Weird to think that this was it. That he's been Aaron for twenty years, and that now he... couldn't be Aaron anymore.
Felt weird, to say the least.
Aaron-who-couldn't-be-called-Aaron-now leant back in his seat, pondering. He was going to have to ponder quickly. He knew that. He wasn't on the clock in the literal sense that someone was timing him - that'd just be all kinds of messed up - but Aaron Wilder was still PNG for killing Duke Abernathy, and he knew that it wouldn't do him much good if he said that it'd been the voice in his head that'd done it. Even if they believed him, and he knew in his heart of hearts how big of n' IF that was, they'd consider Raelyn a danger. They'd try and suppress or control her in some way, and maybe even try and get him to help. And he... well, he couldn't, to put it simply.
Maybe it was all just Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it was unhealthy, and he was doing something stupid and dangerous - stars, it wasn't as though he'd never done that sort of thing before. But when someone was in your head - was your head, really - it just wasn't that simple. He still didn't know a lot about her, and he knew that she wanted it that way. But their psyches were a melting pot. Or maybe a salad bowl. They were linked, now, in some way that he couldn't describe. 'Ineffable', Plue would call it, if he told her. And he did want to tell her. Just as soon as he made it a bit more effable...
The point was, he thought that there was more to Raelyn than met the eye. Was he scared of her? Sure. Absolutely terrified. Did he hate her? Well, kind of. He hated the things that she'd used his body to do. But, at the same time, he knew what it was like to be alone, and desperate, and scared out of your absolute fucking mind. And he thought that there was more to her than just rage and shrieking and anger, despite what she wanted him and everyone else to believe. And he thought that maybe, just maybe, even though she was something isfet, that he could give her a chance.
You always try. That was what his dad'd used to say. It won't always go well, and it won't always work, but with people, you always try.
So maybe he wanted to try. And maybe he figured that the Bulwark wouldn't be willing to give her the same chance.
Also, he probably would still be held culpable to an extent, and he figured that getting slammed in a cell for who-knew-how-long was a whole lot worse than being a bit sneaky and then getting to lead a superhero team by day and be his whole own superhero by night. Pandemonium's Bane needed him. Plue needed him, even if he wasn't sure that she wanted him all that much at the moment. And Ana definitely needed him, even if she wasn't even on theia right now, because he needed to be a good role model and-!
Aaaand he was getting into his own head again. Great. Nice to know that he still couldn't stop doing that, even when it wasn't just his own head anymore.
Get on with it, or I'm going to take control and give you a name that's been out of use for a thousand generations.
As if on cue - some chiming in from his houseguest.
He didn't issue her a direct reply. He was more mature than that.
The fuck you are.
A creak from the seat reminded him that he'd been leaning back this whole time, and he switched around to leaning forwards. Keeping things fresh. Less chance that he'd break something.
So. Aaron was a no-go. Honest, that was kind of fine. He'd been on record about how he considered his name so-so. Plus, 'Aaron and Ana' felt kinda hokey whenever he said it out loud. Like they were characters in a childrens' series. Obviously the reasons could be better - the fact that he didn't really feel like Aaron anymore, like Aaron'd been lost somewhere along the line and now it was just him, whatever was left over, was probably something he should talk to someone about, even though he wasn't going to - but he wasn't stupidly emotionally attached to his name. Maybe when he was younger, he wouldn't've been willing to give it up, because of how little he had. But now he had Plue, and he had the team, and he has his powers, and he had some sort of life that he was able to piece together - and he still had Ana, through it all - and so giving up a name to keep all of that safe didn't feel like such a bad call.
If you really were serious about this, you'd give up the surname as well. I mean, just changing the first name? you're really making it easy for anyone with half a brain to pick up your trail.
Fucking trike balls, ghost off, will you?
Oooh, scary.
Alright. Maybe she had touched a nerve. Maybe a given name was one thing, but a family name was another. Maybe he carried 'Wilder' with more pride and passion than anyone would ever hope to understand, and maybe he wasn't going to let his sister alone to be the last one. Maybe he considered keeping 'Wilder' worth it. She didn't understand. She didn't have to.
It was the name that his parents had carried, and his ancestors before them. It was the name that'd kept him and Ana together through everything. It was the name that Plue had taken on as her own, or been willing to take on before her own had become, like, obligatory. And it was the name that, he knew, she still wanted to take again one day, in the future.
It was the name that made him think that there could be a future, you know?
Whatever. Aaron, he could figure out an alternative for. But Wilder?
Wilder was non-negotiable.
"Hey there!"
Raelyn is absolutely, one-hundred-percent not paying attention.
"Hey!"
She's not. She isn't.
"I know it's you!"
Oh, fuck it.
"Yeah?" she barks, swinging her head around to glower at the meatsack that's trying to arrest her attention. Said meatsack - the tallest and dopest of the strays that Dante's picked up - is just staring at her with this massive fucking grin on her face.
"Yep!" she says. And then, she jabs her hand out with such force that it stops just short of jabbing into Raelyn's chest. Raelyn, for her part, steps back to avoid the jab. Is this fucking thing attacking her, now, or what? She quickly taps into her own power - musing for a moment on how odd it is, to feel herself flowing through foreign veins - but before she actually does anything with it, she realises that the meatsack hasn't actually moved since that first jab. She's not...
It's not an attack.
The hand is outstretched.
Is she- does this woman want to shake her hand?
Raelyn relaxes her stance.
"...What are you doing?" she asks.
The massive woman stares at her. The stare is friendly, if a little blank.
"We never actually said hi," she says, still smiling. "During, y'know, everything. So... hi!"
She thrusts the hand a little bit further forward, leaving Raelyn to just... contemplate it.
She can't quite say she understands why this woman is attempting to greet her. What the rationale is. Why she thinks to care, or why she even cares at all.
Then again, looking at this woman, it's not as though there's been much rationale to a lot of what she's done with herself, so far. Why should it be any different now?
The only question is, what is Raelyn supposed to do about it? It would be the easiest thing in the world to just... ignore the gesture, of course, and walk away. But something within her rankles at the prospect. She's been ignored a lot, so far - when she hadn't been loathed, or feared, of course - and whether or not she cares or it depends on the day. Who is to say what the ramifications are if she ignores this woman, now? This woman who, while outwardly friendly, is vicious. Feral. Raelyn remembers well the way this woman tore through isfet creatures with reckless abandon, and even saw fit to fight the Prime Fucking Mover with that same manic glee that she seemed to bring to everything.
She remembers, and becomes wary of, the fact that she is in a body for the first time and too long. And she finds herself compelled to grasp the hand that's still just hovering there, waiting for her.
"...Hi," she says, with her borrowed jaws and tongue.
The woman lights up.
"Hi!" she says again. Redundant. Then: "You're so strong!"
Raelyn knows her own strength. Even with as limited life as the one she's led, she's also no stranger to people referencing it. But never like this - never like something that's exciting and fun. And yet, that's the blatant read she's getting from the meatsack in front of her.
"...I am," she thinks to grunt. Maybe it's philistine of her, with her thousands of years of vocabulary and knowledge, to leave it at that - but then, it's not as though all of the vocab she knows is in this new human language.
She isn't sure if she misses the Caelans or not.
"...You're somewhat strong," she adds. The words are an afterthought, and they don't have nearly as much bite as it feels like they should - nearly as much bite as her words normally do - and she really isn't sure how to feel about that.
At the very least, the tall woman seems completely stoked by them.
"I KNOW, right?" she beams. Their hands are still grasping each other, and now she begins to shake Raelyn's - up and down, up and down, until the fingers begin to hurt. "Think about how much ASS we can kick!!"
Raelyn snatches her hand away. "Let go," she hisses, feeling a little bit more like herself for it. But she catches the 'we' that the woman uses, and finds herself... intrigued. This creature wants to... what, work with her? Fight with her?
How very Dante.
She - the meatsack - rears back.
"My bad," she says, immediately, which is surprising. Raelyn hadn't pegged this one as capable of self-awareness. "Sorry about your hand."
Raelyn looks at the hand in question. Flexes the fingers. Feels the roll of the joints. Observes the flesh.
"It's not my hand," she feels compelled to say.
The woman blinks. Then, grins harder.
"Yeeeaaaah!" she almost jeers, like Raelyn's just won a footrace, even though Raelyn herself doesn't really understand what's so exciting about what she just said. She's trying to decide on whether she can be bothered to ask or not when the woman leans forward, seizes Raelyn's wrist, and holds it into the air like she's a champion.
Raelyn snarls, but the meatsack doesn't let go.
"Tactical!" she cheers instead, before looking down on Raelyn with glee, as if that makes any sense at all.
This creature is fucking incorrigible, decides Raelyn, once again wresting her hand free of the woman's grasp. But all the same, even with the strange behaviour...
"Tactical," she agrees, prompting another cheer from the meatsack.
"Glad they're letting you stick around," the woman says. "You're fun!"
Raelyn holds back a scoff. Nobody has ever called her that before, and nobody with any sense ever would.
But the woman doesn't seem to realise how wrong she is. "You n' me," she says, pointing to first her, then herself. "How lucky are we, ey?"
It's absurdity, is what it is. But it's still different from normal. And normal is boring, and grating. So... perhaps she can put up with it.
"I think you're the fun one," she says, and it's a surprise to her when she finds that she almost means it.
It was the last time she would see him for a month.
She found him in the fields outside their new home. The ferns that grew unchecked from the ground were a brilliant green, faded to blue as the last vestiges of sunlight fell over the horizon like a blanket that had all but slipped off the edge of a bed. She left her fingers drift across the dew-tipped fronds. Wondered at the feeling, and how long it had been since she had last done anything like it.
There wasn't point in thinking like that, so she stopped, but something of the thought lingered in her mind, like a ghost, as she approached. The rustling of her legs in the plant growth was deliberate. It let him know that she was coming.
She planted herself by his side, like they were two trees in the midst of it all.
He didn't say anything. But then, he didn't need to. He never had - not to her.
"You're leaving soon," were the first words that she said to him. Time was precious. His, all the more so. "Aren't you?"
His gaze never broke from beyond the horizon. The flames from his form rippled, like smoke that just had too much life in it to fade away. That was his great contrast; even when he was so deliberate, and so precise with how he acted and the ways in which he did, he was always moving.
It was enough of an answer for her. She folded her arms over herself, the cold making her shiver. For all that he was constantly burning, none of the heat of a normal fire came off him. And perhaps that was the saddest thing about him - that he couldn't even provide warmth at a distance.
For a while, she thought about what to say. What she could say. That he didn't have to do this? That there was more to life than revenge, and old ghosts? That he could forget about his past, and join her in looking forward to the future?
Would she accept any of those, if she were in his shoes?
Losing her home had been the worst day of her life. But when she'd watched it burn, she'd gotten closure. Stopping any of them from coming near her once she'd been granted her powers had been her vengeance. Saving Jacen had been her repayment. And then helping to bring the whole thing down had been her ultimate absolution. She had suffered, yes, but she had also been lucky in how things had played out. She could face herself, and her past actions, and forgive herself for what she'd done wrong.
And she knew that it wasn't the same for him.
