Daisy Hughes (cyberblonde) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-05-04 13:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, daisy hughes, hunter mackenna |
WHO: Daisy Hughes & Hunter MacKenna
WHAT: Out on a TOP SECRET FACT FINDING MISSION, Daisy and Hunter take a break to discuss... things.
WHEN: Today (Saturday) afternoon.
WHERE: Out on the trails around campus.
WARNINGS: It's long?
STATUS: Complete!
HUNTER: "...And then he was like, do you really want me to do this? And I was like no, man, what I'm trying to say is that it's not about me, it's that this club's whole purpose is supposed to be that it's like, a safe space where nobody's judging who you are or how you got there, and honestly I really think he's gonna hear some stories from other people that might make shit easier on him with his mom..." The mission that Hunter and Daisy had set out upon was actually pretty straightforward, but they'd known setting out that the hardest part was going to be how long it would take. Their leisurely walk had turned into more of a hike once they'd finished with the main buildings and headed out towards the edge of campus. By the time they were done, they would hopefully know every unmonitored blind spot within the forcefield. If they were really going to do this -- if their plan was going to succeed -- their little rebel group needed to have safe places to talk, meet, or work. Hunter had been planning to do this for a while now. He'd already put together a workable map with grid zones that wouldn't obviously seem like what it really was to the casual observer, and he had worked out a simple system for Daisy to signal whether an area was in range of a camera, a mic, or safe (until Daisy pointed out that they didn't need a code word for no bugs if there were no bugs -- she always had a way of being just a little too practical when he was getting excited, dammit). It was just up to Daisy to use her power to sense the technology and its range. The hardest part wasn't proving to be the system, however: it was that Daisy was distracted, preoccupied with other thoughts, and as he glanced over to her face, he could see that she wasn't listening to him talking, either. He stopped walking. "Come on, Dais," he reproached her gently, trying to keep the whine out of his tone, "I know you're thinking about him, but you gotta pay attention, okay? Anyway, long story short, Vic said he's gonna, you know, actually come to OUTback with me next time it meets. I thought you'd like that." DAISY: At the sound of her name, Daisy looked up. "Oh, sorry," she said distractedly. "Yeah, no, I mean -- I do, that's great. Honestly, I'm really happy for you." She gave Hunter her best attempt at a smile; she was happy for him, it was good to see that everything seemed to be working out so well between him and Vic. But it was hard to focus on someone else's good news when you had such pressing worries about your own relationship. About whether or not it even existed anymore, for example. "Sorry," she said again, "I'm not ignoring you, I promise. I'm just... a little out of it, that's all." HUNTER: "It's okay," he sighed, resigned. Hunter knew it wasn't personal. She was upset -- and who wouldn't be, after what had happened between her and Carter? Hunter was upset about it. But part of the point of doing this now was to help distract Daisy, to get her mind off of Carter for a little while. The last thing that she needed to be doing was obsessing about it, especially if it might lead to her trying to talk to him. He did wish that she could talk to him about the whole OUTback thing, because despite his confident stance on the issue, he was pretty fucking worried about all the ways it could go horribly wrong...but now wasn't the time, and that wasn't her fault. It was fucking Carter's. He still had figure out what he wanted to do about that. "Don't worry about it. Just, you know -- we still have to keep paying attention while we're walking, don't forget. Even on IVI's campus, we don't really know what we might find out here." He made eye contact with her as he spoke, hoping that his hint wouldn't be too obtuse for her right now. She hadn't given him a sign whether they were within range of any cameras or mics in a while. DAISY: "I'm payin' attention," she protested slightly, although Daisy knew that Hunter was right to chide her. Her powers didn't need to be activated -- they were always on, they were a part of who she was -- but it could be easy to ignore the feeling she was looking for, if she wasn't concentrating. That slight buzz she felt in her bones. It meant that there was a piece of technology nearby. If she'd been in a better mood, Daisy probably would have enjoyed this almost as much as Hunter. It was a kind of game, like hunting for eggs on Easter. Only it was a game that only Daisy could play, and that was a fact that gave her a certain amount of pride. She liked feeling as if she was useful for something. Frustrated, she stopped walking and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of noise. Carter's name was repeating on a loop; she tried to push it away. "There's nothing here," Daisy finally shrugged, opening her eyes to look at Hunter with her face folded into a pout. "I mean, in my radius anyway. Maybe