Who: Audrey and Thomas What: Convincing Audrey not to run away to Switzerland. Where: Hamartia, subspace, and then the Aubade. When: Immediately following this. Warnings: Light swearing.
Thomas decided to avoid further difficulties altogether. It turned out that Audrey had a transportation ability, which explained her comment to Rescue when she was trapped in the library during the Reaver attack, and Thomas thought it prudent not to bring another Cadillac into the neighborhood. He went rooftops, therefore, moving with the same speed as always, perhaps even faster, because he wasn’t burdened with armor. It was dangerous, of course, but a lot of things were dangerous, and Thomas was running out of patience for this mess.
He came down the stairs from the roof and didn’t announce himself before walking into the Hamartia apartment. “Audrey?” At least the greeting wasn’t stern or angry, but cautious.
Audrey had locked the bathroom door. The lock still worked, thankfully, even after the Reavers had trashed the apartment, and it was the only closed door in the unit. She heard a voice outside and pressed herself a little further back into the niche she’d taken up residence in between the bathtub and the toilet, knees drawn up to her chest. A muffled “Go away” could be heard through the door.
Thomas stared at the locked door. It wasn’t really a barrier, of course, but at the moment it was more stalwart than reinforced steel. “Audrey. You can’t stay in there forever,” he said reasonably. “It’s cold and there isn’t anything to eat. Not to mention the gang on your doorstep.” Thomas glanced out the window, not that he could see anything through the saran.
"No, and I can leave whenever I want," she said, probably so low that it would only come through the door half heard. Then, louder, "What do you want?" Her voice sounded thick, but there wasn't anything she could do about that.
“I want you to go somewhere safe so that you don’t get hurt.” Simply. He was still just standing there, not moving.
A brief, dry laugh. "I came here to get away. I'm not staying here."
“Then,” logically, “you can stay where I know it’s safe.”
There was a stretch of silence from the other side of the door. "Why do you care? I'm your girlfriend's annoying sister who threatens carjackers with a baseball bat. You'd be better off with me gone."
“I wouldn’t leave anyone in this apartment, much less my girlfriend’s annoying sister who threatens carjackers with a baseball bat,” Thomas replied, firmly. (He hesitated a little on the word ‘girlfriend’ but only because he hadn’t said it very much.)
Audrey was tired. She was tired of arguing with her sister, tired of being worked up over seeing her again. She'd come to this world to get away from her past and start new, and the very first thing that happened was her sister insisting she come live with her. She still didn't get why Max cared. Yes, they were blood, and they had to look out for each other whether they liked it or not. Yes, if her apartment hadn't been unsafe before it definitely was now. But why she didn't just send her off to a Motel 6 and make sure she got there okay was beyond her. She had no obligations beyond that, and at least then Audrey wouldn't have to look her in the eye again after running off.
More than anything else she felt ashamed, embarrassed, and stupid - for challenging the carjackers, for running away from her argument with Max - and the idea of facing her again for another lecture straight from their father's mouth to hers was not high on her to do list. It seemed, however, that she didn't really have another choice.
She opened the door to the bathroom after a long stretch of silence. She still had her bag. She'd washed the blood from her arms as best she could in her empty bathroom, but she'd had nothing to bandage them with, so they were still bleeding a touch. She'd wiped away most of her eyeliner, and her eyes were red, and she attempted not to look like she'd been crying despite this. "Max has got to be pretty fucking important to you that you put up with this," she said. Any likeness to their father's military efficiency and serious nature aside, she could already tell Thomas was a much better man. Of course, even when Max picked someone like their father, the same way Audrey had done, she managed to find the good guy and Audrey a string of bad ones.
Thomas recognized all the signs anyway. That was one of the things he did, like Max: pick up details. Unlike Max, however, he didn’t use them immediately. Thomas just retained knowledge until it became relevant. He didn’t have any first aid on him, but he frowned at her arm. “Max is very important to me. You are also important, or I wouldn’t be here.” He paused and then stepped closer, cautious in her space, and he put out a hand toward her arm. “I don’t have anything to treat you here. I brought the car but it is a farther distance away.” His mouth twitched. “It would be faster if you opened a door again. Can you?”