He'd been tricked, but he'd been a warden. He'd been a victim, but he'd been culpable. She'd forgiven him. He hadn't forgiven himself.
He had to find it, by himself. Close those doors, by himself. And that meant that he couldn't stay. Not yet. Not in the way that he deserved to.
So, she didn't say anything. She just stood with him, watching the sun disappear, embracing the comfort of the night as the stars appeared in all their majesty.
"You shouldn't go without saying goodbye," she told him.
Someone might hear that and think that it was silly of her to say. How could a person who didn't talk say anything, never mind goodbye?
But that wasn't what she meant. And she knew that he knew it.
For the first time, he turned his head to look at her. The specks of his red eyes were the only colour amidst the jet-black of his flames.
"But that's okay," she told him. "I can say goodbye for you."
She'd never been to Frigge. But she'd heard the stories, a lifetime ago. She remembered Chantelle Hargrove telling her about the big, furry creatures that lived on that moon. That they hunted in packs, and bounded through snowdrifts. That they licked their friends with big tongues, and killed their prey with sharp teeth. And that, at night, they would all raise their heads and howl at the moon.
In the fields outside their new home, Rose lifted up her head, and, for her friend who had no voice that had not been forced upon him, did as a wolf does.
"AWOOOOOOOO!" she howled. "AWOOOOOOOOO! AWOOOOOOOOOOO!"
A burst of flame by her side. Something dark and triumphant spiralled up into the sky, mixing with her voice, and she howled all the harder.
"AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Her heart thumped. Her throat ached. And then-
And then, it ended. Silence fell once more, and her friend was gone.
Gone, but still with her, in the ways that mattered.
She turned, to walk back through the ferns, and back to home. She wasn't sad. She knew that she would see him again. How could she possibly not, when it was his voice that was coalescing in the breaths in front of her, and ringing in her ears?
"Be safe," she said, back to her own voice more.
Her order was a whisper. But he would hear it, nonetheless.
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
They're handcuffed together. There is a cuff around one of each of their wrists and the cuffs are connected by a chain and they're stuck together. Jacen obviously isn't enjoying it because he's got this MASSIVE frown on his face like his eyebrows are trying to bend down and kiss each other above his nose, and like his mouth trying to make a semicircle pointing down at his chin. Maybe Gaia shouldn't laugh, because it's kinda mean to laugh when someone else isn't having a good time, but he isn't being HURT, he's just cross.
And it is REALLY funny.
"This is all your fault," Jacen grumbles, which is even funnier because yeah, maybe it IS her fault a little bit, but something about knowing that she's one-hundred-percent responsible for this makes her laugh more. It's satisfaction. It's vindication. Yes, she was fiddling with fiddly bits on these cuffs and got it locked around her own wrist - that had been a mistake - and then she'd decided to do something funny instead of sit there and get upset.
The cuffs were upsetting. Any sort of restraining was. That was something she was starting to learn, about the world and herself, now that she was out of That Place. Anything that felt like it was forcing or fixing or holding her in place made her skin crawl, sometimes literally, and it made her want to break out of whatever it was. That had been her first instinct with the cuffs as well, but she'd held herself back from that one because they were technically "evidence" and as angry as Jacen was with her now, he would probably have been even madder if she'd broken the cuffs and then left them where they were. At least this way they were both there, and at least this way, she was laughing, because seeing someone get angry but not upset over the cuffs was funny. And Jacen was already funny. He just was. Something about him- HAH!
"Don't LAUGH," says Jacen, from her side, which just sets her off again. He rrrrrolls his eyes and lets out a very long sigh like he's an engine that's about to break down. A car engine. Imagining Jacen as a car, with his eyes as the headlights and his arms as those bits that stick out to protect the wheels and his voice as the huffing engine, makes her laugh all over again. Which just makes Jacen huff MORE.
"I hate you," he says again.
And Gaia is quick to say, because it's basically obligatory at this point: "No you don't!"
He's only told her that he didn't actually hate her once, but it was a big once. Not long after they'd started to know each other, he'd said to her when she'd done something to annoy him:
"I hate you."
And Gaia hadn't known him at the time. Well, she'd decided that they were best friends, of course, but still. She hadn't KNOWN him. So, he'd said
"I hate you."
And she'd heard it and taken it DEEP into her heart and chest and gotten very upset, and so then Jacen had said to her:
"Look. I know I said
"I hate you."
but I didn't really mean it. I mean, I did, but- look, do you know what a highperbolee is?"
She'd told him that she didn't know what that was, and so he'd continued:
"Well, it's kind of an exaggeration- it's like, you say something, and you kind of mean it, but also you don't mean exactly what you're saying. Does that make sense?"
It had made sense to her, and she'd said so, and he'd continued again:
"Okay. So maybe, when something pisses me off, I say that I hate it. And, like, okay, maybe I hate it IN THAT MOMENT, because it's pissing me off. But I don't hate it full stop. I- not forever and ever, you know?"
She knew.
"So when I say - when I SAID -
"I hate you."
"I maybe meant it at that moment, because you were being annoying. But it doesn't mean that I hate you in perpe-chew-ity. (She hadn't known that word either but she hadn't asked about it.) It doesn't mean that I don't like you overall."
She'd asked him if meant that they were still friends after all, and he'd sighed (but this one hadn't been his annoyed car engine sigh, it had been a different sigh that she didn't know as well), and said:
"Yeah, sure."
He'd said it like he'd known he was going to regret it. And he probably had regretted it a lot of times, since.
Like now. When they were handcuffed together, and it was kinda sorta her fault.
