trans_9 | Man, you look just like I feel [Open]

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Man, you look just like I feel [Open]

Despite the uproar that had taken place only a day earlier, it was all quiet at the Susono Inn. Well... mostly quiet, anyway. It was home to some of the most stubborn crew members on the ship, almost all of whom had gotten involved in the brawl with the Kessek.

Allenby's arm had been broken. Simon had taken a hard one directly to the ribs. Zouichi would probably take a week to get back to real fighting form.

And Howard... well, it would probably take Howard a while to recover from what had happened.

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"I see." Barbara listened to the cat's purr as she reflected. There could be a range of reasons as to why Howard felt the need to control someone as large and intimidating as Orc. "Why do you want to keep Orc under control? Does he hurt you otherwise?"

"No." It's not entirely true, but the time Orc broke his nose has been filed into the "it only happened once so it didn't count' box in Howard's head. "He's my friend."

He looks at Barbara with an expression that implies that he expects her to find this a completely satisfactory explanation for wanting to control someone. Like her and Ian, right?

Not...not quite that right.

Barbara sighed and closed her eyes. It was difficult to not think of the entire situation as 'wrong', or try to redirect Howard's thinking. And Howard didn't exactly take things like that lightly. Or well, for that matter.

"Alright," she said eventually, "and how long as this been going on?"

"We been friends for four years, he's been drinking heavy for one and a half, his time." Stacy threw them out of whack - Howard's nearly a year older than how Orc thinks he should be.

He sees the concern in Barbara's face and reads it as disappointment. He exhales deep. "We went through everything together, back home. He's all I had."

She nodded once. It made more sense when put like that. In such a dangerous world, keeping people one trusts close could be the only way to save one's sanity. So it was understandable that Howard went to such extreme measures to keep his only ally. Barbara had little idea of what she would do in the same situation.

"And you wanted to keep him close in case you were left all alone? I can understand that."

"Yeah. And because he needed me too. He'd have died without me." It's hard enough to stay alive in the FAYZ. To die would be to easy, and for someone as depressed as Orc, too tempting. "And someone probably would have killed me if he wasn't around."

He's about to remind Barbara that she can't tell anyone about this, but he realizes that actually, he trusts her. He wouldn't have told her any of this if he didn't. But she's kept true to her word so far, not judging or accusing but simply teasing out more answers for better understanding, so he doesn't need to say anything to her about the importance of secrecy.

"He cares about me, too. It's not just some one-sided thing."

"If he didn't care about you, he might not have left the ship with free alcohol readily available at all times," she pointed out as she scratched under the cat's chin.

"Do you want my honest opinion?" because she had one but she was happy to keep it locked away somewhere if Howard didn't want to hear it.

He bites his lip and takes so long responding to the question that it might look as if he's forgotten she asked it. On one hand, he knows it's going to hurt because he knows the whole situation is twisted and wrong, but on the other...it's Barbara. She's said things that have hurt him but she's never been cruel, even when angry and insulted.

"Yeah." He braces his hands against the edge of the bed almost as if expecting a physical blow.

"Where I come from, that would be considered as unhealthy but! I think that we are indeed in very different circumstances, and what you have with Orc is just as 'normal' or 'sane' as a blue centaur with four eyes, or 14 year old fully trained ninja and medic. Or six-foot tall militant lizard people, or time travel or..." Barbara broke her ramble to sigh a little, "or just about anything else on this ship.

"However," she continued ever so cautiously, "if you feel that your relationship with Orc would survive and you don't want him drinking so much, you could help him off the alcohol. If you wanted to, that is."

Howard hangs on to that little bit of hope Barbara gives him. Right, they don't have to worry so much about normal when they passed the bridge into Weirdtown many many stops ago.

But it still doesn't change the fact that he thinks she's wrong.

"I don't know if it would survive." He sighs and wrings his hands over each other, over and over. "He's not going to need me like I need him. Not ever. And anyway, I wouldn't know where to start."

"I don't know Orc, so I can't say much more on the matter." The cat in her lap stood up to headbutt her in the stomach for not paying enough attention to it. Barbara scratched behind its ears but was still quite mindful of Howard. "But that's what I think."

Howard exhales and some of the tension goes out of his shoulders, like he's still shakey but so relieved to talk to someone. Especially to Barbara, who is patient and understanding and factoring in that he's not only a fifteen year-old, but a fifteen year-old with horrendous problems socializing.

"I stayed back home for him, you know. In the FAYZ. I had a chance to leave. Only really good thing I done." He takes another deep breath and then lies back on the bed, letting Sushi walk on his stomach.