they're monitoring us from space and this whole thing is freakin' pointless and I'm gonna get us all in trouble and everyone will hate me." She was being purposefully dramatic, but there was some degree of possibility in Daisy's hypothetical -- what if she did miss something? What if she did everything she could, but IVI still managed to pick up their conversations anyway? HUNTER: He relaxed slightly when she gave them the all-clear. Somehow, though it made very little difference when they were already trapped inside a force field, it made him feel just a tiny bit better to know that he could say and do whatever he wanted without Big Brother watching. One of Hunter's eyebrows arched at Daisy, though. She could be dramatic all day long if she liked, but Hunter was armed with Logic and Reason to keep her from moping, if she cared to listen. "If they could monitor us from outside of the force field, you know they would, because none of us would be able to tamper with the devices," he pointed out. "And if their mics and cameras were good enough to cover distances outside of your radius, they wouldn't need so many around the buildings." Reaching out, he caught hold of her hand and tugged her towards a rock next to the path, just about the right height to sit on. It was a good spot to sit down and try to take a fucking break. There were things they needed to discuss, anyway, and they were far enough away from the main area of campus that they weren't likely to be interrupted by other students or by patrolling guards. "Look, Dais, we're doing well so far." He took the paper out to mark the location on the map with a line, to form a complete circle later, when they reached the range of a camera or mic again. She could see how much ground they'd covered and how useful she'd been already, if she looked. "Forget about the cameras for a bit -- we'll take a break, have some water. Let's talk about the communications shit. Rose." Looking up at her expectantly, Hunter scratched at his scraggly red-brown goatee. "So what do you think? I mean, if we can't get her on-board, we're going to have a real fucking hard time putting this underground revolution thing together and keeping it connected. I'm almost completely certain she can do it, with you and me on board especially, but..." DAISY: Daisy looked at him, still a bit unwilling to be pulled so forcefully out of the pity-party she was attempting to have for herself. She begrudgingly considered his question. "Yeah, I'm sure she probably can. She's good. I bet she'd be able to make just about anything, if she could think it up. A new server shouldn't be a problem at all." Daisy bit her lip and reached for the water bottle. She liked Rose fine. They even worked together sometimes, figuring out interesting ways to combine their powers together. But... "But there's the whole Vol Squad thing. I don't know how much she's doing it because she wants to help or if she actually buys into the whole 'IVI is great' thing." The doubt in Daisy's voice was hardly even noticeable; it still felt strange to be saying those words. Up until recently, she still hadn't been fully convinced that IVI and the IVF were really the enemy -- she still wasn't, but their response (or lack of) to recent events had been enough to convince her that they weren't right, either. If the students didn't organize, they were doomed to be forever victims. Daisy couldn't stand the idea of going back to solitary again. She took a drink of water and looked back at Hunter. "Let me talk to Conner? They're like, best friends. And if he's already with us, then I think it'll be easier to convince her. I mean, she likes me too, but... I mean, I trust Conner, and if he thinks it's a lost cause or something, he'll tell me." HUNTER: The corner of his lip caught between his teeth, as it often did when he was thinking. Conner...well, Hunter didn't dislike him, that was for sure. They got along fairly well and he was one of the first people at IVI who Hunter had willingly told about his power, during the kidnapping rescue effort. But learning that Conner came from a family of cops had set off alarm bells in Hunter -- he was fiercely anti-authoritarian, habitually suspicious of the law, and he was hard-pressed to imagine the son of law-enforcing citizens being willing to participate in something that was so clearly going "behind" the rules. Then again, maybe their kid was rebellious. Or maybe it didn't matter: this situation was making for unusual bedfellows, even just among their core group. He couldn't imagine any other circumstance where he'd be teaming up with Mason and Catalina of all people. But each and every one of them were necessary to get this done. In the end, there were going to be a lot of people involved who Hunter didn't fully trust. He knew that. He just had to remember to accept it. Sighing, Hunter scrubbed his hands slowly across his face and nodded. "Yeah, okay. Conner. I mean, Rianne should be involved too -- we could use her power and I'm pretty sure she'd be on-board. So that could be two birds with one stone, if he wants to talk to her too." He rested his chin in his palm and smiled thinly at Daisy, his mouth tight with strain. "Too fucking bad we don't have Valya on-board yet. If someone turns out to be a