"-completely unsurprising that you'd managed to get yourself stuck," the Jacen outside her mind is saying, "but what even possessed you to come running, and find me, and then stick ME in them with you? Instead of just, I don't know, asking for help getting them unstuck? I mean, I'm not a locksmith, but I MIGHT have been able to get this thing unfastened from your wrist if both of MY wrists were free!"
There are a lot of answers to that question, and they feel too complicated for Gaia to put into words. So, she just shrugs - which makes Jacen even more visibly angry, of course. But she's not worried by it, because she remembers very clearly - clear as day, clear as Mama Christmas - that conversation they had back when they didn't know each other so well. She knows that when Jacen says:
"I hate you."
He doesn't really mean that he hates her.
And maybe that's the biggest comfort of all.
"I hate you."
"No you don't!"
Lux sees the man when he's gone on ahead.
Nyssa has been 'window shopping' for ages now, and even if it hasn't been that long it still totally feels like it, so Lux has wandered further down the street. He won't go too far - he can't - but it helps create the sense that he's actually making some progress instead of just standing still. However, he hasn't taken more than a few steps before the path is blocked.
It's someone else window shopping, he thinks to himself as he looks up at the looming figure. But something about them is... it seems different. Whoever they are, they don't look like they're looking through the glass - they look like they're looking at it. Is it the glass itself? Then the person reaches up, and traces the glass with a hand. Lux can't see their expression, but he can feel the intensity radiating off of them like a wave.
He stares, and the person must be able to sense his staring, because they slowly turn around to face him. Lux feels a thrill of fear - he knows not to approach strangers, and this person is definitely a stranger - but doesn't move. He should step away, and check to see that Nyssa is still nearby (why wouldn't she be?), but doesn't.
The person looks to be a man, but not a man like any Lux has seen before. He - the man - looks haggard and dusty, but in a way that goes beyond the words. He looks like an archaeological dig, like the one Lux likes to read about, only in human form. He wears a ragged dark coat that conceals most of his body. His hair is matted and falls down to his chin, there is thick stubble on his face, and a weariness under and around the eyes that looks almost painful.
The man looks surprised to see Lux. What was he expecting, if anything? But, after a moment, he holds up a hand - the same hand that he had placed against the shop window - and gives an awkward wave, fingers contorting out of time like they're out of practice with the motion. Lux for his part, isn't sure what to do. Don't talk to people you don't know, obviously, but this doesn't really count as talking, does it? He waves back, resisting the jitters that he can feel trying to make their way into his hand and settling for a generic little wiggling motion.
It doesn't feel like a very special gesture to him, but the man smiles. The smile is small, and crooked, but it seems to alter every aspect of the man's image; his hair becomes no less matted, but suddenly the soft curls it consists of seem that much more pronounced - and while the dirt and eyebags do not disappear from his face, they suddenly take nothing away from how the man's warm brown skin seems to glow in the late afternoon light.
"Lux!"
Nyssa's voice. Lux turns to face her, only to watch as her eyes widen and she paces quickly towards him. Question on the edge of his lips, Lux turns back to the man he waved at - only to see nothing at all. There is no man standing in front of a shop window, looking at what he can make out of his own reflection - there isn't even a figure making its way down the street, away from the scene. There is only an acrid tang of smoke, carried by the breeze; and it, too, vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
"Your swearing's gotten worse."
"Huh?"
It's two in the morning, Plue needs to be awake in three hours, and Dante's window of opportunity for sneaking back out of her residential palace is shrinking pretty quickly. After the night they'd spent together, he'd expected some contemplative silence. Maybe a bit of snuggling. And sure, it was nice to actually talk to his girl, but still-
"You didn't use to swear so much," says Plue, turning around in the bed so that she can stare at him, the side of her head crinkling the pillow that it's resting on. "Before you... um, before."
Right. Before you took an ancient consciousness into your brain, killed my uncle, sent your sister half a system away, and changed your name. He doesn't really blame her for not saying it. There's a mood-killer, and then there's addressing the chasm that opened up between them the better part of a year ago. They're mending it, slowly but surely - at least, he likes to think so! - but it's still a chasm, and it still terrifies him because he doesn't really know how to handle it - and he thinks that it's the same for her. Hence, not saying it directly.
"Right," he echoes, because he's on the same page. "Before. And now I do?"
She nods.
That's... something that he hadn't even thought about. Or noticed at all, really. It wasn't like he hadn't had other stuff to be worried about!
The emotions in him feel like a frown, and the muscles on his face kinda feel like they're moving in that same direction. "Well shit," he says, without really thinking about it, and then he thinks about it way too late, and watches as Plue's eyes widen.
Way to prove your point.
Some days, his internal voice really does sound like her, even if it's not actually her speaking.
"Okay," he says, quickly, "that one was- that was-"
"Perfectly timed," Plue chimes in, "if nothing else."
Dante isn't willing to admit defeat, just yet. "We could pretend that it's because I don't need to set a good example for Ana anymore?"
"Only I overheard you call something 'bullshit' on your last call with her." Too bad for him, Plue is as stubborn as they make 'em.
He slumps, sinking into the bed that they're sharing. The mattress is so spongey. The sheets are so crisp. He can't imagine that Plue likes sleeping here at all.
"I don't know," he says, quietly. "I mean, I didn't know. It didn't even, like, register."
He can sense her staring at him, worriedly.
"Is that just going to keep happening?" she asks him, and for a moment, he thinks that she's still talking about the swearing and gets kinda confused, but then he realises.
"No."
"Are you just going to keep changing? Become less of yourself over time?"
He frowns. "I thought I explained it to you," he says. "The... y'know. Mind stuff."
"No!" Plue's eyes widen. "No, I- you did. You did. I get it." Her gaze drops from his face - drops from him. "I guess it's just... the difference between knowing something, and seeing the proof with your own eyes."
