; there was a time when Miss Stubbs would probably have been an ally, but Jenny doesn't know now if the woman would even speak to her, with the way everything ended. It's all too uncertain, and here, none of it matters anyway. "It will," Jenny allows; there's a but implied in her tone anyway. "It is nice to be away from all of that, though, not knowing how it'll work out. Some things aren't so easily fixed." Some things, one can't get back at all.

Some things can't be fixed at all, a fact Cameron has learned with startling clarity in recent weeks, as if he had never before known this. In a way, he never had. There's a difference between knowing this is so, that some things are beyond repair — say a dropped plate, Limoges porcelain scattered in surprisingly dangerous pieces, cobalt blue and white across a polished hardwood floor — and knowing that there are things in his own life he left too late, mistakes that he can't put right. He can try, but even he, for all his stubbornness and his code of honor, knows that, now they've lost the website, there's no regaining that ground, that he waited too long, that the best they can hope for now is vindication and, perhaps, for the damn thing to be shut down or — he doesn't know, actually, what the best is, but it isn't what it should have been, and that's on him for waiting.

He looks over at Jenny, brow furrowing slightly. It's hard to picture her as the kind of girl with much in her past which needs must be rectified. "Well, with a little cleverness and determination," he says, "I'm sure you'll find a way. It can't be that bad, can it?"

She could tell him, of course. It would probably be the obvious, most logical response, to explain that yes, it can be that bad, that determination won't get her back into school or undo the fact that she lost her virginity to a married man, that cleverness doesn't always get one anywhere, one of the reasons why she went in another direction. It reminds her of what Miss Stubbs said, asking if it was clever Jenny or pretty Jenny that David liked; she set clever Jenny aside, but she isn't sure he really cared about either one. It wasn't as if she'd been the first, knowledge that still twists something in the pit of her stomach, though at least it's also proof that it wasn't solely her own naivete that got her into such a position. Comparatively speaking, she'd been lucky. It just doesn't feel like it.

When it comes down to it, though, she just can't give all of that away and ruin this just yet (she's given too much away as it is). That doesn't mean she can lie about it, either. She'll just have to hope that a half-truth will suffice. "When I said that I'd never be able to go to Oxford because I showed up here, that wasn't... entirely the truth," she says, uncertainty in her eyes as she looks up at him, expression nothing short of apologetic. "I wasn't going to be able to go anyway. Things happened, and I -- I left school without taking my exams. Just before I showed up here, I was told that they wouldn't let me back in to repeat my final year. That was what it all came down to, at least."

Cam slows to a stop, his hand finding hers again. "That's awful," he says. "I'm sorry. I... couldn't you go back to school later? Or transfer? Independent study or delayed exams or — there has to be some way you can make it up." He doesn't know her situation, he's aware, what kept her from finishing to begin with, but there must be options. Some things in life, yes, there's just one way to do them, but usually there are options, choices, possibilities, and a bright girl like her will find a way to take care of whatever it is and finish in spite of things. It may look dire now, and all the more so for being far from home, but he still believes, whatever may have happened, hard work and diligence will get her where she's meant to be. Maybe he's just naïve or ignorant, but he still has faith in that.

Even as he offers answers, he has questions, but they aren't his to ask. If she's been made to leave school, there's a reason, but he's still virtually a stranger in spite of their budding friendship. It isn't his place to pry. He's made it clear he's willing to talk; if she wants to, that's in her hands.

"I don't know," Jenny confesses, softer suddenly, feeling so much like the girl she's tried not to be. It's the first time she's ever actually admitted as much, if not to herself, then certainly out loud, Cameron being by far the easiest person she's found to talk to thus far. She hates it, how incredibly young she's sure it makes her seem when she wants little more than to be the opposite, but it can't be helped. With the subject at hand now, there's only so much pretending she can do, and anyway, this is, she thinks, the actual worst of it, the not knowing. If she had an answer one way or the other, it might all be a little easier, but she has nothing save for her imagination, and it's difficult, sometimes, not to look at that whole situation through a worst case scenario lens.

Glancing briefly at where his hand rests over hers, she draws in a breath. "It all seemed rather improbable, at the time," she continues, as if that alone could serve as an explanation. "And there's nothing I could do about it here, anyway." Her life in shambles, and her a world apart from any of it — it almost seems fitting after everything else, in the very worst sort of way.

Jenny has, until this moment, seemed like a bright creature — not careless so much as casual, a trait Cameron likes, if only because he's not always wholly capable of it himself, at least with people he doesn't know well. There's a softness to her now, clinging around the edges, that makes him want to draw her to him and say it will all work out, say it like a promise. He'd make things right if he could, even without knowing what it is he would need to fix or if it's even possible. He would make it possible. It just isn't right that a nice girl should have to put up with those kinds of worries so far removed from the ability to try and fix it.

"No, there isn't," he says instead, gentle but firm. "As long as you're here, it'll have to wait."

From anyone else, to anyone else, it might sound harsh, but as it stands, Jenny can only be appreciative of what he says. It's simple, it's honest, and after so long getting neither, both are appealing in ways she never expected them to be. She wants it to be alright, but he doesn't know what happened, and he can't make it so; as nice as consolation would be, there's none to be given, not with any certainty. Besides, she doesn't mind waiting. Some time away to live a life apart from all of that, it's bound to do her good. It won't change anything when she gets back, but this is still a welcome indulgence, at least some of the time.

"It will," she agrees lightly, summoning up a small smile, though it's resigned more so than hopeful. "Until then, there's no point in making too much of it."

