station72 | [ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

That would go against my very British upbringing.

[ He doesn't pity her. In fact, there's the usual absence of reaction. No emotion aside from a faint amusement at her comment. More reactionary than anything else.

Instead, he's thinking. Her whole everything had just been dumped in his lap and he isn't sure what to do with it, aside from let her push it out of herself. It'd been sitting in her head, overfull and spilling over the edges. It manifested in her drinking, in her sharp comments, sharp smile, the way she cuts herself down before someone else has the chance to do it. He recognizes the signs of someone who's been cornered too many times. It's easier for her to lash out because the alternative is worse.

Physically, he relaxes a little, still going over what he's been handed. There's a faint smile at the mention of MI6, the ease in which they'd been cracked open. ]

There's a bit of oversight in upper management. [ They hadn't existed in the same world, either. Right? But now they do. Just the two of them. ]

I have something to show you. Do you mind?

What, you don't wanna just stay all fuckin' secretive and shit while I just spread my shit out everywhere?

[ Like a messy guest who couldn't keep her fucking luggage all contained in one place. ]

Yes or no, little Miss Annie.

[ She might be a messy houseguest but she's still a guest in that scenario. And she's been sharing her side of things, it seems odd not to return the favor. Of course there's more reason to him wanting to do so. That's what it always comes down to anyway, reason. ]

Ew.

[ No one ever puts quite such a girly wash on her, but it makes her laugh at least. ]

Yeah, fine, get on with it.

[ Her little 'ew' makes him smile, briefly. It's not her favorite way of being addressed, but somehow he thinks it's funny.

After, he gets on with it. They're already close enough– the connection basically having remained open between them. It's easy to pick up the thread. His normal abyss fades a bit, makes room for something that resembles an attic. There's still sunlight filtering in from the vent but it's more golden, like it's in the middle of setting. Here there's boxes, filled to brim with photographs. Those are aged, sepia and old polaroids, dusty from time and the years it's been since he's ever dredged them up.

And then they stitch together in a filmstrip, long and winding, flying by. Life at home near London, his parents saying goodbye when goes off to South America for MI6. They don't know why or what he'll be doing.

He never comes back to them alive. There's flashes from there– Heavens Gate, the bodies, the blood, the oppressive heat and humidity. His small team, dead. The offices of Decade and the upper echelons of MI6, asking how do you feel? and his distant answer I don't feel anything. A letter to his family explaining he'd been killed in action, a news station mentioning the anomalies, the radiation in Japan and South America, how no one can go in.

Faces of other contractors, a fake sky, stars falling with each subsequent death. And ice freezing it all over, covering it in perma-frost, smoke curling from his mouth in the aftermath. ]

We're called contractors. The government keeps us all under wraps, thinks people would panic.

[ A huff of a laugh. ]

I suppose they would, since we're not really human any longer.

[ Oh-- She's not sure what she expected. Nothing quite so familiar, at least. For all the little details that are unique to him and his world, there's more there under the surface that resonates, a bigger picture. In a way, the thing he says to her is vindicating. That she hadn't been wrong to think that people -- the remaining people after such a huge disaster -- wouldn't take it well to know there were freaks and geeks among them, more powerful than them. Then again, she'd only ever taken that position out of fear, weakness... She closes her eyes, letting herself reconfigure more comfortably into the crook of his arm, letting her head rest against his shoulder. ]

Pathos-bearers. We kept ourselves under wraps, because we thought people would panic.

[ There's a girl emblazoned on the backs of her eyelids, with a name that rings clear: Therese. She had finally told that story to Noctis, not out of any real desire to do so, but as an act of contrition for failing to deal gracefully with his sadness when Nyx left. Talking about Therese does not make her happy, it's a festering, rotted wound. So she keeps it short: ]

Although a lot of us got tired of hiding, too.

[ A huff of breath, trying to blow a string of hair off her face, but it's too damp and goes nowhere, ]

Why contractors?

[ They're alike, surprisingly. When he agreed to that thing in white to come with it, he hadn't expected this. Who expects to meet someone so similar, when the universe is so large? If he were less empty, maybe he would be like Annie. Coping in the only ways she knew how, pushing to just get through the day with her physical self intact.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

That's her side of the story and this is his. Similar in the ways that seem to count the most. How they hold normal humans a little more distant because of the possibility that one will snap and freak out. It would only take the one. The right one. With enough power and sway and means– he's thought about it more than once. It fills his abyss with discomfort, as though the ice is trying to freeze over his own veins. Not fear, not really. Emotions are too vague for him to label anymore. ]

Hard to be yourself when the world would reject it.

[ One of the reasons he'd stuck with MI6. Sure, he was being used as a weapon. But with such a long leash it was easy to live how he wanted. Decade gave him slack, let him be in the world. He had vacation time, sick days, all expenses paid flights to wherever in the world they sent him next. If he felt more, like Therese, would he still remain? Or would he feel too caged in? ]

It's not an easy life. [ Staying hidden. He's just lucky to have different circumstances that let him be. ]

The term is somewhat literal. Every time we use our powers, we have to pay our contract. There's no real piece of paper, but it's there nonetheless. Think of it as a compulsion.

[ And because it seems pertinent to the current moment: ]

My partner, April, she has to drink. Although, she's lucky and a good sport. Guinness is her favourite; I think she always drinks more than she probably needs to.

[ God she hates him in this moment. Everything he says is too fucking true and they're all sloshed into each other again, so it's not like she can hide the way her heart twists. She'd stuck with Cartazonos, even after the alien slap fight, because it was what she knew, the one place she knew how to be herself after being kept behind a two-way mirror from the world's consciousness for so long.

What does it feel like, to feel that through her? Can he, or does that 'contract' of his filter it out, even when it belongs to someone else. She turns her head up to look at him.