She smiled, faintly. "I was actually going to offer," she said. "But you were nice about thinking my thought, so I'll let it slide." She walked out into the hall and took Thomas's hand with her own. Her fingernails were painted a fluorescent shade of blue to match her hair.
She reached out and shut the door. A few seconds later it suddenly became totally different, white wood with a metal star set in the middle, as always. She put her hand on the knob and looked back at him. "Don't let go of my hand. I don't know what happens if someone lets go."
“I don’t want to find out.” He did, but only theoretically. It was important to know, however, what Audrey did and how she did it. Thomas liked to know what Creations could do; it made future confrontations easier, because he could calculate more possibilities. “You can go anywhere?” His hand closed coolly around hers.
She opened the door. Beyond was blackness in all directions, and when she shut the door behind them it disappeared.
It wasn't truly dark in subspace. It was lit with its own internal light, but that did not change the fact that the 'ground,' or what passed for it, was soft underfoot but otherwise matte black, no shine, not texture, just blackness that absorbed light and did not throw it back. There was no horizon line, no break in the distance, just darkness. She began walking, keeping a firm grip on Thomas's hand.
She thought over whether she should tell anyone any more about her ability than she already had, but he was already here, after all. "Only if I know the place I'm going," she said. "I can go places people describe, but only if the description is good. Otherwise I might end up in the next building or something."
“I can see,” Thomas said, experimenting with the flow of his voice and looking all around though there was nothing to see, “how that would be a problem.” He walked after her, next to her, silent in a way that would have been uniquely his, except nothing at all made noise here except them moving through it. “This is a very useful ability,” he said, in an attempt to encourage her to speak.
She shrugged. "It's made me the fastest delivery girl in the West, I can say that for it. And it makes fleeing familial arguments really easy." Dry as ever with a dash of self-aware embarrassment. "What's your ability? Being a ninja?"
“Nothing that exciting.” He almost smiled. His mouth twitched, and it was on her side, so visible in the pseudo-light of the blackness. “I just go longer. Stay awake, that kind of thing. I need it right now for work, so it’s useful. It means I am not home very often. I should try to be home more. Max is tired.” He paused mid-step for just a moment, and then caught up with her in a long stride.
She saw that little twitch and marked it, since smiles seemed rare coming from Thomas. When Thomas mentioned not being home much, her face closed down in a strange, distinct way. Her sister was pregnant, and if she was going to have a kid with a guy who was going to be around as little as their father had, she might have to actually take issue. "How much is often?" she asked. "And how tired is tired?" she paused, then figured another question couldn't hurt. "Max told me the other day she was coming from a funeral. Who died?"
“Not often enough. Every night--almost. But not for long.” He was troubled by it, at least, and the awareness was marked on his face and in the empty almost-blue of his eyes. “She worries a lot, and I think it keeps her up. Something does. But it has been a hard few weeks.” Few months... few years.
His grip on her hand up until this point had been unchanging, even, but at her last question his fingers tensed slightly against hers, as if he would have preferred to pull away. “My--” he stopped. “...An old friend.”
Every night was better than months at a time, and she relaxed a little. The fact that it seemed to bug him made her feel even better about it. "Hey, I believe you if you say you will." She tried to imagine her sister sitting up at night biting her nails and couldn't. "Why does she worry?" she asked, then: "What do you do, exactly?"
She felt that tensing, and looked over at him. Bad relationships aside, Audrey knew men pretty well by now, and when they acted like that it was because they really didn't want to talk about it, whatever 'it' was. "Sorry," she said, and there was feeling behind the inadequate, rote apology for something she hadn't done that, as it always did, felt like the only thing to say. Another door appeared in the distance, not very far off.
Thomas decided it was better to talk about Max. She was alive. “I run a company. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.” A lot of people hadn’t heard of it but knew what the company did. Thomas underestimated his social influence regularly, but in this case he had no reason to think that a brand new Creation would know his face. “Alfie was my chief financial advisor, and I’m having a hard time finding a new one while trying to rebuild the city.” He just left out the ninja part.