Something twinges in Dante's chest. It hurts.
"And, I mean, I don't know how far it might go. Could go," continues Plue. "I know your- that Raelyn said it would only be slight, but, I mean, what if she's wrong? What if she's lying?"
"She's not lying," Dante tries to assure her, but she's on a role, and in any case, his heart isn't in it. She has a point - is his being defensive of Raelyn really his own feelings? Or are they her own sense of self-preservation - her own defensiveness - bleeding over into what he's supposed to be feeling?
"-if you wake up one day and you're not you anymore-" Plue's still saying, and now it feels less like she's making a point and more like she's spiralling, so he holds - without thinking - and she leans into him - without thinking - and they both sit there, in the dark, for a spell.
"Not that I'm an expert," he eventually says, quietly, "but I'm pretty sure most people change over time. Whether or not they've got an angry ghost stuck in their noggin."
Plue wiggles a bit, grasping him even tighter, like she's afraid that she'll lose her grip on him any moment.
"You know how I feel about change."
She is a whisper in his ear, and he has no answer for her.
Rose didn't like tea. But it was her only option.
Water always woke her up. Coffee always woke her up even more. And the pills that she knew about - the ones that people could take to go to sleep - they were outside Pandemonium's Bane's budget. To say nothing of her budget.
She wasn't good at taking pills, anyway. Every time she'd tried to have one dry, it'd just made her gag, so she'd have to have made herself a drink, anyway, so... it was all a moot point, really.
She leant against the kitchen countertop, warming the tips of her cold fingers on the surface of the mug, and sighed.
She didn't know enough about sleeping patterns. She wasn't even sure what it was called - the circadian rhythm? A person's sleep cycle. Whatever it was called, hers was... well, there was no good way to say it. It was just no good.
For most people, sleeping was a routine. They got tired, they lay down, and they passed out for some hours, ready for the next day. But for Rose, sleeping was more like a gamble; she would lie down, and she would try to sleep, but whether or not she did, and for how long, was as consistent as a roulette wheel.
And tonight, zero was her number.
The tea tasted milky on her tongue, and she winced, wondering if she'd made it right. She was still getting used to making food and drink for herself, after... after everything. She remembered that she used to like milk with tea, when she was younger. Did that still apply, she wondered. Was it just that she'd gotten the recipe wrong? Or was it that she was a different person now, having emerged from the awful chrysalis of that institute as a butterfly that bore little resemblance to the girl that she'd once been?
...Maybe it was just too late to be awake, if her thoughts were starting to get that macabre. Not to mention, vivid.
It was just as she was about to place her half-finished mug down and go back to lying on her back on her mattress again, however, that a silhouette appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.
At first Rose, didn't recognise it, and tensed up. Then, she saw the spikes of hair - so characteristic, even when they were half-squashed by sleep and most of the gel had come out of them - and relaxed. Then, when Dante failed to greet her, or do anything other than stand there, she tensed up again.
"...Dante?" she wanted to whisper, but didn't.
"...Marvellous."
It was Dante's voice, but at the same time, it wasn't Dante's voice. Rose put the pieces together fairly quickly, after that.
"Raelyn?"
Another silence. Dante - Raelyn - didn't leave, but didn't do anything else, either.
Rose, for her part, had no real idea what to do.
She was tired, she was tired, she was oh-so-tired and the thought of dealing with Raelyn right now was just not something that she wanted to give airtime. To even humour.
It wasn't that she hated Raelyn, or that she didn't like her. But she knew that Raelyn didn't like any of them, and seeing loathing when you looked into someone's eyes was something that she had trouble dealing with on the best of days. And this was definitely not the best of days - and not just because it was night-time!
Still, her own feelings weren't important. Raelyn was here. She had just as much of a right to be made welcome as anyone else, and so Rose lifted up her mug in the first greeting that her fatigue-addled brain could think of.
"Couldn't sleep," she all but whimpered into the darkness. "I was just, um... ah... making tea."
More silence.
"...would you like some tea, Raelyn...?"
Still more silence.
Her and her big mouth!
An eternity, almost, of lambasting herself within the confines of her own mind went by. But then, she was drawn out of that negative self-thought - perhaps for the better - by the sight of Raelyn actually stepping forwards, into the kitchen. The sound of Dante's bare feet on the tiled floor echoed through the room, the consciousness steering his body evidently making no effort to move quietly. As Rose watched, with wide eyes, Raelyn wandered up to her, looming like a wraith in the night.
And then, moving too quickly for Rose to hope to stop her, Raelyn snatched the mug. Just like that.
Rose didn't stop her. She couldn't stop her. Couldn't even protest. All she could do was watch, straining into the dark with wide eyes, as Raelyn took a large swig from her mug. And then stuck her - Dante's - oh, the technical details of their situation were so confusing to her! - tongue out.
"You put too much milk in this," she said, voice low. It's nothing less than a scathing putdown, and yet, Rose's instinctual first reaction is nothing less than joy.
She was right! She'd been right! It wasn't just her memory failing her, or her tastes changing as a result of her personhood changing! She really was that she'd made it wrong?
The knowledge felt like relief.
"Yes!" she let slip, a little too excited for the moment, before reigning herself back in and nodding. "I... yes. It's been... well. I'm out of practice." She looked down at her hands, now free of any burden - and yet missing the warmth already - before back up at Raelyn. "I... couldn't sleep."
Raelyn blinked. Slowly. At least, Rose thought that's what she was doing. It was hard to tell in the dark, but she thought that she could make out a faint purple glimmer from the body's eye sockets, and could track how its shape changed as Raelyn moved the eyes one way or the other.