"No," Cameron agrees, nodding slightly, "none at all, when you could be making much of whatever... all this is. A... break. A chance to recuperate and plan ahead. Take a breath. It's okay to let it go for now." It's easy to say. He's been telling himself all this nearly since he arrived. It's just difficult to take at face value when there's still a part of him that feels he could get home if he tried hard enough, that he needs to go back and put things right, though the truth is, it's much, much too late for that. Maybe from where he stands, that's not so, but the fact is, what's done is done and they've lost — a settlement isn't a victory, it's only the barest admission of guilt, and the fact they took it is proof they aren't sure of their own history. It's a damning affair, and his best bet is to learn how to take his own advice.

In the moment, at least, Jenny wants nothing more than to let go of it, to let go and hold fast to him instead, Cameron seeming strangely like the first real hope she's had, the first person in her corner, regardless of what he doesn't know. In a way, it feels almost like he's a symbol of what might have been — he's well-educated and worldly both, some strange middle ground of what she wants and what she knows she needs, what could have been just within her grasp but was let go of, foolishly, naïvely. It is, perhaps, because she wants to that she knows she can't. Someday, farther down the line, when they've known each other more than a scant few minutes (that feel like much more, somehow), she'll tell him the whole truth of it, what she did and why her future seems so bleak, but this is too nice for now, nothing she wants to weigh down with such dismal talk. He's right. This is a break, and what good is a blank slate if she drags her past along behind her? "That's what I'm hoping to do," she says, an admittance in and of itself. There are some things done that she can't undo, physical proof that what happened did indeed take place, and someday she'll have to face that, but it isn't as if she has any reason to be thinking that far ahead just yet. The rest doesn't need to define her. "You're the first person I've told about any of it."

As it is, she's told him barely anything. Cam can't help being curious, of course, deeply so, why someone like Jenny would think herself so utterly without prospects, why she would keep such a burden on her own shoulders with no one to help her carry it. For a moment, he wants again to pull her to him and say it will be alright, as if he can somehow put right the unknown things she's left behind just by offering a little comfort when he can't even be sure it's wanted or warranted. He just can't help the impulse to be of use if he can, especially to the women in his life.

He offers her a small smile instead, slowing almost to a stop so he can look at her without leading her into a tree or anything like that. "I'm honored," he says, and means it wholly. That she thinks she can trust him on so brief an acquaintance is a gesture of faith in him which he himself lacks these days, more often than not. "And if there's anything I can do to help, you only need say the word."

Honored isn't a word that Jenny would think to apply to the situation at all. Given that there's no honor in what she did, if anything, to have told him about it should be the opposite of that, no matter how vaguely it was mentioned. His reaction would be different, she's almost certain, if he knew the specifics, knew that she lost her virginity at seventeen to a married man, someone she thinks would have married her anyway without bothering to mention his wife. What he did was worse, to be sure, but she was still foolish.

"I will," she promises, a note of surprise in her voice and wide eyes, though she means it. There are things she has no intention of telling him, and he can't fix what she did, but it helps to know, to believe, that he means the offer. Just knowing that there's someone in her corner makes all the difference. "Thank you. I... I appreciate it." it's an understatement. She thinks that might show.

That there, the way her expression shifts, the measured tone of her voice — more than the rest, it makes Cameron want to find whoever got her in this trouble she won't talk about, and hurt them, at the very least make sure they never hurt her again. No one should have to be so affected by so simple an offer, least of all a lovely, bright girl like Jenny.

"Of course," he says, soft but firm. "You don't need to thank me, I haven't done anything. Come on, it's right through here." Hand still light over hers where it rests on his arm, he leads her carefully off the path and through the trees, distantly grateful for the shade and the slight respite from the island heat. It's nothing like Connecticut or Massachusetts, and while England has its summer heat, he doubts Jenny's any more accustomed to it than he is. They could both use a break, he thinks, in more ways than one.

More than content to let the subject go, Jenny smiles, following him without hesitation away from the path and towards the stream. A part of her wants to talk about it still, but that same part of her wants to talk about it and be understood, and there's no guarantee of that, no matter how kind Cameron is. Maybe she doesn't deserve understanding, maybe she got herself into this mess, but she didn't entirely dig her own metaphorical grave. Regardless, it isn't worth dwelling on and isn't worth the risk, especially not when they're so close to their destination and everything else (including him) is so lovely.

"Alright," she says, warm, eager to see what he's brought her here to show her, even if it isn't really meant to be all that impressive. It's still something, and anyway, if she's supposed to call this place home someday, she might as well get better acquainted with it, and with her new friend. "So do you come here often?"

"I've only been here a couple weeks," Cameron reminds her, "so no, I wouldn't say often, but... now and again. I like it. It's..." He trails off, searching for the word, and comes up short. "Peaceful." It doesn't quite cut it. He's yet to feel especially at peace since coming here, too distracted by his predicament and the ways in which he is entirely unable to change or fix it, although to say so would be to admit he's given her advice he doesn't know how to follow. He's not going to lie and say he's just fine, but he's more than capable of pretending to be.

"Pretty," he adds, latching onto this new description as they get closer. It isn't like the countryside in Connecticut, and it's not broad enough to row down, even if he managed to attain a boat in which to do so (the inability to keep in proper practice just makes everything that much more frustrating), but it's lovely nonetheless, even if the tropical blooms growing along the water's edge strike him as gaudy and overblown. It has its charms all the same.