station72 | (no subject)

CHARACTERS: Sam and you
WHERE: The Bearings
WHEN: day 46
SUMMARY: After the b&e on Public Security, Sam's distraction efforts have been noticed...by the extranet.
WARNINGS: Memeloving shitposts.

[ So. It's...definitely not bright and early the day after the break-in, because some hosts were up way past their bedtimes. (Some hosts will deny up and down that bedtimes are a thing they should ever have to consider, because oh my God what do you think he is, six years old or something.)

But he's slept in, he's finally stumbled into the shower, and Sam has parked himself in the common room with the news on, a few extranet feeds up in front of him, and a bowl of something vaguely like Cinnamon Toast Crunch drowning in something vaguely like chocolate milk, because researching what everyone knows and what everyone thinks about their highly illegal activities is an important activity and working out that scroll button works up an appetite.

And then he stops in the middle of a bite, spoon still in his mouth and one eyebrow shooting up, as he takes a look at what's actually going on in one of those windows.

It's some badly captured footage of his light show from last night - a bright blue blur doing a few loops and barrel rolls, and some text in a loud, annoying font slapped on the bottom: YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THIS. Another one, this one just a still cap of the same: I DON'T KNOW, THEREFORE ALIENS. A few others, with text with varying degrees of ironically poor grammar... ]

-hmgd.

[ Right. That spoon was still in his mouth. He takes it out, swallows his mouth full of cereal, and tries that again: ]

Oh my God. I'm a meme.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She tilts her head curiously. ]

I cannot even imagine.

[ A brush from her thoughts. Will he share? ]

[ He's more than happy to, because as odd as the prospect of the hivemind still feels sometimes, the possibility of someone understanding easily outweighs it. There aren't many people he's been able to share it with.

So he tries to clear out the rest of his thoughts, and just think about flying.

The exhilaration of speed, the feeling of being able to look down and see the whole world below you, the weird realization that you're that small but you're doing something bigger than most people even dream of.

The feeling that nothing can touch you, until you slow down and let it - the way that makes it so tempting to just never slow down at all, no matter how much you know you need to sooner or later. ]

[ Her memories are far less exhilarating, but she knows that feeling, the relief of understanding when she is able to open up her thoughts and truly express herself without barrier. A sacred thing, from heart to heart, and so she quiets her own mind and simply breathes in the atmosphere that he creates for. The great perspective of the world, the universe, the rush of wind, the wildness, the freedom. The escape.

So much more intimate than the space vessels that have brought them down to the planets, the uninhibited view that made one feel enormous and tiny in one. All of her life had been spent confined to the ground, there is something more than magical about this fantasy. ]

How unique. [ Murmured softly, her eyes closed as she continues to contemplate on the sensations of it all. ] You seem to be an adventurous boy. And lucky.

[ Lucky.

Most of the time he'd agree, because there really is nothing like it in the world. Sometimes he'd beg to differ, because everything that's come into his life along with it has been nothing but complicated, and sometimes in the truly awful way.

But it's usually only on the ground that he disagrees. As soon as he's up in the air, everything's worth it again. ]

I dunno how Dad ever gave it up.

[ The idea of just - stopping being a Nova is daunting. ]

Every time I go up I never want to come back down.

What was your father like?

[ She has gotten more and more comfortable in being able to ask him these things. The older hosts she tends not to pry at quite so much. They seem very... settled in their ways, in themselves. With little Sam she has a curiosity for where he has going, where he has been, like charting the path of a star. ]

Was he a good father?

[ The fathers she knows the most about are Handsome Jack and Han Solo through the damaged children they've left behind. The others, herself included... had no fathers to speak on. She wonders if perhaps she shouldn't have asked. ]

[ Loaded questions.

There's a ripple of something - conflicted, because Sam's had a lot of problems with his father, and only started to really understand the man after he was gone. ]

He was a drunk who could barely hold a job down. [ And that only because Sam covered for him, no matter how much shit he knew he'd be taking from his peers to stay late after school and clean toilets. ] I used to really resent him for it.

[ Now, though... ]

...not so much, anymore.

[ She stares at him gently, no particular reaction to what he says. She doesn't know that archetype: the deadbeat father. Fathers were a rare breed in the burning world. Too many died, of all ages and all sexes. Everyone was alone, an orphan in one way or another. There had been no jobs, and if one had the fortune to find liquor somewhere in the ruins then drunkenness was a perfectly acceptable state. But it was rare.

But she watches Sam though, his downcast eyes, his... very mature explanation of his own emotions. Such an admirable boy. She reaches out and very softly runs the ridge of her thumb along his hairline. ]

What changed your mind?

[ Her tone of voice is docile, only a little louder than a whisper. ]

Being Nova. Going to space.

[ It had a way of putting things into perspective, that was for sure. ]

He was kind of bad at being a dad, but he was a really great Nova. And I didn't realize how hard that was. Or how hard it is to give up.

[ It was hardly a secret how frustrated he'd been since arriving on Concordia. Being stuck on the ground chafed. ]

He gave it up when I was born. So he could be there.

[ She smiles at him. This vicarious interaction with familial love, and all its frustrations, is perpetually interesting to her. Almost a little unreal, some kind of fairy tale opera about father and son and the vast reaching possibilities of space versus the mundanity of the ground beneath their feet. Duty and regret. Love and freedom. ]

Life presents us all with difficult choices.

[ Her usual statement is that fate is cruel, but she tempers the tone of it, for Sam. And she means it in a more positive light this time anyway. ]

I thought I already knew that. And then in the last year it was like life said, ha, you ain't seen nothing yet.

[ For all the dysfunction of his childhood, from the time he was old enough to understand concept like "the poverty line" and "AA" (the later mostly as "that place Dad should go but doesn't"), it could've been a lot worse, he knows. A lot of things that feel like life or death when you're the kid getting shoved off the swings at recess aren't nearly as bad once they're actually over, and at least his family all actually loved each other. They were in it together.

And that feels a lot more significant after you've nearly died at least as many times as you've had concussions in your life (which he doesn't bother counting, but it's somewhere along the lines of "lots"). ]

I am sure coming to join us has been particularly trying.

[ Not that she doesn't understand that others have left things behind, but... Sam has let her see a little more of his, her understanding is a bit more genuine for him. ]

And will only continue to be so.

I kinda wish the timing could've at least been better? Like, if I'm stuck, okay, I'm stuck, but right after I promised my little sister I wasn't gonna just disappear on her just sucks.

You have a sister.

[ A thoughtful tone, she wonders if he had told her that before, shown her that before. She has been fixated on other things when they talk, but now she contemplates this idea, adds another piece to the puzzle she has been assembling on him. On life in the modern world, on family. She thinks on sisterhood. She does not know what that should have felt like either. She has never met a sibling before, it was rare enough for one child to survive, let alone two. Let alone for them to know each other. What would it have been like: to be raised to together, to share all those memories, all those lessons. ]

She will have to... find her own sense of peace. Just as you have. So of course she will, as your sister.

She'll get it faster than me, I'm pretty sure.

[ Maybe it's just easy to think of it that way because she's still young enough not to have started the disillusionment phase that Sam dove headfirst into. And it's not like she'll have quite as much to step up to as Sam did, trying to fill in the gaps that their father left first with incompetence and later with his disappearance, but -

Even setting all of that aside, it's hard to imagine Kaelynn hitting the lows quite as hard. She kept faith with Dad, after all. She'd do the same for him. ]