trans_9 | Hoping everything's not lost

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Hoping everything's not lost

Paco had been among the first people to wake up in a puddle of alien snot in the Pod Caverns. He'd been around to greet almost everyone currently awake on board the ship, if not at Pod Pop then at whatever time he'd been released from the Medbay or from GLaDOS' maze-running. Some people probably thought he was maze-running right now -- he hadn't been causing much of a ruckus lately.

He wasn't running mazes. He hadn't been for awhile, but he really was just waiting for GLaDOS to grab him again to make sure his soul wasn't going to fall out or whatever it was that she tested. With the mood he was in, he wasn't sure that it wasn't about to.

Lately, he had settled himself at the Vatican. He wasn't exactly a big religion kind of guy, he was way more into sleeping in late than dressing up for church and all that. But it was pretty quiet in his corner of the Vatican, and right now he didn't really know where else to turn. He leaned back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling like it might have an answer for him. It didn't, but talking to the ceiling beat talking to himself.

"You pick a lousy-ass time to break out the neck-punching. Just FYI."

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"...did you say someone punched you in the neck?"

She hadn't meant to pry but it echoed in places like the Vatican. Megan wasn't much for religion herself, at least not any from Earth, but exploring beautiful buildings was entirely up her alley.

Paco glanced up, then did a double-take when he saw the red hair. But no the girl wasn't Brenda. Obviously, the voice didn't even sound like her.

"Not literally," he explained. "Strictly metaphorical getting punched in the neck. You looking for someone?"

"Oh, metaphor. Gotcha."

She shrugged a little, folding her hands behind her back almost childishly. "No, I was just poking around. You just seemed sad so I thought I'd see if you were okay."

"I'm as okay as I'm gonna be right now," Paco said with a shrug. "It sucks, but what am I gonna do? Crying isn't going to make any of it any better, and harassing the smart guys while they work won't get what they need to do done faster, so..." He shrugged again, then leaned against the wall again and cast his eyes up toward the ceiling. "Just gonna sit here until something happens that I can deal with."

Megan crouched down next to him, arms wrapped around her knees.

"Do you want some company while you wait?" she asked gently. "I can leave you alone if you'd rather, I just know I don't like being by myself when I'm upset."

Paco shrugged yet again, not looking back at her. "It's a free meatship. Relatively, anyway. Do what you want." He didn't much feel like talking right now, but he wasn't so much of a jerk to try and chase someone out of the Vatican. Besides, she probably just wanted to make him feel better; when he did feel better (or at least less raw), he'd regret chasing her off. Probably.

Gingerly Megan settled beside him on the floor, reading his 'do what you want' as an indirect plea for silent support. She leaned back on the wall, peering up with him at the intricate ceiling.

Megan wasn't all that good at silent though, so it didn't take her long to fill the emptiness with SOMETHING.

Reaching out she gently touched his forearm.

"I like your tattoos."

Paco glanced down at his wrists, flexing both his flesh and blood and his mechanical hand. The latter had the dagger-and-axe image etched on it in the same place his real arm had had the tattoo on it. The star on his other hand looked fine. He'd thought about getting a few more, but God only knows what's in alien tattoo ink.

"Thanks," he said. "Got 'em about a year before I got yanked out of reality. This one used to be real, just like the arm. Etching it back on was a pain in the butt."

"I remember." Megan said shyly, running her fingers over the etching. "It looks really good though, almost exactly like the original."

She looked up at him with a bit of a smile.

"We met once, but you probably don't remember me. Maybe it never happened for you depending on where in time you're from. We were on a field trip and you let me touch your tattoos when I asked."

Paco blinked, peered more closely at her, then barked out something like a startled laugh. "Oh hey! You're Miss Martian! I do remember you! Wow, crazy."

Megan laughed in return, a grin splitting her face.

"Good memory! Wouldn't have blamed you for forgetting me entirely given we only met once." She offered him a hand to shake. "Hi again. You can just call me Megan if you want."

Paco took her hand and shook it. "Well, you are a cute girl who wanted to feel my arms, and turned out to be a super hero. Kind of sticks in the memory," he said wryly.

"Well, when you put it that way..."

Megan smiled and reached over to touch the pattern on his metal arm again.

"I meant to ask you what they represented but I never got the chance."

The beginnings of the good mood evaporated almost immediately when she asked that. Paco's face fell and scrubbed his free hand over his eyes.

"Got 'em when my one of my friends was missing and the other was in the hospital," he said quietly. "'s about all there really is to it."

He might risk the alien tattoo ink anyway, at this point.

Megan bit her lip, feeling her chest tighten uncomfortably. Oh damn...