"Sleeping is difficult."
Such was the state of Rose's brain, it took an embarrassingly long time for her to comprehend that it was Raelyn who'd just spoken. But, eventually, she managed.
Shocking enough that Raelyn was engaging with her at all - but that hadn't even sounded like a particularly derisive thing to say! In fact, it had almost sounded like Raelyn was relating to her!
"I... yes," Rose thought to say. "Yeah, I... I struggle with it. A lot."
"I'm not used to sleeping," was Raelyn's response. "I never needed to sleep, before I had this body." She sounded like she was confused about her own emotions, like she wasn't quite sure how to feel. "But then, I suppose that my existence'd just all been one big sleep up to that point."
"...I'm sorry," said Rose, because she didn't know what else to say. Because she never knew what else to say.
Raelyn scoffed. It was strange, to hear a noise that harsh come from Dante's throat, when he put so much effort into his kindness.
"You fucking people," she - Raelyn - muttered. "Always apologising. Like you're the ones who did it. Like you can do anything."
Rose really didn't have a response to that, so she didn't try to address it. Instead, she turned her attention back to the stolen mug in Raelyn's hands.
Why she'd had the idea - where it'd come from - she honestly didn't have the foggiest. But it wasn't as though she didn't want to know. And Raelyn had thousands of years of memories and knowledge, right?
"Do you..." she ventured. "Could you teach me? To make tea?"
She was glad, now, for the dark, and for the way it was probably hiding the worst of Raelyn's glare.
"I mean, you don't have to," she found herself babbling all the same, "but I was just wondering - you know more than me, probably although that isn't saying much, and I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, but I promise you don't have to. I can, um, leave you alone."
"I mean." Raelyn sets the mug down on the table with a fierce clatter, and Rose flinches at the noise. "I could teach you." She takes a single, hostile step towards her. "You think I couldn't?"
Rose... didn't have an answer to that. Big surprise, there. When did she have an answer to anything? Especially anything that Raelyn said?
With a grunt, Raelyn turned. Her waist caught the hilt of the mug, and it spun, and Rose fumbled to catch it before it dropped to the ground. The last thing that she wanted to do at two in the morning was clear up smashed pieces of ceramic. Thankfully, her fumbling paid off.
"Like I said," spat Raelyn, retreating back through the doorway and into the night, "put less fucking milk in it."
And then, she was gone. And Rose was alone once more, with nothing left of her erstwhile companion but words to chew over.
Some were stringier than others. Some were barely edible at all. But a few... a few had surprised her. A few were more than she'd honestly expected to ever receive from Raelyn. She could feel it, deep within her self, lighting some spark of hope in her soul.
Maybe... Maybe...
Maybe she could give tea-making one more try.
It's one of the first things that Dante notices about Jacen - at least, one of the things that he notices about the guy when they aren't all in mortal peril.
He loves to obfuscate.
To be fair, Dante does too. At least, kind of. He doesn't really try and throw people off the scent of what he's saying very much, though he does sometimes. It's more like he's trying to say a thing, and then he'll go on about it and start talking about another, related thing. Rinse and repeat, until the person he's talking to is suitably, y'know... befuddled.
A lot of that, Plue'd had to explain to him, Actually, she was also the one who'd taught him what the word befuddled had actually meant-
Obfuscation. Right.
Anyways, he does it by accident. But Jacen?
Jacen's got this way with words that kind of reminds him of Plue, but then kind of... doesn't, at the same time. They're both good at, like, using way more words than they really need to to say something. But with Plue, it's like she's reaching into the bowels of her vocab, and also your soul, and dragging out words that you'd never thought of before and making them fit a situation. She uses them to paint a picture, and you're left standing there wondering how you could ever understand something without her there to explain it to you.
Jacen, meanwhile, still draws on this, frankly, incredible amount of words he's got kicking around his head - but, while Plue makes things clearer with hers, Jacen uses his to make things murkier. You're looking at something, and you think you've got it handled, and then Jacen will explain it to you and you'll be left not really sure what you're looking at before. You need to really think about his words - run them through, back and forth, like a bit of food that you've got stuck between your teeth. Pick at it until you figure out what he's saying.
Now, Dante doesn't particularly mind that. If he's being honest, he kind of likes that he has to think about what Jacen's saying. It keeps him on his toes, right? But what he doesn't get is why Jacen does it.
At least, not at first.
And then, one day, Dante was working with Jacen, and Jacen had started, like, basically whacking a wrench against a box that he was trying to fix up. And Dante, mostly just because it'd been funny, had been like hey, what're you doing? and Jacen had jumped, like, a foot in the air. Then, he'd started doing that thing he did with words - going on about impact calibration and percussive maintenance - and Dante'd just sat there, and in his head he'd just gone aaaaahhh, because he'd suddenly recognised what was up with Jacen's lingo.
The guy was an engineer. More to the point, he was an engineer who had a job that he was trying to keep.
One thing that Dante's learnt, from his Bulwark training and especially now as the head of Pandemonium's Bane, is that people don't like it when you describe things as how they really happened in your reports. Like, okay, sometimes, shit really is fucked, and that's the only way you can explain what's just happened. But if a bigwig ever reads shit's fucked in a report that you wrote - well, you're getting in trouble over it, basically. But, if you write that a situation has resulted in an irreversible negative outcome - for instance - well, it somehow becomes acceptable.
Another thing that Dante's learnt is that smart people - like Jacen - love to sound smart. Even if they're really down-to-Theia types at heart, who have no problems with saying yeah, nah, the damn thing lit itself on fire, they think it's funny to say ah yes, a thermal runaway scenario has occurred, and then watch all the people who aren't in the know scratch their heads as the fire spreads. Plue's that sort of person, even if she isn't a gearhead, and he knows other people who were just that person, straight up.
