Collaboration between Mach2 and YoshiSkittlez ------ Only when James was completely gone and out of the house did Deon feel like he could relax again. He sunk his back against the arm of the couch and leaned his now clean of blood face back, feeling the blood rushing to his head. He continued to hold onto the rag, however, in case any sort of movement he made with his face cracked open the fresh scabs. He raised his head back up, feeling the rush of blood drain back down into his body before he looked to Vander. "Thanks." He muttered and gestured towards the bloody rag he was holding. The word seemed...almost foreign to him, the same tickling feeling came to his lips as a child would experience after using their first swear word. Vander nodded an acknowledgement to his thanks, not yet able to force herself to meet his gaze. There was a small part of her that wanted to tell him to follow James out the door, and leave her apartment. There was a part of her that just wanted to be alone and think. But she wasn't about to do that, not when it was at least partially her fault his face was bleeding and his ribs were cracked. "How are your ribs?" she asked, knowing the answer. She knew basic first aid for cuts and scrapes, but had little knowledge of how to handle broken ribs. Deon shrugged. "Well usually I let them marinate in a goopy sauce over night like everyone else, but I do have a few special seasonings I add while I'm grilling." Deon joked and tried to laugh, though was forced into a coughing fit as he did so. The joke didn't even get so much as a smile from Vander. Instead, her expression filled with concern. After a second of hesitation, she stood up, crossing over to Deon and placing a hand on his shoulder while she waited for him to stop coughing. "Should I call a doctor or something?" He shook his head no. "The second you give them my name, they'll laugh and hang up on you." He said once his coughing had ceased. "I'll be fine, I go through something like this on a weekly basis." He said trying to assure her. "But...thank you..." He said, feeling that weird tingle again. "All right..." Vander said. She sat down on the couch beside him, staring down at her hands. "You can stay here if you want tonight. The couch isn't comfortable...but I feel like biking home with broken ribs wouldn't be too fun either." She made the offer hesitantly, keeping as much emotion out of her voice as she could. The last thing she needed was for him to get the wrong idea. Deon didn't answer right away. His lip had cracked back open from talking and he was busy patting away the blood into the cloth. "Yeah, yeah that wouldn't feel too great." He agreed. He had used up all his 'thank you's' for the night. Hell...even the rest of the month. "If you don't mind." He added. He didn't find her couch to be as uncomfortable as she had made it out to be...he had slept on worse. "I'll be out of your hair tomorrow, and you've got enough Lucid to last you for the rest of your life...so it looks like you lucked out because after tomorrow, you don't ever have to come see me again...not if you don't wanna." She nodded in agreement, her face expressionless. After tomorrow morning, there would be no more Deon in her life. Standing from the couch, she walked to the open closet and grabbed an over sized raglan sweater from the floor, as well as an old pair of sweat pants. Without another word to him, Vander entered the washroom to get changed for bed. She pulled the shirt James had bought her out of the pocket of her jacket, hanging it carefully over the towel rack, and pulled off her clothes. Catching sight of her reflection in the dirty mirror, she couldn't help but to cringe. Bruises still lined her back from last night in the alleyway. With the aid of Lucid, she could see each one depicted in exquisite detail. With a quiet sigh, she pulled on the sweater and pants. Even if Deon would be gone, she would have those bruises for most of what remained of her life. It wasn't a thought she wanted to entertain. When Deon left tomorrow, he would be gone. That was all she let herself think right now. Deon watched her go to what he had to assume was the bathroom, no doubt to change or to even take a shower. He felt his body itching to get up off of the couch and follow her, to catch her naked or something and then make a moment out of it...but there was something else pressing against his thoughts, something...uncomfortable...but it was enough to keep him on the couch. The poor girl was going through enough, the last thing she needed was him hounding on her again. He winced. When the hell did he start caring? He shut his eyes and laid his head back down on the couch. James must have hit him harder than he thought. Leaving the bathroom again, she walked past Deon to sit on the edge of her bed...right on top of a hard lump beneath the mattress. With a small frown, she stood, reaching under the mattress to grab the gun she had stored there earlier. "This is yours," she said, walking back to the couch to hand the weapon back to Deon. Opening his eyes back up, but not sitting up, Deon watched as Vander left the bathroom in what he assumed was more comfortable clothes for her. He continued to watch her wordlessly as she then brought the gun back to him, and it was then that he moved to sit up with a painful series of grunts. He took the gun from her gently. "I want to show you something..." He said and then opened up the clip and tipped the gun upside down. No bullets fell from the gun. He then handed it back to her for her to look at herself. "It was never loaded. I picked it up at the warehouse when I got you your Lucid. Didn't even stop to think that I would need bullets for it." He said. "I may come across as an angry person...ruthless sometimes even...but I would never