bad pick, we could just...wipe their memory. Control z." DAISY: "Is somebody asking him?" Daisy's face changed at the mention of Valya's name, suddenly more engaged in the conversation. Her own memories quickly returned to the conversation she'd had with him, only a few weeks ago. She was unconcerned about trust when it came to Conner, she'd already mentally moved several steps beyond Hunter's worries -- even if Conner didn't think it was a good idea, she was certain that he wouldn't need any memory wiping. Unlike some of her more hard-won friendships at IVI, Daisy had always felt secure in the knowledge that Conner cared for her. Valya was different, though Daisy had similar warm feelings for him. Whether they were somewhat diminutive of what she'd felt for Alyosha -- or whether they were some transubstantiation of her guilt -- she would be willing to put her trust in him, too. "He'd want to be involved, I know he would. I don't know why I didn't mention it earlier." HUNTER: Hunter's expression changed too -- softened slightly, his smile becoming a little more genuinely warm. He hadn't thought much about Valya, aside from his power. Frankly, he didn't know much about the Polish guy on Barn Swallow, aside from his power and his relation to Alyosha. He'd been rueing his lack of information about the people attached to the powers, lately; it was one area where Daisy (and perhaps eventually Kim) would definitely come in handy. "Okay," he said slowly, "well. Good to know. It should probably be you, then." He folded up the map and shoved it in his pocket again, then gave up on sitting unaided and simply slung an arm over her shoulders. For all that he'd proposed this hiking expedition, he was fucking exhausted, and he covered it as best he could by leaning against his friend -- as much for her support as his own. "Soon. I think we should make sure we have our close friends and the necessary tech people onboard to make this work, then start working on most useful powers and people we're pretty sure we trust. But you should be the one to ask. You know him better than any of us, I think." DAISY: She let her weight gently fall into him. It was hot and they were both a little sweaty from the hike, but Daisy didn't mind. "Okay. You'll like him, I think. He was... he came and talked to me, a few weeks ago, after I got out of solitary." Daisy fell silent for a moment, though her expression indicated that she was still thinking, still running through the memory in her mind. "He gets it," she finally said, simply. Daisy looked at Hunter, head crooked, and offered him an attempt at bravery. "Sorry. For being... like this. I'll try harder." HUNTER: He'd been thinking, in the silence, about Valya. About how his little brother had been murdered by Hume and his people. He remembered being shaken, nauseous, trying not to let himself give into thoughts about what fate might be waiting his friends if they were prepared to do something like this to a kid like Alyosha -- trying not to let himself fall prey to stupid little memories about his teammate, who he hadn't ever gone out of his way to care about until the moment he found out how he'd died. And now, thinking back, imagining how Valya must have felt in that moment instead of what he'd been feeling. What Valya must have been thinking since. They'd decided, early on, that they weren't going to try to involve any of the radically anti-IVI, pro-VR types, simply because most of them appeared to be more interested in the fight than the more complex process of establishing trust among Vols, and none of them seemed trustworthy. But Valya hadn't been put in solitary and he hadn't marked himself as one of the crazies, and given all the reasons he'd had to lose it altogether after Alyosha's death, that was commendable. Valya, he mused. Should've put him on the list from the start. Daisy's apology interrupted his thoughts, and he blinked owlishly down at her, confused. "For being like what? You're being fine." Aside from a little overdramatic, but he expected that, it was one of her quirks. One he could definitely live with. Hunter nuzzled at her hair and yawned into the strands. "You're being fine, shut up." DAISY: A smile narrowed on Daisy's face, and for the first time since they'd set out, she really looked at Hunter. The walk had been strenuous, but he seemed especially worn out. Had his face really looked that tired when they'd left the dorms? "Hey," she said, not bothering to clarify the fact that she clearly was not acting very 'fine,' that she'd hardly been listening to anything he'd said about Vic or OUTback (or, as Daisy privately termed it in her head, 'Mason's Stupid Gay Club'), or that she was well aware of the fact that she'd been sulking for days. "Are you... okay? Did you sleep alright last night?" Daisy was slightly concerned that Hunter would respond with some kind of graphic tale about the ways that Vic kept him up all night, but it was a risk she had to take. HUNTER: Well, that was tempting. It would definitely distract her from worrying about him, and probably discourage more questions. He hadn't mentioned it because, well -- the things that kept him from sleeping some nights were a touchy subject. Sometimes, he could roll over in bed and wake up Vic to keep him