"...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you sad again." she said after a moment, wringing her hands together in her lap sheepishly.

"Uhm... do you like puppies? Those always cheer me up."

Paco sighed. "No offense, Megan, but I don't want to be cheered up right now. I just had reality take the time to make something completely clear to me, and..." He sighed again, closing his eyes. "I really just need some time to grieve."

It's not just Brenda, trapped somewhere on the ship and scared. It's that GLaDOS dumped him out just in time for that Visitation Day thing that Stacy had done with people's families, and his hadn't been there. Not his mom or any of his sisters or his baby brother. Sure, it wasn't proof, but it was pretty damning evidence that his family wasn't in the Pods; that he was on board on Jaime's ticket instead of having one of his own.

Tears prickle at his eyes again and he covers his face with his flesh hand, swallowing hard.

Megan hesitated for a moment then carefully slid her hand along Paco's shoulder, gingerly rubbing in slow circles before leaning herself against his side in a sort of half-hug.

"It's okay." she murmured, voice soft and steady.

"I can go if you'd rather be by yourself." she offered, "But if you want I can just stay and be quiet and give you a hug. You can talk to me if you want to get a thought off your mind, or you can just be quiet too. Does that sound better?"

Edited 2011-12-03 05:49 (UTC)

Paco leaned into the embrace -- normally he'd be embarrassed about doing this in front of a cute girl, but this was his family. He was willing to let his machismo take a few hits over his family.

"It's not okay," he said thickly, his voice a little muffled by her shoulder. "I've been rolling with the punches since I woke up here, but the punches don't stop coming. I just...I don't know, it sucks and I'm just tired of it. Sick and tired of all of it."

"Of course you are. Anyone would be sick of it." Megan murmured in response, gathering him a little closer against her and stroking his shoulder in soothing sweeps. "But things can't go badly forever."

Paco let her gather him closer -- were Martians stronger than humans? They probably were -- and squeezed his eyes closed. He wasn't sure if he wanted to agree with her or argue with her about how long things could go badly. What if he never got his family back? What if they didn't find Brenda until after Brainiac 4 had killed her or messed her up beyond recovery? There were so many things that could happen, he just...

"I want to do something, but there's nothing I can do," he said quietly.

Castiel's been in and out of many places, the Vatican being one of them. Usually he'll observe and take his leave, but this time, he notices the man grumbling to himself in the corner of the Vatican.

"I might be able to heal your neck."

Paco jumped a bit a the voice, craning his head around to get a look at the speaker.

"I didn't actually get punched in the neck," he explained. "It's just an expression. I'll keep you in mind next time something on board tries to rip my limbs off, though." He scratched absently at the skin that disappeared into his mechanical arm.

Something was a little off about the other man, and Castiel continued staring, blue eyes taking not of everything of the other.

"You are part machine." Well, that went smoothly.

Paco glanced down at his mechanical arm, then back up at Captain Obvious. "Yeah, because I got my arm ripped off. This one's supposed to come off, and it's got a grappling hook in it."

...Man, didn't this guy ever blink?

Curious, curious.

"Hmn. Your world's technology is able to graft metal onto flesh."

"No -- well, yeah, but this happened to me on board the ship." He flexed the metal arm. "Guy who made it for me is back in the Pods right now, otherwise I'm sure he'd be happy to talk your ear off about it."

The angel nodded. "So, you've been on this ship for long? And the one who made your arm, why is he returned to the Pods?"

"Was one of the first people out of the Pods, dude," Paco said, making a face. "There's like, a half-dozen of us who've been here since the beginning, and one of them is me." He leaned back against the wall. "Stacy tells us that we've got this stuff called 'Avia', which is kind of like our souls, and traveling around in between time and reality like she does might make it come loose and fall out. Which is bad, obviously. So sometimes one of the AI's tests our Avia, and if it's in danger of coming out, we get stuffed back in the Pods."

He shrugs. "That's what we're told, anyway."

"The beginning... do you remember when? How long ago was it?" Castiel continued to inquire, blue eyes unblinking. "And this 'Avia', I suppose it extends to non-humans, but Dean told me that there are more than one version of me in the Pods."

"I think it's almost two years at this point," Paco said. "But it's hard to tell. And we were in the Pods for longer than that -- apparently that Aang guy running around was part of a different group of people-from-the-pods, back when the Daligig were Stacy's crew."

He frowned thoughtfully. Come to think of it, the guy did seem a little familiar, but it was hard to say if that was just because Paco had been seeing him around or had seen him around before. "Dean...Winchester? Tall, has cool stories about things that go bump in the night, good taste in cars?"