She snapped the fingers of her free hand. "Right, forgot. I think I saw your picture in the paper a couple weeks ago." It had been some charity story for other, thus all the details were hazy. "You run a company, or something? I have to admit, I'm not really much of a business person. Wish I could help you out there, but I've never been good with numbers. Always been more of a dirt poor creative type."
She pushed the door open, first an inch or so to make sure no one was close by, then all the way, nudging Thomas through first before shutting it behind them. The door had opened on the lobby of Aubade. She'd never been inside the apartment itself and had no idea what the layout was like, so this was the best she could do. "Home sweet home." Bitterness? What bitterness?
“Many creative people are not dirt poor,” Thomas felt compelled to say. He waited until she was through entirely before letting go of her hand, a gesture of concern that was probably unnecessary. “I have some things to help your arm upstairs,” he said, moving a little way toward the elevator and looking back to make sure she was coming.
She was coming. The door had disappeared after she shut it again, and she was feeling very, very tired all of a sudden. "It's not that bad," she said, checking her arms again. The cuts had begun to scab over, though they were messier than they had been when she left the apartment. "You're right. Many creative people aren't. I am, though." She jammed the up button on the elevator, and it opened right away, as if it had been waiting for them to arrive. "What floor do we want?"
“The top one,” Thomas said distractedly. He started to put out an arm to demonstrate his own cuts, but he stopped short and instead dropped his hand mid-lift. “Even when they don’t seem bad, you always treat them with hot water and antiseptic to make sure they don’t get infected.”
Audrey hit the button for the top floor. “Good point,” she said. She paused, then looked over at him. “You sound like you’ve got a lot of experience with that.” She leaned against the back of the elevator, watching the numbers roll up above the door. “I washed with warm water, so there’s a start.”
Thomas made a soft neutral sound of agreement and looked at the ceiling. “I had a lot of free time when I was younger and I did a lot of stupid things.” This was all technically true. In a way. If you squinted.
She smiled a little, knowing. “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” The elevator doors slid open. “What was the stupidest thing you ever did?” She was thinking along her own lines - busting mailboxes, spray painting the locker of a girl who called her names.
“Uh.” Thomas tried to come up with something he could tell her. He kept coming up with times he’d almost died in various ways, but he didn’t want her to know that, so he just stood there and frowned for a little while. “I associated with some unsavory people I met in college,” he said, with obvious care, “who made illegal drugs. I was aware it was stupid but I was curious as to the process so I... overstayed my welcome. It was not one of my better moments in pursuit of knowledge.” And this was the most nonviolent thing he could come up with off the top of his head.
She nodded slowly. "Sounds like fun," she said, a little dubious. "Can't say I'm as curious as you, so hats off in that regard." She waited for him to point her in the right direction as far as which door they were going in. The Aubade was already nicer than anywhere she'd ever lived, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't a touch daunted by it. "What happened when you overstayed?"
To Thomas, the Aubade hallway was acquiring an air of familiarity that it didn’t have before Luke had moved in, and he traversed it without his usual cautious glances and careful movement. “The university found out and made assumptions. It was quite a scandal and I wasn’t used to the media yet.” Thomas’ expression of distaste, a quick flicker there and gone, communicated his feeling on that note. He paused at the front door and looked back at her. “She was just worried. I’m sure she’s calm by now.” Thomas seemed anxious that Audrey was calm too.
“That sucks, “ she commiserated. “Sometimes people just want to screw with you, because it’s fun or because their readership eats it up. All you can do is shrug it off.” She smirked, faintly amused. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m glad nothing I did as a teenager ended up on the front page of anything. I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
When Thomas turned to her and reassured her that Max was calm, her face fell. She’d sort of forgotten why they were there. She’d been so wrapped up in the conversation that she’d forgotten to be freaked out, and now she remembered what she was going to have to face and the feeling was back. “Sure,” she said, lips pressing together into a thin line, eyes intent on the door. She looked like there was going to be a battlefield beyond it when he opened it. And the apartment was going to be, she expected, a place where she fought, so it seemed like a fair assessment, even when he opened it and let her through.