occupied for a little while, or just have the security of knowing that he had two solid arms wrapped around him, but most nights he was alone. Sometimes he even had Daisy there. But he hated talking about it much, anymore. He hated thinking about it. Thinking about it only led to obsessing about it, all the threads left untied, the fact that there was still no way to tangibly prove anything either way -- He shrugged uncomfortably to stop his thoughts from sliding in that direction. "I mean, you know. Nothing new. Fucking dreams." More appropriate to say fucking nightmares. His jaw was aching from the urge to yawn again. "I was up half the night walking around because that helps, sometimes. Just...looking around, double-checking I'm at the school and not..." He didn't know why it helped, exactly, because when he dreamed that he woke up in the asylum, he usually ended up screaming and fighting with the nurses again until an orderly pierced his skin with a needle, and when he found himself back in his bed at IVI sweating buckets and twisted in his blankets, he would wonder if it wasn't just the sedative sending him under again. Pleasant. DAISY: "Hey," Daisy interjected as Hunter trailed off. Reaching out her hand, she placed it on his leg. "You know you can always come over, right? Or text me, and I'll come to you. Seriously, you don't ever have to be alone." Her eyes were knotted in concern, all Carter problems and bug-finding missions momentarily forgotten. They didn't talk about the dreams much anymore, that was true -- although if Daisy really stopped to think about it, they'd never talked about them much to begin with, either. Plenty of nights, either Carter or Hunter had soothed her back to sleep when she woke in a moment of terror, and Daisy had felt the sudden grip of Hunter's arms in the early hours of the morning, pulling her close. She'd reassured him of her presence plenty of times, but almost always at night, in the dark. It felt different to acknowledge their nightmares in the daylight. To admit that they still had them. Daisy bit her lip, considering. "Has it been happening a lot lately?" HUNTER: Ah, yes. Now they were talking about it -- really talking about it -- and the things he'd been silently putting aside were about to come out. He couldn't lie to her. She would see right through him, even if he tried to simply edit the truth a bit, and if she hounded him for a real answer, then he couldn't be like Carter and tell her to leave it alone. Pulling his arm away, he leaned forward to rest his elbows against his knees and rubbed at his arm, his fingers instinctively finding the faded cigarette burn from December. For once, it didn't calm him or reassure him all that much. "I know I can," Hunter sighed, feeling irritation build up in his chest despite himself. Not irritation at Daisy, but at himself and the situation he kept coming back to face, time and time again. "I mean, I know, you'd drop everything and come running if I asked, because I'd do the same for you. But I know how to deal with this, I've figured out ways to cope with it, and I'm not seriously going to text you or Vic every single time I have the same fucking dream I have practically every fucking time I have a dream. It's either going to go away eventually or it won't, and either way, there's nothing we can do about it any more than there's anything I could do about it before except decide not to let it take over my life and my choices." There was much more bite in his voice than there had been when he'd started talking, and Hunter grimaced down at the ground, feeling both apologetic and pathetic. DAISY: Her hand was still on his leg, and Daisy gave it a squeeze. She hated how helpless she felt. It was a reduced version of what she'd felt before, when he'd pulled away from her so completely. The words practically every fucking time I have a dream were ringing in her mind. Did Hunter really go to sleep every night and wake up in the Asylum? If so, how long would he be able to keep up the barrier of sanity between reality and dreams? "But if it's not getting better," Daisy countered softly, "maybe we can try something new." She tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but it was shaky and uncertain. "I'm not like, a shrink or anything, but maybe like... maybe talking about it will help. Instead of trying to ignore it and hoping that it'll go away." HUNTER: Hunter looked up at her, his eyes clouded but thoughtful. They hadn't ever really talked about it, true. She hadn't even heard about it from him, but from one of the others in the group. Either their conversations on the journals or someone had spilled to her -- he didn't remember, just that he had been upset at the time, despite otherwise feeling numb and unaffected by everything. He hadn't wanted to do this with her. But then, it had been because he didn't want to see her suffering while he tried to methodically cut some distance between himself and the people he cared about whom he had apparently invented; afterward, it was because rehashing and untangling that time was painful and he didn't want to be reminded of how badly he'd made a mess of things. He wasn't even entirely sure what to say. The nightmare had been so visceral, so real, and that was how his dreams