So, Dante'd kept his eye out, reading carefully through Jacen's reports, and listening to the guy - actually listening - whenever he explained stuff. And over and over again, he'd see him rephrase stuff to make it sound less bad, and more intelligent, than it actually was. Rather than writing we broke down the door to the flat, in a field report, he'd phrase it as myself and my field partner performed a dynamic entry. Rather than admit that he'd forgotten to plug in a key system one time, he'd said, blushing to the tips of his ears, that he'd come across an issue caused by a high impedance air-gap. And, instead of saying you're an idiot, he would tell Gaia that she had a short-circuit between her ears.
Of course, in the case of that last one, Gaia'd just laughed and put him in a headlock.
Now, again, Dante wasn't really bothered. If anything, he thought it was both pretty funny, and super useful. Heck, if he could get Jacen to write his reports to the Bulwark for him, it'd probably make Plue's job a lot easier.
But what he didn't get was why Jacen would do that sort of thing with them. They were a team. They were friends, right? So why did he feel the need to obfuscate the same way?
He didn't want to push the guy. But did, maybe, want to nudge him a little. So, one day, he poked his head in on Jacen, who was busy doing some work on an engine that'd gone wrong in their transport. Important work - they'd only been given the one ship, and he didn't fancy their chances of getting another if their current hunk of junk broke down for good.
Sometimes, he'd wondered if the Bulwark had only even given them this ship because it would've been decommissioned otherwise. It'd been old, and in rough shape even before landing itself with Pandemonium's Bane. As his old dorm-mates would've said, it was a real POS PTS.
"How's it going?" he asked. Hey, he could be good at the whole 'casual boss' thing!
Jacen almost spun on the spot to face him.
"All good!" he said, snappily, anxiously pushing his glassed back up his nose. "Nothing to worry about at all. Just a little... ah, one of the parts went through a kinetic disassembly."
Translation? Something had exploded. Dante nodded, making himself look as though he was trying to look like he was following along - and making sure to not give away the fact that he actually was following along.
A creature of subterfuge. That was totally him.
Ugh. He could almost hear Raelyn's scoff of disgust in his mind.
"So how'd, you, uh..." he asked, "how'd you get that one solved?"
Predictably, Jacen began to go on.
"Well, we had this replacement part," he explained, turning back to the engine and beginning to point at some mechanisms. "It was a persuasion fit, but a quick bit of swing-pressing-"
He'd had to menace the thing with a hammer to make it fit.
"-and a mild enzymatic cleanser-"
He'd spit-shined it.
"And it... seems to work." For the first time, some uncertainty about his own fix showed on his face. "Though, I'll admit, I'm a little surprised."
Here, it wasn't so much as what he was saying as what he wasn't saying. His whole thing was projecting confidence, and making the crazy sound sane. So if he was admitting, out loud, that he was a little surprised that something had worked...?
"So," hummed Dante, deliberately casual. "You repaired it using FM?"
FM: Fucking Magic. For when you didn't know what'd fixed a problem, but you'd tested it a bunch, and it was working just fine.
"FM," sighed Jacen, obviously agreeing. Then, his brain caught up with his mouth, and his eyes widened, like the thought of someone seeing through his super-secret code was horrifying. "Wait," he breathed, "how do you...?"
Dante put his hands on his hips and tried to look like a cool, experienced leader-type.
"Dorm-mate in the BTA," he said as an explanation, thinking of Wally. Then, he thought of Joy and Kraken, who hadn't been slouches in the mechanics department themselves, and added: "A couple of dorm-mates, actually. But... specifically this one guy. He'd always take stuff that sounded whiffed, and then phrase it in a way that made it sound... less whiffed." He crammed as his fingers together, aware of how nonspecific and non-leader-y he was probably sounding right about now. "One time," he said, only a little hurriedly, "we were shown this video of, like, a train crash, and we were supposed to have to figure out what went wrong, but this guy took one look at it and said that it was a- a 'throttle actuator malfunction'."
'Throttle Actuator Malfuntion' was, of course, one of the ways you could say 'the driver was stupid' without sounding too mean about it. Perfect for Wally, who'd always been the kind of person to apologize to an isfet creature as he cut it to pieces.
Jacen didn't react long enough for Dante to begin to worry that his charming anecdote had fallen on unappreciating ears - but then, he - Jacen - cracked a smile and chuckled.
"'Throttle actuator malfunction'," he echoed, sounding a bit chuffed. "Alright. I'll have to... I'll have to remember that one."
After mulling it over for a moment, Dante planted a hand on Jacen's shoulder.
"I love reading your reports, man," he said, "but I'm not... I dunno. I'm not a boff. When it's just us, you don't have to be afraid of telling it straight with me." He grinned. "Promise I'm not gonna bite your head off." Then, remembering his current resident darker half, he quickly added: "And Raelyn won't either! Her whole thing is that she thinks humans are beneath her - I guarantee you that she has no strong opinions about bureaucratic phrasing."
Jacen's gaze flicked down to the ground for a moment.
"...Thanks," he said. "I mean- yeah. Thanks. But, if it's all the same to you, I still think it sounds better to tell you that maintenance has been delayed by direct interference, or temporal misalignment, then... you know..." he gestured, and Dante got it.
He still felt bad for Jacen, and the way the guy apparently thought that he had to obfuscate - but as long as they were on the same page, he'd take it. It was something.
"Hey," he said, giving Jacen's shoulder a friendly squeeze. "As long as there aren't any delays caused by 'financial difficulties', that's just fiiine by me."
For the second time, Jacen smiled. For the first time, it was something more akin to a smirk.