"And I'm sure he's immensely grateful," Barbara smiled as she looked back at Howard.

She looked as though she were hesitating for another moment. "Are you positive there's nothing I can get you? ...I could even bring you a book or two if you'd like."

"He doesn't know." He doesn't match Barbara's smile, nor does he even try to. But he does get up off the bed and open the cupboard in the bedside table. "No, I'm okay in here. You did say you wanted to read my stuff, right?"

"I'd be delighted," Barbara replied and put the cat on the ground to better free up her hands. Seeing Howard's writing was exciting because it was a whole different side to him that they'd only discussed briefly before. "But only if you want me to."

Howard sits back down and goes through the journal, holding it at an angle where Barbara can't see the pages. "Just promise to just read the fiction stuff, alright? I journal in here too and that's kind of personal."

He finally decides on a piece and passes the journal over to Barbara. It's a few handwritten pages in neat print, a short story about drowning, and then another story about choosing cryogenic freezing over living in the present. They're both fairly morbid, and littered with spelling and grammatical errors, but the basic structures of the story and mood are well-set.

He sits at the end of the bed, clutching Emergency Rations while he waits for Barbara's assessment.

Barbara hadn't expected anything happy, or joyful or light. She stuck to exactly what Howard asked her to read and nothing more. She saw through the spelling errors and grammar errors, trying to read it as Barbara rather than Miss Wright, as it wasn't a mark or a gold star he was after. He merely wanted to share something with her.

"I was right about your eye for detail," she said eventually, after she'd read each story through a few times. "You're an incredible story teller. Were there specific things which inspired you, or are these just a mix of feelings based on the FAYZ and everything?"

"Really? You think?" Howard sounds a little more excited about the positive feedback than he wants to. It's not as if he expected Barbara to be mean, but he was anticipating something more around the lines of 'that's nice'.

"Um, mostly just feelings and dreams and all. Like I get a feeling and try to write it so it's not about me, because that feels kind of...I don't know, like it's just rehashing what already happened."

"I do think," she told him, surprised at his reaction but happy all the same.

It saddened Barbara that Howard had such feelings and dreams which made him consider drowning and and freezing himself. If anything, however, he was dealing with it more healthily than any adult who had been to years of therapy.

Curiosity pulled at Barbara, and she found herself asking for more information. Although she was careful about it, she knew that there were still limits, no matter what he was showing her. "Were these written on Stacey or before?"

"I haven't shown them to no one before." He smiles a broad grin, even though it's fleeting.

"On Spacey Stacy. Ink's a rare commodity back home." Like everything else. "I'm thinking maybe if I ever get away, I could do this as a job. I mean, it doesn't have to be stories, it could be like...hotel reviews or something. Just as long as I don't have to deal with people that much."

Edited 2012-03-22 04:27 (UTC)

"I think you could. All you'd need is an editor or a representative so you wouldn't have to talk to as many people, whether you do stories or reviews or opinion pieces in newspapers."

It was a strange kind of relief that Howard had this outlet, and while she felt privileged that he shared it with her, she would have been just as happy had he kept his samples to himself.

"What did you do before Stacey, then?" she asked as she passed the treasured book back to Howard. "Did you write the stories in your mind?"

"Nah. I kind of wanted to run a business or something, so I could ban people I didn't like." That was about as far ahead as Howard thought back before the FAYZ, but then again he was thirteen. "I didn't really do nothing creative before coming here, except doodling in my notebook and stuff."

He feels guilty, almost. Here he's been bringing Barbara into this other side of his life, his cats and his writing and his job, and he hasn't done the same for her. He's been mostly meeting her on his terms, rather than on hers.

He slides the book back into the cupboard. "Do you want to show me the TARDIS sometime?"

Barbara giggled, "that's a good plan, then you'd be surrounded by people you enjoy. I wish I'd thought of it."

When Howard offered to go into the TARDIS with her, she sobered a little. "I thought you didn't like the TARDIS?" She recalled something about it trying to eat him whole.

"It'd have to be a small business." He smirks self-deprecatingly.

"I don't, but I don't know. Maybe I just caught it on a bad day. It can't be trying to eat everyone if people are living there." He shrugs.

"She does have bad days," Barbara sighed a little, remembering when she was practically thrown from the wardrobe room for taking too long to choose an outfit. And all those times she wouldn't materialise properly...

"What about, when you're feeling better, I'll show you all my favourite parts of the TARDIS?" she said kindly, reaching down to pat Emergency Rations, who was rubbing its head against her ankle.

Man, you look just like I feel [Open]

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