now felt, too. How could he explain the feeling? Daisy had experienced a nightmare of George Cooper's as well, and he was fairly certain that even having seen the Scream movies several times, he couldn't entirely understand what it must have felt like to be in one. Maybe he should just tell her to go watch Shutter Island. "What do you want to know?" he asked at last, softly. At least here, in this blackout spot, he didn't have to feel like the staff was listening in, too. DAISY: It was a loaded question. Daisy wanted to know everything and yet, at the same time, wanted to know nothing at all. Hearing about Hunter's pain was never easy, especially when there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. There was nothing she could have done then and there was nothing that she could do now, at least not in any way that would make a real difference. She couldn't erase it from his past for him. But in the end she did want to know, because it was a part of who he was now. "What happens in the dreams you have now? Are they always the same?" From stories she'd gotten out of others, Daisy had loosely pieced together what had happened to Hunter and the rest of the group that Cooper had taken into his own personal asylum. She could make educated guesses at which parts in particular still haunted Hunter's nights, but hearing it from him would be a start. HUNTER: He shook his head slightly, his thumb still rubbing slowly back and forth across the scar. "No...I mean, I always wake up there. Usually in my room, which is just the one bed." Hunter's mouth tightened and he shuddered a little despite himself, despite the warmth of the day and the sun on his shoulders and all the space around them. "Sometimes I think I'm in solitary at first." He was trying not to picture it in his mind's eye, but it was impossible for the words not to summon images, which fueled more words. "But it's smaller and the paint isn't white, it's that crappy seafoam green and peeling at the corners and you can hear things outside. Other patients. Sometimes I wake up in the...dining hall, I guess, like I fell asleep at the table. I just get up and walk around, and see other people, but I don't recognize any of them, like the first time. So I go looking for Edwin or Audra or Hugo or Nawal or Sol or Anthony and..." Hunter fell quiet, realizing that he'd said much more than he'd originally meant to. No, they're not always the same, even though they are. Some things are different but it's all the same. "In the nightmare," he went on, more brusquely this time, "at one point the walls started moving in on us and crushing us, so sometimes that happens while I'm trying to escape. Or sometime I just get freaked out and upset when I realize that I'm really back there, or because I can't find my friends, and I get in a fight with one of the nurses. Either way, the orderlies eventually come and pin me down, then --" He made a jabbing motion against his thigh. "They tranquilize me, and I wake up back here." Oops. Instead of 'and then I wake up.' DAISY: Daisy was hardly breathing. The description was so vivid, she could almost see it herself. She couldn't imagine having to dream it, having to dream it every night. Now it was her turn to reach an arm around his back, removing it from the place where she held onto his knee. Instead, her hand found the back of Hunter's head and she touched him there, feeling the familiar sensation of his hair between her fingers. It wasn't the casual, absentminded motion that it so often was, but direct and intentional. She had no idea what she was supposed to say. "Hunter," she started, though it was little more than a whisper. "I'm... so sorry." The words felt empty and meaningless, of course she was sorry, they were all pretty darn sorry about everything. 'Sorry' wouldn't help Hunter have pleasant dreams. "Do you still..." wonder sometimes, do you still wonder sometimes if this isn't real? Yes, Daisy knew, of course he did. She could see it in him. What good would it do to make him say the words out loud? "...I mean, does anything help?" She redirected her thought here, to something they could hold onto. There was a pleading note in Daisy's voice and she regretted it, but it was almost impossible to keep at bay. She couldn't look at Hunter and feel anything but desperate. Don't leave me again, please don't, the internal dialogue in her brain seemed to be repeating, over and over again. Daisy did her best to silence it. HUNTER: It was nice to have her hand in his hair, at least. She was right -- the apology made him cringe a little, internally -- but he stayed quiet and waited, lifting his chin to peer out at some point off in the distance, for her to sort through her thoughts until she figured out what she really wanted to say. That desperation made his chest ache, but at least he had something he could tell her. "Yeah," he nodded. She wasn't going to like all of it, but. "Like I said -- walking around helps. Because it's like the asylum, only there aren't nurses and nothing moves when it's not supposed to, which feels a lot better. I mean, maybe it's just because my delusion is more complete here, but at least I don't feel like I have to be afraid of the fucking walls in this place. And having you or Vic there