Hmn. Interesting information yet again. Castiel made sure to remember all of this, and possibly ask around more so he could understand the whole thing with Stacy and the voyage.

Castiel nodded again when he mentioned his charge. "Yes, Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man. You know of him?"

"Well, he didn't exactly introduce himself with that fancy title or anything, but yeah, I've talked with him," Paco said. "He's pretty cool. I need to snag him at some point to see if he'd be interested in racing his Impala against my Beetlemobile."

"Dean is an interesting person to be around. Stubborn, hard-headed, human."

Castiel said the last part with a hint of wonder and respect in his voice. Being an angel, he doesn't quite get the 'free will and humanity' part yet, though, learning about it from Dean was probably a wrong choice.

"I'm guessing from the sound of that, you're not?" Paco asked. "Human, I mean."

When they'd talked, Dean had talked mostly monsters and urban legends that weren't really legends. This guy looked human, but he didn't talk like it, and he didn't seem like a monster or anything.

"I am an angel of the Lord," Castiel replied without missing a beat. "This form is my vessel."

...Welp, hadn't been expecting that.

"Seriously?" Paco asked, looking the guy over again, this time with a little apprehension. "Like with the wings and the halo and the smiting-the-wicked?"

"I am not punching anyone."

Zouichi was mostly just here to observe the architecture, which he'd heard the Vatican was an impressive example of. Unfortunately, the version of the Vatican that was on the ship seemed a little... changed from what he'd expected. Perhaps the Media Library would have been a better bet.

"And I'm not talking to you," Paco answered back, rolling his head to look at the other guy. "I'm talking to the big man upstairs, assuming the Ohm didn't eat him too."

"The big man upstairs?" Zouichi listened, but if there was someone on the upper floor, he could discern no footsteps or movement. "I don't think he heard you. Perhaps your voice didn't carry that far."

Paco blinked, then huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. "No, not an actual guy upstairs. I meant God. Or whoever or whatever it is that throws crap into our lives for us to deal with. Not a big religious guy, I take it?"

Zouichi paused. "Ah. You're a Catholic, then? Like the Chancellor? And no, I'm not particularly religious."

It would be sort of weird if he was. Godless killing machine and all that. "Why would God purposefully make your life more difficult?"

"Yeah, I'm Catholic. Not always a very good one, but I'm not lapsed or anything."

He crossed his arms over his stomach, his mouth twisting unhappily. "Couldn't tell you, dude. That's a question for a priest or some guy who's spent years doing Bible study. I'm just the guy who's got to deal with it as it comes." He sighs. "It's probably more life and the people in it than God. Especially since apparently everyone on this ship is somehow off the grand plan of things or whatever."

He blinked. "What constitutes a 'good' Catholic?"

Ah, yes. That whole Thread Walker thing. Zouichi had rarely heard of a more depressing concept. "Life has not been treating you well?"

Paco sighed. "Look, not to shut you down when you're interested in learning stuff or anything, but I'm not really up for Catholicism 101 right now. I'm kind of in the middle of some something here, so I'm gonna need to call a rain-check until it gets sorted out."

He made a face in answer to Zouichi's second question. "No more or less than anyone else on this ship, I guess. Just really feeling it right now."

"I understand. Sorry for bothering you."

Perhaps he'd be able to explore the Vatican some other time.

"You couldn't have known, don't worry about it." Paco tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling again. "And don't let me stop you from checking the place out. Took a beating when people holed up in here to fight giant cockroaches, but it's still a pretty nice place."

Jaime shuffled into the immense church, staring up towards the altar for a long moment. He'd been raised Catholic, and while he wasn't the best, he'd still gone to Mass with his family on Easter, Christmas, the big days. His mom and dad had taken him every week when he'd been younger, but these days, with mom working and dad disabled, it had dropped to once a month or every two weeks, at best. Sometimes you needed to talk to God and where else but the Vatican, battered and battle-scarred as it was. He took a few more steps, then turned as he heard Paco's voice.

"Hey. Paco." He shifted his weight, then turned to walk over to his friend.

"You too, huh?"

For a moment -- for one, brief moment -- Paco was angry. Furious. But only for a moment, then Paco pushed the anger away. This wasn't Jaime's fault, this was the Ohm's fault, and Jaime had enough on his shoulders right now anyway.

"Yeah," he said, sighing heavily. "Me too." He laughed a little bitterly. "I'm not even sure what I'm 'me too'ing, but I'm definitely in a me-too state of mind."

He sighed again and pushed a hand through his hair. "...I think my family's gone."

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Hoping everything's not lost

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Sorry, LJ ate some of my response. Should have checked it earlier.