"Hah-hah."
"Quigley!"
She didn't realise how loud she'd been until Vector raised an eyebrow at her. It was a familiar eyebrow raise; the kind that sent dread flowing through her because oh no, she was going to have to explain this to someone, and then and watch as they silently judged her.
"Uh," he said, because of course he did. Vector was many great things, and she loved them for him, but none of those things involved keeping himself to himself. "What was that?"
Plue could feel her cheeks heating up already. "Um," she said, "nothing." It didn't even sound convincing to her ears, and Vector... well, he certainly didn't look any more convinced than she felt.
"Sounded like 'quigley'," he observed. "That's the thing where you take out multiple targets with one shot, right?"
Well. At least she didn't have to explain what on Theia a Quigley was. "Yeah."
"So..." unfortunately, Vector didn't seem to be about to let this go. "Why'd you... say that?"
Plue let her pen drop onto her desk, and sighed.
"It was- I was saying it like how one of my old instructors at the BTA said it," she explained. "He always said it in a way I thought was really funny. It got stuck in my head."
Vector's eyebrow rose even higher. "How many years has it been since you were at the BTA?"
Now, Plue resisted the urge to just drop her whole head onto the desk and abandon the conversation. "Things get stuck in my head," she said, defensively. "Sometimes for a long time. And no, I don't know why either."
The next thing that Vector did was that thing where a person stuck their fingers together in a pointing gesture, like they were pretending their hand was a gun they were holding, and then holding said fingers up to their mouth. It was a gesture that implied concentration. Plue wasn't sure what it was called, but whatever its name was, it's what Vector deigned to do.
Steeling herself, Plue bit the bullet, and began to over-elaborate before Vector could even ask his next question.
"Look," she said. "There was that thing you were talking about earlier - when you talked about visiting Canopy Moon. You said something about how there weren't any vines there-"
"Vines aren't native to that place," Vector chimed in.
"Right, right." Plue waved him off. Interrupting was rude! "Anyway. You said there weren't any vines there, and vines, in my head, sounds kinda like Mynes, which is the town that we send out that missage to last week. The one about our offer of protection still standing - you remember?" When she received an affirmatory nod from Vector, she continued. "Well, yeah, so I thought of Mynes and then I thought of, like, general... negotiation stuff, and then I thought about general Bulwark stuff, because, you know, negotiation is an important part of running the Bulwark. Then because I was thinking about the Bulwark, I thought about the BTA, and then when I was thinking about that I thought about Instructor Gatherer, and I thought about the way he said the word 'quigley'."
"And then you said 'quigley' out loud," Vector finished for her.
She nodded. "Yes, then I felt compelled to say 'quigley' out loud." It all made so much sense in her head whenever it happened, but it all felt so stupid whenever she had to explain it to someone. Under the desk, clad in her pinching work shoes, she felt her toes curl. "It's- just-" she tried to say, before giving up. "Don't worry about it."
She wanted to leave it there. To forget about it and get on with the work she'd been doing. But Vector just stood there like a man transfixed, giving her this intense look, like he was thinking hard about something. She could feel his gaze on her, and, though she didn't feel brave enough to actually say anything, it wigged her out.
And then, he snapped his fingers. "Your brain's like a dorudon!"
Plue was completely lost. "...what?"
"A dorudon!" Vector sounded excited, now. "You know how on Tethys, you've got all those whales, and how they live in the water but need to breathe air-"
"Yeah," Plue nodded, wondering if she should feel patronised that Vector's first assumption had been that she had no idea what a dorudon was. She wasn't a naturalist, but she wasn't a rube, either. She knew they were a type of whale. "I know what a whale is."
"Yeah! So-" Vector snapped his fingers again- "That's what your brain's like!"
Plue... didn't follow. "Explain?"
"Dorudon spend most of their time underwater," gushed Vector, sounding all-to-eager to explain the brainwave he'd apparently just had. "But when they need air, they pop!" He made a sound with his mouth and a gesture with his hands. "Out of the water. And then back in." He stopped miming a dorudon breaching the water, and pointed at her once again. "That's like you! You're always thinking, there's always something going on under the surface, but the rest of us can only see what's going on in there when you speak up. That's the breach. That's the-" he made another *pop* noise.
Plue wasn't sure how she was supposed to be taking this analogy, but decided that she'd reserve judgement. It didn't look like Vector was done yet. "Okay...?"
Vector nodded like she'd agreed with him. "And that's why people can't keep up! They only see the breaches! We only hear the stuff that you actually say! Meanwhile, you've got this whole train of thought going on, and it all connects and makes sense and you hop from all these points so quickly - but we don't see that!" He finished with an exhilarated gasp and gesture. Plue had to admit - she was taken in by his delivery. She'd seen him less excited when he was climbing out of a melee that he'd just won.
So taken in was she by his delivery that, she had to admit, it took her a little time to understand exactly what he was telling her. But once she did understand-
"Huh."
She had to admit,
"Huh."
it felt like a pretty good analogy.
Vector was, she realised after a moment, still staring at her like an excited puppy. Or maybe a victorious codebreaker.
"Yeah," she said, "maybe." And then, because it was nice to have someone think that hard about her in a good way (and because he was really excited, and that was maybe a little infectious), she cracked a smile. "Thanks, Vector."
Vector looked like he was calming down a little. But his teeth were still bared in a massive grin as he gave her a jaunty salute.
"No prob, commander."
In isolation, and from an objective viewpoint, it was incredibly odd to be told that her brain was like how some sea creature behaved. And yet, Plue mused, as she picked up her pen and made to crack on with her work once more, 'whale brain'...
...it had a nice ring to it.