kill someone. I...I just want you to know that. I wasn't going to shoot James either." Vander turned the weapon over in her hands, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief, confusion, and relief. She chewed silently at her lip for a moment, unable to respond. When Deon had pulled the gun out on James, she had been terrified. For everything Deon had done wrong, this was a complete change of heart. Setting the useless firearm down on the ground, she shook her head at him. "Why can't you act like a human being all the time?" Deon sighed. He already knew his answer, but explaining it to someone else was something completely different. It took quite some time for his own mother to even understand it...before she had died. "When I'm the Crusher...people expect a show. They want to see blood, broken bones, harsh words...when I first became the Crusher, it was hard to submerge myself into that kind of lifestyle, the only thing I had ever hurt before were cows when I worked at the slaughterhouse. But when I finally got the Crusher's personality down, it stuck hard after..." He couldn't bring himself to say it. "...you know. And even now...it's...difficult to put The Crusher away and become just Deon again. I...I don't even know who Deon is anymore..." Vander nodded, finally able to understand. Everything Deon was when he was around others was an act, a role he had assumed so deeply, it became his reality. The fact that he had dropped that shell, shown his old personality when he as around her...she didn't know how she felt about that. Some mixture of uneasiness and gratitude. "Well, Deon is a lot easier to talk to than the Crusher is," she acknowledged simply. She offered him the slightest of smiles, too emotionally drained after the stressful events of that day to be able to give anything more. A slight chuckle came from Deon's throat. "Believe me, I don't like him any more than you do...which I know is a lot." He returned her smile, his own white smile seeming to make his face genuinly glow with an effect that almost looked like...happiness. His eyes then glanced to the floor where the array of pizza and other food items had been laid. "Well...we have a tub of cookie dough...we can either pop in some chick flick movie and eat it out of the carton, or I can make an honest to God effort and get up to bake them for you. Which is it?" A reluctant laugh was elicited from Vander at the suggestion to watch a movie. She was quickly nearing the point where all she wanted to do was crawl into her bed and fall asleep. "My holovision might die on us," she apologized in advance. Standing up, she walked over to her bed and knelt down, pulling out a small box of discs. Most were films she had watched when she was younger. Looking at them now, she was unable to keep the sadness out of her expression. There were few actual movies in the collection. Most were advanced-level science documentaries. The box of films was one of the few things she had managed to take with her when she'd left home. She returned to Deon, offering him the box with an apologetic shrug at its contents. "Take your pick." Deon didn't even bother looking through the collection, instead he just stuck his hand into the box and pulled out the first one that he grabbed onto. While she waited for him to choose from the selection, she walked over to the old-model holovision on the wall. After some fiddling, Vander finally managed to get the glowing screen to light up. He held out the selected movie for her to put in before bending at the waist a tiny bit to attempt to grab at the cookie dough, but when his ribs let out a loud snapping sound followed by a pained hiss from Deon, he just sat back into the couch with an annoyed expression on his face. He lifted up the side of his shirt to look at his ribs better. His entire side was covered in black and blue bruises, some larger than others, and there was a distinctive bump where one of his ribs was attempting to jut out of his skin. Vander turned at the sound of Deon's noise of pain. Seeing the dark bruises on his chest, her expression fell. "I can get you some ice," she offered quickly, and he nodded. Retreating to the kitchen once more, she opened the freezer. There were trays of ice there, but most had sublimated away. She frowned, pulling out the three trays and opening cupboards in search of a bag. The best she could come up with was a small garbage bag, but it would do. Cracking the remnants of the ice cubes into the bag, she walked back to the living room with the makeshift cold pack in hand and offered it to Deon. He took it gratefully from her and pressed the makeshift bag of ice to his rib cage, jumping at the sudden coldness on his skin but it otherwise felt pretty good. He removed his arm from his shirt and left the shirt to rest up on his shoulder so it wouldn't get wet, leaving the other half of his shirt on sheerly for Vander's sake. "We have a movie to watch yes?" She still looked unconvinced, having seen the rib that looked as though it was going to try to jab through his chest. "Yeah..." she answered reluctantly, grabbing the disc he had selected. Scrawled in messy writing across the front of the disc were the numbers "2112-2115". Her expression fell visibly, and she wasted no time placing the disc back in the box and pulling out another. "No," was all she said as her reason. Looking at the new option, she held it up for Deon to read. Again, the title was hand-written. A lecture and presentation on advanced organic chemistry. She laughed quietly. "Tired? I guarantee it'll put you to sleep," Vander said. She offered him the box of discs once more, doubting that her old videos from school courses would grab his interest. This got a small laugh from Deon. What kind of movie collection did she have anyway? He stuck his hand back into the box and pulled out the first one he touched, this time looking at it. "Hey, here's an old one..." He said and tossed it to her. "But whatever you want bab-er...Vander. If you want to watch that sleepy one I'm down with that too." "I doubt I have enough brain cells left to understand organic chem anymore," she muttered, catching the disc and looking at it. "RED? Sounds good." She walked back to the holovision and slipped the disc in, hoping that the old device would still work. After a few seconds of delay, the film finally started up. Vander walked back to the couch, sitting down beside Deon, but being careful to keep a decent amount of space between them. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs and curling up to watch the movie. He adjusted himself on the couch as well so that he was sort of laying his torso in a somewhat awkward angle so that his bruised ribs weren't touching the couch to keep any unwanted pain away. He rested his arm across the back of the couch and eyed the cookie dough still on the floor before looking back to Vander with a somewhat childish look and smile on his face. "One more favor?" Vander looked over, and it didn't take her more than a second to figure out what the favor was. She smiled slightly, proceeding to unfold her knees and reach forward to grab the tub of cookie dough. She set it on the couch between them, perhaps a bit closer to Deon than to herself, before resuming her curled up position once more. Deon popped open the container of cookie dough and pulled off the spoon that came with it that had been attached to the bottom of the lid. He scooped up a good amount and then plopped it into his mouth before returning the spoon to the dough and then slid the container over to her. After a moment of hesitation, Vander obliged. She scooped herself a mouthful of cookie dough, closing her eyes to savor the sweet taste. It had been a long time since she'd last eaten cookie dough. Probably even longer since she'd been able to taste it properly with Lucid. Setting the container back down near Deon, she found herself immediately exhausted. Movies had always had that effect on her. But combined with Lucid, a drug with the side effect of stimulating dreams, the tiredness was overwhelming. Within a few minutes, the tightly curled up form she had taken on the couch had relaxed. Already asleep, she was unaware of the fact that she had leaned sideways against Deon. Her breathing slowed, and a moment later her eyes twitched beneath closed lids, signalling REM sleep. With er hit of Lucid, she would be dreaming tonight. Deon's attention shifted from the movie to Vander as he felt her slide into him a bit. He didn't even stop to think just how tired she must have been, given the state that her body was in. He watched her carefully, studying her still features, able to really take in the true beauty of her face and features without fear of being scolded by Vander herself. "You really are beautiful..." Deon whispered softly, finding his fingers raking through her hair gently. He moved his body a bit so that they would both be in a more comfortable position before he put his arm back around her, continuing to run his fingers through her hair in a soothing fashion. It really was a shame that she was going to die, but he wouldn't have found out just how beautiful a person she really was if she hadn't been dying. "You've got thirty days to live..." He said, using his finger to stroke the side of her cheek gently. "And I want to be there to give you the best thirty days of your life...if you'd just let me..." He sighed and rested his head back down on the arm of the couch, though still wide awake. He kept his arm around her, moving his hand from her face down to her arm, rubbing the skin gently. It wasn't until the movie was nearly over did he finally fall asleep, followed by troubled dreams. ----------------------------------------------------- There were plenty of dreams that night. Vividly coloured dreams in which she stood on clouds and watched the Earth rotate below her. Dreams in which she wandered through an endless forest, never tiring of staring at the details on the trees. But one dream stood out, so much more real than the rest. Vander found herself standing in her old bedroom. There was the bookshelf, filled with massive volumes of complex works. Everything was carefully organized, like a miniature library. Non-fiction textbooks resided near the top. Epic fantasies and science fiction novels towards the bottom. She traced a finger over the familiar books. Her desk sat beside the shelf, half-finished essays scrawled across pages of looseleaf. The blinds on the window above the desk were open, the yellow-orange glow of street lights streaking across the pages of work. It was the only hint of disorganization in the entire room. A textbook was open on the desk, depicting complex diagrams of molecular compounds. In the corner of the desk, there was an old datapad, the screensaver blinking away. On the other corner, a box of familiar holovision discs. Her single bed was made, a grey and white striped blanket tucked in neatly along the edges. On the bed lay a familiar figure, propped up on one elbow with a sheet of paper held in her hand. Vander stared, and her younger self stared back. She recognized herself as sixteen. At that age, her body looked entirely different than it did now. Her dark hair fell in messy waves to her shoulders, parted unevenly down the middle. The girl was slender, but healthy. There still remained a hint of baby fat clinging to her cheeks. Her expression was incredulous as she stared at Vander. “Who are you?” she asked, dumbfounded by the familiarity. Vander looked down at herself, taking stock. Her own body was hollowly thin, jeans