So many of the other hosts talk about the people they left behind to come here. Annie had already been alone. Therese had already left her. She thought she'd stay alone, that maybe that would be... better. Spend some time learning how to be herself again: human, sober, responsible. She'd wanted to make the school her everything, make it somewhere safe for the new generations of kids so that they wouldn't have to live through what she lived through.

And the Nest took that away from her. Brought her back here and dunked her right back into the torturous life she'd barely just started to heal from. Barely. Barely.

Her eyes fill with tears and her face turns red. ]

Fuck.

[ It's not her. It's fucking Noctis. Her stupid crybaby broodmate that she had brain fucked in a fit of despair and had come out of him again full of fucking tears. She can see him across the pool, she wants to go over there and shake him for doing this to her. ]

I'm going to kill him...

[ He feels it, but he knows it's not his. It's not first-hand, the way the memories of South America were. There's the tinge that makes them wholly Annie, even if it feels odd to get the runoff.

(It feels odd to feel anything at all. Like it's snuck under his skin and settled.)

November is just letting the numbness take its place again when Annie starts crying, face red in the way that tears bring on. He's not sure what to do. ]

I would advise against murder as a first step.

[ As would the symbiote, if he remembers anything Misato told him. ]

Now, who are we trying to kill? And what for?

Not literally, jesus christ.

[ She swipes the edge of her hand at her eyes angrily. ]

God, I got too up in Noctis's brain when he was crying about something and now it's all up in me.

[ And she hates it. ]

I'd say let it out but I'm not sure how much the sauna would overflow– it sounds rather serious.

[ Ok, he's being cheeky and kind of an ass but this is how he knows how to deal with tears. Which is. Well, not very great. Then again, it's easier than the other way, which included a lot more coddling and he's pretty sure Annie would elbow him in the ribs if he even tried. ]

I'll kill you too.

[ Right here in the sauna. ]

They'll have to clean up a second round of bodies out of here.

Don't make threats you don't intend to keep, little Miss Annie.

[ He tsks at her, adding to the silliness of it all. ]

Besides, trying to kill me near water is moot.

Fun fact, I will say literally whatever the hell I feel like.

[ And she'd love to see literally any one of these hosts try and stop her. They'd have to tackle her and gag her, and even then she still had telepathy. Make me. Stop me. I do what I want. ]

Is that what the ice was? Glaciapath?

[ Fucking latin. Ice-passion. ]

[ November laughs a little at that– Annie never minces words. Beyond her proving her own words before, he believes her wholeheartedly. ]

It's my gift from the gate, after what happened in South America. I can freeze any liquid on contact.

Just because you have home turf advantage doesn't mean I can't kick your ass.

[ This would sound like more of a threat if she herself didn't sound so pleased about it. ]

Fuckin' ice wielding shitheads always think you're real clever cuz you've got high defensive flexibility with some fuckin' offensive capabilities.

[ It's like she may or may not have trained with one before. ]

But there's pros and cons to everybody's game.

Edited 2017-11-15 19:49 (UTC)

[ At her vicious comment, he laughs, the sound ringing in the enclosed space of the sauna. It shouldn't be funny, but she sounds so amused that he can't help himself. ]

Yes, well, it's certainly handy when the human body is seventy percent water. I do have a con though, but I'm not about to spill so easily.

[ She likes to fight. If she can't fuck, she will assuredly find someone to fight -- Something that just isn't an option during much of this mission. Picking fights would definitely break their rules about not outing the whole group, would defy that assumption that their 'kind' was shy and demure. She hates this mission. ]

I am definitely gonna beat you up when we get back to the Station.

[ Declared as she settles cozily against his side, eyes closing with a smile. ]

[ Conversely, he doesn't like to fight. Not in the way that Annie does. November doesn't see the reason to stir the pot unless it's necessary– like it had been with BK-201, or with Maki. He fights out of survival and for the upper hand, because it usually doesn't do much in the way of letting off steam.

Of course, this mission is a little more up his alley than it is Annie's. He can play shy, naive, innocent. He can put on whatever mask is asked of him, because years in MI6 has trained him for it. ]

Oh good, I can't wait. I haven't been beaten up since eighth form.

[ November loops his arm around her small shoulders and settles as well, enjoying the passing tension and the warmth of the water. ]

There's nothing else to do back there anyway. Station's creepy.

[ White and empty and sterile. She'd filled her time there forcing people to run laps and spar and play dodgeball. Even then she'd been restless, had started a mural of Final Fantasy shit in Noctis's little cove, had roamed around looking for unsuspecting hosts to have sex with. The usual. ]

Creepy?

[ Ok, the nesting deck was pretty weird. All those pods. Potentially with people in them. Something like out of a morgue. Though, he hadn't gotten a good look around at anything else. The word sterile sticks in his mind and he's not sure if it came from Annie or if it was an subconscious observation of his own for the short period he'd been on the station. ]

Yeah. The kind of place aliens would kidnap you to, to do experiments on you?

[ Oh... right... ]

Uncanny. Unwelcoming. Uncomfortable.

[ She could keep this up all day. ]

Well, considering the circumstances...

[ Isn't that exactly what happened to them? ]

Also, you do realize I don't feel any of those things anymore. [ Discomfort and the first bites of fear are a thing of the past. ]

Well that's fucking great for you!

[ She just... splashes him in the face, whatever. ]

I still feel shit, it sucks.

[ November doesn't even bother to dodge the water, simply laughing in the aftermath. He's already damp, so who cares? ]

I imagine that must be very difficult for you. [ A pause and then: ] If you ever need to not feel anything, you know who to ask.

[ OPEN ] Hot Springs Episode!

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