helps, even if it's just to...watch you breathe. Sorry if that's creepy." His mouth twitched into almost a smile, for a moment. "And, uh -- remember during break? The second day, when you texted me about SantaCon, and I said I'd had kind of a rough night because I was thinking about what was real and I got too drunk, but I was past it?" He turned his arm and tugged at his sleeve. Even in Australia, when it had been so hot that he'd practically wanted to strip naked and go to class, Hunter had worn a light overshirt of some kind open over his undershirt. In part, it was because it was easier to cover up the scar once the burn had healed, at least during the daylight when she was likely to notice. Now, he let her see where he'd drunkenly pressed a lit cigarette against his skin, pointed it out with his thumbnail in case it had faded too much for her to see easily. "I was thinking about how nothing was ever going to feel real anymore. I guess I was so fucked up that somewhere in my head, I thought that meant I wasn't going to be able to feel anything, even fire, so I shoved a cigarette into my arm. Which hurt like hell, as you can imagine. It's --" He found himself smirking a bit for real, though it really was incredibly far from funny, and he was pretty sure Daisy wasn't about to see the gallows humor, either. "I mean, it was fucking idiotic, but it kind of woke me up. Like...if I was so lost in this stupid debate over the delusion that I spontaneously decided to see if pain still hurts, then I really needed to get a grip. Which I already knew, but it didn't really get through my thick skull until then. And so I sort of touch it sometimes to remind myself that hey...delusion or not, pain still fucking hurts, so. Get it together, Hunter. I'm sorry I didn't mention it before, but..." He looked up at her to try to read the expression on her face, at last. Maybe she'd get it? DAISY: Try as she might, Daisy couldn't help but look horrified. Far from sharing in Hunter's pained smirk, she looked like she might cry. Her lips were pressed together in a firm line that had gone almost white. She wasn't sure what was worse -- the mark on Hunter's arm or the way he could so casually reference their reality as a potential (or maybe even likely) delusion -- but there was certainly no hiding how it made her feel. "I don't --" For the first time in what felt like forever, Daisy felt like she couldn't connect with Hunter. She was staring into his face and she felt utterly lost and confused, unable to offer him anything or even know where to start. Worthless. "God, you scare me so much sometimes." The hand was pulled back in shame and Daisy brought it to rub against her own brow, distraught. It wasn't what she felt like she was supposed to say, it probably wouldn't help -- but it was the truth. HUNTER: Well, that was more or less what he'd expected. Not the last comment -- that startled him, a bit, but it didn't shock or hurt him. He knew he was capable of dissociating from these concepts more than he possibly should, and that at times, inversely, he felt too strongly. He could objectively make choices based on evidence that he'd gathered -- things that might mean nothing to others -- and as long as he felt confident about his evidence, his response would be absolute. He had chosen to accept this reality as the one he would be living in. As long as he had access to it, the thing that mattered to him most was that there were people in this world that he loved, who made his life worth living, whereas in the asylum, he was utterly isolated. That didn't mean this had to be real. There had been too much logic in either scenario for him to dismiss one or the other. There were just his choices, and his feelings. His feelings wanted this. "Yeah, I know." He smiled sadly as he shifted, reached to put his arms around her and pull her against his chest, embraced her tightly. "It's okay. I'm okay. I mean, it's not easy, and I wish I was getting more sleep, but I'm a lot better than I was in December. I made up my mind that it doesn't matter all that much if you or Vic are figments of my desperate imagination or whatever because I fucking love you two, and I don't want to live in a world where you aren't there, and I'm not going to waste my whole life obsessing about the truth if I could be spending my life with you feeling things that are real to me. You think I'd be fighting this hard to make a future for all of us with the Vols and this whole plot and making us work together if I thought it was all going to disappear at any given moment because it's not real?" He squeezed her in his arms, his face turning down again to bury in the strands. He loved how she smelled, how she fit against him, how familiar she was -- she was the sister he needed in his life. The one he might have made up, but he needed her. That was all that mattered to him. And if Daisy hadn't been enough, somehow, then the way Vic tasted and all the thousands of other things that Hunter loved him for were worth clinging to with every fiber of his being. "And I've had way worse than cigarette burns, don't worry -- okay, that's not going to make you worry less, obviously," he heard himself laughing thickly against her hair, "but I'm just saying, I mean, small price to pay while