trans_9 | Familiar Air

It still threw her, even though she'd been in a couple of times by now, how truly real the sensoriums made everything seem. The dusty rock underneath her, the arid heat and the way the air just wavered the further you looked into the distance. The little baby mountains, the mesas, the distant noise from El Paso's downtown stretched out below her. Even the SMELL of the air. Nothing about the simulation was the tiniest bit out of place.

It was just cool enough to be comfortable on the ledge, with a light breeze and the shade of her little tree and she watched the movement of cars through the city streets with no small amount of wonder. She had thought about getting up a few times, about going into the simulated city and finding a projected Mrs. Reyes, or maybe even her Tia, but the idea still felt too strange. As much as she longed for familiar faces the knowledge that they weren't real, just placeholders, made her skin crawl.

She sighed and picked up a stone, tossing it down the long hillside below and watching it bounce it's way to the bottom. At least the hot air was still a little soothing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Paco laughed, and it came out a little harsh.

"Yeah. Everyone's okay," he said. His relationship with Kate was screwed -- she hadn't officially broken up with him, but the fact that she could barely handle being in the same room with him because of what those slugs had done to her was a death-knell right there. And that sucked, and he couldn't exactly talk to Brenda about that, what with Kate's "by the way, Brenda seems to have changed her mind about that kiss not having happened" thing.

No, screw it. Screw it. He was going to watch movies with his friends. Future movies.

"We should totally look for future sequels. Or future movies in general. When we get home, we can invest in the big hit ones or something."

She didn't miss the hard edge to his laugh, but she didn't patronize him by pointing it out either. Paco just wasn't a 'come cuddle me when I'm sad' kind of guy. He had always been more about presence than any specific attempt at comfort, for himself and for other people.

For as long as she cared to remember it had been one of his best qualities.

"At the least we can start rigged betting pools about future Academy Awards Winners." She leaned on him a little, just enough to give him a teasing rock. "Hey and maybe Jessica Alba will be in a movie I don't hate in the future."

That last smile didn't feel so forced.

Edited 2009-05-31 02:18 (UTC)

The longer he had both his friends with him, the better he felt. He was going to bounce back to normal eventually, and he could fake it until then. And maybe, with enough space and time, Kate could think of him as at least a non-threatening friend again.

"Okay, we'll toss some future Jessica Alba movies in on the pile," he said with a grin. "So you can figure out if you like them or not.

He got a little more serious again, although this time with less internal moping.

"We might need to sit on Jaime. He's doing that thing where he gets massively responsible and pretends he's not being frantic in his head. He's thundering through his Violations trying to get off this thing and back home."

"Yeeaaah, we'll have to take him aside and beat some childhood back into him." Brenda agreed, nibbling a little nervously on her thumbnail.

"I don't know what that punishment stuff is that you get when you rack up too many 'stop it' points but I really don't want to find out what it is, especially not because Jaime gets himself reprimanded."

"Oh yeah," Paco agreed. "I get that he wants to go home, but there's got to be a better way to do it. So I'm enlisting you in Jaime-watch and recruitment for making sure Jaime doesn't suck up all the Violations himself. If he tries to do something stupid, whack him over the head."

Brenda held up her left hand solemnly, the right settling over her heart.

"Girls Scouts Honor. You can count on me for Jaime whacking."

She'd never actually been a girl scout but whatever.

"So... what about you? I mean I know 'just let's be normal' but... is there anything I ought to do to help YOU out with this whole thing?"

Paco sucked air through his teeth and made a face.

"I'll live. You know me, I'm not trying to ignore it it or pretend it never happened. Just going to let it go and watch some movies with my friends and be normal for a few hours until I feel sane enough to deal with the fact that my brainslug may have just screwed over the time stream."

Stupid brainslug. He really wished that Superboy and Robin hadn't picked that moment to wander into the MedBay.

She takes him by the chin at that and turns his head toward her, meeting his eyes with a serious frown.

"Let's start with this. Stop referring to it as 'your' brain slug like it's some kind of pet that you let just off the leash. It's an evil alien entity in it's own right and it has it's own name. The Sub Visser might as well have put on an episode of Muppets Tonight with you as Kermit the Frog." - Paco knows EXACTLY what Brenda thinks about muppets - "So stop talking like you were responsible, even a little bit, okay?"

She tussles his hair a bit.

"Secondly, lets get the hell out of here and go raid the media room. You want to be normal, lets start being normal and make a list of the movies we wanna see. Then we can start in on designing the ideal sensoriumey movie theatre in our brains."

"Yes Mom," Paco said obediently, and quickly held up his hands to keep her from punching him. "I'm dealing, okay? It's cool, I feel bad about it but I'm not eaten up by guilt or anything. I got my victories -- it didn't kill Jaime and now it's dead, and as a bonus, I can cuss people out in languages spoken by species I've never even met."

That last bit was technically a lie. He hadn't picked up too much language off of Sub-Visser Seven's previous hosts. But it had helped, sort of. Some of them had given up, become quietly despairing shadows in their own minds. Some of them had fought the Sub-Visser every day of their lives. Some had screamed and railed, some had begged, some had tried to escape or kill themselves when the Sub-Visser left their heads to feed. The only victories any of them ever got were small ones, moments of control snatched out of the Sub-Visser's iron grip before the Sub-Visser grabbed them back. He'd had showed some of those moments to Paco early on, trying to make him give up, make him believe that he was going to be a prisoner for the rest of his life. But it hadn't worked. If all Paco could have were small victories, then that was all he needed to aim for. He'd trusted Jaime to do the rest.

He'd won. He was going to be okay.

"Movie time it is!" he said, hopping to his feet. "Come on, let's pry Jaime away from badtouching Stacy's insides and make him help."

"You got it. Surely the temptation of future movies will be too much for his tired brain to resist!"

She smiles as she climbs to her feet as well and follows him out of pseudo El Paso to find Jaime.

Familiar Air

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject