Blinded by science

[unit_girl]

There was only so much time you could spend inside on a nice day. Jo had spent the morning in her room with a pile of books trying to learn more about soil and testing it and what the results might mean. But it had been hard to concentrate. She didn't do that well with concentrating on text books to begin with, but at least now she had an excuse.

Comments

[niceofyoutoask]

Jo hadn't been in her room, and she hadn't been anywhere in the compound, but a woman with the room across the hall from Jo had said she was doing something in the gardens. So to the gardens Lipton went. It was always hardest on the ones left behind.

She was kneeling in the mud, looking like she'd slept in a ditch for a week, mucking about with vials and dirt. "Hey there." Lipton knelt down beside her, ignoring the mud that seeped into his trousers, and put a hand on Jo's shoulder. "What're we doing here, huh?"

[unit_girl]

Jo hadn't noticed anyone coming up to her until Carwood knelt down - she'd been too busy trying not to think. Which was harder than it sounded.

She looked up at Carwood and managed to give him a weak smile. "I'm collecting some soil. I'm going to test what's in it to see what'll grow best in it."

[niceofyoutoask]

He smiled back at her, but it was as fake as he knew Jo's own to be. "Call me a dunce, but couldn't we find that out just as well by actually planting various things?"

[unit_girl]

She shrugged. "That takes ages, though, and I wanted something I could do now."

[realnicetrip]

Even after his own experiments trying to plant flowers in the dell, Harry by no means considered himself an expert on gardens, but Jo was sitting there all alone and looked like she could do with some company.

"Hey," he said, raising a hand as he approached. "How's it going? Need any help?"

[unit_girl]

Jo looked up as Harry called and wiped her eyes with her fingers, managing to get more mud on her face. "I'm fine, thank you," she said, giving him a weak smile. "I haven't got to the technical bits yet."

[realnicetrip]

Harry rummaged around in his pockets, looking for a handkerchief - aha. There it was. He came closer, offering it out to Jo.

"Here, take this. You've got your face all muddy," he said, crouching down beside her. Now he was near, he could see that whatever she was doing, it wasn't gardening. "What're you up to?"

[unit_girl]

"Oh, no." She went red - what must she look like? She wiped her face with the handkerchief and when she looked at it afterwards there was quite a bit of mud on it.

She offered him the handkerchief back. "I'm collecting soil samples so I can take it back to the lab and test it to see what's in it."

[vat_69]

"Oh, hell." Lew doesn't keep up with the boys like he used to, but he knows this girl, even if he doesn't know her name; has seen her around with Martin, and knows well enough that Martin's gone, just as assuredly as Buck and Luz and Doc and all the others are gone. It's like they used up whatever good karma had got them all here, and were left with a deficit they had to pay.

He kneels, drawing the sleeve of his shirt down over his hand so that he can wipe her cheek with it. "Don't you know I can't stand to see a woman cry?" he gently asks on a sigh.

[unit_girl]

She was just about okay - if just about okay meant not crying very much. But when someone who she recognised as being one of Johnny's friends treated her like that it just reminded her what she lost.

She couldn't help herself from crying more as she shook her head at his question. "I'm sorry." She thought she'd mostly done all her crying as well.

[vat_69]

"Don't apologize," Lew sighs, eventually giving up on wiping away her tears and putting an arm around her shoulders instead. "I didn't mean you needed to be sorry, I just fucking hate seeing a woman like you in tears. Excuse my language."

[unit_girl]

Jo leaned against him and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "It's alright." Johnny had used similar language so she was used to it. "I thought I'd finished crying."