loose on her thin legs no matter how small a size they may be. Her hair was shaved, and she knew well the bones of her cheeks and jaw-line cut sharp edges across her face. She must have looked terrifying to the sixteen year old sitting on the bed. Like looking into a funhouse mirror. Vander shook her head, ignoring the question from her younger self, and sat down on the bed. “What’s that?” she asked softly, looking to the paper the girl held in her hands. The younger Vander sat up, folding her legs under her to sit cross-legged and handing the single page over. “Scores. From my Advanced Aptitude Test,” she answered. She gave a slight smile. “They spelled my name wrong.” Vander took the page, reading over the brief text. [i]Vander Pzypaloski, On behalf of the New Ancora Department of Education, this letter is to inform you of the results of your Advanced Aptitude Test, written on December 14th, 2115. Your scores have achieved a passing grade, with details as follows: Advanced Mathematics…………………….…..95% English………………………………….………99% Physics………………………………….………98% Human Anatomy…………………….…………92% Graduate Chemistry……………………….…..100% Introduction to Advanced Organic Chemistry…98% Technical Writing………………………………98% These scores combine for an overall average of 97.1%. Congratulations on your achievement of earning a graduate level degree. We wish you all the best in future endeavours. [/i] The letter was accompanied with a signature from the head of the department of education. “I forgot how smart you were.” Vander smiled proudly, handing the letter back to her younger self. “Those are amazing scores. Dad had his video camera going when you opened the letter, didn’t he?” The girl nodded, smiling. “Scores weren’t so great for Human Anatomy…but still, it’s high enough for a scholarship to Bohr’s Post-Secondary. Four thousand credits, with my average,” the young Vander explained, trying and failing to suppress her pride. “Their chemistry program is amazing. If I take a year off, get a job, save up some money…what?” Vander realized her expression had shifted into something darker. Memories were creeping back into her mind. The year she had taken off from school, where everything had gone wrong. She shook her head, forcing the smile back onto her face as she looked at the girl that sat beside her. “Nothing. Bohr’s is fantastic. You’re going to love it,” she assured her. But her younger twin looked unconvinced. She stared at Vander. At her hair, at her emaciated body, at the tired bags underneath her eyes. “You’re me,” she declared, the shock of realization evident on her face. “You’re older, but you’re me…you…” she hesitated, anxiety hinted in her expression. “You don’t go to Bohr’s, do you?” Vander sighed, looking away. At sixteen, the chemistry program at Bohr’s was her dream. How on earth was she supposed to tell this girl that she never even went on a tour of the campus? How could she crush her like that? But at the same time, she knew that this girl was too intelligent to be lied to. “No. I don’t…[i]you[/i] don’t go to Bohr’s,” she answered, shaking her head and watching the girl’s expression fall. “You don’t save up the money. You just…things don’t always work out.” She watched as the young Vander’s eyes grew glossy with tears. “What do you mean things don’t work out? I studied for [i]weeks[/i] for the Aptitude Test!” Reaching out, Vander pulled the girl into a hug. “I know you did. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. You’re a good kid,” she told her, feeling the tears come to her own eyes. “You’re such a great, brilliant, [i]fantastic[/i] kid. And you’ve done everything right so far. You’ve studied so hard, and you’ve stayed out of trouble, and you’ve been such a great kid.” The girl pulled out of the hug, wiping the tears from her eyes and looking at her older self. “What happens?” she asked, voice filled with dread. “Tell me what happens.” Vander pulled her own legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed across from her younger self. Now that they were both sitting the same way, it truly was like looking in a warped and twisted mirror. She saw her younger reflection, so much promise and so much potential. “You make bad choices,” she answered simply. Reading the girl’s expression, Vander saw that the answer wasn’t enough. She either had to give the whole truth, or nothing at all. Taking a breath, she began relaying her future to her younger self. “Chemistry comes easy to you. You probably would have been one of New Ancora’s most gifted scientists. You’ve got the mind for it, Vander. Memorizing compounds and formulas is nothing for you…it doesn’t take someone with your brains to learn how to synthesize street drugs. For you, that’s child’s play. It’s easy money.” The young Vander had gone pale. She looked physically ill, her apprehension so great that it seemed she might be sick at any moment. But the story continued. “You can’t just surround yourself with that sort of lifestyle and expect to not get sucked in,” she told herself, the words heavy with regret. “You got halfway there, Vander. You tried so hard. You could have covered tuition for half the length of the chemistry program.” For several seconds, the two Vanders stared at each other in silence. Their faces bore mirrored expressions of crushing disappointment. Finally, the younger one spoke. “Do I die?” she asked. “Not yet…but you’re getting there.” She nodded, looking away from her older self. After a few more seconds of silence, she spoke once more, her words biting and cold. “I hate you.” “You…what?” The young girl looked her older self directly in the eye, her gaze filled with anger. “I hate you. What kind of idiot saves up college money by selling drugs?” she asked, the tears now overflowing down her cheeks. “You ruin my life! I hate you!”