finding sanity at the bottom of a bottle, to me. The scar's almost gone, anyway. Soon it'll just be a memory and you won't even have to see it, so." DAISY: "It's not that," Daisy protested, though his attempts to comfort her were working slightly and her voice had lost some of that straining sound, "it's not that I don't want to see it, it's not about the scar -- it's not even about what you did, even though that does scare me and I hate seeing you hurt." The words were a jumbled mess. Daisy struggled to make the point that seemed so clear in her gut. Why couldn't she seem to put it into words? "It's just like, that's what you think right now, but what about in the middle of the night when you've had a really bad dream, or what if something happens again that makes you change your mind? I'm not like, blaming you for feeling this way, but... I'm just scared." HUNTER: It was a fair point, and he was quiet for a long moment. Because there were times when he did wake up alone in his bed, utterly disoriented and terrified and not sure of what was real, or worse -- that he'd come back to IVI, but Vic and Daisy had disappeared, because being a Vol was real but they were the only actual delusions. That the idea that anyone could love him and want to be near him and be his friend or sleep with him or kiss him or hold him was so unlikely that he'd obviously made them up. It wasn't the same as waking up from a nightmare where they'd died, like he had the night after Halloween and had practically flung himself out of bed to go check on Vic, but it was close enough. Those were the nights he needed to hear from them at the very least to know that they were out there. "Like you said," he replied softly, at last, "I can text you. Or Vic. And seeing you...or I mean -- when Vic kisses me, I fucking hear it. The first time he kissed me, he told me that he was real and he was going to prove it. He just was like, don't you fucking dare tell me I'm not real." Hunter smiled slightly, recalling that moment, his shock and the flood of relief and the simple submission to Vic's demands. Giving in had never felt quite so good before in his life. "So...yeah. I understand if you're scared. But you shouldn't be." He pulled back slightly to catch her face, to look her in the eye. "I'm scared about a lot of shit right now," he said solemnly. "I'm scared about this place and how we're gonna get out of here and how much time we have and whether I can pull this off as well as I think I can. But I'm not scared about waking up and losing my mind again. Okay? That is one thing I'm not scared about. Not anymore." DAISY: Letting out a breath she'd been holding in, Daisy nodded. Hearing his confidence gave her strength. It made such a difference when he spoke with such certainty, even if it didn't erase everything he'd said before. Daisy needed to believe that Hunter believed in what he was saying, "Okay," she nodded again. The beginnings of a smile finally hinted upon her face. His story about Vic had given her a sort of relief -- although Daisy had never managed to say anything exactly like that, she was profoundly glad that Vic had said the words that Hunter needed so desperately to hear. "I believe you." Daisy leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and then gave him another hug. "I'm probably always gonna be a lil' scared that I might lose you again, but I'm guessing there ain't anything that either one of us can do about that. Maybe it's not even a bad thing, y'know? Makes me appreciate you even more, or whatever." HUNTER: He gave her a crooked smile in return. "Like you don't fucking appreciate me enough already, christ." Brushing a strand of hair away from her face to tuck behind her ear, Hunter yawned -- problems might have been resolved, but he still needed a goddamn nap soon. "Come on, buttercup. Let's finish this map or I'm gonna end up taking a nap on this rock, and we'll lose the sun and I'll sleep through the pub night we're not allowed to go to and we'll have to spend the whole fucking weekend out here." He grabbed hold of her hand and pushed himself up to his feet, tugging her along with him, gently. "When we get this private network up and running," Hunter added quietly as he glanced down at her, "I'll message you on that if I can't get back to sleep. Okay? So the staff don't get to know. We'll finally have a way to talk without them breathing down our goddam necks, adding everything we say to their dossiers about us." DAISY: Daisy stretched as she got up off of the rock. Hunter was right -- from the look of the sun hanging low in the sky, it was already getting late. She didn't have her phone to check the time, nor did Hunter have his -- it was much easier for Daisy to accurately detect the cameras and microphones if her familiar devices were out of range and not clogging up her thoughts. If they managed to create a new network, Daisy wondered how long it would take her powers to get used to it. If they really could create a secret way for people to communicate on campus, Daisy knew that it would be huge, a potential shifting of power to the students at IVI. Of course, it could also mean big trouble for the people involved in creating it. She squeezed Hunter's hand nervously. "Alright. Let's finish this thing." |